Top 5 movies for a fabulous Fourth of July

The burgers are searing, the pool glistening, the beer flowing — and it's still too hot to go outside until the fireworks show. But that doesn't mean your Fourth can't be fabulous. Get your flag primed for waving and watch one of these 10 rousing all-American films with patriotic verve.

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5. 'Team America: World Police' (2004)

Give "South Park" creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone a budget and a bunch of marionettes, and what do you get? A projectile-vomiting puppet and a sex scene that manages to be frightfully graphic in spite of the lack of any naughty bits. It's a movie very much of its time, satirizing both big-budget action films and the more jingoistic global politics of the United States when international relations were a bit dicier, and it loses a lot of its shock-value charm after the first viewing. But no amount of viewings can take the shine off a musical number as inspired as "America," with an expletive-laced subtitle. 

4. 'Yankee Doodle Dandy' (1942)

You're used to seeing James Cagney play tough guys and gangsters, but a tap-dancing Franklin Delano Roosevelt? The thing is, Cagney's boundless charisma plays just as well when he's waving a flag as when he's waving a gat. And there's a lot of flag waving in this biographical musical based on the life of "the man who owned Broadway," George M. Cohan, a vaudevillian entertainer who became an American institution with such patriotic tunes as "Over There," "The Yankee Doodle Boy" and "You're a Grand Old Flag." He also was the first artist to receive a Medal of Honor, "for his contribution to the American spirit."

3. 'Born on the Fourth of July' (1989)

Oliver Stone's best movie won him his second Oscar for direction and scored Tom Cruise his first nomination. Cruise plays Ron Kovic, a real-life Vietnam War veteran who returns home paralyzed and traumatized to a country he can't trust anymore as his horrified family asks, "What did they do to you in that war?" It's a transformative performance, the most physically and emotionally demanding role of Cruise's career. Kovic eventually heals enough to become an anti-war activist, but it's a long, painful road to salvation, and a viewing experience that's sadly as relevant today as ever.

2. 'Independence Day' (1996)

What does America do when aliens attack? Same thing we do to all our enemies: kick their asses. Nobody blows up our White House and gets away with it. Will Smith was at his blockbuster prime when he suited up to take on the alien invasion, but the real star turned out to be Bill Pullman as President Thomas J. Whitmore, thanks to a particularly rousing call to arms: "We will not go quietly into the night! We will not vanish without a fight! We're going to live on! We're going to survive! Today we celebrate our Independence Day!"

1. 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington' (1939)

Frank Capra's film about an idealistic Boy Ranger raising some civic hell in the U.S. Senate should be to the Fourth of July what "It's a Wonderful Life" is to Christmas, played on TV in 24-hour marathons. All-American icon James Stewart stars as Jefferson Smith, a starry-eyed stooge with no political experience hand-picked to replace a recently deceased senator because the powers that be think he'll be easy to manipulate. But no man who idolizes Abraham Lincoln can be broken so easily, and although his naivete takes a beating when he tries to take down a graft scheme with an with a epic one-man filibuster, so does the political machine. For the time, it's a strikingly ugly view of American politics. But more than that, it's a heartening triumph of the American spirit.

Reach the reporter at barbara.vandenburgh@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8371. Twitter.com/BabsVan.