Twenty-five new National Film Registry inductees were announced for 2017, ranging from documentaries like Spike Lee's "4 Little Girls," blockbusters like "Titanic," and little-known films like "Time and Dreams."
The new titles, added to the registry's collection for having cultural, social, or aesthetic significance, were picked from public suggestions sent to the Library of Congress in consultation with the National Film Preservation Board, according to Variety.
The registry now has 725 titles with the 2017 additions. Some 5,200 titles were submitted to the Library of Congress by the public, Variety said.
"Our love affair with motion pictures is a testament to their enduring power to enlighten, inspire and inform us as individuals and a nation as a whole," Carla Hayden, the Librarian of Congress, said, according to Variety. "Being tasked with selecting only 25 each year is daunting because there are so many great films deserving of this honor."
Here are the 2017 inductees with the dates they were released and a brief description from the National Library of Congress:
1. "Ace in the Hole" (aka "Big Carnival") (1951) – Kirk Douglas stars in the film based on the infamous 1925 case of Kentucky cave explorer Floyd Collins, who became trapped underground and whose gripping saga created a national sensation lasting two weeks before Collins died.
2. "Boulevard Nights" (1979) – The film had its genesis in a screenplay by UCLA student Desmond Nakano about Mexican-American youth and the lowrider culture. Director Michael Pressman and cinematographer John Bailey shot the film in the barrios of East Los Angeles with the active participation of the local community.
3. "Die Hard" (1988) – Bruce Willis stars as a New York cop who faces off, alone, against a team of terrorists inside a high-tech, high-rise Los Angeles office tower. Gripping action sequences and well-crafted humor made this film a huge hit and launched Willis as a major box-office star.
4. "Dumbo" (1941) – Disney's charming, trademark animation finds a perfect subject in this timeless tale of a little elephant with oversize ears who lacks a certain confidence until he learns — with the help of a friendly mouse — that his giant lobes enable him to fly.
5. "Field of Dreams" (1989) – Iowa farmer Kevin Costner one day hears a voice telling him to turn a small corner of his land into a baseball diamond: "If you build it, they will come." "They" are the 1919 Black Sox team led by the legendary Shoeless Joe Jackson. Although ostensibly about the great American pastime, baseball here serves as a metaphor for more profound issues.
6. "4 Little Girls" (1997) – Spike Lee's important documentary concerning America's civil rights struggle, "4 Little Girls" revisits the horrific story of the young children who died in the 1963 firebombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.
7. "Fuentes Family Home Movies Collection" (1920s, 1930s) – The collection of home movies by longtime Corpus Christi, Texas, residents Antonio Rodríguez Fuentes (1895-1988) and Josefina Barrera Fuentes (1898-1993) — shot on 9.5 mm amateur film format — are among the earliest visual records of the Mexican-American community in Texas and among the first recorded by Mexican-American filmmakers.
8. "Gentleman's Agreement" (1947) – Winning the 1947 Academy Award for best picture and considered daring at the time, "Gentleman's Agreement" was one of the first films to directly explore the still-timely topic of religious-based discrimination. Director Elia Kazan masterfully crafts scenes that reveal bigotry both overt and often insidiously subtle. The film was based on a book by Laura Z. Hobson.
9. "The Goonies" (1985) – Executive producer Steven Spielberg penned the original story, hand-selected director Richard Donner and hired Chris Columbus (who had written the 1983 "Gremlins") to do the offbeat screenplay. With its keen focus on kids of agency and adventure, "The Goonies" protagonists are Tom Sawyeresque outsiders on a magical treasure hunt, and the story lands in the continuum between where "Our Gang" quests leave off and the darker spaces of Netflix's recent "Stranger Things" pick up.
10. "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" (1967) – Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, who won an Academy Award for best actress, play an older married couple whose progressiveness is challenged when their daughter (Katharine Houghton, Hepburn's real-life niece) brings home a new fiancé, who happens to be black. Celebrated actor Sidney Poitier plays the young man with his customary on-screen charisma, fire and grace.
11. "He Who Gets Slapped" (1924) – One of the earliest "creepy clown" movies, "He Who Gets Slapped" was the first film produced completely by the MGM studio, though not the first released. The film features Lon Chaney in a memorable role as a scientist who is humiliated when a rival and his wife steal his ideas just as he is to present them to the Academy of Sciences.
