Counter-Currents
1,520 words
Author’s Note:
The following text is a scrap rescued from obscurity and buffed up a bit. In 2002, a reader of VNN suggested that the site’s movie reviewers post their “Ten Best” lists. I found it impossible to settle on just ten best films. So I decided to produce a “Favorites” list instead. I came up with more than thirty movies. These are films I like to re-watch and show to my friends. I think the list includes some of the best films ever made, but it also contains some that are pretty far from the best. So here are ten movies that are near the top of my favorites list.
1. Network
This is the best movie ever made. The story is wonderful, the script brilliant, the acting stunning, the satire cutting and hilarious, and the message serious and profound. Network shows how capitalism works in the realm of culture, how the culture industry works to debase public standards and corrupt public morals.
The only real flaw of the movie is that it hides the role of Jews in the television industry and the general corruption of culture. The big villain is a blonde from the Midwest named Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway) who somehow manages to corrupt, manipulate, and exploit the old-timers from the New York media (none of whom are portrayed as explicitly Jewish). The other villain, Mr. Jensen (Ned Beatty), also has a Scandinavian name. A former salesman from Oklahoma, Mr. Jensen has built a vast business conglomerate which has purchased the TV network of the title and wishes it to spread the Kojèvian gospel of the universal homogeneous consumer society.
But it turns out that the network is not solely controlled by sinister Scandinavians. Some Semitic foreigners also want to buy in, so Howard Beale, the mad prophet of the airwaves, alerts America to the danger of the world’s most powerful tool of propaganda and brainwashing falling into the hands of . . . Saudi Arabians.
These mounting absurdities should come as no surprise, though, given that the script was written by Marxist Jew Paddy Chayevsky.
But greed alone—and therefore Marxism alone—is not enough to explain the behavior of the media. One can be a gentleman and a patriot and still make money. No, one must also add such elements as alienation from and hostility toward the dominant culture, boundless cynicism, and crazed, hate-filled ethnocentrism to the mix to explain the modern media. In short, one has to add Jews (and their spiritual kinsmen and collaborators).
Favorite scenes: Howard Beale’s “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” speech; Mr. Jensen’s chilling “End of History”/”New World Order” speech; Mrs. Schumacher’s tirade to her cheating husband (four minutes of screen time that won her an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress); and any scene featuring the afro-headed, fried chicken slurping, gun firing, money-grubbing, bad-ass Commie Negroes Lorraine Hobbes and The Great Ahmed Khan.
When is White America going to say, “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”?
2. Vertigo
This is the other best movie ever made, and in terms of sheer beauty, it is far superior to Network. The story of Vertigo is a tragedy worthy of Euripides. The film is visually stunning, emotionally wrenching, and beautifully acted, with magnificent music by Bernard Herrmann
3. Pulp Fiction
Yes, I like Pulp Fiction. Why? Because the post-modern, consumerist world is a sewer. Pulp Fiction is a cool, funny tour of that sewer. But it has a serious side. It shows us the qualities of character that either raise us out of the sewer or drag us further down into it. The movie is filled with situations demanding moral decisions. The characters who are ruled by their appetites (John Travolta’s Vincent Vega and Uma Thurman’s Mia Wallace) make very different decisions and have very different fates than the characters who are willing to risk comfort, security, money, and even life itself in order to do what they think is right (Bruce Willis’s Butch and Samuel L. Jackson’s Jules Winnfield).
Don’t be put off by the Negro characters and the race-mixing. No portrait of the sewer would be complete without them. My favorite scene is when the black gangster Marsellus Wallace offers Butch the same deal that modern bourgeois society offers us all: abandon our pride, abandon our principles and we can have money, comfort, security. Your soul is a small price to pay for all that, isn’t it America? Most Americans seem to agree.
[See my extensive review-essay on Pulp Fiction here.]
4. Blue Velvet
This is more than a movie, it is a myth: It is a coming of age tale, an initiation tale, a descent into the underworld and resurrection tale. Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle McLaughlin) discovers evil in society and the potential for evil in his own soul. He also discovers the artifices that we create to keep evil in check. And finds the strength in himself to do battle against it.
