My coworker was telling me how well Jerry Maguire stands up today and I forced myself to remember the major beats of that piece of shit:
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Big company bad and evil; small start up good and pure.
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Being principled always pays off in the end.
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Everyone can make it if they try hard, believe in themselves, and believe in each other.
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We can have perfect interpersonal relations if we just learn to balance work and life appropriately, and it's up to us to accept that challenge.
Fuck this movie. More importantly fuck people who like this movie. Jerry would have turned out just like his old firm buddies (even if the major plot points largely stay the same). Everyone in this movie is actively trying to exploit each other in the beginning. And even though it's totally inconsequential to how bad these people are in their shitty lives, if you ask me the most unbelievable part is when Jerry and Bridget Jones get back together at the end.
Not buying it.
Tell me about the shitty liberal movies that are renting space in your head.
The Pursuit of Happyness and any other rags to riches movie tends to have bad moral takeaways. Poor down on his luck door to door salesman keeps trying hard and one day succeeds, can't move his shitty bone density scanners, has to sleep in a subway bathroom with his kid, takes an unpaid (!!!) internship despite his clear impoverishment and against his wife's wishes, and through gumption and the power of a relatively decent rate of profit in the 80s, he makes it because he wore a suit to his last interview and solved a rubix cube I think. Awful, very liberal boomer brained.
the framing ignores the fact that there are still many poor down on their luck people
Those poors need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get an unpaid internship by making a snappy joke about pants in the job interview
Isn’t it based on a real guy though? I mean I know they’ll have a shitty message regardless but the real guy seems to be a pro bootstrapper so I’m not sure how you’d frame a biographical movie that’s opposite of what the person believes in
You could emphasize the role of racism prior to his getting lucky as a stockbroker, emphasize the role his wife played while he wasn't getting paid (providing free childcare, show how the private medical system influenced him to drop his previous interest in training as a physician to trying to sell medical equipment before meeting a guy driving a Ferrari who convinced him to pursue being a stock broker, etc.
A lot of bootstraps type stories are about how am individual rose above their circumstances by their own ability- but none of us are really able to do that, it's up to the community as a whole and/or random fate. And there's plenty of this guy who tried and tried and screwed their family over and in the end, they have nothing to show for it. It's a choice to pick the 1 who succeeded over the 100s that don't.
I heard an interview on the radio with a famous singer who advised that if you want to be a singer you should commit fully and have no backup plan. Which is alright for him he made it but what about all the people who tried that and failed they don't get radio interviews
Sure, but just like other forms of propaganda it's less about what's fact, and more about what facts are reported in/emphasized/made into movies.
The editorial process starts with choosing what to make a story out of. Its very existence as a multi-million dollar film is capitalist propaganda.
the movie skipped the part of the real guy's life where he worked as a drug dealer
not sure how you’d frame a biographical movie that’s opposite of what the person believes in
wolf of wall street did an ok job of that although mainly because Jordan Belfort doen't believe hold any convictions or principals so strongly they interfere with his greed
well it's just a movie about being a terrible person who has a massive substance abuse problem. You could make the same movie about pirates operating out of Nasau and no major plot beats would need to change
I actually saw this turd with some friends and I was the only one who absolutely hated it in our group.
Can we call Legend of Korra a movie for the purposes of this thread?
I love how basically the first scene of the show is a guy in a park saying “I’m tired of being oppressed by all the magic users in this city” and our main character, the most powerful magic user of all, beats him up with magic. And keep in mind that both the city government and police force are made up entirely of magic users. Amon was right, Zaheer was completely right.
also one of the guys we're supposed to feel bad for having his magic taken away is a mobster who sets fire to people for fun and until it happens he keeps yelling about setting fire to people.
not sure why the audience was expected to think there's a man who should have power over fire
I guess the point is that bending is sort of a deep intristic part of a person. Taking someone's connection to the element is like chemically castrating a person.
