When you’ve had your fill of fireworks, parades and potato salad, there’s nothing like curling up with a good movie on a warm summer evening.

Here’s 16 of the best movies about America that will put you in a patriotic mood.

A toe-tapping rendition of the founding of our country, 1972’s "1776" brought the Broadway musical of the same name from stage to screen just in time for the bicentennial with much of the celebrated cast reprising their roles.

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Standout songs include "Sit Down, John" and "Molasses to Rum."

A somber portrayal of a veteran’s experience in Vietnam, "Born on the Fourth of July," is based on Ron Kovic’s real-life story of serving in the war, becoming paralyzed and eventually turning to anti-war activism.

The movie stars Tom Cruise and Willem Dafoe and was directed by Oliver Stone.

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The Academy Award-winning portrayal of a simple man’s optimistic view of the world follows the titular Forrest Gump from fighting in Vietnam to going on an inspiring run around the country.

The 1994 film stars Tom Hanks and Gary Sinise.

If action — and aliens — is more in your wheelhouse this Fourth of July, 1996’s "Independence Day" says it all in the title.

Defending the country (and the world) from extraterrestrial invaders, a group of patriots band together in a reminder that freedom isn't free.

Starring Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum and Bill Pullman, the impressive blockbuster even won an Academy Award for visual effects.

What could be more fun than watching president-turned-action-hero Harrison Ford save the country, his family and the occupants of his plane from terrorist hijackers?

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Gary Oldman, Glenn Close, Wendy Crewson and William H. Macy also star in the 1997 thriller.

An emotional story depicting the horrors of war, "Saving Private Ryan" follows a group of men during World War II who set out to bring a soldier home to his mother after she's lost her other three sons.

It stars Tom Hanks and Matt Damon and was directed by Steven Spielberg.

The film took home five Academy Awards, including best director for Spielberg.

"National Treasure" is a non-stop thrill ride through our nation's history that imagines a secret treasure map on the back of the Declaration of Independence.

The movie takes its stars — Nicolas Cage, Diane Kruger and Justin Bartha — from the National Archives in Washington, D.C. to the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia and Trinity Church in New York City.

Its sequel, "National Treasure: Book of Secrets," includes memorable scenes at Mount Vernon, the Library of Congress and Mount Rushmore.

Mel Gibson plays a reluctant Revolutionary War hero in this historical epic where he attempts to save his son who is captured by the British.

The movie also stars Heath Ledger and Joely Richardson and was nominated for three Oscars, including legendary composer John Williams for best score.

A love story, "Pearl Harbor" recounts the events of Dec. 7, 1941 through the eyes of two fictional Army Air Corps pilots and the nurse they both loved.

The 2001 Michael Bay film stars Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett and Kate Beckinsale. Jon Voight and Alec Baldwin also play Franklin D. Roosevelt and Jimmy Doolittle.

The movie, based on a book of the same name, depicts the 1945 Battle of Iwo Jima, the famous raising of the flag there, and the aftermath for the men shown in the picture.

Directed by Clint Eastwood, "Flags of Our Fathers" is a companion movie to "Letters from Iwo Jima," which shows the Japanese view of the battle.

The two movies were nominated for a combined six Oscars, with "Letters from Iwo Jima" taking home one for best sound editing.

Another Steven Spielberg-directed film, "Lincoln" stars Daniel Day-Lewis as the 16th president struggling the Civil War and abolishing slavery.

The film also stars Sally Field and Tommy Lee Jones.

It was nominated for 12 Oscars in 2013, and took home two, including best actor for Day-Lewis.

"There's no crying in baseball!"

While much of the country's young men were overseas fighting World War II, someone had to keep America's favorite pastime alive.

Enter female athletes played by the likes of Geena Davis, Rosie O'Donnell and Madonna coached by Tom Hanks, a washed-up former MLB star.

The movie, directed by Penny Marshall was selected by the Library of Congress in 2012 to be preserved in the National Film Registry as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

Harrison Ford is back to save the country, this time as CIA agent Jack Ryan, hunting down the IRA terrorist who left his wife and daughter badly injured.

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The film, based on the Tom Clancy novel, also stars Samuel L. Jackson, Sean Bean and James Earl Jones.

This 1986 action flick is a high-flying, patriotic ode to the best of our military pilots.

It follows Maverick, played by Tom Cruise, as he trains at the elite Top Gun Naval Fighter Weapons School, his cocky attitude rubbing others there the wrong way.

The movie also stars Val Kilmer and Kelly McGillis.

The 2022 sequel "Top Gun: Maverick" reunites Cruise and Kilmer, catching up with the titular character who is now a test pilot and flight instructor to a new generation of trainees.