Lynch is not arguing that the idyllic White America of Lumbertown is somehow a fraud because it has an evil underbelly. That is the common Leftist misunderstanding of the movie. Lynch thinks that evil is not a product of a particular social system that can be abolished by social reform. Evil is metaphysical and will always be with us, and social conventions and artifices like those of Lumbertown are justified by keeping evil in check.
I have seen this movie 25 times, and I still find Dennis Hopper’s Frank Booth absolutely terrifying. His performance is so compelling that he has been playing Frank Booth characters ever since!
5. Ran
King Lear set in feudal Japan, Ran is pure poetry, one of the most beautiful movies ever made with exquisite music by Toru Takemitsu
6. The Birds
Another Hitchcock masterpiece set in San Francisco and points nearby, I read this movie as an anti-feminist allegory by the most extreme misogynist in film history. Melanie Daniels (played by the exquisite ‘Tippi’ Hedren) uses her wealth and social status to violate the laws of nature. She is independent, mischievous, and sexually aggressive in pursuing lawyer Mitch Brenner (played by the extremely masculine Rod Taylor). The forces of nature, in the form of the birds, punish her for her independence, and every attempt at self-assertion is struck down, until by the end of the movie she is reduced to a state of battered, shocked, almost comatose dependence on Mitch.
7. Sunset Boulevard
Dark comedy or tragic satire about Hollywood and the corrupting power of fame and money, this movie features an extraordinary performance by washed-up silent movie star Gloria Swanson as washed-up silent movie star Norma Desmond.
8. The Bridge on the River Kwai
This is a tragedy that Sophocles could have written. It is David Lean’s best film: the directing, script, acting, and music are all superb. Fans of Evola’s The Metaphysics of Sex will appreciate seeing his contrast between the higher, Uranian and lower, Tellurian types of masculinity exemplified by Alec Guinness and William Holden respectively. There is also a splendid score
9. The Talented Mr. Ripley 
I love this movie, and not just because I love its Italian settings. In spite of his being “a gay serial killer,” I found Matt Damon’s Tom Ripley a deeply believable, sympathetic, and moving character. Not only does Ripley have education and taste, he actually has a conscience, which is more than can be said for his first two victims. It is only because Ripley has genuinely good qualities that the movie turns tragic in the end as his powers of deception fail him, he thinks he is trapped, and he does not have the courage to come clean.
10. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
VNN, June 20, 2002
38 comments
I would like to include Hitchcock’s “Shadow Of A Doubt’ because it explores the creation of serial killers by contemporary society (of which there will be increasingly more as time goes by). David Lynch’s “Muholland Dr.” is also an excellent analysis of how a young white girl is destroyed by jewish controlled hollywood.
1. Aside from Sergio Leone, I never got into Westerns. But I am open to learning. I thought of including Once Upon a Time in the West when I wrote the original list, instead of The Fellowship of the Ring, but I felt I had to re-watch it to say anything about it, so I punted.
2. Bergman? Well, Fanny and Alexander, Smiles of a Summer Night, and his Magic Flute (in the original Swedish) are masterpieces. But I never got into the grimmer stuff.
3. Fellini? La Strada is one of the most beautiful films I have ever seen, but so sad that I have only watched it once. I never got into the sillier stuff, though, but I love Nino Rota’s music. The ecclesiastical fashion show in Roma is one of the most strangely moving scenes in movie history.
4. Truffaut? Jules et Jim, Fahrenheit 415, and The Bride Wore Black
5. Kubrick? An important director, I’ll grant you that, but I don’t enjoy his work.
6. Scorsese is a great but uneven director, my favorites being Gangs of New York and Taxi Driver.
7. Spielberg? Not even close
8. The Godfather? I liked them, and objectively speaking, there is greatness there. But little pleasure for me. Once was enough. I much prefer Bram Stoker’s Dracula and even Youth Without Youth.
9. Citizen Kane? Good, but hardly lives up to its reputation.
10. I disagree RE Mulholland Drive and agree with Quint. See my very first movie review: https://counter-currents.com/2010/07/mulholland-drive/
Odin help me but I do detest Quentin Tarrantino and all he stands for, which is the Sewer. Did I misspell his name? Good.