in his case it's like chemically castrating a serial rapist while he yells threats to continue doing that even if that were the analogy. If it was the analogy it's a bad one as these intrinsic parts of them grant them immese and inescapable power over everyone around them and also Aang taking away the bending of the fire lord was earlier portrayed as a merciful and reasonable thing to do
The show's line on this seems to be the same as current mainstream view on chemical castration as a from of crime prevention — it's a cruel and unusual punishment, the dude should just be put in jail.
that's a really bad analogy if it is the case they're making because they made it magic powers he's a violent man who can apparently never be disarmed without it being a violation of his inalienable right to set fire to whatever/whoever he wants to
I haven't watched the show since it came out, but as far as I remember they had like a whole city full of those bending dudes and a badass metal bending police force, so I feel like they had the whole bender jailing situation figured out. Unless the plot needed a prison break, of course.
badass sure but really bad at investigation and the guy had been operating openly in city streets for years and just no one on the police stopped him. that police force and it's focus on firepower over any form of community outreach played more like an occupying force than a source of justice (it is an American show though).
And it’s extra frustrating because the first show was a story about anti-imperialism
Don't take my magic powers away! Something something culture something something spirituality plus then I'll just be a regular nonmagic person! The horror!
commits false flag terrorist attack on cities
furthers ethnic tensions
sells weapons to government in response to terrorist attacks
gets found out and imprisoned
prison is low security with luxury amenities
not the bad guy, just a comic relief side character
main characters only mad for a few seconds
marries submissive secretary
Goes deeper than that. Korra's a cop, bender supremacy is upheld, bourgeois democracy is the only acceptable form of political organization, and in season 4 the airbenders are basically the CIA.
Everything there is right besides the last part. zhuli is clearly the dom of the relationship. by the end at least. Boy couldn't top a carousel
Office Space
stealing is bad even if it’s fractions of a penny from a corporation!
But then the plot twist is that
stealing is actually good if you can get away with it
if it doesn't harm anyone and nobody even notices it happening, how can it be wrong?
oh wait that applies to creepshots under some circumstances... maybe we need to be deontologists after all
I think you could make the argument that it is wrong to do something if there is both
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A chance that someone finds out what you've done
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Harm done to that person if they do find out
The psychological harm done by an invasion of privacy is enough to consider it wrong even if that psychological harm isn't guaranteed. imo anyway
yeah recklessly risking harm to someone is bad, that's a good angle. Still leaves some shithead who is certain they can get away with it but they probably aren't justified in that certainty unless it's an independant tech cloning hard drives while they have custody of my computer.
that one is theft of intellectual property which i'm not sure is a real thing but it'll do for now and i'm not trying to be a libertarian debate bro here.
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that's not what i meant, jackass. i meant you could spy on somebody in an undetectable way and that finding where that's harmful to the victim (or "victim", i guess) is a lot harder than with noticed surveillance.
i think it's wrong and it's definitely against the norms of any society i'd want to live in but I struggle to articulate why from first principles.
The problem with your whole thing is comparing a sex crime to a minor theft from a corporation.
no, the comparison is between the logic. not the crimes. it doesn't need to be creepshots it could be a non-sexual spying.
my bodily autonomy has nothing to do with somebody in the high-rise six blocks away having a telescope that could see into my window or a government satellite seeing into an open-top beach shower.
undetectable crimes need a different explanation for how they cause harm
the deontology part was a joke and i'm shocked anyone took it seriously
You’re conflating “harm” with “morally incorrect.” Insulting someone may not harm someone but it still isn’t the morally correct thing to do.
no, insulting someone is harmful in the general case and the specific case where they shrug it off or friendship contexts where it's understood to be a joke doesn't change how we should consider insults broadly as a class. the undetectable equivalent would be insulting someone privately and in a manner where they couldn't find out about it (e.g. star trek "fans" saying shit about wil wheaton online in public means he could reasonably find out about it compared to some jackass only saying the same thing to his roommate about wheaton's child acting means it's vanishingly unlikely that would ever contribute to the abuse.)
if something other than harm makes things bad I don't really know what that is or how you have a coherent framework around it.
