National Film Registry adds ‘Top Gun,’ ‘Shawshank,’ ‘Ghostbusters’

WASHINGTON — It’s a bro-centric year for movies added to the prestigious National Film Registry.

Two of the most-popular male-bonding movies of all time — “Top Gun” and “The Shawshank Redemption” — are being added to the collection of films preserved by the Library of Congress, the library announced today.

They’ll be joined by an all-male quartet that’s about to get an all-female reboot — the gang from “Ghostbusters.”

Each year, the library picks 25 movies to preserve for their cultural, historic or artistic importance. The list is always eclectic and, as usual, includes titles that are older, experimental or otherwise obscure.

And then there are the crowd-pleasers. “The Shawshank Redemption” is a mainstay atop the Internet Movie Database poll of the top 250 movies of all time.

Its exalted ranking — “The Godfather” places second — is somewhat curious. “Shawshank,” a deliberately paced, well-crafted prison drama about the friendship between a wrongly convicted man (Tim Robbins) and a savvy fellow inmate (Morgan Freeman), was considered a box-office disappointment upon its 1994 release. It was the first feature for director Frank Darabont, who adapted the screenplay from a novella by Stephen King. Nominated for seven Oscars, it won zero.

But its popularity increased thanks to home video and countless airings on cable television, where viewers came to appreciate the elaborate plot, poignant score by Thomas Newman and Freeman’s soothing voice-over narration.

The almost comically macho “Top Gun” (1986) was an instant blockbuster and remains a cultural 1980s touchstone. Applications to naval flight schools soared post-release, and it elevated Tom Cruise to a new level of stardom. Its visual style, from action maestro Tony Scott, helped influence a generation of directors.

Two years before “Top Gun,” director Ivan Reitman’s “Ghostbusters” was also a box-office smash, setting a standard for high-concept, effects-driven comedy that was rarely duplicated. Reitman’s gift was allowing improvisational comedians including Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Rick Moranis to riff their way through the movie’s ridiculous spectral set pieces.

“Making ‘Ghostbusters’ was one of the great joys of my life,” Reitman said in a statement. “It’s an honor to know that a movie that begins with a ghost in a library now has a spot on the shelves of the Library of Congress.”

A new version of “Ghostbusters,” with a female spook-hunting crew led by Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy, will be released in July.

The film registry, which began in 1989, now includes 675 titles.