Bendite’s must put the fireworks away this year after city officials banned everything except the professional shows. To soothe that hankering for blowing something up, try these movies that go “boom” for your Fourth of July. Warning: since a lot of these explosions come toward the end of movies, there are spoilers.

“Apocalypse Now” (1979) — The psychological war epic features a lot of, well, war stuff including some major explosions. With a “Final Cut” released in 2019 which is definitively what director Francis Ford Coppola intended “Heart of Darkness” inspired the film to be it horrifically depicts the Vietnam War and is not going to everyone’s jam. The new cut is apparently more surreal than the original theatrical release according to a 2019 Guardian interview with Coppola. Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer: 98%. Rent it on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Vudu or YouTube.

“Caddyshack” (1980) — You may not expect a good explosion from an ‘80s comedy about golf, well you might given that it was written by Brian Doyle-Murray, Harold Ramis and National Lampoon co-founder Doug Kenney. The “boom” in question comes at the end of the movie when groundskeeper Carl Spackler (Bill Murray) uses a massive amount of explosives to take care of the golf course’s gopher problem. Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer: 73%. Stream it on Hulu or Tubi or rent it on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu or YouTube.

“Da 5 Bloods” (2020) — Featuring one of the finest performances from both Delroy Lindo and Chadwick Boseman, the Spike Lee joint takes four veterans and sends them back to Vietnam to recover gold they buried in the jungle decades prior. The film powerfully depicts the brotherhood between the four soldiers and their fallen friend “Stormin” Norman (Boseman) as well as racial injustice. Again, it’s a war movie, there’s a lot of war stuff. Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer: 92%. Stream it on Netflix.

“Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” (1964) — The black comedy satirizes the very real threat of mutually assured destruction that the world faced during the Cold War, and it does it with larger than life characters, ridiculous situations and brilliant performances. The explosion comes at the very end as Maj. T.J. “King” Kong (Slim Pickens) makes that fateful ride to Earth on the back of an H-Bomb. The film also sees Peter Sellers playing three different characters, each entirely different than the other including a British Captain, President of the United States and the eponymous Dr. Strangelove, a wheelchair-bound, ex-Nazi mad scientist. Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer: 98%. Stream it on HBO Max or rent it on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu or YouTube.

“Star Wars Episode IV — A New Hope” (1977) — You may just remember the Death Star explosion at the end complete with Han Solo (Harrison Ford) swooping in allowing Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) to deliver the pivotal blast, but you should also remember Alderaan. That first planet annihilation at the hands of the Empire sets up everything we need to know about this world and who we should be rooting for if you weren’t already aware given the scary music, monochromatic color scheme and literal stormtroopers. The movie, to be quite honest, has a pretty thin plot, and not much happens when you think about it, but by borrowing from Kurosawa and Boroughs and using Holst-ian music, it launched a cinematic universe that is still going strong (after some dips) today. Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer: 92%. Stream it on Disney+ or rent it on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu or YouTube.

“White Heat” (1949) — The big explosion comes right at the end with one of the most iconic in film history lines delivered by James Cagney in one of his best performances. He stars as Cody Jarrett, a mentally unstable crime boss who has an unusual attachment to his equally crooked mother. When Cody ends up in jail, he’s spied on while his wife, Verna (Virginia Mayo) on the outside shacks up with Cody’s right-hand man. When Cody finds out that his mother’s been killed, he makes a break for it, rejoining his crew and pulling one more job at a chemical plant. Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer: 97%. Rent it on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu or YouTube.

Honorable mention: “Another Stakeout” (1993) — This is not a good movie. Seriously, it has a whopping 16% on Rotten Tomatoes. But it does have a pretty spectacular explosion complete with people running for their lives, catching on fire, jumping in pools, flattening a house and dodging debris at the very beginning. The rest of the film is pretty lackluster. So maybe just watch the clip on YouTube.