Summing up a decade in a single film

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1970's: Smokey and the Bandit

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Okay... I'll go along with that

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1980's: Rocky IV

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Not a terrible Choice, although I'd throw in Ferris Bueller and Breakfast Club

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1990's: Clerks

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Of all the movies in the 90's, Clerks?
In no particular order:
- Cant Hardly Wait
- 10 Things I Hate About You
- Fight Club
- You've Got Mail

If I'm feeling a little saucy, I'd thrown Varsity Blues and American Pie in the mix.

EDIT: My opinion could be skewed based upon the fact that I was in high school in the 90's, so for me your high school comedies are what resonates to that decade.

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2000's: ?

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Originally I was going to say "The Matrix". But then I realized that the film came out in 1999.

1970's: Dog Day Afternoon or Rocky
1980's: Top Gun or 16 Candles
1990's: Clerks or Pulp Fiction
2000's: 500 Days of Summer...but this one is more for style and tone

70's= Taxi Driver
80's= Breakfast Club
90's= Can't Hardly Wait or Office Space
00's= (500) Days of Summer
10's= Social Network

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2000's: ?

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Superbad has to be in the discussion. Awkward millineals trying to get booze and girls in high school. Obviously it's an outrageous comedy.

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1990's: Clerks

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Way better movies sum up the 90s than Clerks. Bad choice, in my opinion.

Go with something like Office Space. Office Space is pretty 90s. Also, some of the teen movies can sum up 90s culture well like 10 Things I Hate About You or Clueless.

Disagree on Clerks and Fight Club for the 90's.

1990's - Reality Bites, Clueless

1980's - Risky Business, Breakfast Club

2000's - Superbad, Old School

For some reason I lean towards comedies for this exercise.

70s: Taxi Driver. If there's one thing that always strikes me about the 70s, it's how much society just let themselves go. Just look at old highlights and look in the crowd. Everyone looks disheveled. It's amazing. White flight hit its high point, and our cities sort of stagnated. Just a depressing decade (Nashville has a good case as well).

80s: Wall Street. Greed is good was supposed to be a warning, not a slogan, people. The Yuppie generation summed up in one film (Runner up: St Elmo's Fire... God, do I hate those people).

90s: Singles. Idealistic yet still lost. For all of the 90s talk of irony and cynicism, Gen X can still be summed up by a romantic comedy. There was a lot of earnestness under the cynicism. (Runner up: Trainspotting... some of the cynicism was right on point, though)

00s: 25th Hour. Few movies capture how broken we were after 9/11 as well as this, and this movie isn't even about 9/11, though Ground Zero plays a part. (Runner up: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I think they biggest theme of the 00s was a loss of connection with our fellow humans. This explores the concept to the nth degree)

For the 00's, it has to either be The Dark Knight or Superbad.

In a literal sense, Zero Dark Thirty summed up an entire decade of the manhunt for Bin Laden.