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

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

good work clemenza. This is turning into a really good thread already and giving me new things to watch.

Thanks. I was thinking about Meet John Doe too--the perils of populism (depending upon your tolerance for Capra...like It's a Wonderful Life, actually quite a grim film).

Completely forgot what could conceivably be my #1 (and will have a hard time getting any other votes): The Champions, Donald Brittain's three-part documentary on Trudeau and Levesque that I've plugged on other threads.

Harlan County, USA
features a union politician and election, not government. I think it counts.

oh and here's a bad one that could only exist during the clinton years. republicans and democrats, they bicker! two gay panic jokes in the trailer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_57GKDXmXKk
(my fellow americans, in case it's ever removed)

Harlan County for sure.

I should never have brought that bit up about politicians and elections. I was just trying to keep a potentially mammoth nomination list under control. But things like Harlan Country, Carlos, Welfare, and countless other films obviously belong. If the nomination list ends up being huge, not a big deal.

In that spirit, I'll add Malcolm X (on just about every online list I see), The Weather Underground, and Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst.

That My Fellow Americans trailer looks like a parody (and not a particularly good one) of 90s high concept comedy. Also, I count three gay panic jokes--the Dykes on Bikes, the Pride parade, the sleeping guy fondling Lemmon.

I've never seen this but it sounds awesome, Old Mother Riley, MP .

https://d1t80wr11ktjcz.cloudfront.net/movieposters/h12/AllPhotos/71771/p71771_i_h12_ab.jpg

“Duck, You Sucker!” / A Fistful Of Dynamite

not a fan of Anthony Eden, but his excellent command of the French language in The Sorrow and The Pity is noteworthy.

Looks like this could be a series of by-decade polls instead, clemenza

Completely forgot what could conceivably be my #1 (and will have a hard time getting any other votes): The Champions, Donald Brittain's three-part documentary on Trudeau and Levesque that I've plugged on other threads.

― clemenza, Sunday, June 30, 2019 9:10 PM (yesterday)

clemenza -- i remember you mentioning this doc before and have thought about checking it out. would you say it's accessible even if you don't know much about canadian politics?

I think so, yes. They're basically a Canadian version of Kennedy-Nixon; they come to prominence at almost the same time, start as friends, end up as (sometimes bitter) rivals, and they even match stylistically: Trudeau's the glamour guy, Levesque the rumpled plodder (except in Quebec, where he's god). The one major difference is that Levesque, whatever you thought of his goal of breaking apart the country, comes across as someone with boundless integrity.

You can watch the whole thing online if you're interested:

https://www.nfb.ca/film/champions_part_1/
https://www.nfb.ca/film/champions_part_2/
https://www.nfb.ca/film/champions_part_3/