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The Best Conservative Movies

Once in a blue moon, Hollywood releases a conservative movie, or at least a
film that resonates with conservatives in a particular way. Because
conservatives love movies - and especially debates about movies - we decided
to produce a list of the 25 best conservative movies of the last 25 years.
Our approach in selecting them doesn't rise to the level of an actual
methodology, but there was a method to it. We asked readers of National
Review Online to submit nominations. Hundreds of suggestions came in, along
with explanations and arguments. We considered each one, tallied them up,
and consulted a number of film buffs and professional movie-makers.

We do not claim that the writers, directors, producers, gaffers, and key
grips involved with these films are conservative. We certainly make no such
assertion about the actors. Yet the results are indisputable: Conservatives
enjoy these films because they are great movies that offer compelling
messages about freedom, families, patriotism, traditions, and more.

- JOHN J. MILLER


1. The Lives of Others (2007): "I think that this is the best movie I ever
saw," said William F. Buckley Jr. upon leaving the theater (according to his
column on the film). The tale, set in East Germany in 1984, is one part
romantic drama, one part political thriller. It chronicles life under a
totalitarian regime as the Stasi secretly monitors the activities of a
playwright who is suspected of harboring doubts about Communism. Critics
showered the movie with praise and it won an Oscar for best foreign-language
film (it's in German). More Buckley: "The tension mounts to heart-stopping
pitch and I felt the impulse to rush out into the street and drag passersby
in to watch the story unfold."

- John J. Miller


2. The Incredibles (2004): This animated film skips pop-culture references
and gross jokes in favor of a story that celebrates marriage, courage,
responsibility, and high achievement. A family of superheroes - Mr.
Incredible, his wife Elastigirl, and their children - are living an
anonymous life in the suburbs, thanks to a society that doesn't appreciate
their unique talents. Then it comes to need them. In one scene, son Dash, a
super-speedy runner, wants to try out for track. Mom claims it wouldn't be
fair. "Dad says our powers make us special!" Dash objects. "Everyone is
special," Mom demurs, to which Dash mutters, "Which means nobody is."

- Frederica Mathewes-Greene writes for Beliefnet.com.


3. Metropolitan (1990): Whit Stillman's Oscar-nominated debut takes a
red-headed outsider into the luxurious drawing rooms and debutante balls of
New York's Upper East Side elite. One character, a committed socialist,
falls for the discreet charm of the urban haute bourgeoisie. Another
plaintively theorizes the inevitable doom of his class. A reader of Jane
Austen wonders what's wrong with a novel's having a virtuous heroine. And a
roguish defender of standards and detachable collars delivers more
sophisticated conservative one-liners than a year's worth of Yale Party of
the Right debates. With mocking affection, gentle irony, and a blizzard of
witty dialogue, Stillman manages the impossible: He brings us to see what is
admirable and necessary in the customs and conventions of America's upper
class.

- Mark Henrie is the editor of Doomed Bourgeois in Love: Essays on the Films
of Whit Stillman.


4. Forrest Gump (1994): It won an Oscar for best picture - beating Pulp
Fiction, a movie that's far more expressive of Hollywood's worldview. Tom
Hanks plays the title character, an amiable dunce who is far too smart to
embrace the lethal values of the 1960s. The love of his life, wonderfully
played by Robin Wright Penn, chooses a different path; she becomes a
drug-addled hippie, with disastrous results. Forrest's IQ may be room
temperature, but he serves as an unexpected font of wisdom. Put 'em on a
Whitman's Sampler, but Mama Gump's famous words about life's being like a
box of chocolates ring true.

- Charlotte Hays is co-author of Somebody Is Going to Die If Lilly Beth
Doesn't Catch That Bouquet.




Warner Bros.



5. 300 (2007): During the Bush years, Hollywood neglected the heroism of
American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan - but it did release this action
film about martial honor, unflinching courage, and the oft-ignored truth
that freedom isn't free. Beneath a layer of egregious non-history -
including goblin-like creatures that belong in a fantasy epic - is a
stylized story about the ancient battle of Thermopylae and the Spartan
defense of the West's fledgling institutions. It contrasts a small band of
Spartans, motivated by their convictions and a commitment to the law, with a
Persian horde that is driven forward by whips. In the words recorded by the
real-life Herodotus: "Law is their master, which they fear more than your
men[, Xerxes,] fear you."

- Michael Poliakoff, a classicist, is vice president for academic affairs at
the University of Colorado.



