national review's 25 best conservative movies

National Review has posted a list of the 25 best conservative movies of the last 25 years. I was surprised by how many films on this list I actually enjoy and, furthermore, consider some of my favorite movies. Below, I have listed some of the more notable films, and my favorites are denoted by asterisks (***). The following comments are from insightful readers of the National Review.


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

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

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

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

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

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

craig ferguson's "lonely goatherd"

A little background information: My mother went into labor while watching The Sound of Music and refused to go to the hospital because "the Nazi part" hadn't come yet. So my mother waited. Until this three-hour movie was over. Before allowing me into the world. Well, lucky for us (so as to not become a site for bitterness), The Sound of Music became one of my favorite films (Captain von Trapp is amazing) and ABC shows the film every year on my birthday. I can't even think of a time when this film didn't show on my birthday. But there is one part -- one song -- that my mother cannot stand, and it happens to be the song that is the most fun to sing: "The Lonely Goatherd." Its playfulness is contagious, but my mother absolutely hates it. She walks out of the room. So mum, this video is for you.

In the video above, late night comedian Craig Ferguson's puppets do a rendition of "The Lonely Goatherd." Watch, listen, enjoy, and repeat. You'll need to repeat it because you will have missed it the first time from laughing so hard.

(Actually, this video is really for me. I think Craig Ferguson is one of the funniest improvisational comedians I've seen -- certainly on any late night program -- and I can never tell when his jokes are scripted, which is a sign that he does his job well. He's been starting off each episode with a puppet show, rather than a monologue, and the set-up should absolutely fail, but somehow it doesn't. What's impressive about the video above is that Ferguson knows the lyrics to the song -- really well -- to the point that, when the unicorn's mouth doesn't match the lyrics, he knows and the unicorn looks around confused. So what's better than Craig Ferguson, puppets, and The Sound of Music? Not much, not much.)

flight of the conchords, "the carole brown song"

In case you missed last night's episode of Flight of the Conchords, which matched the height of the near-perfect first season, here is "Choir of Ex-Girlfriends" (or The Carole Brown Song?). The jokes were top-shelf (Keitha's "Australianness" was comedy gold), the sight gags were clever (Bret's gloves that look like hands!), and the songs were brilliant (see also "Too Many Dicks on the Dancefloor"). But instead of doing a commentary on the episode (I don't watch the show regularly enough to add anything insightful), I thought I would simply share this video that makes me so, so happy.

It is also worth noting that Michel Gondry was the director of this episode, and the music video above clearly showcases his unique visual style.

ew: rom-com clichés to retire

Because I despise Valentine's Day -- a $14.7 billion capitalist market that reminds me that we're little more than consumer-sheep -- I am posting some of romantic comedy clichés that Entertainment Weekly would like to require. There are 24 in all, but I've posted the ones that especially grate on my nerves. Also, you may have in the past picked up on the subtleties of my disdain for romantic comedies, and I'm always ready to post anything anti-rom-com related. So happy Valentine's Day. It's great to love somebody, but -- like this list notes -- it's not great to be cliché.


MEDIA MAVENS
She's smart, she's sassy, and her mistakes can be captured in print or on film. Her job can take her anywhere, introduce her to anyone. Occasionally, she has deadlines.

EXAMPLE: In 13 Going on 30, Jenna (Jennifer Garner) is an editor at a women's magazine that needs to be redesigned, so she calls on her old friend Matty the photographer (Mark Ruffalo).

SEE ALSO: Writers in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, The Devil Wears Prada, Never Been Kissed, Sleepless in Seattle, When Harry Met Sally..., and Hitch; Talk/news-show employees in Little Black Book, Someone Like You, Bridget Jones's Diary, and Knocked Up.


WORKING GIRL...NEEDS BALANCE

EXAMPLE: We're gonna have to quote EW critic Lisa Schwarzbaum here, because we weren't paid to see New in Town: ''Renee Zellweger teeters in high heels as a brittle singleton executrix who relocates to a Fargo-adjacent burg and discovers the virtues of 'square' Christian values.''

SEE ALSO: The ad exec-turned-baby applesauce maker (Diane Keaton) in Baby Boom; the home swappers (Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet) in The Holiday; the big-city fashion designer (Reese Witherspoon) who returns to her roots and coon dog cemetery in Sweet Home Alabama; and the movie star (Julia Roberts) who's just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her (side note: worst line EVER) in Notting Hill.


