10 Movies to Watch with Dad This Father's Day

This Father's Day, instead of picking up another ugly tie for your dad (hint: he hates them) or just taking him out to dinner, why not watch a movie with him? There are a host of movies celebrating fatherhood, and what better time to break out one of these classics than on Dad's day?

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Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)

A grand father-son adventure, battling rats and Nazis to find the holy grail of holy grails...like, the real one. Sean Connery is perhaps the one person who can believably play Henry, Indiana Jones' father, and he's equal parts clueless and brilliantly resourceful as Indy's sidekick. Oh, and he's witty: "We named the dog Indiana," he quips. The brilliance of this movie is punctuated by a finale in which Indy has to save his dad, then Henry has to save his son. And while Indy is frantic in his efforts, it's Henry's fatherly, hand-on-the-shoulder wisdom that saves the day.

Field of Dreams (1989)

Men are often emotionally stunted creatures, which is why so much of the father-son interaction is about regret over things they didn't say or do when they had the chance. Take "Field of Dreams," one of a handful of movies during which men would tell you it's OK to cry, where Iowa farmer Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner), a former hippie, left on bad terms with his own father, a former baseball player. When Ray starts hearing voices in his corn telling him to "build it," he plows his crop and builds a baseball field. Ray thinks the voices want to let the ghost of "Shoeless" Joe Jackson (Ray Liotta) play ball again. But (SPOILER ALERT) what they really want is for Ray to have with his dad what, to his eternal regret, he once refused him: a game of catch.

Boyz n the Hood (1991)

One of cinema's great fathers, Furious Styles (Larry Fishburne) is a man who can't get his son out of the ghetto but is determined to keep the ghetto out of his son. For all of its social bluster, John Singleton's seminal film points directly to one key factor for the plight of the inner-city black youth in the early '90s — the absence of fathers. Taking his son, Tre (Cuba Gooding Jr.), when his mother (Angela Bassett) no longer can control him, Furious works on turning his boy into a man. In one of the film's most harrowing moments of foreshadowing, he points out how friends Ricky (Morris Chestnut) and Doughboy (Ice Cube) don't have a strong male role model in their lives: "You'll see how they turn out, too," he said. The message is clear: Those of us with tough dads like Furious Styles are the lucky ones.

Creepshow (1983)

My personal Father's Day tradition: watching the "Happy Father's Day" segment of George A. Romero's and Stephen King's schlock horror anthology. In it, a rich man killed by his crazy daughter returns from the dead to exact revenge on his spoiled, conniving offspring, and collect the bounty he never got in life: his Father's Day cake.

Superman: The Movie (1979)

Perhaps the definitive father-son movie, "Superman" is perhaps the greatest of heroes not because of his super powers, but because he had not one, but two fathers who loved him. At its core, Superman is a man trying to live up to the legacy his father(s) set for him, at the same time becoming greater than them both, which of course is what fathers want for their sons.