Sony Pictures


6. Groundhog Day (1993): This putatively wacky comedy about Bill Murray as
an obnoxious weatherman cursed to relive the same day over and over in a
small Pennsylvania town, perhaps for eternity, is in fact a sophisticated
commentary on the good and true. Theologians and philosophers across the
ideological spectrum have embraced it. For the conservative, the moral of
the tale is that redemption and meaning are derived not from indulging your
"authentic" instincts and drives, but from striving to live up to external
and timeless ideals. Murray begins the film as an irony-soaked narcissist,
contemptuous of beauty, art, and commitment. His journey of self-discovery
leads him to understand that the fads of modernity are no substitute for the
permanent things.

- Jonah Goldberg


7. The Pursuit of Happyness (2006): Based on the life of self-made
millionaire Chris Gardner (Will Smith), this film provides the perfect
antidote to Wall Street and other Hollywood diatribes depicting the world of
finance as filled with nothing but greed. After his wife leaves him, Gardner
can barely pay the rent. He accepts an unpaid internship at a San Francisco
brokerage, with the promise of a real job if he outperforms the other
interns and passes his exams. Gardner never succumbs to self-pity, even when
he and his young son take refuge in a homeless shelter. They're black, but
there's no racial undertone or subtext. Gardner is just an incredibly
hard-working, ambitious, and smart man who wants to do better for himself
and his son.

- Linda Chavez is chairman of the Center for Equal Opportunity.


8. Juno (2007): The best pro-life movies reach beyond the church choirs and
influence the wider public. Juno was a critical and commercial success. It
didn't set out to deliver a message on abortion, but much of its audience
discovered one anyway. The story revolves around a 16-year-old who finds a
home for her unplanned baby. 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. The movie doesn't glamorize much
of anything but leaves audiences with an open-ended chance for redemption.

- Kathryn Jean Lopez


9. Blast from the Past (1999): Revolutionary Road is only the latest
big-screen portrayal of 1950s America as boring, conformist, repressive, and
soul-destroying. 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. Christopher
Walken and Sissy Spacek as Fraser's parents are comic gems.

- James Bowman is a movie critic.


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. This last fact is the other reason to love
Ghostbusters: When Dr. Peter Venkman (Bill Murray) gets kicked out of the
university lab and ponders pursuing entrepreneurial opportunities, a nervous
Dr. Raymond Stantz (Dan Aykroyd) replies: "I don't know about that. I've
worked in the private sector. They expect results!"

- Steven F. Hayward is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.



New Line Productions


11. The Lord of the Rings (2001, 2002, 2003): Author J. R. R. Tolkien was
deeply conservative, so it's no surprise that the trilogy of movies based on
his masterwork is as well. Largely filmed before 9/11, they seemed perfectly
pitched for the post-9/11 world. The debates over what to do about Sauron
and Saruman echoed our own disputes over the Iraq War. (Think of Wormtongue
as Keith Olbermann.) When Frodo sighs, "I wish none of this had happened,"
Gandalf's response speaks to us, too: "So do all who live to see such times.
But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with
the time that is given to us."

- Andrew Leigh is a screenwriter and producer in Los Angeles.


12. The Dark Knight (2008): This film gives us a portrait of the hero as a
man reviled. In his fight against the terrorist Joker, Batman has to devise
new means of surveillance, push the limits of the law, and accept the hatred
of the press and public. If that sounds reminiscent of a certain former
president - whose stubborn integrity kept the nation safe and turned the
tide of war - don't mention it to the mainstream media. Our journalists know
that good men are often despised by the mob; it just never seems to occur to
them that they might be the mob themselves.

- Andrew Klavan is the author of Empire of Lies.


13. Braveheart (1995): Forget the travesty this soaring action film makes of
the historical record. Braveheart raised its hero, medieval Scottish warrior
William Wallace, to the level of myth and won five Oscars, including best
director for Mel Gibson, who played Wallace as he led a spirited revolt
against English tyranny. Braveheart taught that freedom is not just worth
dying for, but also worth killing for, in defense of hearth and homeland.
Six years later, amid the ruins of the Twin Towers, Gibson's message
resonated with a generation of American youth who signed up to fight
terrorists, instead of inviting them to join a "constructive dialogue."
Liberals have never forgiven Gibson since.

- Arthur Herman is the author of How the Scots Invented the Modern World.