I agree with you. I do not know why people make so much of “Pulp Fiction?” I cannot get past Samuel Jackson’s big mouth and sullen face, it just drives me into a rage. The true message of “Pulp Fiction” is this. In the pawn shop Bruce Willis should come back to help Ving Rhames. Why? Because, no matter what lines we cross in order to make the big score and screw each other over we must unite to destroy the evil racists (don’t forget the civil war and nazi pharaphenalia). That is the true and only message in that disgusting film. The same thing was done in “Falling Down” which starred Michael Douglas. Forget about trying to find any metaphysical truths in “Pulp Fiction” they will always be drowned out by the disgusting characters of Samuel Jackson, Ving Rhames and Uma Thurman.
#1 TOMBSTONE………script that kills, casting perfect, acting superb, sound score great, zero political correctness………..the most dangerous animal on earth is an angry white man…..and this movie is full of angry white men. based on actual events. if you haven’t seen it, see it!
Speaking of Matt Damon, I happened to watch The Departed on a motel TV – a star-studded movie with a rather complicated plot, starring Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jack Nicholson, Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin, about “Irish Mafia” in Boston. Wonder if Trevor Lynch saw it?
I’m not terribly crazy about Westerns, but I did enjoy the whitest Western I’ve seen: “3:10 to Yuma”, starring Christian (Batman) Bale & Russell Crowe.
Great choices, especially the particular Lynch and Hitchcock works. I was a bit surprised to see “Network” at the top. The film certainly deserves the praise. Three times William Holden, is that a coincidence? Ten movies of course can never be enough. I’d also include The Searchers, Barry Lyndon, Taxi Driver, Apocalypse Now, Mishima, Fight Club… and these are just the American ones that come to my mind.
It is a coincidence that Holden appears three times on that list. A fourth Holden movie that I very much enjoy is Billy Wilder’s underrated, indeed, nigh unknown, Fedora.
I really chose films that (1) I like to re-watch and (2) I like to share with friends. Here are some more.
Watchmen
The Dark Knight Trilogy
Sergio Leone’s Dollars Trilogy
Once Upon a Time in the West
Blade Runner
Taxi Driver
Gangs of New York
Mishima
Fight Club
Cinema Paradiso
Another Ten:
Dune
Wild at Heart
The Elephant Man
Lang’s Siegfried
Miller’s Crossing
The Loved One
Inception
Erendira
Cronenberg’s Crash
Wise Blood
Some Guilty Pleasures (because they are silly and/or contain serious flaws):
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Oliver Stone’s The Doors
Barbarella
Flash Gordon
The Fifth Element
The Empire Strikes Back
Starship Troopers
Hero
Sin City
Legend (truly but fascinatingly awful)
Films I Use for Teaching Purposes:
Africa Addio
American Pimp
Cabaret
Quiz Show
Miller’s Crossing
Barton Fink
Jud Suss
People I Know
They Live
Storytelling
Palindromes
Mister Death
Defamation
Allright, inspired by this list I have finally watched “Bridge on the River Kwai””, the only film on it I hadn’t seen yet. I can see why it is a classic. The finale not only blew up the bridge, but my mind as well. Utterly amazing. Flawless direction. Visually stunning. The twist in the movie is great when Alec Guiness more and more gives in to Western man’s sense of building, constructing, creating order and civilisation, dominating nature and chaos… almost like a drive he cannot suppress. Made me think a bit of Camille Paglia’s ideas.
I am glad you liked it. It is an amazing film.
I see, “Trevor”, that you have a Going-Back-to-Sicily-After-Many-Years film in your list. There is another, “Mafioso” (Italian, 1962), and this one is replete with Messages without being superficial, though all films have some sort of message of course. The first part of the story seems to be a farce/comedy but even in the factory scene at the beginning there is a sense of unease – to me, at least.
I can live without American films or any films at all. But if I had to make a choice of 3, this would be one of them, to see again.
It’s interesting to read everyone’s lists.
I’d like to know more about Cabaret and Taxi Driver.
Eventually I will write about them. In the meantime, take a look at them.
What no Canadian films! – Black Robe, The Hanging Garden, The Sweet Hereafter.
Dear to my heart just like the most grim Bergman films. Any D. H. Lawrence book put to a movie and the same with Thomas Hardy. My favourite western is McCabe and Mrs. Miller.
Forgot to mention Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven. An incredible film. Some say it closed the book on Westerns, but they are wrong. No Country for Old Men comes close, but not quite.
