Trump Films (the Best Films)

also i feel like your perception, clemenza, that there's been lots of trump at the movies might be rooted in the way culture in general has become more militaristic and dour? (you could write a dissertation on the d/evolution of imagine dragons from mumford hangers-on to official soundtrack for the no doubt imminent gladiator games)

what was the Seagal (or Van Damme?) movie that Trump had cut down to just the carnage for maximum enjoyment?

so, maybe that soporific John Wick garbage?

bloodsport iirc

and it wasn’t that he cut it down, it was that he made don jr fast-forward to the good parts, which makes it funnier/sadder

Two precursors: Pain and Gain and Observe and Report

yeah, i left Pain & Gain unfinished, as i would like to leave this era

beatriz at dinner

Logan seemed to incorporate several references to the effects of the trump regime or at least what they were talking about. Clamping down on certain aspects of society etc.
I noticed at the time it was out but it's pretty early in the incumbency

the florida project wasn't bad in this regard but there aren't many. (shouldn't be a controversial statement with a degenerate product of nepotism who can't even spell simple words correctly on a regular basis in the oval office but it takes a while for people born into privilege and advantage sufficient enough post-reagan that they get to become professional gatekeepers on multi-million $$ "art" projects to catch wind of what's 'really going on' in 90% of american lives for the production of zeigeist-y films to ensue. i'll be surprised if there are many pre-midterms)

i feel like your perception that there's been lots of trump at the movies might be rooted in the way culture in general has become more militaristic and dour?

I also see a lot of documentaries, and that probably causes me to feel like there are more Trump films out there than there actually are--a lot of what I list above are documentaries.

Also given the speed at which the outrages pile up, I'm not sure most filmmakers know what to focus on

True--unless you're Spike Lee, focused on one specific thing, where the fuck do you start? Wherever you start, it'll be old news within a week. If Trump is reelected--sorry to ruin everyone's day--I suspect there'll be such numbing despair that filmmakers will either turn away entirely, or Trump will only be a metaphorical presence, embedded in nihilistic horror films and such.

I forget that J. Hoberman maintains a site. Here's his review of Get Out ("Conceived in the waning days of Barack Obama’s presidency and premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, four days after Donald Trump assumed power"), also a more recent piece on "Trump the Entertainer."

http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/03/13/a-real-american-horror-story-get-out/
http://j-hoberman.com/2016/11/the-entertainer-trump-loeil/

Logan seemed to incorporate several references to the effects of the trump regime or at least what they were talking about. Clamping down on certain aspects of society etc.

this was written years before and filmed before the election

but there was no predatory capitalism or "Clamping down on certain aspects of society" in the USA til the Grifter came along

also, Hugh Jackman didn't have a beard

Seemed to be all too fitting at the time I saw it anyway.

Hollywood's first explicitly Trump film will probably star Matt Damon, Jake Gyllenhaal and Jessica Chastain.

Shock and Awe isn't terrible, but boy it feels 10 years out of date (if it had been made in 2008, I think there would have been a dozen related films even then, counting documentaries). Obviously, it's a W. film first and foremost. But--I'm sure why Rob Reiner felt it would be timely now, much as with The Post--it begins with a Bill Moyers quote about a free press. To that end, it becomes partly a Trump film.

Worst line (one of the two main reporters contrasting Woodward and Bernstein with the reporting they're doing on Bush):

"They took down a president whose biggest crime was trying to cover up some dirty political tricks."

Not quite.

not film but barry (will hader) "is" "trump" (hader a wannabe actor not eastern eurotrash thrall assassin reading alec baldwin (trump)'s lines from glengarry glen ross) a la arrested development bluths = bushes sorta

Went to see How to Steal a Million tonight, part of a local rep series called "Designing the Movies." (Too tired, shouldn't have gone.) They've got Whit Stillman's Metropolitan coming up, which the series host described as a snapshot of "Trump's New York." Intriguing, but I've seen Metropolitan two or three times, and I would have said that's as far away from Trump as you can get.

Also: Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 11/9 is a Trump film. A not particularly good one.

Metropolitan is a weird case: It kind of fits in that it was shot in Trump's New York, but it's set much earlier (early '70s).

You could make an argument that Rick Von Sloneker is now president, or at least on the Supreme Court.

cross-medium:

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/crudo-she-tweeted-olivia-laings-crudo/

this book is as excruciating as living through the trump presidency

not in a good way either

Metropolitan is set in the early '70s? Honestly, that went right past me--I just thought it was set when it was made.

Looking around trying to confirm that, and all I can come up with is "It's set, according to a title card, in 'Manhattan, Christmas Vacation, not so long ago.'" How did you place it in the early '70s?...I just don't remember anything specific.

To me it was set in the 80s.

It's based on being in NY after/during Stillman's freshman year so I guess 70s is right, but it really did seem like the 8Os.