Born out of Lin-Manuel Miranda's brilliant mind and writing, "Hamilton" takes viewers on a hip-hop version of the founding of our country.

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An expensive ticket on Broadway, the filmed stage version starring Miranda is available to stream.

Top songs include "My Shot," "Satisfied" and "Wait for It."

Finishing off with a bit of nostalgia, this 1989 Kevin Costner movie will satisfy both baseball fans and those who are looking for a dose of classic Americana — or frankly, anyone who wants to feel inspired.

The movie follows Costner's character as he decides to build a baseball diamond in his Iowa cornfield after hearing a voice tell him: "If you build it, he will come."

It also stars James Earl Jones, Ray Liotta, Burt Lancaster and Amy Madigan.

Palestine is not competing in the World Cup. They have nothing to do with the tournament, but that didn’t stop Egypt coach Hossam Hassan from making his team’s win against Australia politically divisive by waving a Palestinian flag on the pitch.

The video of Hassan went viral on social media with people chanting "Free, free Palestine!" in the background.

Following their victory via penalty kicks, Hassan said he was dedicating the win to the "good and noble" Egyptian and Palestinian people.

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"My heart and soul are with them," he added in his post-match interview. "I dedicate this victory to the Palestinians. May Allah grant them victory and have mercy on their martyrs."

Earlier in the tournament, while I was watching the USA's final group-stage match against Turkey, I noticed a Palestinian flag. So I asked a simple question: Why in the world would a Palestinian flag be allowed?

Palestine has nothing to do with the World Cup. It’s overtly political. It’s divisive. There's obviously a double standard because Israeli flags have been banned from matches, but Palestinian flags have been seen many times throughout the tournament.

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FIFA has yet to make a public statement or respond to any media requests regarding this incident.

Egypt is set to play Lionel Messi and Argentina in their round of 16 match on Tuesday in Atlanta.

Latin America has moved right. Not in one election, not in one country, and not as a passing mood. The region’s political map has been reordered. Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Peru, Colombia, Honduras, El Salvador, Ecuador, and the Dominican Republic are now governed by right-wing, center-right, or security-first governments broadly aligned with Washington’s new strategic posture.

Only Mexico, Brazil, Uruguay, and a handful of others remain, for now, outside this broader shift. Cuba and Nicaragua remain closed authoritarian cases. Venezuela, after the rupture of the old Chavista order, now stands as the clearest warning of what happens when left-wing regimes lose both legitimacy and protection.

That is the new hemisphere. The pink tide has receded. In its place is a harder, more security-driven right. And the latest proof is not just that the right is winning. It is why it is winning.

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The decisive change came after the U.S. moved from pressure to force in Latin America’s strategic environment, then widened that pressure through Cuba and the Iran war. Washington showed that hostile regimes could be squeezed, destabilized, or removed; that fuel, sanctions, and military leverage could be used together; and that the hemisphere would now be treated less like a diplomatic afterthought and more like a security perimeter.

That changed the political calculus across the region.

This was not a single event. It was a sequence. Maduro’s fall changed the psychological ceiling on what Washington would do. Cuba’s fuel crisis turned leftist scarcity into a living warning. The Iran war pushed energy prices, shipping risk, and domestic fuel politics into the center of elections from Chile to Colombia. Together, those shocks rewrote the incentives for leaders, voters, business elites, and security forces.

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A voter may forgive weak growth for a time. He does not easily forgive a state that cannot protect his family, his shop, his commute, his border, or his future. Once people conclude that the state is absent, weak, or captured, they stop voting for ideals and start voting for force.

That is the real story of Latin America’s new right. It is not a conventional conservative wave. It is a revolt against vulnerability.

The new right understands this better than the old right ever did. It does not campaign only on markets, tax cuts, and anti-socialism. It campaigns on punishment. It says the state has been humiliated by gangs, cartels, corrupt elites, failed parties, and weak executives, and must be made visible again.

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Not through another reform committee. Through force.

That is why Bukele-style politics has become the hemisphere’s most important export. Bukele did not invent hardline security politics. He made it modern, visual, and electorally overwhelming. Emergency powers, mass arrests, military presence, mega-prisons: all became a spectacle of the state overpowering the gangs.

The method is dangerous. The appeal is obvious. In societies exhausted by extortion, violence, and impunity, visible force can be sold as competence. Bukele’s real export is not a policy manual. It is a visual grammar of power. He showed that security can become a governing brand, and that voters abandoned by institutions may reward the leader who looks willing to break them.

