Clerks (1994)

Clerks is a Kevin Smith movie, so of course it’s loaded with coarse jokes — none rougher than a sequence in which Dante (Brian O’Halloran) laments the sexual history of his girlfriend (Marilyn Ghigliotti). Meanwhile Dante’s ex, Caitlin (Lisa Spoonauer) has a horrific, mistaken identity encounter with an elderly customer at the store where Dante, well, clerks.

The iffy moments weren’t too offputting to keep the Library of Congress from adding Clerks to the United States National Film Registry for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” The film, made for an initial budget of about $27,575, helped usher in the indie film boom of the ’90s.