Wonkette
THE 10TH, 9TH, AND 8TH BEST CONSERVATIVE MOVIES OF THE LAST 25 YEARS: “#10 Ghostbusters (1984): This comedy might not get Russell Kirk’s endorsement as a worthy treatment of the supernatural, but you have to like a movie in which the bad guy (William Atherton at his loathsome best) is a regulation-happy buffoon from the EPA, and the solution to a public menace comes from the private sector.” It’s a welcome bit of escapism, sure, because we all know that the private sector is constantly trying to destroy the country.
#9 is fairly unbelievable:
#9 Blast from the Past (1999): …A decade ago, Hugh Wilson’s Blast from the Past defied the party line, seeing the values, customs, manners, and even music of the period with nostalgic longing. Brendan Fraser plays an innocent who has grown up in a fallout shelter and doesn’t know the era of Sputnik and Perry Como is over. Alicia Silverstone is a post-feminist woman who learns from him that pre-feminist women had some things going for them.
James Bowman, film critic for art mag The American Spectator, wrote this blurb about Blast from the Past. We have no choice but to take his word for it, because James Bowman is the only person in the world who’s seen this movie. We want to party with James Bowman!
Get ready for this (K-Lo herself wrote it!):
#8 Juno (2007): The best pro-life movies reach beyond the church choirs and influence the wider public… The film has its faults, including a number of crass moments and a pregnant high-school student with an unrealistic level of self-confidence. Yet it also exposes a broken culture in which teen sex is dehumanizing, girls struggle with “choice,” and boys aimlessly try — and sometimes downright fail — to become men.
We remember this annoying debate about the political values of Juno reaching every corner of the Internet for a few months, after its release. But thanks to these few sentences from The Corner, we know that this movie about a teenager who gets pregnant, chooses to get an abortion at first, wrestles with the choice for a while, and ultimately chooses to keep the baby, without having her friends or parents dictate the choice — instead they support the choice she herself made, with her body — is 100% pro-life. If this movie were liberal, like most movies, the plot would have involved “self-confident” harlot Juno just cold killin’ her fetuses every 12 minutes or so.
#8 Juno [The Corner]
#9 Blast from the Past [The Corner]
#10 Ghostbusters [The Corner]
I think what they’re trying to imply is that Ghostbusters confirms the worthlessness of elite academics, vs. the productivity of the private sector. As someone who is both an elite academic and a grunt worker in the private sector, I can confirm that they are 100% correct. Also.
I knew Juno was going to be in there somewhere.
Kingdom of Heaven will be there along with 300, which someone else mentioned.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0320661/
Jonah Goldberg secretly fantasizes that he is the Stay-Puft man. And is actually a threat to something other than his own dwindling self-esteem. Or that he’s eating the Stay-Puft man.
“Ghostbusters”?! Naw, the GOP’s fave movie is “Spookbusters”, available through your local KKK chapter.
BTW, I should mention that the National Review likes to do this from time to time. They’ll take a list of beloved movies and try to convince us that they are in fact “conservative movies.” They only do it to tweak liberals. I’m sure they don’t believe a word of it themselves.
The last time I saw one of these lists on the National Review they listed “The Bicycle Thief” as the #1 movie for the way that it (I paraphrase): illustrates the centrality of private property to the dignity of the individual.
Never mind that the film’s director was a Communist, clearly “The Bicyclke Tief” film was an allegory of how taxation is unwarranted theft of the assets of the hard working monied classes to give to the undeserving idle masses.
I can’t wait for them to talk about the conservative virtues in ‘A Handmaid’s Tale.’
Silly me, I thought Stay Puft was the bad guy in Ghostbusters.
Serolf Divad: Bicyclke Tief?! How dare you curse at us in Portuguese!
A surprise at Number Six: Michael Moore’s “Bowling for Columbine”
“Unrealistic level of self-confidence”? I think K-Lo has some self esteem issues. When I was in high school, all my friends were wise-cracking, sass-giving, young women. I found this movie very believable.