Interesting that The Talented Mr. Ripley made your list. I am a huge fan of the Ripley novels. A bit of a guilty pleasure but so be it. I wonder if you have seen Ripley’s Game with John Malkevitch and Ray Winstone. Both give masterful performances and, I believe, of all the Ripley movie adaptations it is the best by a considerable margin.
I have not read the novels or seen that movie. I find Malkevitch repulsive, but I will add it to the list.
You might also be interested in the, in my opinion, vastly superior Wim Wenders version of the same novel “The American Friend” starring Dennis Hopper.
Do you like Wender’s films? I think “Paris, Texas” is a wonderful film.
I love Paris, Texas, and Wings of Desire but have not really followed his work. I will check out The American Friend. Thanks.
Here are some excellent movies that aren’t often mentioned:
WHAT WE LOST
Gone With the Wind
The Big Sleep
The Country Girl
The Bridges at Toko-Ri
Gigi
Executive Suite
Picnic
Cat People
MODERN CLASSICS
The Last Days of Disco
Metropolitan
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Shakespeare in Love
Much Ado About Nothing (2013)
Treasure Island (1990)
Dark City
Following
FOREIGN
L’Innocente (The Victim)
The Dreamers (2003)
Hrafninn Flygur (When the Raven Flies)
Ohm Kruger (Uncle Kruger)
Sissi Trilogy
Revanche (2008)
Borsalino (1970)
Le Cercle Rouge (The Red Circle)
Un Flic (Dirty Money)
La Piscine (Swimming Pool) 1969)
Swimming Pool (2004)
Honestly, Whit Stillman films are wonderful! Evidently, you like Romy Schneider too.
Yes, mostly. The recent ‘Damsels in Distress’ was a disappointment, though worth watching if you like his style.
Nowicki did an essay on Stillman’s films:
https://counter-currents.com/2012/10/the-discrete-wit-of-whit-stillman/
98052,
I second your endorsement of those two Whit Stillman films. Metropolitan, in particular, is just wonderful. There are some great lines in that one that a radical traditionalist could have easily spoken. Even Spengler’s The Decline Of The West makes a cameo.
Apparently, his godfather was E. Digby Baltzell. Do you think Baltzell has anything interesting to contribute?
Don’t laugh, but I love Urban Cowboy. It seems to capture a time and place. It’s one of those movies I’ll watch every time I stumble upon it on TV.
I’m with Peter on this one.
Perhaps you’re right. In order to understand “Mulholland Drive” one must realize that real physical action does not take place until near the end when the main character is awakened in her apartment by a next door neighbor who is retrieving property that she left when she switched apartments with her (the scene where the next door neighbor also retrieves an ashtray). From there we learn that the protagonist is a jilted lesbian lover, a failed actress, and has hired a hitman to kill her former lover. The first 3/4 of the film occurs in the protagonist’s mind where she is experiencing a depression and going through a series of rationalizations in her mind. Like “Lost Highway” Lynch develops most of the story in the main character’s mind who is in a fugue state. Lynch likes to use the device developed in “An Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge.” The movie is too complex for a superficial treatment and someday I will have to give it the analysis it deserves.
Perhaps you’re right. In order to understand “Mulholland Drive” one must realize that real physical action does not take place until near the end when the main character is awakened in her apartment by a next door neighbor who is retrieving property that she left when she switched apartments with her (the scene where the next door neighbor also retrieves an ashtray). From there we learn that the protagonist is a jilted lesbian lover, a failed actress, and has hired a hitman to kill her former lover. The first 3/4 of the film occurs in the protagonist’s mind where she is experiencing a depression and going through a series of rationalizations in her mind. Like “Lost Highway” Lynch develops most of the story in the main character’s mind who is in a fugue state. Lynch likes to use the device developed in “An Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge.” The movie is too complex for a superficial treatment and someday I will have to give it the analysis it deserves.
I liked films about child prodigies – “Vitus” and “August Rush”. “Vitus” is a Swiss-made film to encourage more white births. I first found out about “Vitus” via Yggdrasil. Maybe Trevor Lynch could do a movie review on “Vitus”?
I’m not very talented in film analysis, but I know good visuals and quality when I see it.
