My god...the delusion...the incredible, incredible delusion...

That was simultaneously the funniest and most maddening article I've ever seen. Do they honestly believe that they - as conservatives - are the only ones who believe in "marriage, courage, responsibility, and high achievement?" They do, don't they?

Still, I guess they're right about "300," especially when you consider the real story...

"10. Ghostbusters (1984): This comedy might not get Russell Kirk's endorsement as a worthy treatment of the supernatural, but you have to like a movie in which the bad guy (William Atherton at his loathsome best) is a regulation-happy buffoon from the EPA"

I made this point to some friends while we were watching Ghostbusters on TV one night in college - but I was drunk.

PoopStain: No, they just don't believe in rewarding people for failing at them like Democrats do.

1/10.

zooter Do they honestly believe that they - as conservatives - are the only ones who believe in "marriage, courage, responsibility, and high achievement?" They do, don't they?


no, they don't. they talk about normal human virtues as if they are discreet political positions for one reason: to piss off liberals.


real conservative movies:

The Toxic Avenger (pollution is good)
Birth of a Nation (self explanatory)
Howard's End (accidentally rented because they thought it was gay porn, but watched anyway and it's pretty good)

flavor of the month: zooter Do they honestly believe that they - as conservatives - are the only ones who believe in "marriage, courage, responsibility, and high achievement?" They do, don't they?


no, they don't. they talk about normal human virtues as if they are discreet political positions for one reason: to piss off liberals.


real conservative movies:

The Toxic Avenger (pollution is good)
Birth of a Nation (self explanatory)
Howard's End (accidentally rented because they thought it was gay porn, but watched anyway and it's pretty good)

Wall Street-up until the last 20 minutes or so.

I ain't gonna use no leaf!

This has to go green.

robmilmel: Howard's End

Awesome. AWESOME movie. Usually that shiat puts me to sleep, but that was a great movie.

Terry Gilliam is now a conservative?

flavor of the month: zooter Do they honestly believe that they - as conservatives - are the only ones who believe in "marriage, courage, responsibility, and high achievement?" They do, don't they?


no, they don't. they talk about normal human virtues as if they are discreet political positions for one reason: to piss off liberals.


real conservative movies:

The Toxic Avenger (pollution is good)
Birth of a Nation (self explanatory)
Howard's End (accidentally rented because they thought it was gay porn, but watched anyway and it's pretty good)

Nice.

PoopStain Don't forget Predator. The woefully unprepared and weaker members were systematically killed off instead of being saved by a government agency. The one competent soldier survived and presumably got to bang the girl.


Government lies about the premise of a military action, sends soldiers into combat with inadequate equipment.

This is easy, and fun!

Oooooh, oooooh, I know: Triumph of the Will.

Right?

The homoerotic movie "300" is the 5th best conservative movie? Gotcha.

This again? Buncha dead-ender righty ideologues studiously squinting, turning their heads sideways, peering through arbitrary gaps between their fingers, and deconstructing out-of-context snippets of dialog so they can claim ownership of other peoples' work for their political brand?

And this from folks who routinely deride any entertainer who states an explicit political opinion in public - except the tiny handful of self-identified conservative B-listers, whom they obsequiously curry and adore.

PoopStain

You have one of the more entertaining profiles I've read. Cheers!

co-conspirator: Oooooh, oooooh, I know: Triumph of the Will.

Pretty sure that fits the list. Impressive military power display from a group of people who have triumphed over adversity with no help from others. It ought to be at the top of the list.

You guys are Zombie food..hahaha

Complicit: PoopStain

You have one of the more entertaining profiles I've read. Cheers!

Heh. Just read it, and I agree. Nice profile, PoopStain.

GaryPDX: You guys are Zombie food..hahaha

are you implying that you aren't zombie food? would that make you brainless?

This whole article blows my farking mind, but here are some highlights:

4. Forrest Gump (1994): It won an Oscar for best picture - beating Pulp Fiction, a movie that's far more expressive of Hollywood's worldview. Tom Hanks plays the title character, an amiable dunce who is far too smart to embrace the lethal values of the 1960s.

Wow, that is some mighty sanctimonious point-missin' you got there. His wise ignorance (Jesus, how meta can this discussion get?) might mean he stays "virtuous" (despite seeing one friend die and the other crippled in Vietnam), but it means he completely misses the significance of the events around him.

5. 300 (2007): During the Bush years, Hollywood neglected the heroism of American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan - but it did release this action film about martial honor, unflinching courage, and the oft-ignored truth that freedom isn't free. Beneath a layer of egregious non-history - including goblin-like creatures that belong in a fantasy epic - is a stylized story about the ancient battle of Thermopylae and the Spartan defense of the West's fledgling institutions. It contrasts a small band of Spartans, motivated by their convictions and a commitment to the law, with a Persian horde that is driven forward by whips.

Even according to Herodotus, the Spartans were but a tenth of the Greek force defending Thermopylae, and Diodorus Siculus' accounts agree with that estimate. Also, overly romanticizing a long-past military conflict through the eyes of hyper-jingoistic narration (both Miller's and Herodotus')? Once again that's pretty freaking meta.