I’ll bet they can’t wait for Juno 2, where Allison Janney and J.K. Simmons do the hanky panky and have a child…when they’re OLD!
Good thing they have the Previa, with its many many rows of comfortable seating!
CivicHoliday: Wait, didn’t those liberal academics end up saving everything using science? Aren’t ghosts PAGAN?!
Plus, the reason Ghostbusters II isn’t in there is that it involved an art museum (known gay/lesbian brainwashing hippie factories) and the guys coddled that terrorist slime, implying that it could be swayed into loving bad Amur’can pop music. Oh, and everyone got all gay at the end with sticky (pink) slime all over themselves. The symbolism is clear, PEOPLE!
Fine. They can have their stupid list, but no more complaining about batshit insane liberal Hollywood.
Cape Clod: FTW! Anonymous forced sex with the powerless is awesome!
Ghostbusters? “Unlicensed nuclear accelerator” must be music to a conservative’s ears.
Did they forget there was a black Ghostbuster busting white ghosts? And why are they raping our childhood memories the same way they, you know, rape children? No one steps on a church in my town!
Where is “Madea Goes To Jail” on this list?
Plot: Sassy and ungrateful black lady goes to jail, for sass.
Still waiting for “An American Carol.”
I actually paid money to see “Blast from the Past.” Its a movie about how someone’s paranoid fear of an over-inflated boogieman causes him to spend all of his life in a bunker. Said paranoid takes his family down with him. Apt metaphor for our little excursion into Iraq.
I’m pretty sure the “bad guy” in Ghostbusters was the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.
The EPA guy was your typical Republican incompetent crony appointee, in the Reagan administration.
You know, I could actually see their point about “Ghostbusters” but for the fact we’re talking about a movie about three people (and that other guy) running around and chasing ghosts and ends with a climactic battle against (SPOILER ALERT) a giant marshmallow. I think a general rule in movie criticism is that any movie including the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man probably does not have a political agenda.
That Ghostbusters logo would also work for Munich.
BillyClubb:
Sorry, I meant to write: bisexual queef.
tdehr: And now marshmallows are not only going to kill me, but they’ll start to resemble Rush Limbaugh. I’ll get all queasy just walking near them now.
Juno? Really? This turd makes her out to be a movie version of Bristol Palin. If I recall, Juno declines the abortion because she is uneasy about the clinic and procedure, not from any ideological objection to abortion, about which she and her friends are pretty casual. Did this sack of shit even see the movie or is he basing this solely on having seen the trailers which prominently feature Juno carrying the child to term. The bit about teen sex being dehumanizing is also double-plus retarded.
magic titty: It’s only the men that need to be feared, apparently.
Too Lazy To Sign In:
I concur; me and my friends at that age were insecure, but we covered it up the way Juno did–by being sassy, listening to music we thought would really impress people, and dropping references to shit that no one expected a teenage girl to know about. I found a lot of the “these characters are soooo unbelievable” complaints of the movie pretty patronizing–as if there are things teenage girls say and do, and to do otherwise is simply impossible.
Juno portrays teen sex as dehumanizing? Funny, I thought Juno characterized her teen sex as fantastic. And how about the woman who chooses single motherhood, HMMM? Conservative values?
I’d say Serolf David is right, but I think that’s giving them too much credit. I think they’ve gotten so used to filtering reality thru their own ideology that they’ve irretrievably lost touch with the world as the rest of the population experiences it.
When I look at where neo-con hatred of regulation and government at all levels intersects with a belief in limitless “freedom” to possess crazy weaponry, I wonder if Mad Max is Number One, because that’s the kind of America they’re going for these days.
Gallowglass: Jennifer Garner’s uptight character ends up being more likable than Jason Bateman’s free spirit character. That aspect of it strikes me as more conservative than the “smashmortion” one.
