I find Errol Morris' The Fog of War (2003) a great way to talk about World War II, the Cold War, Vietnam, etc. McNamara doesn't always shoot straight with all the facts, but it still gets the students thinking and talking about things they otherwise hadn't considered (like the morality of the firebombing of Tokyo, the role of misunderstanding in both the Cuban Missile Crisis and Vietnam, and where seat belts came from). I use snippets from it when I teach.

Separately, in the documentary realm, CNN's 24-episode Cold War (1998) is pretty great. It's pre-9/11 so they haven't yet re-written that history to make it all about terrorism, it was at just a great moment to interview all of the participants, they have amazing access to the interviewees (they interview US presidents, Soviet premiers, KGB and CIA chiefs, and go all the way down to the common person in all of the countries affected), and it segments the topics into pretty reasonable chunks. I am particularly fond of the episodes about the Soviet-Afghan war (and US involvement in it — again, it was taped all pre-9/11, so there are ominous things lurking in the shadows, hinted at but not made much of), US interventionism in Latin America (my wife's high school kids were shocked to learn about what the US did in Guatemala and Chile), and the episode on the Stasi in East Germany (maybe not great for a US class, but a great episode). One of my all-time favorite documentary series. I watched the whole thing on my lunch breaks when I worked at a video-rental store in the early 2000s. :-) It has fortunately been re-released on DVD.

I will say, I have stopped using Atomic Cafe because I feel it encourages the students to trivialize the Cold War fears and Civil Defense preparations. As a historian I read it as an artifact of the early 1980s, a way for the left to complain about the policies of Reagan and the then-current fears of nuclear war. But it is not in any way objective — it is meant to be explicitly ridiculing of the earlier Cold War, to imply that it was all a waste and so on. I don't like that mode of engaging with the past. I do show (in my nuclear history class) some of the films from that age (Duck and Cover and The House in the Middle) but I also try to get the students to develop an empathetic connection to the past. I don't think Atomic Cafe encourages them to do that — it is a mocking view. Just my two cents.

Hiya - just to clarify, sorry, are you referring specifically to movies or documentaries for depictions of the US in dust bowl America, or rather peoples' recommendations for their various fields of interest?

I wouldn't show the whole thing, but the first twenty minutes of Captain America does do a decent job of showing all of the propaganda and the unified home front during WW2. In fact, the only reason I've seen the movies is because it was shown in a history class I took during my undergrad.

Dr. Strangelove works well in a classroom because younger generations may not have seen it and it's comedic and watchable while still offering educational value if you're looking for commentary on Cold War politics, propaganda and public fears.

Chinatown deals with land-grabbing and water rights in early 20th-century California and is relevant to Dust Bowl topics.

If you want an excuse to watch other all-time classics, I think films like Citizen Kane and On The Waterfront work well simply to add color to a conversation about a specific time and place in American history.