6. Groundhog Day (1993): This putatively wacky comedy about Bill Murray as an obnoxious weatherman cursed to relive the same day over and over in a small Pennsylvania town, perhaps for eternity, is in fact a sophisticated commentary on the good and true.

Actually, it's a much simpler (and less sanctimonious) and far more satisfying story about improving oneself and not being a dick, told through the amusing re-living of events.

12. The Dark Knight (2008): This film gives us a portrait of the hero as a man reviled. In his fight against the terrorist Joker, Batman has to devise new means of surveillance, push the limits of the law, and accept the hatred of the press and public. If that sounds reminiscent of a certain former president - whose stubborn integrity kept the nation safe and turned the tide of war - don't mention it to the mainstream media. Our journalists know that good men are often despised by the mob; it just never seems to occur to them that they might be the mob themselves.shiat, I remember this argument back when TDK was out.

No, the two things are not the same. In the end, Batman is a fugitive who must avoid the police and hide his identity because of the very methods he employs. Whether they're useful or just is irrelevant to this argument because he still accepts the fact that he is outside the system, and will face the punishment of that system if it catches up to him. Which is pretty farking far from the point NRO is trying to make.

24. Team America: World Police (2004): This marionette movie from South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone is hard to categorize as conservative. It's amazingly vulgar and depicts Americans as wildly overzealous in fighting terror. Yet the film's utter disgust with air-headed, left-wing celebrity activism remains unmatched in popular culture. As the heroes move to stop a WMD apocalypse, they clash with Alec Baldwin, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Sean Penn, and a host of others, whom they take out with gunfire, sword, and martial arts before saving the day. The movie, like South Park itself, reveals Parker and Stone as the two-headed George Grosz of American satire.

You've missed exactly half of the "point" of the film. Congratulations.

25. Gran Torino (2008): Clint Eastwood directs and stars in the ultimate family movie unsuitable for the family. He plays Walt Kowalski, a caricature of an old-school, dying-breed, Polish-American racist male, replete with post-traumatic stress disorder from having served in the Korean War. Kowalski comes to realize that his exotic Hmong neighbors embody traditional social values more than his own disaster of a Caucasian nuclear family. Dirty Harry blows away political correctness, takes on the bad guys, and turns a boy into a man in the process. He even encourages the cultural assimilation of immigrants. It feels so good, you knew the Academy would ignore it.

What part of any of that is conservative!? But yeah, Gran Torino got farking robbed. As did Dark Knight (no Nolan for director? Seriously?)

Wow. These are starting to make my head hurt. I'm wondering if some of this shiat is even real. Comparing invading Iraq to the Fellowship of the Ring? Are there really conservatives that deluded?

Almost none of these movies are "conservative." Neither are they "liberal." Just because some movies have a political agenda (let alone one that fits neatly into "conservative" or "liberal" categorization) doesn't mean all movies do.

Narnia definitely is, though, but that's no surprise. Most of C.S. Lewis's work is extremely thinly veiled promotion of the might-makes-right school of Christianity.

But... Gattaca? What?

The movie is a cautionary tale about the progressive fantasy of a eugenically correct world...

So the Nazis were progressives?

farking italics tags. Yeah, every other paragraph (the ones that aren't numbered) should be plain text. The numbered grafs are quotes from the article. Not reposting because I don't want to spam.

Bucky Katt: GaryPDX: You guys are Zombie food..hahaha

are you implying that you aren't zombie food? would that make you brainless?

Well if you want to get eaten..g'head.

WOLVERINES!

Seriously, though, for farking emphasis:

The movie is a cautionary tale about the progressive fantasy of a eugenically correct world...

Calling eugenics progressive. Eugenics. *head explodes*

PoopStain The people who stood around waiting for the "government" to come solve their problems were executed, while the lone true conservative created his own destiny.


If you think Jesse Ventura and the crazy Indian guy were standing around doing nothing, you must be the most extraordinarily hyperactive person on earth.

Now I can't decide whether to go out or watch Predator and get drunk.

PoopStain: Titanic

Except my choice makes sense using the very reasons used in the article and some of the core ideals that Repubs trumpet. Fail more.

The love of his life, wonderfully played by Robin Wright Penn, chooses a different path; she becomes a drug-addled hippie, with disastrous results.

Actually, her hippie days were OK save for the abusive boyfriend. It isn't until the Reagan 80s that shiat starts to go downhill - she embraces the Me attitude of the 80s, hits the hard drugs and catches a disease the Republicans wouldn't even acknowledge existed.

Red Dawn actually promotes the use of terrorism. These people went full retard.

Surprised and disappointed about not making the list:

I'm kida surprised this film didn't make the list:

Link (new window)

Danny DeVito's character is a Wall Street "player" but he's treated as a rather complex figure and comes across as ultimately sympathetic.

what? come on. this needs to be there.

List is also missing:

Otherwise known as the movie with the most obvious by-line ever.

