The 25 best films set in Washington, D.C.

See, it’s not all political films! Instead, we start with what many think is the best, or at least scariest, horror movie ever made. The events of The Exorcist take place in Washington, including a real staircase that became a piece of film lore.

Sure, there’s action at Area 51. Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum go to space to give an alien craft a computer virus (somehow). They blow up the White House in the movie. It has to make this list.

If you like seeing the process in action, All the President’s Men is pretty much perfect for you. The movie goes into Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein breaking the Watergate story, thereby ending the presidency of Richard Nixon. Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman star as the journalists, but Jason Robards is the one who went home with the acting Oscar.

Between making the classic political satires The Thick of It and Veep, Armando Iannucci bridged the Atlantic Ocean with the movie In the Loop. British politics meets American politics, with action happening on both sides of the ocean. Oh, and there’s a ton of swearing. Like, so much swearing.

As the seat of the American government, D.C. is an ideal location for a satire about influential people falling under the spell of a simple man they believe to be a genius. Peter Sellers plays Chance, a gardener for a wealthy old man. When the man dies, Chance is lost in the world. However, the president's advisor believes him to be Chauncey Gardiner, a man of insight and philosophy.

The two Presidents that get the most love, both in the real world and on screen, are George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Washington never actually served as President in the city that would be named after him. Lincoln did, and Daniel Day-Lewis won yet another Oscar for his turn as Abe.

Aaron Sorkin has his faults, but the man knows how to write a politicizing speech or two. Tom Hanks is the star of Charlie Wilson’s War, but Philip Seymour Hoffman steals the show. That’s because Sorkin gives him the best speeches.

The Coen Brothers bring their irreverent, violent taste in comedy to the world of espionage in Burn After Reading . It has a killer cast, including Coen stalwarts like George Clooney and Frances McDormand. John Malkovich plays Osbourne Cox, a CIA analyst who quits in a huff and then writes his “mem-wahs,” which falls into the hands of a couple of lunkheaded gym employees who think they have found vital state secrets they can sell. Gunshots to the head ensue.

All the President’s Men goes into the nitty-gritty of how Nixon was taken down. Dıck is a frothy, airy comedy that presupposes it was two bubbly teenage girls who did it. Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams make it a better movie than it has any right to be. If you want a breezy comedy, you can do worse than Dıck.

Kevin Kline plays Dave, an ordinary man who makes money as a lookalike for President Bill Mitchell, also played by Kline. President Mitchell then falls into a coma. Some schemers try to avoid having the Vice President assume power and convince Dave to impersonate the President in a real way. Dave proves less malleable than they hope.

Aliens just won’t leave Washington alone. In Mars Attacks , the nihilistic Martians are all over the United States and the world doing damage. They even take down Vegas! The monsters! The President and his family are all key characters, with Jack Nicholson playing the President in one of two roles he plays in Tim Burton’s anarchic comedy.

This is the second appearance from Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, and Ben Bradlee. Robards plays Bradlee in All the President’s Men. In The Post, it’s Hanks’ turn to play the longtime editor of The Washington Post . This time, Meryl Streep is along for the ride, and she received an Oscar nomination (naturally).

John Grisham's books have been turned into several movies, and The Pelican Brief may be the best. It stars Denzel Washington and Julia Roberts, a strong starting point for any film. The plot revolves around a conspiracy regarding the deaths of two Supreme Court Justices, which means plenty of time spent in Washington, D.C.

Mike Nichols and Elaine May were back working together, this time with May writing a screenplay and Nichols directing. It’s based on a novel written anonymously and based on Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign. John Travolta plays Jack Stanton, the Clinton stand-in, but Kathy Bates stole the show in an Oscar-nominated role.

We’ve had a couple of films about The Washington Post, but what about television news? This film has you covered. Broadcast News is a funny, insightful dramedy with great performances from William Hurt, Holly Hunter, and Albert Brooks. It’s a film with some bite and plenty of laughs.

The assertion that The Winter Soldier was a political thriller in the vein of those beloved ‘70s conspiracy movies was perhaps a bit overstated. Still, you can see some of the influence there. The movie features a lot of Washington, D.C., which is a starting point for that. When the film begins, Steve Rogers is working in D.C., and ‘70s staple Robert Redford is on hand as the villain, who happens to work for the U.S. government in D.C.

Forrest Gump won Best Picture, and then it got some backlash, and then there was a bit of backlash to the backlash. And now, we don’t know where the consensus stands. We know that a Best Picture winner should probably be on this list. Forrest meets multiple Presidents and has some other significant moments in D.C.

If we were doing a list of the best movies set on Kung Fu Island, Black Dynamite would be on that list. This film is a parody/homage to Blaxploitation movies, and it plays it to a tee. Naturally, that means a conspiracy that goes all the way to the White House. Does Black Dynamite beat up the President? You’ll have to watch to find out.

Sorkin is back as a writer, though this time with a movie that’s a bit more of a crowd-pleaser. It’s a romantic comedy where Michael Douglas plays the President, and he has a relationship with an environmental lobbyist, played by Annette Bening.

D.C. Cab is a low-budget ‘80s comedy about a wacky cab company. It features the bodybuilders known as the “Barbarian Brothers,” Bill Maher, Andy Kaufman hanger-on Bob Zmuda, and none other than Mr. T. It’s not exactly a masterpiece, but a lot of people have an affinity for this silly ‘80s movie. Plus, it has “D.C.” right in the name.

A crooked tycoon goes to Washington to “influence” a politician. Along for the ride is his girlfriend, a very ‘50s-style “brassy dame.” The tycoon hires a man to educate her, and once that happens, the girlfriend realizes what kind of guy her boyfriend is. That girlfriend is played by Judy Holliday, who won an Oscar for her performance.

In 1960, Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove gave us a darkly comic take on nuclear tensions. Fail Safe by Sidney Lumet takes that idea more seriously. It’s so visceral that it shook people to their core at the height of the Cold War. After all, the Cuban Missile Crisis had just happened. The movie also has a great cast, led by Henry Fonda as the President.

The sequel to Naked Gun isn’t quite as good as the first, but it’s still a joke-a-second comedy with a lot of big laughs. Leslie Nielsen hadn’t completely started mugging yet, which sells the jokes better. This time the action involves a lot of D.C. incidents, and a George H.W. Bush impersonator is in the film as the then-President.

As a CIA analyst, Jack Ryan works out of D.C. Although, he’s often on the road. In The Hunt for Red October , for example, almost all the action takes place on submarines. Harrison Ford had two turns as Ryan, and Clear and Present Danger is the better of those two. We could have included another Ford film, Air Force One, but a lot of that is on a plane. A plane Ford would prefer you get off.

Conspiracy thrillers get a lot of fodder out of Washington and American politics. Will Smith plays a lawyer accidentally roped into a conspiracy and has to try and parse what’s happening while the NSA, with all its surveillance power, is trying to take him down. Fortunately, Smith’s character finds a former NSA agent played by Gene Hackman, who can help him.