Trump Films (the Best Films)

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Shock and Awe isn't terrible, but boy it feels 10 years out of date (if it had been made in 2008, I think there would have been a dozen related films even then, counting documentaries).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#/

I can't even pretend to have anything that goes deeper than the picture above.

Since I recently signed up for Netflix, I guess I can finally watch this show, huh?

Didn't prioritize it, as interest in it seemed to have peaked a few years ago--I don't know when the second season landed, but I don't remember it generating nearly as much discussion as the first--but currency is rarely ever a worry of mine.

Don't inflate your expectations too much, and it's worth your time. To use a cliche, its heart is in the right place.

I watched Putney Swope the other day - it's all about a guy who is unexpectedly voted in to the top job and then goes around telling people they're fired.

Back To The Future Part II surely still the definitive Trump movie

I'll go with the obvious--A Face in the Crowd--with Heath Ledger's Joker close behind. (Putney Swope, definitely.)

Which, again, was not Hoberman's method--he was interested only in films released during someone's term of office.

Sorry, clemenza, forgot the opening paragraph of the thread by the time I got to the bottom.

Not directed at you at all--that was Hoberman's way of looking at it, and it's what made the book so fascinating (that every president creates a body of films that mirrors him)--but as you can see from my own post, I'm really interested in films that might anticipate somebody too.

From the Us thread:

The ending is illogical.

Agree--in the context of the film's universe, it makes no sense. Worse, the last 15-20 minutes seem eight times as long.

this movie will disappoint those who want A Message About Our Times from Peele

Maybe. But if you believe Robin Wood's contention that most every good horror film is about the return of the repressed, shadow-mom's "We're Americans" points to a very obvious reading. I'm not saying it's the correct reading, but it is there, plain as day.

I can't really bring myself to recommend it--if you know anything about the subject, that doesn't need any explanation--but The El Duce Tapes, reassembled footage chronicling the Mentors' sad saga, did inspire (?) 45 minutes of stand-up conversation after the film, and twice it very explicitly casts itself as a Trump film. I've known about the Mentors for 30+ years, but the film was the first time I ever actually heard them. So don't shoot the messenger. (Just about the smallest audience I've ever experienced for a Hot Docs screening--less than half full.)

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.)