CowboyNinjaD: Red Dawn actually promotes the use of terrorism. These people went full retard.

Exactly, that's why it's so funny to watch Red Dawn now. Charlie Sheen and Patrick Swayze go full American Taliban. It's like watching the best satire of right-wing foreign policy ever.

Also, I realize different people take different meanings out of movies, but I think The Dark Knight was actually conveying the message opposite to the one NRO took out of it. The Dark Knight absolutely touched on political issues - how we fight terrorism, how we have the technological capacity to be enormously invasive in peoples lives; and ultimately it showed that breaking the law on such a massive scale is morally wrong, just as vigilante justice is ultimately morally wrong. In Lucius Fox's (dismayed) words, "This is too much power for one man". At the end of the sequence using the cellphone spying technology, it's revealed that Batman shared this point of view and anticipated Fox's objections - and had the technology self-destruct. The message is that this technology, this unprecedented invasion of privacy, shouldn't have been used and can't be used again, even if it's effective. I don't interpret that as any kind of pro-Bush message.

I can see how someone could interpret in Batman that breaking the law to fight terrorism is a worthy endeavour. But The Dark Knight actually treats the need for extra-judicial crime-fighting as a tragedy. Bruce Wayne's conscience is gravely troubled by it. He wants the law to work. He ultimately can't quit, and you have a sense at the end of the movie that part of him has been destroyed and in a way, that the people he's fighting have won because they have ruined Bruce Wayne, and he has been consumed by his alter ego. Taking this as a pro-Bush message is delusional.

PoopStain: Get bent.

Really? That's it? You could have just told me I'm right, it would have accomplished the same thing.

As a Conservative, this is freakin' reaching to justify a damn article.

They're movies--and despite ideology, sometimes movies are just that. Not Liberal. Not Conservative. Just movies.

When we stop trying to shoehorn everything through a skein of "Conservative," "Liberal," or other thought, then maybe we can see where folks are coming from.

So long as folks have blinders like this, you're going to see dumb ass articles like this.

PoopStain: I also cannot believe they forgot Titanic, which of course was an allegory for the life of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Jack, like Jesus, was poor but interested in saving the eternal life of a whore who farks men for money, Rose (Mary Magdalene). Then Jack, just like Jesus, died so that the rich people could get in a lifeboat and become even richer later on, thus giving FDR a tax base to steal from so he could help the least among us, like Jesus wanted.

I LOL'd.

Apollo 13

And while we're at it...

The Right Stuff

cchris_39: Apollo 13

This is true. A move about how government agencies fark up. That was the *REAL* message of Apollo 13.

Naman: Seriously, though, for farking emphasis:

The movie is a cautionary tale about the progressive fantasy of a eugenically correct world...

Calling eugenics progressive. Eugenics. *head explodes*

Eugenics WAS considered progressive and enlightened back in the 1920s. You might want to look into eugenics sometime. A lot of "thinkers" went for "improving man scientifically."

No mention of this one either?



It's priceless for the fact that in John Wayne's Vietnam there are pine trees.

CowboyNinjaD: Red Dawn actually promotes the use of terrorism. These people went full retard.

It's okay when we do it!^TM

11. The Lord of the Rings (2001, 2002, 2003): Author J. R. R. Tolkien was deeply conservative, so it's no surprise that the trilogy of movies based on his masterwork is as well. Largely filmed before 9/11, they seemed perfectly pitched for the post-9/11 world. The debates over what to do about Sauron and Saruman echoed our own disputes over the Iraq War. (Think of Wormtongue as Keith Olbermann.) When Frodo sighs, "I wish none of this had happened," Gandalf's response speaks to us, too: "So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us."

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA... Wait... HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA... Gotta catch my breath... HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!

What!? No Nixon?!

hubiestubert: As a Conservative, this is freakin' reaching to justify a damn article.

They're movies--and despite ideology, sometimes movies are just that. Not Liberal. Not Conservative. Just movies.

When we stop trying to shoehorn everything through a skein of "Conservative," "Liberal," or other thought, then maybe we can see where folks are coming from.

So long as folks have blinders like this, you're going to see dumb ass articles like this.

I know. As a fellow Conservative I'm often amused by the howls of anger directed at Hollywood. It's not about a left or right bias, it's about a profit bias. Studios are going to make movies that rake in the most cash. Hell if politics was the driving force behind everything that came out of California we'd be seeing a "Redacted" or "Lambs for Lions" every few months.

cchris_39: The Right Stuff

John Glenn served in the U.S. Senate as a Democrat for 25 years.

Wow, many of those movies mock conservative values in a not so obvious fashion, and they think that the movies are supporting their ideology. Forrest Gump and Team America are the first 2 that come to mind. It's like they're agreeing with a troll. Hilarious.

I would say that An American Carol should be on the list 'cause its a total conservative movie, but it sucked...

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1190617/

Liked the choice of Brazil.

Ken VeryBigLiar: No mention of this one either?



It's priceless for the fact that in John Wayne's Vietnam there are pine trees.

John Wayne was a fag.

Wow, talk about reading too much into things.