Some holidays just hit differently on the big screen. The Fourth of July has produced some of the most iconic, most rewatchable, and most purely American movies ever made. Whether you’re looking for something that’ll make you want to stand up and cheer or something that’ll make you think, the list has something for everyone. Here are the best movies that take place on the Fourth of July.
4. Independence Day (1996)
It doesn’t get more on-the-nose than this. Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum, and Bill Pullman save the entire planet from alien invasion on the Fourth of July. It’s the kind of movie that understood the assignment completely and delivered on every level. The speech alone is worth the watch. This one was practically made to be played on a big screen with a cold drink in hand, and nearly 30 years later, it still holds up better than it has any right to.
3. Jaws (1975)
Technically a summer movie, but a huge chunk of it takes place over the Fourth of July weekend. The whole conflict hinges on whether the town of Amity Island is going to close the beaches for the holiday. It’s both a genuinely terrifying shark movie and a surprisingly sharp commentary on small-town politics and what people are willing to ignore when money is on the line. Spielberg was 28 years old when he made this.
2. Born on the Fourth of July (1989)
One of Tom Cruise’s best dramatic performances. Oliver Stone directed this Vietnam War story about Ron Kovic, a patriotic young man who enlists, comes home permanently injured, and spends the rest of the film grappling with what that patriotism actually cost him. It’s not an easy watch, but it is a necessary one. It hits completely differently when you watch it on the actual holiday it’s named after.
1. The Sandlot (1993)
The most purely joyful movie on this list. The Sandlot is peak summer nostalgia. Baseball, best friends, a terrifying dog, and a Fourth of July fireworks scene that is genuinely one of the most feel-good sequences in family movie history. The whole film is set in 1962 and culminates in a Fourth of July game, and it captures a specific kind of American childhood that people have been chasing ever since.