gross oversimplifications! Movies!

I'd propose that Ghostbusters and Donnie Darko are the two films everyone should see about the 1980s. Ghostbusters has pointless and sometimes cruel humor, a what-me-worry approach to environmental issues, catchy music, and cartoony villains versus all-American entrepreneur heros who manage to triumph over all odds. So it's pretty much how people in the 80s wanted to see things. By contrast Donnie Darko is about alternating between wanting to get laid and wanting to kill yourself, with an adult world which is constantly telling you about how great everything is, while it's really obvious that things are dreadfully, terribly wrong, which is a lot closer to reality. (Okay, so that was my experience of the 80s.)

So what's the equivalent for the 90s, or heck, the 2000s? I think either The Crow or The Matrix qualify as essential 90s movies - they frame most of the decade and have everything people thought was really cool. (Again - maybe that's my bias. I logged an okay amount of time playing old skool White Wolf from 1996-1999.) But that doesn't answer "what would you show someone to give them an idea of what the 90s were actually like?" And as for more recent, no clue.

('Course, this is a lot of oversimplification. 1985-1990 certainly wasn't the same time period as 1980-84. And I'm pretty sure there's an age thing involved.)