Which movies do you think are most important to watch for understanding American pop culture...?

...references?
My husband is a naturalized American citizen who has lived here for 11 years. Sometimes I take for granted certain pop culture references which he doesn't understand.

Which movies do you think are most important for understanding a lot of common pop culture references, or for understanding Americans in general?

Try to keep your list under 20 movies.Which movies do you think are most important to watch for understanding American pop culture...?...But certainly American comedies yield the most pop culture references. Just off the top of my head I would recommend (not necessarily comedies):

Ghostbusters
Spinal Tap
Indiana Jones
ET
Die Hard
Terminator 1 and 2
The Star Wars Movies
Alien and Aliens
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
The Godfather

Bonus holiday recommendation:
Christmas Vacation

In a nutshell, look at the top grossing US movies of all time and also the IMDB top 100--the most referenced movies will also be the most popular. This page has many good lists-http://www.imdb.com/chart/Which movies do you think are most important to watch for understanding American pop culture...?
Here, try this link: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packag鈥?/a>

Other link (same website as above): http://www.time.com/time/specials/packag鈥?/a>



I have to warn you, though, that NOT all movies included in the list are American so you'll have to look up on them one by one if you're only looking for American movies. However, at least this may provide some insight to your husband about movies considered the greatest by American critics. Also included in the above links are greatest performances by greatest actors and greates "guilty pleasures" in American cinema.



Btw here are some other lists from American Film Institute (the link is from wikipedia): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AFI_100_Yea鈥?/a>

There, you can find lists of top-100 Movies, Stars, Heroes and Villains, Songs, Movie Quotes, Film Scores, Musicals etc.Which movies do you think are most important to watch for understanding American pop culture...?Action movies: Pulp fiction, terminator (one and two), Star wars, Indian Jones,



Drama: godfather (one and two), Titanic, Jaws, Forest Gump, Casino, Good fellas,



Comedy/musicals: Grease, sound of music, Mary Poppins, west side story



Horror: Exorcist, sixth sense (not really horror)



Kid movies: Bambi, snow white, cinderella, any disney movie, E.T.,
80's teen movies (Breakfast Club, Weird Science, Sixteen Candles ETC.)



Sci-Fi movies (Aliens, Terminator 2, Jurassic Park, Matrix, Back to the Future)



Comedy (Half Baked, Naked Gun, Airplane,)



Drama (Rocky series, Good fellas, American Psycho,)



Action (Anything Arnold Schwarzenegger, Die Hard series,)



Kids films ( E.T., Goonies, Pee-Wee,)



Horror (Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th,)Which movies do you think are most important to watch for understanding American pop culture...?The Lord of the Rings trilogyWhich movies do you think are most important to watch for understanding American pop culture...?
the National Lampoon's Vacation movies. They are hilariously funny.
8 Mile

Baby BoyWhich movies do you think are most important to watch for understanding American pop culture...?
Films



Pulp Fiction

Jackie Brown

Wild Bunch

The Good The bad The Ugly

Godfather

Taxi driver

Mean streets

Silence of the Lambs

Frost vs Nixon

Milk

Dog Day Afternoon

Crash

Joh Ford's old western films

All sergio leone films

Scarface

Blow out

Basic instinct

Unfaithful



Novels



Mario Puzo s novels

Earnest hemingway

Ayn rand

John grisham

David balacci

Thomas Harris

Dan brown

Jack kerauk - novels like 'On the road' and 'Dhumma burms'

William s Burroughs - Junkie







Music

Madonna

Micheal jackson

Boston

70's rock music

90s hip hop

70's jazz music

Brintey - unfortunately she s also a part of pop culture



Marvel Comics

Times Magazine

vanity fair



After exposing yourself to all of these stuff, you are a perfect american