have a reasonable expectation of privacy be considered part of bodily autonomy. Or just have it be considered important but separate.
yeah the point is we expect that privacy in our homes and beach showers but that privacy can be undetectably violated and I have a really hard time figuring out how I'm harmed by somebody seeing me cleaning my butthole if I don't know it happened and they never contact me or post the photos online etc.
is that you seem to understand how violating privacy is bad but you can’t say that because you don’t have a moral framework to dub it so. I’d say you have it backwards. Moral frameworks do not impose morality but rather attempt to explain it.
yeah asshole i'm trying to figure out the basis that we intuit it to be wrong. 99.9999% of the things we talk about being bad are bad because they do harm. ethical veganism is based on harm. queer rights are defended because our existence doesn't harm. and so on.
How about the idea that harm isn’t a requirement for an action to be considered bad?
for the fourth time, what fucking basis then?
despite mentioning Deontology which does just that.
except deontology is obvious bullshit, like I said, that was a joke.
You could also say that only actions and not their consequences are the basis of morality.
that sounds like deontology, you just need the "rules"
You also have the golden rule, which supposes that a morally permissible action is one in which the other person would be reasonably okay with.
"treat others how you wish to be treated" is not the same as "treat others how you figure they'd like to be treated". masochists following the former is an obvious flaw.
How about a universal system of morality is impossible and thus your question is at fault?
we have implicit moral frameworks because we can make moral judgements about novel scenarios so it should be possible to work out an explicit one that maps to our intuition.
That’s not how the burden of proof works. I don’t need to have a positive assertion to prove that yours is incorrect.
if you're going to say mine is wrong that means you're using a different one and you should be able to describe it.
Yeah. I hate the "but your stealing" part from Rachel. This movie is perfection in aesthetic (it hit so close to home with its office satire I shivered the first time I saw it) and the comedy is pretty great. Turns out the message is just kind of sort of total bullshit.
that argument was so unpersuasive that it basically just washed over me. They literally couldn't even show any reason for why it was wrong for example anyone being hurt or even inconvenienced.
My brother in christ it's your story you control the narrative why are you just stating your point with no narrative support.
that said the moral of office space is that you should burn down the office if your boss moves your desk so you can't see the squirrels
The office space guy was way happier as a labourer even though he has to endure a lot of the same petty bullshit and jokes that pissed him off before, they don't really dwell on that cause it's just a quick throw away gag. He probably also took a massive pay cut, they never really got into that.
I watched this movie on Netflix a couple of months ago called I Care a Lot. It's from 2020; It's got Peter Dinklage in it, it's listed as a comedy, drama, thriller, LGBTQ... And it's fucking monstrous. Here's the storyline off imdb:
Poised with sharklike self-assurance, Marla Grayson is a professional, court-appointed guardian for dozens of elderly wards whose assets she seizes and cunningly bilks through dubious but legal means. It's a well-oiled racket that Marla and her business-partner and lover, Fran, use with brutal efficiency on their latest "cherry," Jennifer Peterson - a wealthy retiree with no living heirs or family. But when their mark turns out to have an equally shady secret of her own and connections to a volatile gangster, Marla is forced to level up in a game only predators can play - one that's neither fair, nor square.
So the opening scene shows Marla Grayson(Rosamund Pike) winning a court case where a distressed white guy framed as a weak, neglectful, mama's boy is no longer allowed to see his mother. Marla has her in a rest home and the movie is framing everything as if Marla is the good guy. The weak white guy spits on her after the case, calls her a fucking bitch, we then find out Marla is a lesbian with a girlfriend, has her own very successful guardian business; In the first 15 minutes the movie checks all the neoliberal boxes as a White Yass Qween fighting the white man. But then we find out, that actually, Marla is a fucking monster and is taking advantage of these people, working with a doctor to find wealthy people who don't have anyone that can stand up for them when the doctor recommends them for guardianship and Marla comes in and liquidates their life. It even shows her having a collusive relationship with the management of the care home she's sending these victims off to.