14. A Simple Plan (1998): A defining insight of conservatism is that
whatever transcendent inspiration there may be to moral principles, there is
also the humble fact that morality works. Moral institutions and customs
endure because they allow civilization to proceed. Sam Raimi's gripping A
Simple Plan illustrates this truth. Bill Paxton plays a decent family man
who lives by the book in every way. But when he's cajoled into breaking the
rules to get rich quick, he falls under the jurisdiction of the law of
unintended consequences and discovers that simple morality is not
simplistic, and that a seductively simple plan is a siren song if it runs
against the grain of what is right.

- Jonah Goldberg


15. Red Dawn (1984): From the safe, familiar environment of a classroom, we
watch countless parachutes drop from the sky and into the heart of America.
Oh, no: invading Commies! Laugh if you want - many do - but Red Dawn has
survived countless more acclaimed films because Father Time has always been
our most reliable film critic. The essence of timelessness is more than
beauty. It's also truth, and the truth that America is a place and an idea
worth fighting and dying for will not be denied, not under a pile of
left-wing critiques or even Red Dawn's own melodramatic flaws. Released at
the midpoint of Reagan's presidential showdown with the Soviet Union, this
story of what was at stake in the Cold War endures.

- John Nolte blogs at BigHollywood.Breitbart.com.



20th Century Fox


16. Master and Commander (2003): This naval-adventure film starring Russell
Crowe is based on the books of Patrick O'Brian, and here's what A. O. Scott
of the New York Times said in his review: "The Napoleonic wars that followed
the French Revolution gave birth, among other things, to British
conservatism, and Master and Commander, making no concessions to modern,
egalitarian sensibilities, is among the most thoroughly and proudly
conservative movies ever made. It imagines the [H.M.S.] Surprise as a
coherent society in which stability is underwritten by custom and every man
knows his duty and his place. I would not have been surprised to see Edmund
Burke's name in the credits."

- John J. Miller


17. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe (2005):
The White Witch runs a godless, oppressive, paranoid regime that hates Santa
Claus. She's a cross between Burgermeister Meisterburger and Kim Jong Il.
The good guys, meanwhile, recognize that some throats will need cutting: no
appeasement, no land-for-peace swaps, no offering the witch a snowmobile if
she'll only put away the wand. Underlying the narrative is the story of
Christ's rescuing man from sin - which is antithetical to the leftist dream
of perfected man's becoming an instrument for earthly utopia. The results of
such utopian visions, of course, are frequently like the Witch's reign:
always winter, and never Christmas.

- Tony Woodlief writes for World magazine and blogs at tonywoodlief.com.


18. The Edge (1997): Screenwriter David Mamet uses a wilderness survival
story about friendship, betrayal, and forgiveness to present a few truths
rarely seen in movies: Knowledge has its limits, fortitude is a weapon
against hardship, and honor can motivate even the shallowest man to great
sacrifice. Some have interpreted the film as a Cold War allegory because it
features a menacing bear. The main characters (played by Anthony Hopkins and
Alec Baldwin) understand that there is neither wisdom nor nobility in
waiting for others to save them, and that they must take responsibility for
their own lives and souls. Life is unfair, but to challenge life on its own
terms is an exhilarating reward, no matter the outcome.

- Michael Long is a director of the White House Writers Group.


19. We Were Soldiers (2002): Most movies about the Vietnam War reflect the
derangements of the antiwar Left. This film, based on the memoir by Lt. Col.
Hal Moore (played by Mel Gibson), offers a lifelike alternative. It focuses
on a fight between an outnumbered U.S. Army battalion and three North
Vietnamese regiments in the battle of Ia Drang in 1965. Significantly, it
treats soldiers not as wretched losers or pathological killers, but as
regular citizens. They are men willing to sacrifice everything to do their
duty - to their country, to their unit, and to their fellow soldiers. As the
movie makes clear, they also had families. Indeed, their last thoughts were
usually about their loved ones back home.

- Mackubin Thomas Owens, a Vietnam veteran, is a professor at the Naval War
College.


20. Gattaca (1997): In this science-fiction drama, Vincent (Ethan Hawke) can't
become an astronaut because he's genetically unenhanced. So he purchases the
identity of a disabled athlete (Jude Law), with calamitous results. The
movie is a cautionary tale about the progressive fantasy of a eugenically
correct world - the road to which is paved by the abortion of Down babies,
research into human cloning, and "transhumanist" dreams of fabricating a
"post-human species." Biotechnology is a force for good, but without
adherence to the ideal of universal human equality, it opens the door to the
soft tyranny of Gattaca and, ultimately, the dystopian nightmare of Brave
New World.