"I was specifically portraying the 1969 deb season, as during that season there was very much the feeling that the debutante era was over. "

https://www.theawl.com/2012/08/a-conversation-with-whit-stillman-about-the-script-of-metropolitan/

I'm going to have to watch it again because I would not have guessed that year.

But:

"People can come to their own conclusions about what period it is. And the reaction was great: there were some people who thought it was the 50s, others, the 60s, others who thought it was the 80s, when it was filmed. What helped the ambiguity on film is that most cars parked on Park Avenue, or on any street, are old cars."

The Stillman universe has it's own unique sense of time and logic, but another tell re: Metropolitan's time frame is Audrey (Carolyn Farina's character) briefly reappearing as a grown-up in The Last Days of Disco, which was somewhat clearly set in '79-'81.

That's a good point--hadn't though about the two films in relation to each other. (Doesn't Audrey turn up in the one he made a couple of years ago, too?)

"thought"

Carolyn Farina had a small role as a waitress in Damsels In Distress.

The Incredibles 2 flirts with being a Trump movie with some "Make Superheroes Legal Again" sloganeering, but then makes the billionaire into a loveable boy scout and the real villain a--well, I don't wanna spoil, but its curious, to say the least.

I still liked the film (Brad Bird is probably the best director of action, live or otherwise, currently working) but either Bird seems ideologically confused or the film bears some of the marks of probably having gone into development before November 2016 and then finding ways to gesture towards Trump without really knowing what to do with this context.

how has no one said DEADPOOL yet? sure, first one came out in early 2016, but that's the Trump movie.

search: the doc Bisbee '17

as the filmmaker noted, they started shooting a month before "Dipshit was elected."

They've got Whit Stillman's Metropolitan coming up, which the series host described as a snapshot of "Trump's New York." Intriguing, but I've seen Metropolitan two or three times, and I would have said that's as far away from Trump as you can get.

Yeah, Metropolitan could be set in Christmas 2017 and it still wouldn't be in Trump's anything -- it is interested in entirely different stuff. I find that description of the movie almost inconceivable.

Bird seems ideologically confused

his response to "Brad Bird's films seems v v Randian" was "nuh-uh, I have learnt over time that a little bit of compromise, but not much, can be practical"

he made the iron giant so he gets a pass from me even if he decides to make nothing but documentaries about puppies being kicked into woodchippers from now on

Nocturnal Animals feels like a parable about the gap between urban coastal America and red-state Texas in a Trump-era way.

ehhh

Fury Road definitely feels like it belongs in this category, despite having come out in 2015.

Nah, Fury Road is well Brexit

god fine. FINE. do not test me on this. pic.twitter.com/pIbC45xUN2

— Georgina Voss (@gsvoss) February 20, 2018

(thread well worth a look (Brexit not so much))

is immortan joe the eu, and max and furiosa the plucky brexiters? or is joe the crusty brexiter, trying to keep his grip on the imaginary 'good old days', as represented by the brides? truly the mark of great art is that one can read volumes into it

Because we're free to say anything's about anything, I'm counting Stranger Things--set in 1984--as a Trump film.

http://i.pinimg.com/originals/42/3f/7e/423f7eaac00d27d2572f602a25d1c783.jpg

Hmm - more explanation needed.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-baron-trump-adventures#/

Check out Odie Henderson's review in The Boston Globe

That's pretty good, thanks--was able to read it on a Press Reader link. Only point of disagreement is Cera, who I found as unbearable as everyone else. I realized I have a book by Henderson, Black Caesars and Foxy Cleopatras.

Thought the first hour or so of Eddington was pretty good. Started to lose its way after that, then there was 15 minutes I'll call the Lingering and Pernicious Influence of Peckinpah and Taxi Driver, and all I could think during that was "Please fucking end." The Ironic Epilogue was okay. Trump scrolls by glancingly--would have posted here anyway, for (a few dozen) obvious reasons.

Second film in a row, though, where I've really liked Pedro Pascal (Materialists the other).

there's some discussion in the Beau Is Afraid thread

I saw that, and also Justin Chang's review. I'll single out what I thought was the best scene, early in the film: the confrontation between the sheriff and the mayor in the grocery store. I expect there'll be a great COVID film someday--don't think Eddington is it--and could see that scene being in that film.

Eddington sure has taken a turn since he had those marmalade sandwiches with the queen.

Do we need a parallel Elon Musk Films thread? I saw Superman (2025) last night, and there are things I want to say.

Feels like every blockbuster has an Elon Musk stand-in villain in recent years, I believe he even whined about this himself at one point.

Interesting idea...Hoberman's book (inspiration for this thread) focussed solely on presidents, but I guess Musk partially was, for a while.

