Tuesday, February 17, 2009

NATIONAL REVIEWS TOP 25 CONSERVATIVE MOVIES

made in the last 25 years. . .

The List

If you haven't seen LIVES OF OTHERS put it at the top of your Netflix cue. Dude has been waiting for my review for more than a year, but the movie just leaves me speechless. Both times I saw it.

What rightwing movie do you think was the biggest omission on this list? Not counting the 25 honorable mentions.

My vote is for HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG. It might be the most Libertarian movie in ten years.

I don't feel like going through every movie on the list, but here is someone who does and has a few a good issues with it.

4 comments:

E said...

"A defining insight of conservatism is that whatever transcendent inspiration there may be to moral principles, there is also the humble fact that morality works."

Dude said...

We've talked about SAVING PRIVATE RYAN feeling like a conservative triumph despite the Spielberg signature. I have a place in my heart as well for JERRY MAGUIRE, a film in which people are rewarded for doing the right thing. Also, MILLION DOLLAR BABY which played differently for me in the third act than it did for you. That film even teaches us to despise the lazy welfare demographic. TO LIVE is a Chinese film that made me very happy 'to live' under a capitalist regime rather than communist. And you can even take away a conservative message from THE MARCH OF THE PENGUINS - after all those little buggers can survive in an environment that has pretty much killed everybody else.

Tom said...

Yeah, RYAN is conservative. I guess we're all conservatives when it comes to the Nazis. Half the group drops off if we want to fight anyone else. You can't watch John Adams and not think Hanks is pulling one over on us. That series was pure conservatism. Spielberg was a conservative up until the time he tried to win some Oscars. Jaws, Raiders, ET were all rightwing more or less in at least there isn't any moral equivalence.

I had never thought of Jerry Maguire politically, but taking the right step morally coupled with the message on good marriages seems pretty conservative to me, although I didn't like the movie as much as you. I tend to go more hot and cold on Tom Cruise. I like Almost Famous the best.

I don't disagree about MILLION DOLLAR BABY being conservative. In fact, I think it's one of the factors that makes the resolution contrived. The other being the loss of her can-do spirit.

Dude said...

For me, she didn't lose her can-do spirit. She showed the same determination to end her life as she did to live it fully. What she lost was the ability to enact it and that was a physical issue not moral. Eastwood understood that she literally needed him to do it for her, and although he fought the idea on moral grounds, he understood that it was the right thing to do given the circumstances as it was the proper way to honor her. Either way, it was win/lose, and it was entirely his choice and he took the lose. Duty over self. Conservatism.

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