Here's where it's supposed to get funny:
spoiler
Marla's doctor friend recommends to Marla a woman who is really fine, but has no one to stand up for and then we see the evilness of Marla and her process. She swoops into court gets guardianship without the lady knowing what's going on and totally wrecks her life... and just as we're supposed to see how horrible Marla is we find out that actually the lady wasn't alone, she was in hiding as the mother of a big Russian Mafia guy who faked his own death in Peter Dinklage. OMG! THE HILARITY! Peter Dinklage says give me my mother or I fucking ruin you... and not only does the movie frame Marla as a victim making her evil pale in comparison to Dinklage, but eventually Marla gains the upper hand and the fucking movie frames her as a a hero for it. A Yas Qween White Lesbian Woman who defeated the scary russian mobster! Hooray! She even earns his respect and they go into a partnership to expand her business of ripping off old people!
But wait! Remember that loser who couldn't see his mother from the beginning of the movie? His mom died and that pathetic piece of shit never got see her again, so just as Marla is cresting the peak of her ascension, this pathetic, sexist, piece of shit comes along (regularly calling her a fucking bitch) and shoots Marla. And I shit you not the ending scene fades out with us seeing Marla's girlfriend crying for her! It feels like we're supposed to feel bad that Marla dies! Seriously, if you don't plan to watch it check out the ending scene and tell me Marla is the bad guy.
It was like Neoliberalism the movie. Whether it meant to be or not. Fucking drove me crazy watching it. Reminded me of something Thomas Frank said about the reason no one really got in trouble for the 2008 crash was because the neoliberals didn't care about the moral implications, they were impressed by the convoluted intricacies by which they worked around the rules.
I hated that movie so much. Not only is the ideology paper deep, the shooting is terrible, the writing is bland, and (as you say) the ‘heroes ’ are exclusively pieces of shit. Also it was like three different stories wrapped up and sold as one. Dog doo film making really
I would really like to know what the point of making it was? Were they really trying to make us feel for her? Or was the true intention supposed to be that the throwaway white guy was the real hero all along and we're just supposed to hate lesbian girlbosses? It's such a weird fucking movie. Why was it listed as satire? As crypto-neoliberal propaganda. WTF!!!
I have literally no idea. I hated everyone in the movie except the ‘villain’ (the dude who had his mom stolen, but was mean about it?). More than anything, I want to be a fly on the wall of Dinklage’s office after he read the script, but before he accepted the role. What was my man thinking???
the lib take is that horrifically abusing elderly people and calling a woman who does that a sexist name are morally equivalent and she followed the lawTM so she was basically morally fine maybe a little sleazy but loveable.
Sound like the writer had in mind a dark comedy where everyone is terrible, and the director decided that actually one of the terrible people was the good guy.
can't believe they straight up made a movie about how elder abuse is cool and good
I got so viscerally mad at the lead character in the movie, and so for better or worse this movie made an impression on me. I was so disgusted with this character it had me wondering if the movie was actually good. Like, to evoke such a reaction. The elder abuse was particularly angering as it was kind of played for laughs and i guess we were supposed to think it was kind of okay because, like you said, Russian mob. On the other hand, it's probably more like a rorschach test or something. What I saw was abhorrent but others might've found themselves titillated by the extreme self interest and terribleness of the characters. Like Scorcese making movies that he claims are scathing indictments of his subjects and you are supposed to hate or something, but most people see it as normative and good (and tbf, that is a pretty reasonable impression to develop in a world under capitalism). I agree with your takeaway one hundred percent
I was so disgusted with this character it had me wondering if the movie was actually good.
That has occured to me as well, but it's all so ham-fisted and unapologetic that I can't make myself believe it. It's maddening.🤷♂️
I watched that and I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to think the main character is a likeable slay queen girl boss. I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to think she’s a sociopath lol.
Then they probably shouldn't have repeatedly tried to frame her as sympathetic and a hero, which is my point. Check the comments on that YouTube clip of the ending. It's not just me.