CLUMSY HEROINES
Apparently, the best/easiest way to make a woman seem vulnerable/single is to have her fall on her butt or walk face-first into something. The pratfall epidemic is truly painful.

EXAMPLE: In Bridget Jones's Diary, Bridget (Renée Zellweger) slides down a firemen's pole onto her bottom (and a camera); in Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, she parachutes into a pigpen and slides off the roof while spying on Mark (Colin Firth).

SEE ALSO: Jessica Alba in Good Luck Chuck; Amanda Bynes in What a Girl Wants; Drew Barrymore in Never Been Kissed; Monica Potter in Head Over Heels; Hilary Swank in P.S. I Love You; Anna Faris in The House Bunny; Brittany Murphy in Little Black Book; and Anne Hathaway in The Princess Diaries.


SCHLUBBY GUY, PRETTY GIRL*
A close cousin to the ''Fat Guy, Skinny Wife'' rule of sitcoms, this applies to movies where a superhot girl falls for a guy totally below her league because she learns what a nice guy he is. When was the last time a schlubby girl got a hot guy?

EXAMPLE: Ben Stone (Seth Rogen) wins the heart of uberbabe Alison Scott (Katherine Heigl) in Knocked Up.

SEE ALSO: Steve Martin and Daryl Hannah in Roxanne; and Kevin James and Amber Valletta in Hitch.

* Of course, my male students find absolutely nothing wrong with this because, and I quote, "nobody wants to look at ugly people." Kevin James isn't exactly a Greek god...


I'VE NOTHING TO WEAR...
Rom-coms and fashion go together like horror movies and blood, so it's no surprise that the majority of them include a scene in which a character tries on a series of outfits in front of giggling friends, helpful salespeople, or smitten lovers.

EXAMPLE: Jane (Katherine Heigl) shows Kevin (James Marsden) her entire wardrobe of bridesmaid dresses in 27 Dresses.

SEE ALSO: Pretty Woman and Sex and the City.

saturdays with ted: jonathan haidt and ursus wehrli

I have recently begun reading Jonathan Haidt's The Happy Hypothesis -- which I am finding to be quite engaging -- and I went online to discover this website YourMorals.org. After registering my name, I began to take a few psychology surveys, the first of which happened to relate to Haidt's Ted talk on conservative and liberal morals. (According to the study, liberals tend to value justice and have a higher openness to experience, whereas conservative value loyalty.) Here, Haidt opens with the following anecdote:

Suppose that two American friends are traveling together in Italy, and when they come face to face with Michelangelo's David, they both freeze dead in their tracks. The first guy -- let's call him Adam -- is transfixed by the beauty of the human form. The second guy -- we'll call him Bill -- is transfixed by embarrassment at staring at the thing in the middle. My question is, which of these men voted for George Bush and which voted for Al Gore?

Interestingly, Haidt makes the connection that most Tedsters are liberal, and this becomes a problem because all of these individual thinkers actually become a team working towards the same goal. We need to have diversity. And in speaking to this liberal audience, he consciously points out that people who think that the half of America who voted for Bush are either dumb or super religious are blinded by the trappings of their own close-mindedness. In an engaging lecture, he goes on to discuss the 'first draft' of the moral mind, the five moral foundations of psychology (harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity), and how these five foundations work.


And now for some humor... Ursus Wehrli "shares his vision for a cleaner, more organized, tidier form of art -- by deconstructing the paintings of modern masters into their component pieces, sorted by color and size." As someone who isn't the biggest fan of modern art, I find Wehrli to be very funny (on Jasper Jones: "He was practicing with his ruler.") and the images he uses are fantastic. His re-constructed works are actually aesthetically pleasing, mostly because -- as a person who values logic and reason -- I appreciate structure and order.

Comedian and cabaret artist Ursus Wehrli is the author of Tidying Up Art, a visionary manifesto that yearns toward a more rational, more organized and cleaner form of modern art. In deconstructing the work of Paul Klee, Jaspen Johns and other masters into its component parts, organized by color and size, Wehrli posits a more perfect art world.

