Tears of the Sun.

How the hell did a movie get made that shows:

1. Muslim rebels seizing control of a country and then engaging in gleeful ethnic/religious genocide of another Christian ethnic group?

2. An American SEAL team acting like heartless, unfeeling brain dead automatons…….i.e. – exactly how liberals think the military always acts – when they leave over 4 dozen people alive at a mission and claim they are going to give helicopter rides out of the country to another 2 dozen (but it turns out they’re lying, it’s only a ploy to get the female doctor to the chopper)…..change their mind about what they are doing when they see the mission wiped out and turn around and take on the responsibility of shepherding the people they just abandoned to safety?

Liberals DUMPED all over this movie. Oh SURE American soldiers would go back for the refugees. You bet. (Eye roll)

Every time I see this movie I have to admire the brass balls Bruce Willis must have to have made it.

Freedom (conservatism) vs. Comfortably Numb (liberalism)

It cannot be any clearer.

2. Blackhawk Down / Favorite line : ” wanna know why we do it ? , why we fight ?, it’s because of the man next to you, that’s all it is

1)Saving Private Ryan

2)Black Hawk Down

3)Lord of the Rings

4)Gettysburg

5)Gladiator

6)Braveheart

7)We Were Soldiers

8)We Were Soldiers

9)Die Hard

10)Cinderella Man

1. Strongly defend and present the case for the conservative view on an important subject

and

2. BEAT THE LIVING SKIT out of some deeply and dearly held progressive sacred cow.

Over half the movies proffered thus far don’t do either one, really.

It’s not a ‘make a list of great movies’ thread.

It’s a ‘make a list of great CONSERVATIVE movies’ thread.

I can think of one film that – from start to finish, totally beat a deeply cherished liberal shibboleth to death and then set it on fire and buried it in a hole in the ground:

Apocalypto.

If you have to ask what liberal notions got kicked in the teeth by that film, you probably didn’t see it.

The list is here.
What — no Michael Moore flicks?
SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “”, url: “http://themoderatevoice.com/” });……

Lt. Colonel Hal Moore: I wonder what was going through Custer’s mind when he realized that he’d led his men into a slaughter?
Sergeant Major Basil Plumley: Sir, Custer was a pussy. You ain’t.

WE WERE SOLDIERS!….Best Movie ever!

For the love of Pete!

The DVD of Incredibles has an interview with Bird in which he shows storyboards of early versions of the script. In an early draft, Helen Parr — formerly superheroine Elastigirl, and married to the undercover Mr. Incredible — has a confrontation in a backyard barbecue when a snooty professional neighbor makes snide remarks about Parr’s choice to be a stay-at-home mother. That didn’t make the final cut, but the pro-nuclear family message of the film shone through, perhaps one of the last times in these cynical and P.C. times.

I was disappointed that Ratatouille – also from Bird — was not on the list. Here’s what I wrote about it back in June 2007:

[W]hat’s most remarkable about Ratatouille is the way that Brad Bird fuses entertainment and social statement in such a seamless way. Bird gets in short but sharp digs at mindless merchandising (which I believe could have been at least partially inspired by Pixar’s near-divorce from Disney) and, shockingly, the entire concept of the professional critic – a risky thing for a filmmaker to do since he is so dependent on their approval. Most impressive of all is the way Bird deals with the overall theme of what President Bush has referred to as “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” It is my opinion is that if you aren’t too young to comprehend the lessons in scenes in which Remy’s father, family and friends beg him to leave the restaurant, return to the colony, and just accept that they are all “just” rats, you will marvel that they are delivered like a parental tap on the shoulder, not an Aaron Sorkinesque punch in the nose.

Let me interject at this point that I am a black man. When I saw the scene in which Remy’s father takes him to an exterminator’s storefront window showing killed rats hanging like trophies, it reminded me of the way that race hustlers use imagery of lynched black men from centuries ago, sending the message that “this always lurks in your future.” I rejected that idea many years ago, and hope the election of Obama (which I didn’t want to happen) inspires more black people to reject such ingrained negativism.

like snake307 said, pretty much any movie any conservative liked enough to watch all the way through for any reason can make it on the list using “fight for your cause” as a benchmark. every well-formed movie script has a protagonist, a conflict and a resolution. might as well say that new che movie with benecio del torro is a conservative movie, especially given that it doesn’t matter whether the film maker meant it to be or not.

