You monsters.
Conservative film criticism is wonderful stuff that we all should be reading, and I'm not even being facetious on that one. It's glorious. The very premise puts
conservative above
film criticism, asserting that the only true way to review a film is to ascertain whether its perceived message is a conservative one, and to then declare the film Good or Bad based on that. Acting? Set decor? Foley work? Bah—all can be overlooked, cough
Atlas Shrugged cough, because if the film of the week has a conservative message it is a Good film, and if it has a Hollywood elite liberal socialist Democrat stupid damn love and tolerance message it is a Bad one, and all the rest is padding.
So when the conservative segregationist rag National Review has one of its authors—an African American author—set out to make a list of recent films that have "effectively destroyed art" through their naughtiness, you know it's going to be good. And it is.
Since 2004, the year that film culture split along moral and artistic lines, political and class biases have been exhibited in films that became more and more partisan. This rift was furthered by a compromised media, where critics praised movies that exhibited cynicism along with political bias.
What happened in 2004 that broke this man's spirit? Mel Gibson's
Passion of the Christ did not get good reviews, and it made our film critic very sad. I'm not even kidding. That's what the link says. And for some reason the early 2000's saw rise of a cultural "cynicism" expressed through the measurement of the popularity of various movies, and that's Bad because America shouldn't be cynical just because everything was terrible and would continue to be terrible for the indefinite future. I blame the films.
Not just entertainment, the 20 films listed here effectively destroyed art, social unity, and spiritual confidence. They constitute a corrupt, carelessly politicized canon.
This. Is. Brilliant. It takes a lot to
destroy art, social unity and spiritual confidence, but to do it in a mere 20 modern movies is a genuine miracle. I would not reckon even an Adam Sandler film had the capacity to
destroy art, although several of them did make me question the existence of a compassionate God.
Shall we look? Shall we? Of course we will, below the fold:
I am going to go in reverse order, because that is the proper way to do things and our illustrious "film critic" needs to learn a few things about how to do lists of terrible things. You always put the most terrible thing last, not first, to build tension. You don't destroy the Death Star at the beginning of the movie, your cowboy does not ride off into an uncertain sunset in the first five minutes, and you do not explain what "Rosebud" means while all the other actors haven't even gotten their makeup on yet. I'm also going to skip quite a few of these because Chee-rist, who the hell wants to sit through 20 of them. And what's number 20?
20) Lincoln (2012)—Spielberg succumbs to Tony Kushner’s limousine-liberal cynicism to valorize Obama-era political chicanery.
Sorry, Steven Spielberg. You've destroyed art. Furthermore, you've destroyed art by being cynical about the Civil War, which is a no-no, and by believing the liberal spin that the slaves were not, in fact, freed by a time-traveling Ronald Reagan but by complex wartime political goings-on that featured no talking horses or F-16 fighters.
16) The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)—Ass-kicking espionage disparaged American foreign policy while making money off it.
When your film criticism checklist includes
can goofy film be perceived as disparaging American foreign policy you should be reviewing films for the CIA, not
National Review. The unstated problem, of course, is that the film presumably disparaged the
wrong foreign policy, since a film that disparaged a perceived Obama foreign policy would be awarded the Palme d'Souza, or whatever it is they give the "Good" films.
13) Slumdog Millionaire (2008)—an Oscar-winning tale of game-show greed as an answer to systemic poverty.
The real answer to systemic poverty is, of course, tax cuts.
11) Precious (2009) coincided with Obama’s first year in office to revive racial condescension with the audacity of nope.
We could make fun of that sentence if it made any sense at all, but the author's incomprehensibility has foiled us.
9) Knocked Up (2007)—Judd Apatow’s comedy of bad manners attacked maturity and propriety.
And it didn't even have Adam Sandler in it. This seems a bit haphazard of a list, and I wonder how many of these movies could be claimed to have any impact on the national consciousness at all, much less were capable of
destroying art and social unity. I don't think anything that finds its way into a Wal-Mart discount bin can really destroy very much at all.
8) Frost/Nixon (2008)—Political vengeance disguised as a dual biopic that prized showbiz egotism over conflicted public service.
Stop talking about that stuff Nixon did that caused national cynicism and put more than a few scars on "social unity" itself. He was "conflicted," damn it.
5) Wall-E (2008)—Nihilism made cute for children of all ages who know nothing about cultural history or how to sustain it.
If
Wall-E makes it into the future canon of nihilism I, for one, will be very surprised. I was under the impression conservatives despised it for having an environmental message about how maybe turning the planet into an unsurvivable hellhole would have an eventual downside; here we learn the true flaw in the animated flick was that it did not sufficiently teach our children to sustain our cultural history. Whatever that means. We may need a contest in comments to see who among us can pick out what our film critic thinks he is talking about on this one.
4) 12 Years a Slave (2013) distorted the history of slavery while encouraging and continuing Hollywood’s malign neglect of slavery’s contemporary impact.
I'll give him that one. By insufficiently explaining that some enslaved black Americans were quite happy and content, this anti-slavery movie destroyed art and our social unity by telling the actual true story of an actual slave as told in his actual memoirs. And the cry went up:
Unskew slavery!
2) The Dark Knight (2008) used the Batman myth to undermine heroism, overturn social mores, and embrace anarchy.
The Batman myth to film critic: You know nothing of my work.
And that leads us to the number one movie that Destroyed Art, Social Unity and Spiritual Confidence. It would have to be a George Clooney film, because everyone knows that George Clooney is the most devious and dangerous and damaging liberal Hollywood has ever produced, but putting this one at the top of the list may be a bit too nail-on-the-head, if you ask me.
1) Good Night and Good Luck (2005)—George Clooney, president of the corrupt canon, directed and acted in a dishonest fantasy biopic of TV-news icon Edward R. Murrow to revive blacklist lore as part of a liberal agenda.
Reviving blacklist lore is part of the scheming liberal agenda, says the
National Review writer in a piece that has condemned a list of 20 movies for their insufficient ideological purity and who has declared in the very first bit of that sentence that a certain actor is "president" of the Hollywood contingent that is "corrupting" us.
Yes sir, a bit too nail-on-the-head. If you ask me.
But it leads me to an inevitable personal conclusion: I have got to get in on this racket. I could churn out conservative movie reviews at the rate of All of Them Per Week, and I wouldn't even have to watch the damn films to do it. That movie over there? Too cynical. The vampire one? An allegory for how the takers are bleeding us dry. Tell me there's money to be made in this, dear conservative friends, and I'm yours.