After the talk, Wehrli notes that he will autograph his book for anyone "using the name of any artist." Ha, what wit. And if you don't want to stick around for the whole 15 minutes (though it goes by quickly, trust me), skip ahead to the 12:28 mark, where Wehrli reorganizes a Jackson Pollack work.

episode: lost, "this place is death" (5.5)

I don't have anything too insightful to add about last night's episode, mainly because it moved the plot forward -- some say in a hurried way, but I say at an appreciated pace. We learned that Charlotte's parents were part of the Dharma Initiative and that she had indeed been on the island before; Daniel visited her when she was a child and warned her that coming back to the island would mean certain death (and I hope the show sticks to the time-travel rules and that, no matter what Daniel says to her, he doesn't change the fact that she dies); the time-travel flashes have been occurring because Ben knocked the wheel of its axis (does this mean the time-flashes won't happen anymore?); Jin gives Locke his wedding ring to convince Sun that he is dead, but when Ben gives the ring to Sun, it is this very item that convinces him he is alive; Eloise Hawkings is in fact Daniel's mother (but is she the same Ellie that was part of the Dharma Initiative and took Daniel to the atomic bomb?); and Kate still sucks.

I thought this episode was very good in answering some of our questions -- how Danielle's men got "the sickness" (from the monster), what "the Temple" looks like (the hieroglyphs say "Underworld") -- and it showed us some awesome scenes along the way, like Smokey ripping off a guy's arm and Desmond encountering Ben. As Alan Sepinwall notes in his recap, there's no reason for Desmond to recognize Ben or to know that Ben is searching down his beloved Penny to kill her as retribution for Charles Widmore killing Alex.


In case you haven't been reading Entertainment Weekly's Lost recaps, I highly recommend that you do so. I believe a team of graduate students must be behind these impossibly thorough connections, all of which are highly educational to the mythos and intelligence of the show. Take for instance EW's insight into Charlotte's further connection with C.S. Lewis, as demonstrated in this week's episode:

''I'm not supposed to have chocolate before dinner,'' she blurted, her mind suddenly elsewhere. And then she was gone for good.

The temptation of chocolate takes us somewhere, too — namely, straight to hell. In C.S. Lewis' first Chronicles of Narnia novel, The White Witch — a stand-in for Satan; the incarnation of death — seduced Edmund into betraying his siblings with an English delicacy made of chocolate known as Turkish Delight. For Charlotte, the Island was her Turkish Delight — her forbidden fruit — and chasing after it led to her doom. ''This place is death!'' she bellowed, and I couldn't tell in that moment if her mind was in the present, speaking of her killer environs, or if it was in the past, passing along something she had been told.

Digging deeper into the Charlotte/Lewis connection, we sinker deeper into an abyss of subtext. Along the way, we pass A Grief Observed, Lewis' chronicle about the death of his companion, Joy, and how it tested his Christian faith. Then, there's The Great Divorce, which actually isn't about marital dissolution but a fantastical vision of the afterlife, à la Dante's Inferno, although it was actually meant as a parable about living in the here and now. (The title is a riff on — and the book a response to — William Blake's surreal manifesto, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.) These are stories about the underworld, the mythical place where souls hang after they've shed the mortal coil. And now recall the Egyptian hieroglyphics in "The Hatch," which according to the producers of Lost translated into ''Underworld.'' And Smokey's scene-stealing, arm -ripping presence in this episode reminds us that the guy who made the Map in "The Hatch" called the Monster by a different name: ''Cerberus,'' the three-headed demon dog that guarded the gates of Hades. And finally, know that Christian Shepherd, the dude with the Jesus pun name, played the part of ''psychopomp'' in this episode — a ''psychopomp'' being a mythic underworld figure who serves as a ''guide to souls,'' escorting the dead between states of existence.

Pretty interesting, right? And here's a connection that EW makes to HP Lovecraft's works:

Actually, forget CS Lewis and his Christian parables. ''This Place Is Death'' felt like an HP Lovecraft horror story to me. Lovecraft was all about fools who go chasing after forbidden knowledge and buried secrets and wind up getting more than they bargained for, if not killed, or worse, driven hopelessly mad. His stories were full of ancient lands hidden away from the world, where malevolent gods and their pet monsters dwell in their ruins and lie in wait for explorers and other lost souls to feed upon or possess. The essential Lovecraft saga is At The Mountains of Madness, about geologists who discover the remnants of an old civilization in Antarctica and stumble into supernatural trouble, including a monstrous, shape-shifting creature called a Shoggoth. What did Faraday say in this episode?

And here's where your mind is about to blow up. I'm not kidding. It. Will. Explode.

Per the precedent set in ''The Constant,'' in which Season 4 Faraday did not remember meeting Time Traveling Desmond in the past until Season 4 Desmond actually made the trip, I don't think Season 1 Rousseau recognized Jin from their Season 5 encounter. Yes, a little confusing, but it's all summed up by the term ''course correction'' which Lost has frequently cited.