Cape Clod: OK WIN! WIN ! WIN! LOLOLZ
Re: Juno
What’s up with that “boys try to become men” comment in the NRO post? I don’t remember any of that from the movie–not only are the male characters not major players, but whatshisface doesn’t grow the slightest pit–not personally or emotionally. Is it just because the reviewer can’t handle a movie where a man doesn’t do something awesome that she has to bring that up?
Too Lazy To Sign In: A minority, female, republican with self-esteem issues?? I simply don’t believe that…
In the director’s cut of Juno she gets the abortion. The film is 11 minutes long. It’s not very good.
They just like Ghostbusters because the EPA guy gets a fuckload of Stay Puft detritus dumped on him at the end. And because the Rick Moranis character turns into Dick Morris.
loquaciousmusic: I’m hoping in Juno 2 they leave absolutely no doubt that the movie is pro-choice. Maybe star Sarah Silverman as a college-aged Juno having like 5 abortions during a semester in school. And throw in a scene of vomiting and pissing on a Bible after a night out drinking, for good measure.
You know, the entire Juno as conservative pro-life parable falls apart instantaneously upon watching the whole thing, if any of these people ever did, when the main character (spoiler alert) agrees to give her baby up for adoption to A Single Woman whose husband just left her. Since “everybody” (Ann Coulter) knows that Single Mothers are the cause of every horrible thing that has ever happened, these people clearly need to get their fables straight.
Also, it was written by a former stripper. Also.
I don’t think Kingdom of Heaven will make the list. The conflict is resolved peacefully through constructive dialogue between the Christian and Muslim leaders, and both Balian and Saladin were supicious, contemptuous and dismissive of their respective religious leaders. Decidedly un-Republican in theme.
300 might make the list on account of involving the heroic westerners slaughtering bazillions of brown dudes and because it was so totally gay. 300 was the most overtly homoerotic movie to be released as a blockbuster thriller since “Nightmare on Elm Street 2″. 300 men in leather thongs and capes? That gets the Sen. Larry Craig Sexy Toilet Seal of Approval!
“teen sex is dehumanizing” is definitely not the message I got from Juno. Maybe K. Lo is projecting from her own experience (OH GOD I CAN’T UNTHINK IT NOW)
So Birth of a Nation will be in the top seven?
But…but… Ghostbusters is about the triumph of science over the supernatural…!!!
jagorev: Damn you! Damn you to hell!!!!
Re Ghostbusters, didn’t the private-sector solution turn out to be disastrous?
K-lo portraying herself as a “female” is dehumanizing.
Shorter NRO culture critics, as expressed by Meatwad: “We dumb. Dumb as hell.”
Also re: Ghostbusters, and the evil public sector…how is it that conservatives think the public sector always SUXX, except for when it’s monitoring your phone calls and deciding who to waterboard? Then the public sector is a font of wisdom, prudence, and discretion. I am seriously puzzled at what point conservatives, who used to be inherently pessimistic about human nature, decided that concentrated power in the hands of certain said humans is A-OK.
I can’t believe Red Dawn only made it to #15. What the hell is this shit?
Gallowglass: Are you kidding? 300 is a lock for top 5. The movie redefined the term ‘war porn.’
Proving these guys don’t know shit about movies, they’ve neglected like every slasher flick ever, from like, the Seventies to the mid-Eighties.
Hippies get killed, Jason never dies, the end.
In “Blast From the Past”, the family stays cocooned and incommunicado in a nicely appointed hole in the ground for literally decades, all on the basis of a completely unfounded fear. It’s the perfect conservative movie.
…and boys aimlessly try — and sometimes downright fail — to become men.
That about sums up the previous administration.
I mean, let’s face it: apart from Brazil, it’s not like we really want to reclaim most of these movies or anything.
um - in juno - didn’t she have the child proudly out of wedlock and didn’t jennifer garner decide to raise the child without parental involvement?
Where’s Dan Quayle to enforce family values when you need him?
