National Review's Best Conservative Films

That whole list is just...fucking baffling. I'm not sure where to begin.

If they had to resort to calling Groundhog Day a conservative film, maybe they should have just made a shorter list.

Also, they call An American Carol 'great', and as one of the hundred or so people that has seen it, I can assure you that that one word linked to that movie is enough to discredit a lifetime of work.

Wish THREE KINGS wasn't an also-ran. Would have liked to have read the reasoning.

Same for ROCKY BALBOA.

That has to be the most surface interpretation of Metropolitan ever.

In the sense that the EPA guy is bad, but that always felt more like an 80s thing than a conservative thing. I suppose in the way that any story about someone starting a successful business is inherantly capitalist, it could be construed as conservative. If you wanted to be an asshole about it, that is.

The point on Brazil is willfully ignorant, though. Unless you want to go ahead and say liberalism = bureaucracy.

That Braveheart summary that BobClark copied depicting it as an inspirational call for young folks to fight against an insurgency is proof positive that conservatives can create brilliant satire. As long as they have no intention of doing so.

Good God...


That's funny because last time I checked, these were a few of a conservative's favorite things.

When I got to "Team America: World Police," I had to stop. These people understand movies to a lesser degree than they understand democracy.

Yeah, even assuming they analyzed the films correctly, it's really weird to put a libertarian philosophy next to pro-war next to pro-religion, etc. on a list together as if they're all the same. Sure, those things can go together in certain political coalitions, but they're not obviously related (certainly not within any one of these movies), and many of the films would disagree with each other on big issues. But the list is a funny read.

Almost sig-worthy.

It's actually an interesting list. Of course they're going to try to steal some over to their side. But when they include AN AMARICAN CAROL, even as an also ran, they effectively shot themselves in the foot.

The METROPOLITAN justification was indeed also a head scratcher.

GROUNDHOG DAY was a great choice, but they botched why.

The rationale for Three Kings would've undoubtedly focused solely on the idea that US soldiers were saving people who were under the thumb of Saddam's Republican Guard. Completely ignoring... everything else about the movie, I guess.

"Perhaps even more boneriffic for conservatives is the major let down Russell Crowe gives to Paul Bettany's evolutionist during the film. Captain Jack must clearly support intelligent design."

"Paul Bettany's evolutionistic doctor sees the fault in his liberal thought when he discovers the FRENCH! OMG! OMG! ship in the harbor. There, he quickly throws away his misguided respect for Darwin's theory as he realizes his true calling: the national security of the Union Jack. Huzzah, red stater. Huzzah."

I just don't think conservatives would approve of Rocky dating a single mother of a biracial son. For heaven's sake the kid had cornrows.

I guess they didn't consider that, in the real world, we were the Persians and Iraq was the 300.

Where's Battleship Potemkin and Land and Freedom? Why were they omitted from the list? It makes as much sense to include these as most of the ones they did.

So I guess there were no movies made before 1980? Conservative movies that is?

Please! These fuck knuckles have "The Island", as an also-ran...

The Fucking Island!

It's not about quality or message with these people... it's blinking lights, explosions, and pert, honeydew-shaped breasts.

The absence of Red Dawn and Conan invalidates this list. The authors are clearly closet Liberals trying to satirize Conservative beliefs.

Also, no Nailin Palin

Land and Freedom is 14 years old (Has it been this long? Damn I'm old) and the communists were kind of assholes in it.

I'm surprised they went with Heartbreak Ridge over The Hunt For Red October (or any of the other Ryan flicks).

Also you think they would've wrapped themselves around Ron Howard's stuff, especially Apollo 13

We need to be careful here. Just because you enjoy a movie doesn't mean that it can't be interpreted to support a view that wasn't intended/obvious. We've been doing this on the liberal side in academia forever (see feminist readings, post-colonial readings, queer theory readings).

But here's a big caveat: to claim something has these leanings, it's on you to make a good case, typically based on recurring, consistent subtexts running under the whole thing. Saying that there are a couple of lines in Ghostbusters that might skew a tad conservative doesn't really make a great case for it as a "conservative movie."

My biggest problem - the recurring equation of anti-totalitarianism to conservatism. Yeah, the totalitarianism in the Lives of Others is communist in origin, but it's not as if opposing totalitarianism is something specific to the right. It's an even bigger stretch to use this argument with regard to Brazil.

Same problem with the Incredibles. Individualism is not specific to conservatives. In fact, you see these leanings in the Romantics of the 19th Century, and those guys were far from conservative.

Some of their reasoning is beyond questionable, but they nail a few of their choices (like The Dark Knight) and a lot of other selections are well argued (I have to say that Brazil's "too much government" subtext comes straight out of 1984, which is something of an attack on socialism, so that does kinda make sense, although I think it's a rather simple read of the film as a whole).

Gilliam and Orwell are attacking the concept of totalitarianism in general, though, which can come from the left (via socialism or communism) or from the right (via fascism) or from a calculated combination of both. Orwell was actually pretty fond of socialism, in and of itself. It's more than a little disingenuous of the authors in this article to consistently characterize totalitarianism as some obvious product of the left, since so many of the most well-regarded thinkers on the subject are adamant about how it exists separately from our standard conceptions of left and right(Orwell, certainly, but also Hannah Arendt, whose Origins of Totalitarianism practically covers everything you need to know about the foundations of our two major totalitarian systems of the mid-20th century).