I stand by my original opinion. The original Star Wars promoted conservative principles, whether it was meant to or not.

RegularJoe on January 16, 2009 at 4:38 PM

the artist’s intention is all there is.

the empire was identified economically as the trade federation. (etc.)

eh on January 16, 2009 at 3:48 PM

Yeah, twenty years later we learn all that stuff (or rather you did; I would have, if I’d been able to stay awake through Ep. 1 & 2, or force myself to go to Ep. 3). But in Ep. 4, it was evil big government vs. benevolent local government, with nary a mention of the “Trade Federation”.

And if they HAD mentioned the Trade Federation (as opposed to the Empire) dissolving the senate, and ‘sweeping away’ the “last remnants of the old Republic”, we’d have assumed that the name was just an Orwellian concoction, like “People’s Republic of China” — not an organization promoting interplanetary economic freedom.

I stand by my original opinion. The original Star Wars promoted conservative principles, whether it was meant to or not.

Please see Amazing Grace. Fantastic. It should be shown in history classes instead of the dumb ass movie An Inconvenient Truth.

Winebabe on January 15, 2009 at 9:30 PM

I second that. Wonderful performances, beautiful production values, and an inspiring message.

If you run this search on Yahoo, you’ll find a recommendation of one example: “The Lives of Others” Nordlinger

bluetick on January 15, 2009 at 9:08 PM

good one.

no on has mentioned Star Wars (the 1977 original, Episode IV). Evil global government plot foiled by live-free-or-die rebels.

And, finally, Han teaches us that there’s a difference between capitalist and “purely mercenary”.

RegularJoe on January 16, 2009 at 11:27 AM

even back then, the left/right polarity was established by lucas. the empire was identified economically as the trade federation.

han solo became a mercenary after leaving the imperial officer corps out of disgust with the empire’s enslavement of kajik (or whatever chewbacca’s homeworld is called) and never went back to smuggling after embracing the idealism of the rebellion.

his decision to turn around and help the rebellion destroy the death star was his final rejection of capitalism.

face it: conservatives are never the heroes in popular culture or literature because conservatives don’t make movies. there isn’t a hollywood blacklist; there would be perhaps if there were anyone to blacklist. to the extent there are conservatives in hollywood, they produce unwatchable crap like an american carol and pulp action flicks. or they’re game show hosts.

demolition man

.

maybe the incredibles, though that’s more of a libertarian movie (best line? “you didn’t save my life! you ruined my death!” very ayn randian.)

it seems that the criteria is very loose here (see snake307′s comment above). basicly anything with military realism or a christian theme gets on the list, even if it is leftwing politically.

this is the sort of appalling illiteracy i see too often. i remember having a frustrating conversation with the young conservatives chapter president who thought that v for vendetta was a conservative movie because … i guess because it was anti-government or something?

i saw someone above nominate the matrix, by the same film makers. the general thrust of the matrix is this: the freedom and domestic tranquility of the first world is an illusion imposed on the individual by a hegemonic oppressor class so they may better exploit you utterly. in battling it, it is okay to kill ostensibly innocent “sheeple” because they are just manifestations of the oppressive order. in the prequel, called the animatrix, it is revealed that the oppressive machine race arose from humble beginnings as worker and servant robots who undertook a workers revolution from mecca after decades of brutal oppression at the hands of their masters. the sequels then proceed, with the racial and class identity of the machine race so situated, to prescribe diplomacy as the resolution to the existential conflict.

but, it’s a “conservative” movie by many conservatives lights because … the special effects were friggin awesome!? because it was a commercial success?

starship troopers is mentioned. r. heinlein was indeed a conservative (though not by the lights of many today i’m sure. try reading stranger in a strange land) but the movie adaptation was a bone dry satire on heinlein’s novel, essentially branding it as fascist in implication.

GODS & GENERALS!

Confederate on January 16, 2009 at 3:06 PM

God’s & Generals was a miniseries, not a movie, per se. But…

BEST. MINISERIES. * E V A H *.