Blast from the Past - In reality, women were much more content when all they had to do was bake shit and pump out kids. After all, it’s the general consensus (Rush) that feminism is just an attempt by unnatractive women to try and infiltrate mainstream society.
#9: I’m holding out for Encino Man. I think the conservative movie cannon deserves two time-traveling Brendan Fraser movies. Ummm… intelligent design? I’m sure they can work that in.
They do know one of the Ghostbusters is black, right?
But honestly, I expected the top ten to be fully comprised of The 40 Year Old Virgin, so this is already stellar.
I for one, am sick and tired of far-right-wing Hollywood pervading our culture.
p.s. Imagine being K-Lo. Waking up every morning K-Lo. Looking in the mirror and seeing that you look like K-Lo. Begging for money on the corner like K-Lo. *shudder*
Coming in at No. 3, it’s a shocker — Oliver Stone’s “W,” showing their great hero battling with and eventually defeating pretzels, putting Dick Cheney in his place and pretending that those drunken slut daughters don’t even exist.
humble pinko: Rush’s schtick itself is an attempt by a horrific blob-man to somehow infiltrate civilized society, by way of the badly overused used and poorly constructed White Retard Hateway
Juno? Juno?!? Holy WTF, Batman! I knew this list would be insane, but I never guessed it would be insane in that they would include movies that are not Conservative in any way, shape, or form.
Seriously, how fucking hard is it to come up with actual Conservative movies when the entire 80’s are up for grabs. Uh, let’s see. Off the top of my head, how about Iron Eagle, Rambo II - III, Rocky IV, Robocop, Escape from New York, Conan the Barbarian, the entire Dirty Harry run, and pretty much anything else starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Eastwood, Van Damme, and every other roided-up, muscle-brained tough guy imaginable?
This just goes to show the level of these retards’ mental incompetence. Even fucking Maxim can throw together one of these bullshit lists that actually makes sense.
Also, a movie that’s suprisingly ultra-Conservative upon a second viewing that should be on the list instead of stuff like freaking Juno the most indie-light, custom-tailored-for-a-Liberal-audience-near-you, movie ever - Forrest Gump.
#1 will of course be Ghostbusters 2 in which our entrepreneurial heroes defeat a ghost by sing that anthem of traditional values Auld Lang Syne.
BillyClubb: The letter k doesn’t exist in Portuguese. No it’s not funny, but it is at least true (give or take some loan words and weird spellings of nicknames). No w either; probably a political joke to be made based on that but it would be bad.
As for the remaining films, what about the Hostel movies? They involve both a guilty pleasure of conservatives (torture porn) and a message that hostelling in Europe is for decadent liberals who will meet their doom…
If Juno was a conservative movie, Juno wouldn’t just have the kid, she’d also attend pro-life rallies and hold up pictures of baby fetuses.
tdehr: “No one steps on a church in my town!”
I’m surprised they didn’t cite that part as a clear message of the importance of conservative Christian values to our society, and the proper treatment of those who object to their presence in every aspect of our daily lives.
Oh right, it was a Catholic church. That explains it.
I don’t understand Juno. Weren’t they teaching all their kids to saddleback now?
Oh GOD, K-LO! Let me PROVE it to you! I’M ALL MAN BABY!!!
Upon further reflection there may be hope for Tootsie up that list after all.
A Geek Tragedy: #1 will be Top Gun. Homosexual militarism is all they crave.
Gallowglass: I just watched it last night. The anti-choice protester outside the clinic seemed really stupid. “All children want to get borned.”
Iggy Plop: I’d just like to say that Jonah Goldberg is silly whale, and the StayPuft man will eat him alive, starting by ripping off his head, even though he’d probably like that.
Conservatives also like Ernie Hudson’s totally-token-minority role.
#7 is “The Pursuit of Happyness” for its portrayal of one man’s ability to succeed through his own will in the face of economic devastation. Unstated is Reagan’s role in creating those economic conditions.
magic titty: Come to think of it, will there be a black performer in any of the chosen 25? Hmmmm….
