Been awhile since we've done this thread, and it's always fun. Here are some of my picks:

  • The Pursuit of Happyness (2006) is really bad. Will Smith's inspirational moment is going to the New York Stock Exchange and seeing all the happy rich guys in suits walking around, and wanting to be like them. Having to do stuff like brown-nose executives, sleep in train station bathrooms and pull his son out of daycare due to lack of money are presented not as flaws of the system but evidence of Smith's smart bootstraps-oriented thinking. This movie is the Mein Kampf of liberalism.

  • Air (2023) is really bad too. Literally a feature-length Nike commercial coupled with a fuckton of Michael Jordan worship, the message being that a bunch of rich guys deserved to get even richer because they signed a sneaker deal. The closing 5 minutes of the movie are a "where are they now" montage showing how much money all the Nike executives made, yay!

  • Anastasia (1997), which portrays the Russian Revolution as the result of a wizard's curse and communism as bad because it got in the way of the Romanovs living in big palaces and wearing fancy dresses.

  • The Post (2017), about a wealthy, heroic girlboss newspaper executive who makes the heroic decision to...uhh...not block the publication of a story that would expose the lies of a corrupt president threatening our democracy (take THAT drumpf)

post more.

  • ButtBidet [he/him]
    ·
    9 months ago

    I just watched Master and Commander, because dudes somehow love that movie because it shows just us guys hanging out, doing stuff, and occasionally managing emotions in the most stilted fucking manner. I will never get over how the film is basically propaganda for the British navy and British imperial wars. They kept talking up Admiral Nelson so much that I thought it would lead up to something. Nah, his aristocratic and pro-slavery views were never discussed.

    • GalaxyBrain [they/them]
      ·
      9 months ago

      Dawg, the subject matter predates Liberalism. It's the napoleonic war. It's history nerd pilled, they're like that cause dudes were like that

    • BynarsAreOk [none/use name]
      ·
      9 months ago

      Nah, the British Navy is as relevant as ancient Rome as far as modern audiences goes.

      Also I recommend Culture Why Are So Many Guys Obsessed With Master and Commander?

      Will Menaker, the co-host of the popular leftist podcast Chapo Trap House, said, “I don't know how there could be ironic fans of a movie that's this brilliant—a movie that does onscreen everything movies promise. What's bad about this movie?”

      “I always think of the scene where Aubrey and Maturin are playing their cello and violin—you're hearing that and it's just sort of taking you around the ship and it's all very quiet. And then there's just a moment where the camera goes underneath the boat and it's a shot of the anchor trailing through the ocean as you hear the slightly muffled sounds of Aubrey and Maturin's music,” he continued. “I just always am so struck by the beauty of that moment and the fact that every single conceivable detail about the social hierarchies and physical maintenance of this vessel is so lovingly crafted. It's the historical verisimilitude of it and just how it does a very rare thing for movies of this nature—it's like the battles are almost incidental.”

      Sure, there are no female characters in the movie (except for the ship, and the wooden lady on the ship). But overall, the masculinity of Master and Commander, especially as modeled by Aubrey, is overwhelmingly wholesome and positive. Any nostalgia for the traditionalism in the movie is less reactionary and more about the healthy male bonding between the characters.

      “You've got a bromance for the ages in Aubrey and Maturin,” Menaker said. “They're just fucking buds and they play their violins together as they're traversing the Cape of Horn. It's awesome.” Writer David Grossman told me that Master and Commander is “a deeply felt vision of non-toxic masculinity,” while Alex Yablon pointed to it as “a portrait of healthy homosociality.” Even director Taika Waititi once called it his favorite romance movie.

      I don't mean as an appeal to authority lol fuck Chapo shit, but this article and the quotes are a Siberian winter level take on why the movie is actualy kind of good and I completely agree with all the points.

      I can see why you may not like it since there are basicaly two audiences for this movie now. The original viewers mostly nostalgic and the whole early 2000s the end of the blockbuster era(LOTR, Gladiator, M&C etc) and the modern audience looking through all the context of modern society and what Hollywood has become. If you see yourself in the modern audience I guess yeah it probably isn't all that special or even relevant, specialy as a leftist even.

    • SSJ2Marx
      ·
      9 months ago

      Yeah it sucks about the movie's politics but on a pure entertainment level I still love it. It helps that they're fighting the Fr*nch so it's not like it's a film about Brits putting down a fully-justified uprising or something.

      • GalaxyBrain [they/them]
        ·
        9 months ago

        They are fighting the Americans in thr novel and it was the war of 1812. I'm not really sure what politics you'd prefer in an historical drama, it's a pretty accurate depiction of the place and time. People were generally press ganged into naval service at age 14 or so and it was the only life they ever knew, i guess they could go into hat stuff more but it's there. I'm not really sure what you'd want from it without making it an entirely different piece of work

    • Dessa [she/her]
      ·
      9 months ago

      They were priming it to.be a whole series, but it didn't do as well as they hoped