Simply, this means that some kind of omniscient and self-aware agency — God; Fate; Some undiscovered regulatory force — finds a way to sort things out when paradoxes or inconsistencies are created by time travel. This is not merely a writers' contrivance. This is actually rooted in some kind of theory. It is called ''The Principle of Self-Consistency,'' and it was promoted by two eggheads, one named Igor Novikov, and one named David Lewis — and yes, as we learned last season, that also happens to be the name of Dead Charlotte's Dharma Dad.

But it's that Novikov guy who's about to flip your lid. In 1991, in a journal called Classical and Quantum Gravity, Novikov and another dude named Andrei Lossev wrote a big paper about time travel called — drum roll please! — ''The Jinn of the Time Machine: Non-Trivial Self Consistent Solutions.'' The purpose of the paper was to describe various solutions to paradoxical problems created by time travel. Here's an example of one such paradox — taken from a book I found called The New Time Travelers — that I believe speaks to the larger plot of Lost. Let's say a writer wants to write a novel. So he builds a time travel machine, goes to the future, buys a copy of the novel he wrote, then brings it back. Easy. Except who created the novel if the author really didn't write it?

And in describing the significance of Jin's name, EW explains:

The term ''Jinn'' is another word for the kind of genies you might find in Arabic fairy tales. Novikov and Lossev used the term Jinn to describe things like that magical novel I mentioned earlier — things whose existence defy conventional explanations. According to the mysterious author of The New Time Travelers, Novikov and Lossev were drawing on the depiction of a kind of Jinn that you find in the Koran; they are ''a race of spirits that can appear suddenly and unexpectedly.''

A race of spirits that can appear suddenly and unexpectedly. Just like Jin in last night's episode. Just like Christian Shepherd in last night's episode. And just like Desmond in last night's episode — Desmond, whom Faraday in the season premiere called ''miraculously unique.'' Just like a Jinn.

Lost, I may have been short with you in the past -- a bit impatient, with a lot of eye-rolling and sighs -- but I'm 100% back on board. Take me wherever you may lead.

film news: february 2009

• Joaquin Pheonix was on The Late Show with David Letterman last night, and it's not a pretty sight. Whether he's under the influence of some substance (the glasses do not hide the fact that his eyes can't focus) or acting, it's extremely uncomfortable and in no way going to do anything for his career. I've always had a soft spot for Pheonix, so it's difficult to watch someone with so much talent on an obvious downward spiral.

• Woody Allen's latest muses? Josh Brolin and Anthony Hopkins.

• Been wondering what Michael Moore's next project will be? Following Sicko, his next documentary will take a look at the bailout.

• What? Someone outside of academia can analyze The Incredibles through a Nitzschean lens? The following is by Julian Shapiro over at Film School Rejects:

In order for class stratification and nobility to be properly instilled, the supers need to exploit the commoners for their own gain. On the flip side, however, it could be interpreted that instead of simply intending to save Metroville, the Incredibles aimed to cleverly thrust themselves back into the spotlight instead (in hopes of reclaiming superheroic greatness.) Thus, The Incredibles presents a very murky conclusion to the Nietzschean dichotomy that they had originally established in act one: it showed that it is possible to return to pseudo-greatness—or perhaps even Nietzschean greatness itself—after the birth of mediocrity, but it did not attempt to establish how permanent this form of greatness would be, nor how Nietzschean of a form it took; superheroic nobility was implied to once again be celebrated but there was no suggestion that the commoners had learned their lesson and accepted Nietzsche’s ideal of a “natural” society—one in which class stratification is strict and the growth of the noblemen is the outcome of a self-centered will to power. Hence, The Incredibles’ narrative coming full circle seems to suggest that the superhero is permanently compromised by the slave revolt.

• You can watch the first five minutes of the Clive Owen and Naomi Watts film The International over at Film School Rejects.

• Now, this is geek-tastic. The Vader Project, via Cinematical, "features 100 reimagined Darth Vader helmets created by some of today's most talked-about underground and pop surrealist painters, artists and designers." It's exhibiting at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. Visit The Vader Project website.

• This is older news, but still worth noting because of the actress involved... Cate Blanchett has replaced Sienna Miller in Nottingham, the Robin Hood update with Russell Crowe. And despite my protests, Crowe will not be playing Maid Mariam.

• And lastly, for Valentine's Day, please give out these STD e-cards to your loved ones.