The idea of citizenship, US and other, as depicted in the movies

Citizenship: On Celluloid – by Brian Villalobos (from Sanantoniacurrent)

Alien Nation (1988, dir. Graham Baker)
How thinly veiled do you take your immigration/assimilation conceits? Got a weakness for spotted noggins and sly double entendres? In 1991, 300,000 slave refugees from the planet Tencton came to Earth (what, you missed it?), integrated themselves into American society, and gained civil rights, only to contend with racism and prejudice.

Green Card (1990, dir. Peter Weir)
You know the drill: Andie MacDowell marries Gérard Depardieu for convenience, complications arise. Like your citizenship-cinema super saccharine? Sure you do. (Hey, it got an Oscar nomination ... )

Starship Troopers (1997, dir. Paul Verhoeven)
A society wherein only soldiers are granted full citizenship? Ribby lampoons of war propaganda? Criticisms of jingoism and militarism (and, perhaps, of Robert Heinlein’s original source material)? Oh, you betcha — Troopers has more going on upstairs than some might care to admit. (Plus, a veritable dickload of exploding bugs.)

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962, dir. Robert Mulligan)
Best Dad Ever Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck) defends a black man wrongly accused of raping a white woman in the Deep South in this three-Oscar classic.

Her Alibi (1989, dir. Bruce Beresford)
A struggling detective novelist (Tom Selleck) takes in a Romanian immigrant (Czech-supermodel-cum-Mrs.-Rick-Ocasek Paulina Porizkova) who’s suspected of murder; she provides him with fodder and inspiration, he lies to protect her from prison/deportation. Underappreciated, and funny.

In America (2002, dir. Jim Sheridan)
An Irish family immigrates illegally to the U.S., then struggles to cope and belong. Thrice-nominated film is bolstered by some seriously arresting performances — none more memorable than those of the two little girls through whose eyes the story is told. If they don’t melt your heart, then, brother, toss it out, ’cause the sucker’s busted.

Philadelphia (1993, dir. Jonathan Demme)
Tom Hanks plays a man who’s fired from a law firm for having AIDS. Denzel Washington is the skittish-about-gays lawyer who defends him; Antonio Banderas is Hanks’s lover. Nominated for five Oscars (won two of ’em).

Born in East L.A. (1987, dir. Cheech Marin)
Rudy, a Mexican-American U.S. citizen, is mistakenly rounded up in an INS raid and deported. Without friends or I.D. to prove he’s legit, he must sneak back in on his own. Throw in Cheech, and you’ve got one of the better-loved cult comedies of the ’80s. (Alternate: A Million to Juan .)

The Iron Giant (1999, dir. Brad Bird)
One of the best of that robots-as-people bunch designed to spur thoughts about tolerance and what it means to be human. See also: Blade Runner ;A.I. ;Short Circuit I-II ;Bicentennial Man ;I, Robot . And, aw, screw it: Pinocchio and/or Frankenstein .

North Country (2005, dir. Nicki Caro)
File under “Uncompromising Single Mothers Take On Corporations and Win Rights for the Individual.” See also: Norma Rae ,Erin Brockovich .

The People Vs. Larry Flynt (1996, dir. Milos Forman)
Woody Harrelson’s Oscar-nominated turn as the eponymous pornographer-turned-unlikely-free-speech-hero. (Plus: a golden-vagina necklace. You know, for the kids.)

12 Angry Men (1957, dir. Sidney Lumet)
One room, 12 opinions: classic treatise on personal prejudices and the power of the vote.

Citizen Ruth (1996, dir. Alexander Payne)
When a judge offers poor, pregnant, paint-huffing mother-of-four Ruth Stoops a lighter sentence if she’ll get an abortion, Ruth becomes a focal point — and her uterus a battlefield — for pro-lifers and pro-choicers alike. Black comedy from Sideways helmer-scribe Payne.

V for Vendetta (2005, dir. James McTeigue)
Get past the silly mask and stilted dialogue, and V’s a pointed rumination on the power of the citizenry and the nature of democracy.

In the Name of the Father (1993, dir. Jim Sheridan)
Sheridan again: based on the true story of Gerry Conlon, falsely imprisoned for an IRA bombing, who fights to clear his name and his father’s. Seven (thoroughly deserved) Oscar nominations.