Colombia and Peru show how far that grammar has traveled. In Colombia, Abelardo de la Espriella’s rise was fed by legislative gridlock, failed peace policy, rural violence, corruption allegations, and the assassination of a major conservative figure. His appeal was not nuance. It was ruthlessness. He sounded like a man willing to act where institutions had stalled.

But his rise was also accelerated by the regional context. A few months earlier, he was still a political outsider. Then Washington demonstrated in the region that anti-U.S. regimes could be squeezed hard, that Maduro was no longer protected, and that Latin America would now sit inside a more aggressive American security frame. De la Espriella’s hardline, Trumpaligned message fit that new order perfectly.

In Peru, Keiko Fujimori’s victory came in a country discredited by political churn, dysfunction, recurring crises, crime, and instability. Her advantage was not ideological freshness. It was a familiar security-first brand in a system voters no longer trusted. She was not riding a wave of enthusiasm. She was riding a wave of exhaustion. That distinction matters.

Neither Colombia nor Peru delivered a landslide. Both delivered razor-thin right-wing victories in divided societies that had lost confidence in the old political class. Those results

do not suggest consensus. They suggest institutional fracture. They suggest voters were reaching for order because the alternative looked like drift.

Donald Trump did not create that demand. Crime did. Weak growth did. Failed institutions did. The exhaustion of the pink tide did.

Trump did something else. He gave the shift geopolitical structure.

Washington is no longer treating Latin America as a development challenge or diplomatic afterthought. It is treating the hemisphere as a security zone. Cartels, migration, Chinese infrastructure, ports, energy, critical minerals, and hostile authoritarian regimes are no longer separate files. They are one contest over power in America’s own neighborhood.

That changes the calculation. Alignment with Washington now signals access, backing, seriousness, and protection. It tells investors a government wants order. It tells security forces they may have U.S. support. It tells voters their country is not drifting toward Havana, Caracas, or Beijing. And after the Iran war, it tells them that energy shocks, shipping disruptions, and strategic instability will be managed by governments that sit close to the American center of power.

Trump’s maximum-pressure posture toward hostile regimes makes alignment with Washington more valuable and isolation more costly. It also makes the right look like the only camp with a realistic external backstop. If you are a governor, a general, a banker, or a voter trying to decide who can protect your country from the next shock, that matters.

For the United States, the stakes are plain. A more U.S.-aligned Latin America could improve counternarcotics cooperation, reduce migration pressure, complicate Chinese influence, and restore American leverage in a region

Washington neglected for too long. But a hemisphere of pro-American strongmen is not the same as a hemisphere of strong democratic partners.

There is a difference between rebuilding the state and performing power. A serious government strengthens police, courts, prosecutors, prisons, borders, and ports. It makes law

credible beyond one leader. It may produce fear. It may even produce temporary order. But it leaves behind weak institutions and a leader too large for the system around him.

That is the test of Latin America’s new right. It has understood the public’s demand for order, the collapse of patience with the old left, and the value of Washington at a moment when America is again treating the hemisphere as strategically vital.

Now it has to govern.

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The Socceroos' World Cup is over after losing to Egypt on penalties on Friday, but before their heartbreak, Australian fans had one final hurrah.

And what better way to do that than by storming a Walmart in Texas and partying until the boys in blue arrive on scene?

There are probably some, but this works too.

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Walmart has been a hotspot for World Cup tourists because, while we take it for granted, it's pretty incredible if you think about it. You can get a giant sack of pizza rolls, take 20 steps, buy a dress shirt, take another 20 steps, buy a PlayStation, then take 20 more steps and grab a new garden hose. And, in between, you can even score some Dunkin' Donuts and a pair of prescription glasses.

That's kind of cool.

Fox 4 Dallas-Ft. Worth shared some clips on social media of Australian fans hitting up a Walmart in Arlington, and it was one of the wildest fan-related scenes of the World Cup so far.

Which is saying a lot, because we had a guy stick his head in a cotton candy machine.

If you were headed to that Walmart to stock up on Vegemite, go elsewhere. It's definitely sold out.

All I could think of was the poor person who stopped at that Walmart on the way home from work for a gallon of milk and some toilet paper, only to encounter throngs of Aussie soccer hooligans.

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Unfortunately, their excitement was short-lived — and not just because the Pharaohs stomped on their hearts a bit later — but because some of Arlington's finest were called in to help calm things down.

Absolute scenes.

I'm going to be honest: I think we're really going to miss all these World Cup fans once they're gone.

Arpit Gupta, the only member of New York City's Rent Guidelines Board (RGB) to vote against the rent freeze, told Fox News Digital the policy could gradually push older rent-stabilized buildings into disrepair by depriving landlords of revenue needed for capital improvements.

