The 25 Best Conservative Films

The Stalinist goonsquad at the National Review has put together a list of the top 25 conservative films of all time. This is hilarious for all kinds of reasons. For one, it shows the passive-aggressive relationship that conservatives have with popular culture. They feign deep disdain for the entertainment industry, but at they same time they shamelessly kiss the ass of any actor or director who they believe to be on their side. They're jealous of the fact that most creative types are liberal, and secretly wish that they could hang out with the likes of George Clooney and bitch about the estate tax. So you have the sorry spectacle of right wing culture warriors championing any piece of popular culture that they think ratifies their world view. They do this even if a good film in question could only be considered"conservative" if you squint real hard and tilt your head to one side, or if an indisputably conservative film could only be considered "good" if you hit yourself in a face with a 2X4 a couple of times.

Here's a look at some of the more interesting films on the list.

1. The Lives of Others (2007): I'll admit that I haven't seen this film, but by all accounts its a great one. The degree to which it counts as "conservative" depends on whether you consider the message "the East German secret police were bad" to be an exclusively conservative one.

2. The Incredibles (2004): They've got a point here. As much fun and as clever as this movie is, it really does play as a Children's Theater production of Atlas Shrugged.

4. Forrest Gump (1994): A choice like this leaves me wondering if conservatives aren't so eager to see their views projected on the silver screen that it blinds them to every other consideration. Not only is Forrest Gump an awful, seeping load of soporific awfulness, it seems to be an open insult to the very notion of conservatism. Do the right-wingers who champion this film not realize that the protagonist who embodies the virtues that they champion, who served in Vietnam, ignored the self-indulgent protest movements and hedonistic self-destruction of the 60s and 70s, and became a successful entrepreneur in the Reagan era, is a FUCKING RETARD!?!? If I thought for a minute that Robert Zemeckis is capable of irony of any kind, I'd think he was intentionally mocking these people.

5. 300 (2007): Seriously? Apparently all a film has to do to qualify as a "great" conservative film is to 1. espouse a conservative ( in this case, flat-out fascist) view and 2. be popular. For all the visual audacity, 300 is crushingly stupid, heavy handed and testosterone-poisoned. Also, in case I forgot to mention EXPLICITLY FASCIST.

6. Groundhog Day (1993): I know that National Review nepotism-case and serial dullard Jonah Goldberg champions this movie as a signal statement of conservative ideals, and I guess that's a defensible view. Goldberg and company point to the fact that Bill Murray is drawn over the course of his ordeal to classic, community minded virtues. One could point out that there is nothing necessarily conservative about this, and that, in fact, modern conservatism embraces the sort of mindless acquisitiveness that Murray turns away from and that in an era of hyper-capitalism the sort of community-mindedness that the film champions is deeply leftist. One could also point out that the real goal that Murray strives for throughout the movie is fucking Andie Macdowell.

8. Juno (2007): Apparently, any film in which a pregnancy is carried to term counts as conservative.

10. Ghostbusters (1984): I love me some Ghostbusters. And there's no doubting that it is a time capsule of Reagan-era reaction. I'm okay with this because, unlike some people, I don't judge art by a political standard. Although, it is worth pointing out that christian conservatives can't be too comfortable with the notion that our world is ruled by pan-dimensional pagan deities who can be vanquished with science, but not Jesus.

12. Dark Knight (2008): It's nice to know that a movie that intentionally muddies the ideological and moral waters its characters swim in with the express motive of unsettling the audience can be seen as an unambiguous endorsement of illegal surveillance and torture if you are desperate to have your views affirmed by Hollywood. And if you drink enough paint thinner.

15. Red Dawn (1984): Re-tarded. The idea of the U.S. being occupied by a bunch of Cubans is Cold War paranoia of Birchian proportions. Then you've got the fact that the movie itself is plodding, poorly acted and flat. And, of course, the hilarious irony that one of the signal achievements of conservative film is a celebration of insurgency. Do you think that Iraqi guerrillas watch pirated Betamax editions of Red Dawn before they go out and set IEDs to blow up the foreign invaders? What's "wolverines" in Arabic?

23. United 93 (2006): It's good to know that in addition to pregnancy, all depictions of the Events of 9/11 are inherently conservative. I'm waiting for the National Review to start championing Uwe Boll's Postal in the near future.