12. "Interior New York Subway, 14th Street to 42nd Street" (1905) – This early actuality film documents New York City's newest marvel, the subway, less than seven months after its opening. However, the film is not as simple as it first appears. It required coordinating three trains: the one we watch, the one carrying the camera and a third (glimpsed on the parallel track) to carry a bank of lights.
13. "LaBamba" (1987) – "La Bamba" is a biopic of the life of rock star Ritchie Valens, rock's first Mexican-American superstar. Directed by Luis Valdez, "La Bamba" (the film draws its name from Valens' signature song) charts Valens' meteoric rise as a musician and his tragic death at age 17 in a 1959 plane crash, along with Buddy Holly and The Big Bopper.
14. "Lives of Performers" (1972) – Yvonne Rainer's work has been described as "foundational across multiple disciplines and movements: dance, cinema, feminism, minimalism, conceptual art and postmodernism." "Lives of Performers" has been characterized as "a stark and revealing examination of romantic alliances ... the dilemma of a man who can't choose between two women and makes them both suffer."
15. "Memento" (2000) – This innovative detective-murder, psychological puzzle (and director Christopher Nolan's breakthrough film) tells its story in non-linear stops and starts in order to put the audience in a position approximating the hero's short-term amnesia.
16. "Only Angels Have Wings" (1939) – Considered the "quintessential" Howard Hawks male melodrama by many, "Only Angels Have Wings" stars Cary Grant as the tough-talking head of a cut-rate air freight company in the Andes. Grant has a dangerous business to run and spurns romantic entanglements, fearing women blanch at the inherent danger.
17. "The Sinking of the Lusitania" (1918) – Newspaper cartoonist Winsor McCay produced this propaganda short (combining animation, editorial cartoon and live-action documentary techniques) to stir Americans into action after a German submarine sank the British liner RMS Lusitania in 1915, killing 1,198 passengers and crew, including 128 Americans.
18. "Spartacus" (1960) – Even among the mega epics being produced by Hollywood at the time (such as "The Ten Commandments" and "Cleopatra"), "Spartacus" stands out for its sheer grandeur and remarkable cast. The film is also credited with helping to end the notorious Hollywood blacklist of the 1950s.
19. "Superman" (1978) – For many, Christopher Reeve remains the definitive Man of Steel. This film, an "origins" story, recounts Superman's journey to Earth as a boy, his move from Smallville to Metropolis and his emergence as a true American hero. Beautiful in its sweep, score and special effects, which create a sense of awe and wonder, "Superman" — as the tag line reads — makes you "believe a man can fly."
20. "Thelonius Monk: Straight, No Chaser" (1988) – Charlotte Zwerin's insightful documentary of the jazz pianist-composer Thelonious Monk blends together excellent interviews with those who knew him best and riveting concert performances, many shot in the 1960s by Christian Blackwood.
21. "Time and Dreams" (1976) – Created in 1976 by Mort Jordan, the film offers a personal journey back to his Alabama home during the civil rights movement, where he contrasts two societies: the nostalgia some residents have for past values versus the deferred dreams of those who are well past waiting for their time to fully participate in the promise of their own dreams.
22. "Titanic" (1997) – James Cameron's epic retold the story of the great maritime disaster and made mega-stars of both its leads, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. The film cost $200 million to produce, leading many to predict a historic box office disaster, but "Titanic" became one of the top-grossing films of all-time and a cultural touchstone of the era.
23. "To Sleep With Anger" (1990) – Critic Leonard Maltin called "To Sleep with Anger" an "evocative domestic drama about the effect storyteller/trickster (Danny) Glover has on the various members of a black family. More than just a portrait of contemporary black society, it's a story of cultural differences between parents and children of how individuals learn (or don't learn) from experience, and of how there should be no place for those who cause violence and strife."
24. "Wanda" (1971) – Film and TV actress Barbara Loden wrote and directed this affecting and insightful character study about an uneducated, passive woman from the coal-mining region of Pennsylvania, where the cinema verite-like film was shot.
25. "With the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain" (1937-1938) – This advocacy documentary about the Lincoln Brigade was shot during the Spanish Civil War to raise funds for bringing wounded American volunteers home. Some 2,800 Americans enlisted in the International Brigades to fight against fascism in defense of the Spanish Republic.
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