- Wesley J. Smith is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute.


21. Heartbreak Ridge (1986): Clint Eastwood's foul-mouthed Marine sergeant
Tom Highway makes quick work of kicking Communist Cubans out of Grenada.
And, boy, does "Gunny" hate Commies. Not only does he kill quite a few, he
also refuses a bribe of a Cuban cigar, saying: "Get that contraband stogie
out of my face before I shove it so far up you're a** you'll have to set
fire to your nose to light it." A welcome glorification of Reagan's decision
to liberate Grenada in 1983, the film also notes how after a tie in Korea
and a loss in Vietnam, America can finally celebrate a military victory.
Eastwood, the old war horse, walks off into retirement pleased that he's not
"0-1-1 anymore." Semper Fi. Oo-rah!

- James G. Lakely is managing editor of InfoTech & Telecom News at the
Heartland Institute.


22. Brazil (1985): Vividly depicting the miserable results of elitist
utopian schemes, Terry Gilliam's Brazil portrays a darkly comic dystopia of
malfunctioning high-tech equipment and the dreary living conditions common
to all totalitarian regimes. Everything in the society is built to serve
government plans rather than people. The film is visually arresting and
inventive, with especially evocative use of shots that put the audience in a
subservient position, just like the people in the film. Terrorist bombings,
national-security scares, universal police surveillance, bureaucratic
arrogance, a callous elite, perversion of science, and government use of
torture evoke the worst aspects of the modern megastate.

- S. T. Karnick blogs at stkarnick.com.




Universal Studios


23. United 93 (2006): Minutes after terrorists struck on 9/11, Americans
launched their first counterattack in the War on Terror. Director Paul
Greengrass pays tribute to the passengers of United 93 by refusing to turn
their story into a wimpy Hollywood melodrama. Instead, United 93 unfolds as
a real-time docudrama. Just as significantly, Greengrass provides a clear
depiction of our enemies. United 93 opens as four Muslim terrorists pray in
a hotel room. Several hours later, the hijackers' frenzied shrieks to Allah
mingle with the prayerful supplications of United 93's passengers as they
crash through the cockpit door and strike a blow against those who would
terrorize our country.

- Andrew Coffin is director of the Reagan Ranch and vice president of Young
America's Foundation.


24. Team America: World Police (2004): This marionette movie from South Park
creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone is hard to categorize as conservative.
It's amazingly vulgar and depicts Americans as wildly overzealous in
fighting terror. Yet the film's utter disgust with air-headed, left-wing
celebrity activism remains unmatched in popular culture. As the heroes move
to stop a WMD apocalypse, they clash with Alec Baldwin, Tim Robbins, Susan
Sarandon, Sean Penn, and a host of others, whom they take out with gunfire,
sword, and martial arts before saving the day. The movie, like South Park
itself, reveals Parker and Stone as the two-headed George Grosz of American
satire.

- Brian C. Anderson is editor of City Journal and author of South Park
Conservatives.


25. Gran Torino (2008): Clint Eastwood directs and stars in the ultimate
family movie unsuitable for the family. He plays Walt Kowalski, a caricature
of an old-school, dying-breed, Polish-American racist male, replete with
post-traumatic stress disorder from having served in the Korean War.
Kowalski comes to realize that his exotic Hmong neighbors embody traditional
social values more than his own disaster of a Caucasian nuclear family.
Dirty Harry blows away political correctness, takes on the bad guys, and
turns a boy into a man in the process. He even encourages the cultural
assimilation of immigrants. It feels so good, you knew the Academy would
ignore it.

- Andrew Breitbart is the proprietor of BigHollywood.Breitbart.com.







--
For those keeping score: Number of arrests in Michael Phelps case: 8. Number
of arrests in peanut company salmonella case: 0


Random Commercial Observation #1: You know something, those women in that
Russell Stover commercial seemed awfully damn smug about their box of
chocolates. I get that it's a holiday for the ladies, but to just assume
you're getting your box of candy because of what the calendar says is a bit
of a slap in the face. Nothing says romance like demanding your man waste
twenty dollars of hard-earned money on a box of chocolates that you're going
to inhale and then cry over because you think you won't be able to fit into
your new dress. Hallmark can kiss my left nut.


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