There's no overt Trump figure in the new movie, but Superman's antagonists are steeped in the attitudes and environment (especially in the media) that Trump cultivates. The biggest administrative figure we see is the Secretary of Defense, and I didn't get a reading on him from one viewing.

Rewatched Iron Man 2 recently and got blindsided by the Musk cameo, totally forgot about it (from a pretty forgettable sequel tho).

Bugonia seems like an obvious fit to me, and someone else wrote on the Yorgos Lanthimos thread yesterday that he thought it was much better than Eddington--not mentioning Trump, but I'll infer the same connection there.

I thought it was interesting most of the way, even compelling during some of the back-and-forth between Plemons and Stone as he detailed his crazed, QAnon-level theories. (Plemon's look makes him the obvious choice for The Clayton Kershaw Story.) Strong evocation of The King of Comedy and Reseroir Dogs (tacky suits and Green Day subbing for Stealer's Wheel--not as good, and the song was almost too literal in context).

It only unravelled a bit right at the end for me. First, the surprise (I've never seen the original South Korean film) isn't much of a surprise, if was even supposed to be. And then there's the final five-minute postscript. I found it so sappy and puerile, I honestly wonder if it isn't meant as a parody of the kind of film that would have tacked on the same postscript in earnest.

Did not recognize Plemons' mom at all till I looked at credits later...not that recognizing her's easy.

I guess it's a "Trump film" insofar as it reflects the psychosis of living in the U.S. during the "Trump era," though the fact that it's a remake of a Korean film from 2003 kind of cuts against the idea that there is something unique in what it is capturing. More generally, I am resistant to the idea that the sociopolitical culture of the past decade can be reduced to Trump (as suffocating as his presence can sometimes feel). I know this thread is inspired by a J. Hoberman book, but it just feels like a narrow way to approach movies that are picking up on a lot of different cultural strands.

Not sure if you've seen the film yet, or how closely the actual script is to the original film. To hear Jesse Plemons explain himself, and then Stone's dismissal of him--and then Plemons' ridicule of her dismissal--was, for me, a perfect encapsulation of the Trump-era feedback loop. Obviously, Hoberman's book (did Arthur Penn set out to make one of the definitive LBJ films when he made The Chase? my guess is he would have been surprised to hear that...), and this thread, involve a lot of speculation. But I think the core of Hoberman's idea is sound, even if the connections are more intuitive than concrete. I love art like that; but I know many people are resistant to that kind of thing (not saying that you are in general).

I am resistant to the idea that the sociopolitical culture of the past decade can be reduced to Trump (as suffocating as his presence can sometimes feel)

Don't disagree with that--he's the end point of a long story. I'm reading Gabriel Gatehouse's The Coming Storm: A Journey Into the Heart of the Conspiracy Machine right now, and while it's a Jan. 6/QAnon/Trump book, it starts with Vince Foster. (Actually, it starts with witches in the 16th century.) So in that sense, any "Trump film" is going to have a trail extending into the past.

The best counter-example I can think of to the idea that fortuitous timing is some kind of mitigating factor: Coppola's The Conversation. Not just in terms of the subject matter--a film about wiretappers landing just as Watergate reaches its culmination (release date of April 7, 1974)--but also in the way Hackman (secretive, socially inept) and Allen Garfield (a wheeler-dealer blowhard) perfectly encapsulate opposite sides of Nixon's personality, there isn't a more definitive Nixon film. It feels that way today, and I'm sure it would have felt even more like that in 1974.

The script was written between 1967 and 1969, inspired by Blow-Up; Harry Caul was supposedly based on the lead character in Herman Hesse's Steppenwolf. Do either of those facts make it any less of a Nixon film? Not to me; for someone else, maybe.

And some stuff just seems fortuitous in retrospect because it's an early sign of something that gets expressed better later - there's a Sean Connery film, The Anderson Tapes, that would feel like a parody of the surveillance paranoia of the 70s, if it was released in 1980 - but it was released a decade earlier, before the ones most people would think of.

would love to know about people that have seen the 90s little rascals remake and their voting habits

An actual 100% Trump film: The Apprentice. Definitely worthwhile for Jeremy Strong's Roy Cohn--that has to be a dream role for an actor. Thought Maria Bakalvoa was very good too as Ivanka Trump. Sebastian Stan was smart to settle for the occasional hand gesture in lieu of slavish imitation. The big leap you have to make in watching the film is that Trump was once, as Cohn latches on to him, a relative innocent who would say things like "Isn't that illegal?" It's a big leap. (Another reason to watch: Trump dancing to Suicide's "Ghost Rider." The soundtrack's actually pretty interesting throughout, although songs will be plunked in willy-nilly--i.e., the Pet Shop Boys' "Always on My Mind" seemingly as Reagan's presidency is beginning rather than ending.)

(Ivana, not Ivanka.)