Every year, the Library of Congress adds new films that they deem “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” to the National Film Registry in order to preserve a complex and complete archive of American cinema. This year, twenty-five films were added to the registry after all successfully meeting all of the NFR’s requirements, which is to say that all of these pieces are at least ten years old.
While some of these new recruits are no-brainers like the Academy Award–winning L.A. Confidential and 1894’s groundbreaking Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze, other inclusions have us scratching our heads (cough, Top Gun, cough).
Check out the full list below, and feel proud that whenever you pop Ghostbusters or The Shawshank Redemption into your DVD player, you are watching an officially significant film.
Being There (1979)
Black and Tan (1929)
Dracula (Spanish) (1931)
Dream of a Rarebit Fiend (1906)
Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer (1975)
Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze (1894)
A Fool There Was (1915)
Ghostbusters (1984)
Hail the Conquering Hero (1944)
Humoresque (1920)
Imitation of Life (1959)
The Inner World of Aphasia (1968)
John Henry and the Inky-Poo (1946)
L.A. Confidential (1997)
The Mark of Zorro (1920)
The Old Mill (1937)
Our Daily Bread (1934)
Portrait of Jason (1967)
Seconds (1966)
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Sink or Swim (1990)
The Story of Menstruation (1946)
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1968)
Top Gun (1986)
Winchester ’73 (1950)
(via Vulture)