Gupta is also worried that the freeze, a central campaign promise from Mayor Zohran Mamdani, could make it more difficult for landlords to pay their bills.

"It's a little bit of a slow burn," said Gupta, an associate finance professor at New York University’s business school. "The risk is that the buildings do go under more distress. There are a variety of responses. One is... deferred maintenance, which will worsen the physical conditions of buildings."

He continued: "There are other avenues of distress, like going behind on mortgage payments, insurance payments, eventually property taxes, which leaves the property to be transferred in ownership to a bank or to the city, possibly for a tax lien sale."

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RGB Chair Chantella Mitchell, whom Mamdani appointed in February, acknowledged in her statement following the June 25 vote that landlords are facing soaring property tax and insurance costs but argued that most "remain able to meet rising costs."

Gupta, first appointed to the board by former Mayor Eric Adams in 2022, does not dispute Mitchell's claim that many landlords are doing fine.

Rather, he argues that the financial strain on the city's rent-stabilized housing stock is not the same all around, with older buildings that rely almost entirely on regulated rents facing a much greater burden than newer, mixed-income properties.

The board under Mamdani went further than it did under former Mayor Bill de Blasio, whose administration froze rents three times — in 2015, 2016 and 2020 — but only for one-year leases. The current freeze will affect roughly 1 million rent-stabilized apartments and applies to one- and two-year leases that run from Oct. 1, 2026, to Sept. 30, 2027.

As a result, landlords could, in the longest possible case, have to wait until late September 2029 before they can legally raise rents.

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Gupta considers the blanket rent freeze a blunt tool that doesn't adequately address the affordability crisis. Instead, he favors targeting aid to struggling tenants while allowing financially-strained buildings to continue raising rents.

"About 30% of the tenants in rent-stabilized housing make six figures or more. At the same time, many individuals in market-rate housing are below the poverty line," Gupta said. "So, to have a system that provides so many benefits for one sector of the housing stock while completely leaving out the market-rate tenants — whose rents might actually go up because of the dynamics of freezing one part of the housing stock — means that we have an incompletely targeted program."

New York City already has programs that freeze rents for qualifying senior citizens and disabled individuals. Gupta said these programs should be expanded to low-income residents more broadly, rather than limiting relief to rent-stabilized tenants.

Another worry Gupta has is that the rent freeze will incentivize landlords to leave units vacant.

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In early June, Gothamist reported that more than 57,000 stabilized apartments were vacant in April 2025. At the time, state housing officials said this number did not offer a complete picture, since some of the units included in the count were in the process of getting new tenants.

But Gupta argued that some of those apartments are being left vacant because owners cannot recover the cost of rehabilitating them before re-renting them, a problem he believes will be exacerbated by the rent freeze.

Many landlords point to the 2019 Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act as the main catalyst for falling revenues. The law eliminated the so-called "vacancy bonus," which allowed owners of stabilized units to raise the rent by up to 20% after a tenant left. Landlords say the change made it harder to recoup the cost of renovating apartments before renting them to a new tenant.

Gupta told Fox News Digital he sees where Mitchell and his colleagues are coming from and acknowledged that many tenants are seriously struggling to pay their rent, despite the board’s past efforts to ease affordability pressures.

"In the five years I’ve been on this board… we have set rents below our estimate of building cost increases, we have set rents below CPI, and we've even set rents below wage growth in the city," Gupta said.

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Despite that, the city's spending on one-shot deals to cover tenants' back rent more than quintupled between 2022 and 2025, rising from $102 million to $555.8 million, according to the rental board’s income and affordability study.

The same study found that last year, 62% of evictions occurred in buildings with rent-stabilized units, a key data point the board used to bolster its case for a rent freeze.

While Gupta disagrees with the board's policy choice, he rejected the notion that the outcome was pre-ordained after Mamdani reshaped the municipal body. The mayor appointed six of the nine members of the board in February, and all of his picks voted for the rent freeze.

"From my understanding, the administration did not direct or try to influence the vote directly," Gupta said. "My fellow board members tell me that they were independently appointed."

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"What I also hear from board members who joined is that in the vetting process, as they were entering the board, they weren't asked or pressured on their position on the rent freeze," Gupta said.

Gupta’s view is not shared by Christina Smyth, another Adams appointee who resigned from the board shortly before the vote. In an open letter posted to social media, she said the board was "rebuilt," was no longer a "fact-finding body" and that it was "required to deliver a rent freeze."