Ghostbusters a conservative film? Nope. First, they hired a black
guy. Second, it wouldn’t have been the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man terrorizing them, it would have been a 50ft Babara Boxer.
Oh, whatever.
I want to see what they can do with American Beauty. It has “American” in the title, and the end of the movie ends up with brains all over a kitchen table, because of teh geyz. The moral? Gay people will shoot you if you don’t make out with them.
Dr. Spaceman: That’s what they made in order to get funding for the film. Once they had backers they could afford to let the baby live, which opened up some narrative possibilities.
Barrett808: Ghostbusters: Three 30-something do-nothings quit school to start a business with questionable financing, completely disregard environmental, safety, and nuclear regulatory concerns, and use their success to chase women while exploiting their low-wage staff. In the end they lose their business and destroy a tall building in New York.
#6? You guessed it. Soul Plane.
No Tyler Perry Movies??
Fucking “Ghost Busters”, oh my the “tard barn” is open.
Can’t we just jump to the top of the list, where they declare Goodfellows the ultimate conservative movie, as it follows three paranoid thugs through a series of murders before they loose everything and end up on the government dime.
If that is not the perfect metaphor for modern, NRO Conservativism, I don’t know what is.
jagorev: Was that really necessary? (Uncontrolable shudder)
You mean they haven’t picked Booty Call yet? Gotta be Top Five, then.
Mr Blifil: Well. Ernie Hudson was in Ghostbusters. They considered him Negroid #2.
Suds McKenzie: See: magic titty:
I had the same question.
Gallowglass: Nah 300 (aside from being completely gay (and, evidentially, wife candy) is actually a stirring tale of a small but determined band of fanatics, who, through their suicidal mission, manage to bring eventual defeat to the largest, most advanced, army the world has ever known. The fanatics even resort to terror tactics, (enemies’ bodies as mortar) and, uh are totally gay- ok maybe it is conservative just for that
I like how all these entries have the length and intellectual weight of a troll post on the IMDb.
Juno was such a piece of shit I stopped watching after five minutes (though the soundtrack sounded like it would be awesome). The dialogue was like a full brain download of the worst possible crap from a creative writing class long forgotten and burned from memory, the one that haunts your subconscious and makes you think you’ve died and gone to hell when you dream about it.
So I’m not surprised it hit the list.
I’m still holding out for Deliverance. For the gay rape scene and the accurate depiction of Palin supporters. Pure conservative.
They’re getting into Brendan Frazier movies now. Holy shit.
SayItWithWookies: I too have seen Blast from the Past (on TV in Australia, where such things belong). The father is a a paranoid cold-war fanatic, the mother is under his thumb and going crazy and the son succeeds as a sort of juvenile Chauncey Gardener.
The message: Old fashion men will be polite and restrained and lock you underground from three decades.
The only way to see the teen sex in Juno as “dehumanizing” is if you consider all sex dehumanizing, period. I guess in the NRO interpretation of Juno, the two get back together at the end but never, ever, ever do it again. They’re so cute and naive.
Juno is my favorite conservative movie yet, right after the one in which the Iraq war debate was all about orcs.
Juno? Get the fuck out of here!
Seriously, if K-Overfed were preggers, I couldn’t tell.
I haven’t felt this kind of snark since the Paultards showed up.
shanemacgowan: OBVIOUSLY THE NATIONAL REVIEW IS PART OF THE FALSE-TICKET ISSUING, AUDIENCE-ATTENDING-FALSIFYING CONSPIRACY TO HIDE THE TRUTH ABOUT AMERICAN CAROL’S POPULARITY. WE ARE INVESTIGATING. SEND ME YOUR NATIONAL REVIEW SUBSCRIPTIONS AND TOGETHER WE WILL GET TO TEH TRUTH!
Double Scorpion: 50 ft tall Barbara Boxer? Theatrical!
