What Kind of Movies Do Austrians Watch?

Miscellaneous General
1

I see the music thread was a big hit and this has probably been discussed already, but what are some of your favorite movies?

I’ll list my top 10:

  1. There Will Be Blood - excellent character depth, near-perfect usage of symbolism and allegory, Daniel Day Lewis’ best performance by miles

  2. 2001: A Space Odyssey - Again, a movie about 20 layers deep. Uses the birth-rebirth plotline to perfection, alludes to Zarathustra, explores what it means to be human through HAL 9000 (my favorite villain!).

  3. Network - While I sensed a bit of an anti-capitalist agenda, I can’t help but sympathize with the main message of the movie. People want entertainment rather than fact. Over-reliance on TV for instant gratification cheapens our abilities to actually live life rather than delve into a fantasy realm. Howard Beale is easily my favorite movie character of all time.

  4. Full Metal Jacket - Kubrick does a good job of showing what war does to people, and although that was the main message of the film, the scenes with Sgt. Hartmann were what made the film memorable to me. Some of the war scenes in my opinion could have been done much, much better, but the message stays intact.

  5. Requiem for a Dream - Again, hits on the subject of people having asinine, unrealistic goals and how we let our obsessions take control of us.

-----(just listing the rest)-----

  1. Office Space

  2. Unforgiven

  3. The Fountain

  4. Gran Torino

  5. The Room (Wiki this and watch it, you’ll be glad you did if you can laugh at other people’s failures )

2

No particular order: Inception, Gattaca, LOTR, Tron: Legacy, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, The Warriors, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, anything involving Clint Eastwood with a gun (For a Few Dollars More, High Plains Drifter, Gran Torino, and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly), and anything by The Coen Brothers.

3

Can never go wrong with Clint Eastwood, IMO.

4

https://forum.freecapitalists.org/t/must-see-movies/9012

On like the 3rd page, there is an edited , categorized list.

I would update it, but it won’t let me edit. At some stage I’ll go back into it and post an up to date one.

5
  • The Matrix - I don’t care if it was a blockbuster or hyped, it was a real experience for me when I saw it. In many ways, I think this movie prepared me to become a libertarian.

In the scene where Morpheus explains what the Matrix is to Neo as best he can, he says, “The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work… when you go to church… when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth. That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your mind.”

In the closing statement of the movie, Neo issues a threat to the machines, The Matrix: “I’m going to show these people what you don’t want them to see. I’m going to show them … a world without rules or controls, borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you.”

The Wachowski brothers said in interviews that when they submitted the script to movie execs, the execs had no clue what the movie was about. They couldn’t understand the gamer/hacker lingo, and the sci-fi stuff was incomprehensible. I think the script was a sort of Trojan horse, it intentionally obfuscated the simple message - humans are slaves to a machine that sucks away their life energy and they are so thorouhgly immersed in this system of control that they cannot even imagine the “Desert of the Real”, that is, the unvarnished reality of their enslavement. I don’t think they meant this as a metaphor, I think they meant it literally.

I also enjoyed V for Vendetta (from the Wachowski brothers… surprise!) but it was no Matrix.

  • A Bug’s Life - This has become one of my new favorite movies of all time and I like to let my kids watch it. The message of liberty is so simple and clear. The ants have to gather food to appease the grasshoppers who terrorize them and threaten to beat them up and squish the Queen ant if they don’t do what they’re told. When a well-meaning ant accidently ruins the annual offering with one of his inventions, the villain (Hopper, Kevin Spacey) gives the colony one more chance to make it up - or else. When one of his minions suggests they don’t follow through on their threat to return and gather the new offering, Hopper explains the way the world works:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlWZZSD4irM

Rothbard would be proud. In one of the final scenes, the entire colony has an epiphany and stands up to Hopper and his gang. The Princess (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) explains the Natural Order to Hopper (which quote happens to be in my sigline):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FFm224BODE&feature=related

  • The Godfather, of course. Nuff said.

  • Fight Club. This movie really touches something visceral in the human (male?) pscyhe and I just love it. One of the greatest movies of all time… just a blast from beginning to end.

  • Heat. When I watched this, I was stunned at the realism - take when they do a small safe-cracking job on the side and Val Kilmer walks up to the door to break in, he inserts a bolt with a key-shaped shaft into the lock then uses a 3-foot long wrench to silently open the deadbolt without the slightest resistance… how cool is that! So simple, so realistic!

  • Appaloosa - this movie is well-written, well-directed and well-starred… all by Ed Harris, for whom I now have new respect. Paints a palpable picture of life in the American West and shows a little bit of old-fashioned law in action in a much more historically accurate way than the old Spaghetti westerns or John Wayne movies.

  • On the more artsy-fartsy end of the spectrum I liked Memento, I also enjoyed 2001: A Space Odyssey, I like Crash, Kill Bill, Sin City, Dark City (this has got some really cool philosophical implications). Titus is also pretty interesting especially since the script is straight Shakespeare!