And, yeah, I completely agree that The Dark Knight is a very arguable case. It all depends on whether you take Batman's Bush Administration strategies to be a justification of those strategies or whether you take them as a means of painting Batman's actions as less-than-admirable.

Exactly. A lot of the things that these so-called conservatives are embracing are actually liberal ideas. So its basically a wash if their definition of "conservative" sees fit to include anything good about freedom and individuality.

Its funny how everywhere else on the planet, modern conservatism as practiced by the right-wing in this country is called neo-liberalism.

You're right, and I should have argued that 1984 could be read as an attack on socialism. Gilliam often said Brazil wasn't a look at the future, but a look at the way things currently were, and Brazil doesn't seem really concerned with politics one way or another, just about the destructive force of bureaucracy in general. But I find it interesting (if not all together correct) to see a conservative slant on Brazil, and I think one could make the case (although I disagree) about both the movie and 1984. That's all I was saying. Then again, Brazil seems especially chilling when viewed in the context of the W. presidency, so it's not like it can't be read as an attack of that kind of political thinking as well.

I honestly think it may be a bit of both. And that's why I think it's a rather complex, fascinating film.

Here's Kathryn Jean Lopez's write-up on Rocky Balboa. She particularly liked this little speech from the film:

I would think their reasoning behind that one should be clear. The characters in the movie think they should not have been pulled out of Iraq before helping the Iraqi people overthrow Saddam. In retrospect of the W. presidency, it could be argued as a somewhat compelling argument to support Bush's decision to re-invade.

Of course, that's not really the point of the movie at all (if anything, Three Kings was an attack on Bush Sr.'s Iraq policies) but still, a convincing case can be argued.

What's hilarious about their inclusion of Brazil is that they think the terrorist bombings are a valid threat in the movie, and that the government is too mired in bureaucracy to stop it. Except the bombings are completely made up by the government, that there are actually no terrorists at all, and it's just a scare tactic to cover up the fact that they can't build any ducts that don't randomly explode. "It's not our fault, it's...... it's the terrorists! Yeah, that's it!" At least that's my interpretation. And Gilliam's.

Inevitably everyone has their knives out because the word 'conservative' is in the title, but really I think the article is fairly reasonable for the most part - rather than projecting conservative values onto the films, they're mostly just explaining how the films might resonate with people of a conservative mindset. The way the article attempts to claim certain fairly neutral values and principles in the name of 'conservatism' does grate a little, though.

Couldn't agree more. The idea that I took away from old Bats going to the extreme with surveillance was that he was a) conscious of the fact that it was too much power to be placed in his hands, b) willing to give up that power after using it once, and c) willing to take the consequences of his actions in general. He had to become hated and opposed to keep him honest. That's where the ties to conservatism break down for me...no contemporary conservative wants to be held responsible for their beliefs and actions when they cross to "the dark side".

Exactly. The point of Brazil is that they have all these steps, systems and orders in place....but none of it works, and because shit won't work (including the hall of mirrors bureaucracy) it seems as if there is terrorism going on when really it's just the governments own fault. Which begs the question, what really is terrorism? A more thoughtful analysis of the movie would see it as a reflection of using 9/11 as a scare tactic, which is pretty incredible in of itself and just underlines how ahead of its time Brazil was as a film and a work of art.

Although, that arguably fits just as well with a "conservative" view, where the government is inept, mendacious, and needlessly complicated.

But at the same time it doesn't, because everyone is against that kind of system, whether they're anarchist, communist, or anything between, let alone the more nebulous distinctions in our mind between Democrat and Republican.

So yeah, basically everything you and Dave have said so far.

I still don't buy their love for "Ghostbusters." The heroes prevent a "disaster of biblical proportions" by putting all their faith in a scientific theory ("crossing the streams"). The Ghostbusters basically prevent the Rapture.

Why aren't "Rambo: First Blood Part II" and "Commando" on the list? Those would seemingly satisfy Conservatives' bloodlust more than "Three Kings."

Regardless of your chosen affiliation, it's a good list for these reasons...

A. It's thought provoking, and conversation-stimulating.
B. They make a case.
C. The choices aren't all obvious.

You could argue any of those points with examples, but overall it's better than most published lists you see pop up in this area of the MB.

Some of the arguments on that list are like an encapsulation of how unfocused the right is at the moment. Even they don't understand what their philosophies are right now.

Eh I missed Red Dawn, but still, no Conan?!

Why no The Passion of the Christ?

It's kinda funny they slurp the heinous When We Were Soldiers and dismiss most other 'Nam movies as "leftist" (except Hamburger Hill, which was an also ran)....most 'Nam movies I've seen are at worst attempting to document how the US government (with Democrats as presidents, yet) put our soldiers into an untenable situation. Even Hamburger Hill, at the end, questions the worth of what was achieved.

I'm guessing Saving Private Ryan or Black Hawk Down didn't make the cut because they are of the view that war is horrible and wasteful....never mind that SPR also takes the view that it is sometimes necessary.

You nailed it. I've seen these lists before. It basically boils down to this: everything I like is conservative, and everything I don't is liberal.

I totally agree with Happyness. The main character puts his own child's life in constant danger for the sake of money. I can't think of many more quintessentially 'conservative' traits than that.

I had often felt that Parker/Stone and South Park are mis-self-identifying as "conservatives" but have since realized that I share at least one fervent viewpoint with them - the desire to call "bullshit" when I see obvious bullshit.

Have they ever actually called themselves that? I've never heard it. I've only heard it said about them.

They consider themselves a-political with Libertarian leanings.