Diablo Cody Syndrome is the last logical progression in Whedonitis, which itself is rampant Sorkinism filtered through the banter at a mall food court.
Anonymous Office Zombie: Robocop is only really conservative in its “Law and order involves shooting everybody and blowing stuff up.” Otherwise, he works in a police department that’s been privatized, in a city that’s overrun by drug-dealing gangsters who are connected to high-ranking executives in the corporation that literally owns the city. The film climaxes with the cybernetic public servant blowing away a corporate executive.
Sussemilch: On the upside, they did prevent a demonic force from occupying NYC. Christ figures, really.
Actually, would “Birth of a Nation” be #1, or “Triumph of the Will?”
I cannot help but agree with “Braveheart” at #13. For who can forget that rallying cry, still echoed by conservatives today: “They may take our lives, but they’ll never take our ALLLLSSSSOOOOOOOOOO!”
norbizness: WIN, and to add another Meatwad quote that describes they’re mentality”
“Well hey now, guys, look. I do not want to do anything illegal here… but I would kill somebody… in front of their own mama… to get a ten speed. And if any witnesses testify against me, I’ll gouge their eyes out.” Greedy individualism at its best.
I’m guessing Little Miss Sunshine is in there somewhere. You know, families sticking together, underdogs fighting the system, old men dying of heroin od’s.
Oh CUM ON, don’t defend Juno as liberal just because it has a pagan name. It is as subtly conservative-valuesy as Judd Apatow’s sanctimonious craploads, no matter how much the people who made the film may hate/want to take artistique naked pictures of Sarah Palin. Let’s see if “knocked up” makes it in the top 5 yall.
Blast from the Past was actually a pretty funny movie. Perhaps the peak of Brendan Fraser’s career, although I know that’s not saying much.
I can’t help but wonder if Empire Strikes Back will make it in the top five. Hypothermia is a major problem in the beginning of the movie, almost killing two of our heroes. Thus, Global Warming is obviously an illusion. Then, since the military is unable to capture the rebels, independent contractors are hired. Boba Fett = Blackwater. Finally, Han and Leia place their faith in a little known yet charismatic black man and what happens to them? They get completely fucked over. C3P0 covers the latent homosexuality angle too.
More Top Conservative Movies: “Secretary,” “9 1/2 Weeks,” “Friday the 13th,” “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” “Showgirls,” “Tootsie,” “Apocolypse Now,” “Coming Home,” “Comes A Horseman,” “Platoon,” “The Deer Hunter,” “Hair,” “The Doors,” “The Conversation,” “Psycho II.”
“Driving Miss Daisy.” Black man as butler. Knows his place. Everyone’s happy. Nuf said.
ET(guys with guns version)
Elliot calls his brother “penis breath”
Iggy Plop: Fivetree: Rule 43
Groundhog Day? Groundhog Day?!? GROUNDHOG???? DAY????
Enough of this, they’re pulling stuff out of their asses knowing that with enough mental gymnastics anything can serve as an allegory for anything. Then they’re watching us go crosseyed and laughing about it.
Can we get the Paultards to make a top 25 “movies to make your friends see the light” and see if the NRO shits bricks? #1 and #2 will be The Matrix and Loose Change, fine - but the rest can be movies randomly drawn from IMDB, like “Uncle Buck” or “Deep Blue Sea”
Chris Walken and Sissy Spacek do rock the house in Blast From the Past
When I was a “teen” with “friends” who I “spent time with,” after every movie we saw, this exchange would follow…
Me: What was your favorite part of the movie, Dave?
Dave: I liked the part where the giant marshmallow man destroyed the city.
thanks for bringing back that great logo (and my next avatar, after i get over my apocalyptic ponies)
what agency was that from, I forgot
#1 will be Red Dawn. The apocalyptic Cold War narrative, not to mention the record-breaking number of acts of violence, is pure republiporn.
Iggy Plop: Well her or a 50 ft tall Barney Frank.