To me it just seems like the same energy as people watching breaking bad or the sopranos and thinking the protagonists of those shows are meant to be heroic. I’m not saying it’s a well made movie or anything, but people having no media literacy doesn’t mean the creators intended her to be an inspirational character 🤷♂️
Except it's the other way around? The director intentionally did shots framing the main character in a a sympathetic manner. If anyone is media illiterate, and it was unintentional, it would be the writer/director. Look at those comments again, check other reviews; They didn't feel sympathy for the character, they felt they were being told to feel sympathy for the character because that's how the movie is repeatedly framed. But for many it didn't work because the character was so abhorent.
Edit: even the movie summary is kinda ambiguous about morally judging Marla.
Enola Holmes. The movie centers around women's suffrage - it's been a while but I keep thinking about it
- the mother is depicted as crazy for taking direct action and associating with activists and her plot ultimately fails. I think she abandons her family too
- The boy who Enola falls for can vote and ultimately is the pivotal vote to give women suffrage
Same goes for Fantastic Beasts 3 which ends in a vote
I just watched the 3 fantastic beasts movies a few days ago and they all suck but the last one is a fucking disaster holy shit. If you haven’t listened to it I recommend the episode of the Shrieking Shack podcast where they review that movie. The rest of the podcast is pretty good too
Summing up their discussion of that vote scene. “So there’s a bunch of fascists at this vote. The candidates are up at the top of the stairs, and they bring this baby deer out, and the deer has to choose a candidate and it chooses the fascist guy. And it looks legitimate, it’s announced that it’s legitimate, and then some guy shows up and says ‘Actually that’s the wrong deer, this is the right deer’ and that deer chooses the non-fascist, and all the fascists just go ‘Welp, I guess we lost!’ Like, why would you think the fascists wouldn’t just start beating people up? ‘I mean I came here prepared to do fascism, but then the deer didn’t pick him! Well actually the deer did pick him, but that was actually the wrong deer. Yeah, I know, crazy right? How do I know it was the wrong deer? Oh that random guy showed up and told us!’”
As far as I understand, which is not far because this movie was incomprehensible gibberish, the magic deer shows them who’s “pure of heart” but then for some reason they vote and they just trust all the fascists to vote for the pure of heart person. As if they wouldn’t just go “Yeah no he’s an asshole and that’s why I like him”
And then it bows to someone who isn't even running, which even the film is embarrassed about
And the non-candidate it bows to is the one who organized this situation that could be considered a coup!
That sounds horrible.
Also, I hated Harry Potter from the get go so I stopped torturing myself after the second film. That was like 20 year ago. Haven't seen a Potter film since.
Fantastic Beasts 3 which ends in a vote
I haven't watched it but that's too fucking perfect lmao :peltier-laugh:
It's amazing considering that for all of their flaws the original books at least end with a violent political confrontation where the Nazis have to be defeated in order for things to go back to normal.
It's still not good that they end by rehabilitating the wizard government that had completely failed to address the Nazis until the main character, who was a teenager, decided to do something about it.
If you enjoy watching bad movies and making fun of them I can’t recommend it enough. I had a blast watching it because it’s an absolute disaster. Watch it with a friend or a partner, maybe make a drinking game out of it.
the mother is depicted as crazy for taking direct action and associating with activists and her plot ultimately fails
Is she? The male characters treat her as crazy but I feel like the audience is supposed to emphasize with her whole thing.
I could be misremembering. I feel like she was at least portrayed as foolish for failing
I think there's a bit of a reversal that shows the mom wasn't crazy after all and she's working for women's suffrage.
I know this always makes the list in these types of posts but a couple of my nerd friends that I used to play WoW with were super enthusiastic about Ready Player One and had both read the book. The book at least showed what a hellscape the future is going to look like with people eating gruel as the mega corporation tries to vacuum up as much Capitol as possible. The movie threw even that fairly lukewarm imagery out the window and shows people getting pizza delivered by a drone. Then it all gets thrown out the window when they win the prize money and the protagonist gets a cute girlfriend.
