The Library of Congress has announced this year’s 25 selections for addition to the National Film Registry, its collection of motion pictures of “cultural, historic and/or aesthetic importance,” and it’s a very big day for that Twitter account dedicated solely to getting Die Hard on the list, because Die Hard is on the list. And hurray for that – it’s a wildly entertaining and undeniably influential mainstream American movie! Also, The Goonies is on the list, which, no.
That complaint aside, it’s a fine mixture of modern-ish favorites (Titanic, Field of Dreams, Memento, Superman), hidden gems (To Sleep With Anger, Wanda, Boulevard Nights), and straight-up classics (Dumbo, Only Angels Have Wings, Ace in the Hole, Gentleman’s Agreement, Spartacus). It also features a handful of fascinating odds and ends, including Interior New York Subway, 14th Street to 42nd Street, a 1905 “actuality” that ingeniously used the newly-launched subway as a camera car; the 1918 animated dramatization The Sinking of the Lusitania; and a collection of home movies from the Fuentes family of Corpus Christi, Texas, capturing the daily lives of Mexican-Americans in the early 20th century.
Here’s the complete list, alphabetically:
Ace in the Hole (aka Big Carnival) (1951)
Boulevard Nights (1979)
Die Hard (1988)
Dumbo (1941)
Field of Dreams (1989)
4 Little Girls (1997)
Fuentes Family Home Movies Collection (1920s and 1930s)
Gentleman’s Agreement (1947)
The Goonies (1985)
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967)
He Who Gets Slapped (1924)
Interior New York Subway, 14th Street to 42nd Street (1905)
La Bamba (1987)
Lives of Performers (1972)
Memento (2000)
Only Angels Have Wings (1939)
The Sinking of the Lusitania (1918)
Spartacus (1960)
Superman (1978)
Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser (1988)
Time and Dreams (1976)
Titanic (1997)
To Sleep with Anger (1990)
Wanda (1971)
With the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain (1937-1938)