  • On the more epic end of the spectrum, I liked Clash of the Titans - the Kraken is truly awesome, try watching it on a high-def big-screen… WOW. 300 is a visually stunning retelling of the old Spartan standoff. Didn’t like Troy, it just didn’t grab me. It tried to maintain a mythic feeling but then didn’t succeed at all. I liked Henry V though it is very pro-war. Apocalypse Now definitely deserves mention. I love epic movies so I’m sure I’ll remember others later.

  • On the action end of the spectrum… After Bourne Identity, I can’t hardly watch action movies anymore… Bourne is just so logical, so cool, so real, that every other action hero looks like a fumbling neophyte by comparison. I liked Bad Lieutenant with Nicolas Cage - it’s a really unvarnished look at the ugly side of copdom. Terminator 2 really captured my imagination when I first saw it. The Dark Knight was amazing. Laugh all you like, I really enjoy the 13th Warrior. I love the Mad Max movies.

  • My sci-fi tastes are pretty short - the bad science in sci-fi movies tends to drive me crazy more than anything. One old movie famous for its robot - Robbie - Forbidden Planet. It’s got awesome philosophical ideas within it. Didn’t much care for Avatar, though I liked that Cameron had the courage to broach the subject of the genocides of the Native Americans in such a publicly visible format. The Island is really slick and has some interesting ethical implications. Hated Tron (the old one, haven’t seen the new one yet, waiting for DVD release).

  • On the drama end… I am hugely into royalty movies lately, I watched The Duchess… wow! Totally dispenses with the romanticism typical of royalty movies. I watched The Young Victoria, I liked it, it’s nice to see inside the corridors of power even if they are historically remote. Still haven’t watched The King’s Speech… we’ll see if I can get to a theater while it’s still showing. I know I’m forgetting some. I liked the Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth because it just really gives you a taste of what it must have been like to live then, ignoring some of the more flamboyant characters. I liked Slumdog Millionaire. Another foreign movie that is really cool is Pan’s Labyrinth. Also enjoyed the more fantasy movie Stardust. I did like the LoTR movies - how couldn’t you? - but they were a bit… engrossed.

Clayton -

6

Oh yeah, Flags of our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima. The two pictures side by side are a stunning statement of conscience. Only Eastwood could get away with it and I salute him for his courage in doing this.

I still love the movie Patton despite its blatant glorification of war. George C. Scott’s depiction of Patton’s persona is just unbelievably excellent. I can’t stand Pearl Harbor, I hated Ben Affleck’s terrible acting but he was good in Good Will Hunting. Mercury Rising is an interesting movie.

Clayton -

7

Oh, how could I forget District 9??? Awesome!

Edited to add: This is a bad topic, I’m going to have to keep updating my posts!

Braveheart (epic), Apocalypto (epic!). Another Gibson movie I watched is Passion of the Christ and I’m not sure what to make of it beyond saying that I guess it was what Gibson said it was, a personal work of penance on his part, it had a very private, personal feel to it and I respect that though I wouldn’t say the movie is enjoyable to watch.

Oh, I really enjoyed Clooney’s Ocean’s 11 but the sequels sucked really bad. The movie The Score is really excellent! Pretty much every movie Anthony Hopkins has ever been in…

Clayton -

8

Every single movie with Humphrey Bogart. ALL OF THEM.

Also Bladerunner.

If you are thinking, “Hey, I wonder if Fepp’s favorite genre is film noir?” YOU WOULD BE RIGHT.

9

Good stuff, Clayton. I haven’t watched A Bug’s Life in 10 years, but maybe I will after the links you just posted. It really hits you over the head with the concept. It could have been just a short polemic against bullying, but that is pretty much what the State does. I wonder though if John Lasseter, the director of this and Toy Story, had a more libertarian message in mind? You never know with that computer programming profession.

10

Poor Flick. All he wants to do is invent a product that will maximize productive output, yet the skeptical anti-technology communitarian ants want him to “pick grain like everybody else.” Yes, I’m doing a socio-political analysis of a kid’s movie

11

You didn’t sense such an agenda in There Will Be Blood?

12

Not as much honestly. I realize it probably had something to do with criticizing the oil industry and an insatiable lust for power, but you can be criticial of an insatiable lust for power and not demonize capitalism in the process. I thought it was much more of a character analysis of Plainview than anything else. His competitiveness wasn’t his downfall, his misanthropic distrust of other people is what ultimately wrecked his sanity.

13

You know it’s based on an Upton Sinclair book, right?

14

Yeah, but Upton Sinclair isn’t producing the film. Paul Thomas Anderson took the book and ran with it in a different direction. If there’s any criticism of capitalism, it’s incidental because Plainview is the plot of the film. The film mostly has to do with family (“blood”) relationships and social alienation.

