What Do We Do Now? Nominating Thread for a Political-Film Poll...

I knew heading into this it would be really tricky--maybe even more than comedy or horror, in terms of what qualifies. All I can say is use your best judgement.

Dick
Bob Roberts
Suddenly!
Bad Eggs
Rats In The Ranks
DON'S motherfucking PARTY

Which Suddenly, sic--the old Sinatra film or the quasi-remake?

Lots of online lists; this one's a good mix of the literal and the more metaphorical (with the usual barrage of click-through ads):

http://www.mandatory.com/culture/962677-big-list-50-best-political-movies-ever

I'll add The Conformist and Game Change. I haven't seen Wiseman's State Legislature, but--again, no politicians and no elections--I've got to nominate Welfare.

election (2005)
shin godzilla
othon

The President Vanishes (1934)
Gabriel Over the White House (1933)
Washington Merry-Go-Round (1932)
The Washington Masquerade (1932)

What was that one w Streep as Thatcher
The Iron Lady (2011). Which loops in The Manchurian Candidate (1962 and 2004)

Danton
La Commune
Punishment Park
Winstanley

Nocturama

If you're receptive to long and massively problematic silent films, Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916).

If you're receptive to George Arliss:
Alexander Hamilton (1931)
Disraeli (1929, and a lost 1921 version)
Voltaire (1933)
The House of Rothchild (1934)

The Taking Of Power By Louis XIV (1970)

classic(underrated?) made for tv movie by Rossellini.

is there a bit of a thin line between what arguably makes a political movie or a war movie? fuck knows.

could movies like The 317th Platoon and The Red and the White be nommed as political movies?

Surely war films are part of political film but this might widen it considerably.

The Sorrow and the Pity

could movies like The 317th Platoon and The Red and the White be nommed as political movies?
― calzino, Sunday, June 30, 2019 10:41 AM

Surely war films are part of political film but this might widen it considerably.
― xyzzzz__, Sunday, June 30, 2019 10:44 AM

Both apply--I'm leaving it up to your judgement. I haven't been including nominations posed as questions thus far ("Could..."); just nominate something, and it goes on the list.

Do ‘The Big Short’ and ‘Margin Call’ count or are they finance movies?

Finance is intimately bound to politics, but I don't remember Margin Call featuring the political infrastructure that enabled the markets to get themselves into that fix. Did The Big Short call out the watchdogs that failed to bark?

Speaking of finance meeting politics and the media, The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990).

xps

The Sorrow and the Pity is something I'm going to watch soon cos of the glowing mentions in France: The Dark Years, and I thought I'd seen it, but might be getting it mixed up with Hotel Terminus.

If it's a film you like and would probably vote for, and you're on the fence about whether it's political enough, nominate it. If other voters agree, it might place.

But I'd probably avoid nominating borderline films if you don't plan on voting for it yourself.

A president, unless also Gerard Butler

I would consider 2012 more political than Independence Day (but I'm fine with them both being outwith the scope here)

To Live (Zhang Yimou, 1994)

A president, unless also Gerard Butler

I'm not sure what that means...

Oh I'm just joking - that the three "Gerard Butler saves the President" films shouldn't count as they're really not very interested in politics (and, I understand, terrible)

A Touch of Sin (2013)

was thinking of nomming that but thought it was .. hmm fuck knows.. erm cinema verite/social realism with genre touches.. but would happily vote for it nevertheless cos it's class.

on that note..

Platform (2000)

Could nom and vote for almost all of Jia's, same applies to Peter Watkins tbh. Am mulling over Buñuel at the moment.

Argo
Charlie Wilson's War

Amazing Grace
The Baader-Meinhof Complex
Lincoln
Munich
The Rise of Michael Rimmer
Scandal

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
Hitler: A film from Germany
Germany in Autumn
The Third Generation
The Lost Honor of Katherina Blum
The Second Awakening of Crista Klages
Battleship Potemkin
Postwar History of Japan as Told by a Bar Hostess
Too Early, too Late
Being Gypsy
The Fall
Xala
A Soft note on a Sharp Scale
Hiroshima Mon Amour
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
Vietnam in War
The Patriot
One Man's War
Come and See
Here and Elsewhere
Rome, Open City
Narita: Peasants of the Second Fortress
Black Panthers
Far from Vietnam
Hour of the Furnaces
Death by Hanging

Germany, Year Zero
Day of Wrath
Sobibór, October 14, 1943, 4 p.m.

I think Sobibór is the greatest of Lanzmann's docs. The bit where Lerner describes standing nervously behind a hulking SS officer with an axe in his hand, describing that moment just before delivering the savage coup de grace to his fucking fat head is just amazing. I think it was a Shoah offcut but it is so powerful.

The Human Condition trilogy
The Leopard

I'll periodically repost the nominations document:

http://docs.google.com/document/d/12Ts0EtUkx1eDgstQGLQePHbwFtBGL5rbyDtIyRtziek/edit

xyzzzz: by Black Panthers, do you mean The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution from a few years ago, or is it something earlier?

Should The Human Condition be treated as one film or three (haven't seen it)?

There’s a Varda doc called black panthers

Thanks--I'll include both (I've seen the more recent).

xxp erm it's a trilogy based on one novel iirc and splitting it up takes up more room ..

well one six-volume novel.. but different times!

Chinatown

army of shadows

Sansho The Bailiff

feudal politics is politics

A City of Sadness

Le Gai savoir

Citizen Kane
A Lion Is in the Streets

All the King's Men (1949 version)

Clemenza - sorry yeah meant the Varda

Which Suddenly, sic--the old Sinatra film or the quasi-remake?

Having just gotten to the 1954 this month after a year on my Kanopy queue, I am mad at you for revealing a Uwe Boll remake

Point of Order, Millhouse: A White Comedy. There are other de Antonio films that would fit too--those are two I've seen.

...So Goes the Nation, Horns and Halos.

Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment
Meet John Doe
October: Ten Days That Shook the World

lmao clemenza <3

Anything nominated (i.e., stated, not posed as a question), I'll add to the list. I'm an easy mark here for joke nominations, especially in the realm of superhero movies--whether it's sincere or a joke will go right over my head.

I don't often make an effort to catch up with gaps in movie or music polls--pure laziness, plus I'd rather go with opinions that go back more than a week or two--but I'm going to force myself to sit at the computer for 3.5+ hours and watch Frederick Wiseman's State Legislature off Kanopy. It won't be in one sitting, that much I know.