Going forward, Gupta’s main concern is that the rent freeze will be extended far beyond what he believes is reasonable, given that Mamdani promised that he would "freeze the rent every year I’m in office."

"I've had many discussions with other members of the board, and I've asked, ‘if you vote for the rent freeze now, what are the conditions under which you would vote for rental increases?’" he said.

Up to this point, he said he has not gotten a clear answer on that question, with some board members telling him they need to wait for future data to make an informed decision.

"I'm not sure whether all the board members believe that's the future, or if maybe the future is just more freezes. Freeze after freeze for four years, as Mamdani campaigned on. That's a very different picture."

Fox News Digital asked Mitchell whether she viewed the rent freeze as a temporary measure and about concerns that it could worsen the financial condition of some rent stabilized buildings. She declined to comment beyond the statement she issued following the vote.

As Americans around the nation celebrate the nation's 250th anniversary this week, a parade that had been slated to take place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Friday was called off due to scorching temperatures expected in the city.

Welcome America Inc. noted the cancellation in a post on X, which the city of Philadelphia reposted.

"Due to the extreme heat, the Salute to Independence Semiquincentennial Parade is cancelled," the post noted.

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The X account for the National Weather Service Philadelphia/Mount Holly noted in a morning post Friday, "If Philadelphia Int'l Airport reaches our forecast high of 104° today, it will be the hottest temp recorded there since July 3, 1966."

City Health Commissioner Palak Raval-Nelson extended an ongoing "Heat Health Emergency" through 8 p.m. Sunday, according to the city's Department of Public Health.

The parade had been slated to include floats and marching bands, according to an event description.

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Welcome America Inc. President and CEO Michael DelBene noted that the organization's first duty is people's safety.

"As much as this decision pains everyone inside our organization, we simply cannot host an event of this size and scale under these dangerous heat conditions. Todd Marcocci and Under the Sun Productions, along with all the parade groups, have been working tirelessly to design something truly historic, and having to cancel it at the last minute is heartbreaking for all of us," DelBene noted in a statement obtained by Fox News Digital.

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"While large-scale celebrations and community events may be our mission, our first responsibility will always be to the safety and security of our staff, our guests, and our event participants."

The International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) issued a red notice Friday for Anastasiia Berezovska, a 39-year-old Ukrainian national suspected of bombing a Monaco apartment building that reportedly targeted a Russian-linked Ukrainian oligarch.

The June 30 apartment building explosion, according to numerous media reports, injured Vadym Yermolaiev, a Ukrainian-born construction magnate.

While declining to identify any of the victims by name, Monaco public prosecutor Stéphane Thibault also revealed the explosion injured a woman and a 13-year-old child in the apartment who media reports widely claim to be members of Yermolaiev's family.

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Berezovska, according to Interpol, is now wanted on charges of attempted murder, depositing an explosive device on a public highway with criminal intent and criminal association.

Interpol identified the Ukrainian national as a dark-haired German-speaking woman who possibly has a tattoo of a snake on her arm.

The 39-year-old suspect was initially believed to be a heavy-set man. Monaco Deputy Prosecutor Morgan Raymond even initially referred to the suspect in masculine terms.

"He stood up a few meters ahead of the victims, placed an explosive device taken from his shopping bag on the entrance steps of the building, then turned to confirm the presence of the three victims before triggering the explosion using a remote control," Raymond said at an initial news conference after the incident.

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Prosecutors reviewed footage of the days leading up to the explosion, finding that a man wearing a fishing hat repeatedly cased the apartment building and surrounding area. However, on June 28, the man was absent from security footage. Instead, a woman — who prosecutors now believe to be Berezovska — followed the same patterns as the man.

"The repeated reconnaissance operations and the pauses made in front of the building clearly demonstrate the intention to specifically target the three victims," Raymond said.

Investigators tracked her escape across the Monaco-France border, through Italy and into Germany, where authorities are now actively looking for her. They raided her Frankfurt apartment Thursday.

Raymond noted that the sophistication of her explosive device gives prosecutors reason to believe she did not act alone.

"The relative sophistication of the explosive device and the modus operandi appear to indicate that the person who placed the device was not acting alone," Morgan said.

Though authorities have provided no motive, Yermolaiev's status as a sanctioned former Ukrainian is notable.

The 58-year-old construction tycoon renounced his Ukrainian citizenship in 2017, Ukrainian media reported, and has been a citizen of Cyprus since 2019. 

In 2023, the Ukrainian government sanctioned him for allegedly continuing to engage with Russia, paying taxes to Moscow and facilitating business transactions through his liquor business in Crimea, a Ukrainian peninsula which Russia annexed in 2014.