The shoot-em-up sci-fi flick really savages capitalism and American culture, if you watch the clips that play on the TV screens alongside the ‘main action’.
Thank you, but I was just thinking how easy it is to take a favorite film and then go back to find reasons to call it “subversive” (The Big Chill? John Hughes??? Please.)
Salt of the Earth (1954), a movie about a real-event mining strike in New Mexico, was seen by the whole Hollywood machine as subversive:
[QUOTE=film reference]
Collective decision-making distinguished not only the script’s preparation but all aspects of the film’s production, marking an abrupt change in the hierarchical collaboration that characterized Hollywood filmmaking. Most of the roles were filled by the miners themselves and local Anglos, including the male lead Ramon, played by unionist Juan Chacon. The heroine was originally to be played by Gale Sondergaard, already involved in the project, but was finally cast with Rosaura Revueltas, a highly successful Mexican film star. Her participation in the film led to her deportation from the United States, and ultimately to the end of her film career.
The production and post-production of Salt was hampered by constant harassment from industrial and political leaders. Hiring a union crew proved impossible as Roy Brewer, red-baiter and head of the I.A.T.S.F., refused to allow union personnel to participate. During the film’s shooting, the project and all those involved were denounced by union representatives in Hollywood, the trade press, and Congressman Donald Jackson in the House of Representatives, all leading to increasing tension in Grant County which hindered the film’s completion.
Post-production was impeded not only by Hollywood union recalcitrance but also by Howard Hughes’s attempts to organize an industry-wide boycott of the film by post-production facilities throughout the country. The film’s exhibition encountered such strong resistance from I.A.T.S.E. projectionists, who under Brewer’s orders refused to project the finished film, that it was and still is seen most widely at union activities and outside the United States.
[/quote]
I can just imagine Molly Ringwald getting deported.
Battle of Algiers
Last Temptation of Christ
American Beauty
Z
One Flew over the Cuckoo Nest
Never Cry Wolf
The Rapture
I love that film!
Disagree.
The ‘respected’ establishment vice-principle is a venal, snooping, cowardly bully. The custodian is sardonically contemptuous of authority, and casually manipulates it. The top jock is an insecure kid running scared, the nerd is an insecure kid running scared, the princess is an insecure kid running scared, the punk is an insecure kid not running scared, and the basket case is keenly alert and actually more on top of things than anyone else except the custodian.
That pretty much skewers most of the highschool movie tropes as well as poking traditional authority structures in teh eye.
I am surprised I am the first to mention In the Loop: a satire about the shenanigans leading up to the Iraq war. I found it much funnier than Wag the Dog which was something of a disappointment.
A few that have been mentioned already:
Brazil
Battle of Algiers
Z
I haven’t read the book (macho sci-fi isn’t my thing), but last month my housemate and I watched Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers, which I thought was hilarious. It uses all the codes, structure and language of a by-the-numbers action film to tell a story about a bunch of fascists.
US action films tend to be very nationalistic – I’m thinking especially of that awful scene in Independence Day when Bill Pullman’s president character gives a Rousing Speech about how the US Independence Day is now a global day of freedom, gag, but most of the others I’ve seen have all been very USA! USA! – and I thought Starship Troopers was a great subversion of the US action film template.
Three Kings I would also call subversive for the same reason. It looked and talked like a war film, but instead it took apart the just war concept. I loved it.