15

Yeah, I’m with Eric080 on this one… I’m sure that people will see what they want to see in the movie (i.e. leftists will see a criticism of oil use) but I really don’t think that’s what the movie was about. It was a character study set in a very unique and passing moment in American history. Also, I think the movie really laid the blame at the feet of religion and the sanctimonious attitudes in the community itself. The point where Plainview is forced to publicly shout “I’ve abandoned my boy!” to satiate the ambition of the up-and-coming preacher kid is when he emotionally snaps and he is never the same. Before that point in the movie he’s just a straightforward, uncomplicated businessman. After being manipulated by the preacher - who was cynically leveraging the sanctimony of the community to further his own agenda - he himself begins a massive decline into cynicism and drunkenness. Powerful stuff.

I want to believe there is a hidden commentary on the Rockefeller family in there somewhere, too, but I’m probably just seeing what I want to see.

Clayton -

16

Indeed Plainview is the plot of the film, and Plainview is a greedy, ruggedly invidivualistic entrepreneur who cares about profits more than people (even, ultimately, more than his own son).

If anything the Anderson’s version of Plainview is even worse than Sinclair’s. At least Sinclair’s oil tycoon was only a swindler. As far as I can tell, it was Anderson who turned him into a murderous sociopath for his movie. But that’s par for the course for the entertainment industry. As Thomas DiLorenzo wrote in “How Capitalism Saved America”:

“The Media Research Center in Washington, D.C., conducated a “content analysis” of several weeks of network television to analyze how businesspeople were portrayed. The researchers found that more than 90 percent of all murderers on television are businessmen, when in reality businessmen commit less than 1 percent of murders.”

While it was excellently produced and performed, this movie is part and parcel of that.

17

I’m terribly curious Clayton, why in the world do you put a dash after your name in your signatures?

18

I’ve never thought about it! I have no idea why I do it. Since you’ve asked, I’ll venture a guess… I used to post on a debate forum and I seem to recall that, a long time back, the signature was not separated from the rest of the body of the post so I think I might have started putting the dash there as a way to separate the signature from the body of the post and my name. For some reason, I prefer to actually write my name each time instead of having it in the sigline. It’s a control-freak thing, I guess.

Clayton -

19

Here’s some of my favourites

The Trial and Citizen Kane both directed by Orson Welles

Pi and Requiem for a Dream directed Darren Aronofksy

There Will Be Blood and Magnolia directed by Paul Thomas Anderson (as an aside TWBB certainly shows the material benefit of capitalism: Plainville’s workforce are very well treated)

The Prestige and Batman Begins directed by Christopher Nolan

The Elephant Man and Mulholland Drive directed by David Lynch

Wild Strawberries and the Seventh Seal directed by Ingmar Bergman

Barry Lyndon directed by Stanley Kubrick

Rashomon and Ikiru directed by Akira Kurosawa

Solaris directed by Andrei Tarkovsky

Gran Torino directed by Clint Eastwood

The Island (or Ostrov) directed by Pavel Lounguine

Toy Story 3 and Up both Pixar productions.

The Truman Show directed by Peter Weir

Psycho directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Lawrence of Arabia and Great Expectations directed by David Lean

Brazil and the Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus directed by Terry Gilliam

The Lives of Others directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmark

I find a good place to find film recommendations is Movielens. You rate the films you’ve seen and recommends films to you; unlike say Amazon or IMDB it takes into account all ratings rather than one purchase. It’s not perfect but if you use it just to made aware of films you may like and have not seen worthy of further investigation it’s excellent.

(BTW it gets you to rate random films until you rate twenty and your account opens properly. This can take ages. I’d suggest rating films you haven’t seen then rate twenty you have then remove the ratings of the ones you haven’t seen. It will save you a lot of time.

20

I basically agree with this guy’s take and this guy’s take on the matter. Here is a short excerpt from the first analysis where capitalism is brought up:

One thing I must address is the misconception that this film is about capitalism. Sure, capitalism exists in the movie, but it’s not Plainview’s driving motivation. Capitalism’s emotional equivalent is human greed, as the word itself means the accumulation of “capital,” defined as sanctioned wealth or property. Plainview is not primarily a greedy man. Greedy people choose personal gain over personal values and loved ones. Plainview, however, goes out of his way to choose a more strenuous (and dangerous) long-term gain (with Union) over an easy short-term gain (with Standard Oil), inarguably to prove his worth. He also desperately wants to bring someone he can trust and love into his business, to dominate, but also to share with. These are not consistent actions with simple avarice.

Again, not that capitalism must be greedy, but that the two are often correlated together symbolically. Plainview has higher goals that he is aiming for. It’s not his individuality or his greed, it’s the fact that he has, quite simply, no family and no friends to love. He suffers from distrust of others and his sympathy for children really makes him into a Holden Caufield type character.