Jenny was correct and a based anti war activist and should have never gone back to him. Should have just gone from a hippie to a sober/straight edge anti war activist instead
I'm ok with Forest Gump, ban me idgaf. No I don't think boomers should be allowed to watch it. I like how the movie turned out balanced. I can't think of a movie that can commit to the tones Forest Gump does with the acts feeling like they belong in the same movie. Doc Brown bled out alone that night while Marty McFly saved himself. They COULD have devoted an act to grieving and guilt but that'd break the tone of the movie.
Was flipping through this list and some of the entries are very funny. I guess Harold and Kumar goto White Castle has minorities. I forgot the Guantanamo Bay movie was a sequel.
https://www.listchallenges.com/most-liberal-movies-according-to-conservapedia
Not a movie, but I'm watching through Babylon 5 for the first time. I was a die-hard Trekkie when it first aired and avoided it on principle, but decided to give it a chance after all these years because I'm a fan of many people on its creative team, and because its popularity has endured for years. I'm about 2/3rd's of the way through the first season.
B5 feels like it was made in response to criticisms of ST (story arcs, conflicts between main characters), although ST itself had already learned from these criticisms with DS9. And Star Trek itself is pretty lib in many respects, but B5 feels like it analyzed Trek's writing and story structure to death, with no attention paid to its politics.
Three of the main cast are actual ambassadors, so it's hard to take any political stories about them seriously, when they are essentially state concerns and actions embodied as individuals (the definition of liberalism).
There are occasional mentions of poverty among the low-class civilians on the station, but no analysis of the causes, and it never appears to affect the main cast.
Except for the head of security, who is just a straight-up cop, and who has been driven out of every other posting he's had.
The station commander is basically a "good guy" for the sake of it. A strike among the actual labourers on the station is resolved when he just steps in and hands them a big chunk of the station's military budget. I'm also getting vibes of a chosen one theme from him, but it looks like the actor left the series after the first season so who knows how that arc would have turned out.
Maybe it changes as the seasons go by. And in spite of these issues, I'm still enjoying it. But there's no real analysis of political power dynamics, from a program that presents itself as explicitly political.
Already watched "TKO," and yes, it was crap. Can't have a "Balance of Terror" without a "Spock's Brain."
I'm watching a download of the entire series, so it would be a hassle to skip the opening. And NGL, the opening is one of my favourite parts. The music slaps, and the narration makes it feel almost mythological.
Thank you for the head's-up. I do sense threads of competent writing here and there, and I've seen enough shows take their time to pick up steam that I'm still willing to give it a chance. Nice to know that it picks up.
I also just started watching Babylon 5, but based on the comments elsewhere on this site, I'm told it gets a lot better and more nuanced after the first season.
Camp X-Ray has to be up there i don't remember much but something about Guantanamo and Harry Potter.
Iron Man. The basic thesis of the first Iron Man is that billionaires will save us, everyone else is incapable or too evil to wield power. Let private individuals with lots of money solve problems.
Pretty much anything Pixar puts out anymore. The movies are so tailored to appease and provoke the critical studies grads that pen the inevitable think pieces about the politics or moral questions raised by this or that property. But the morals and the politics can never be really good, because disney can't make that kind of movie. One that tells the kids how it really is and how this story is brought to you by a market actor that is using this movie as an ad for their endless product lines, seeking to instill brand recognition at critical years of development to shape the nostalgia-trapped consumers of tomorrow. Endlessly rehashing the same shit like a closed circuit human centipede of ideological filth doomed to the myopia of eating and shitting the same old eaten shit waste. Knowing that Disney or Pixar are making angles on the minds and imaginations of your kids on the one hand, but then getting conned into validating the shit they spew out as having nuance and being deserving of a critical reading on the level at which it is pandering to be read is the height of annoying liberal shit. It's like billion dollar shit posting when they craft these scripts with small moments intended to stir up controversy and discussion and the reply guy film critics duly oblige in a feedback loop increasingly amplifying into a pure tone of mediocrity.