The ones I keep viewing are:
The Asphalt Jungle / Night of the Iguana / The Misfits – Huston
Rope / Strangers on a Train / Psycho / Rear Window / North by Northwest / Lifeboat – Hitchcock
Kind Hearts and Coronets / The Last Weekend – Ealing Comedies with Alec Guiness
M – Lang
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly – Leone
The Third Man – Reed
I should have included: “Touch of Evil” – Welles’ cut, which has the longest tracking shot that I’m aware of – it opens the film and covers several blocks. Tremendous – pre-figures Psycho in several scenes with Janet Lee and a hotel room.
Not trying to outdo you or anything, but might you remember that almighty traffic jam scene in Godard’s “Weekend”? It went on and on and on. And then there is that Russian film “Russian Ark”, which, we are told, was done in one take. It’s more than an hour long for sure, as I recall.
For a pro-‘white’ site, I am rather shocked by this less than ‘Eurocentric’ and even quasi-philo-Semitic top ten list. Not a single European film!? What about F.W. Murnau, Fritz Lang (yeah, he was 1/2 Hebraic but he made some rather Teutonic works), Carl Th. Dreyer, Derek Jarman, Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, Werner Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Federico Fellini, Ingmar Bergman, Luchino Visconti, Michael Haneke, Paulus Manker, Nicholas Roeg, Helma Sanders-Brahms (who has made films on Heinrich von Kleist and Gottfried Benn), Veit Harlan, Leni Riefenstahl, and countless other great European auteur filmmakers. One of the reasons I have been reluctant to ever get involved with the so-called ‘pro-white’ nationalist movement is the sheer and utter lack of understanding of European culture that plagues the movement, as if ‘European’ is just a skin color or something. Sorry, but Europe and not vapid-product-producing Hebraic Hollywood is responsible for the greatest films of cinema history and to be ignorant of that, especially as a white nationalist, is nothing short of unforgivable, not to mention downright absurd.
Derek Hawthorne seems to have a more ‘Faustian’ taste in film and should probably takeover as the official film reviewer of CC.
Maybe you would feel more at home with a bunch of pompous asses.
“For a pro-’white’ site, I am rather shocked by this less than ‘Eurocentric’ and even quasi-philo-Semitic top ten list.”
Right. well-spotted. My guess is that everybody here (except me) is 30-something. Kids. Don’t remember when America was really like Frisco in “Vertigo.” I do. And I see this in every response in this thread. I’m glad, however, that the few generations after me are WNs. And so literate. Very encouraging to me at my age. This is an excellent site. Carry on!
Obviously everyone will have a different list, de gustibus and all that. But I would strongly argue a vote for “A Man For All Seasons” as one of the best films ever: casting, script, acting, cinematography, etc are all incredibly good.
One of the good movies with a very interesting NWO (i.e. Jew World Order) theme, In Time (2011), starring Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried. It’s a sci-fi film – over 100+ years into the future: In 2169, people are born genetically engineered with a digital clock on their forearm. When they turn 25 years old, they stop aging and their clock begins counting down from one year; when it reaches zero that person “times out” and dies. Time has become the universal currency; it is used to pay for day-to-day expenses and can be transferred between people or capsules. The country has been divided into “time zones” based on the wealth of the population. The movie focuses on two specific zones: Dayton – a poor manufacturing area where people generally have 24 hours or less on their clock at any given time – and New Greenwich – the wealthiest time zone, where people have enough time on their clock to live for centuries.
A friend, who saw this movie 5 times, writes: I noticed that at the end credits of In Time, there are a lot of strange names of people who contributed to making of the film. (names like Amy Israel, Abraham, etc.) So this led me to thinking, does this film has the same “double meaning” as Matrix? One meaning that viewer gets at first glance, but quite another meaning for those “initiated”.
The main character Will Salas (Timberlake) lives in the ghetto. It is the same as in the Matrix where “the rebels” live in Zion. The main villain is a banker called “Weis” which in German means “White”. Weis looks like a white man, has white wife, white daughter and has aristocratic white manners. So Jews with this film suggest that whites are the main “bankers” and oppressors of the “poor masses”, and that white bankers are a major problem in today’s society.
Rich New Greenwich represents a white man’s civilization. (those few mud people are depicted there just for sake of modern “political correctness”) Just the same as Matrix represents white man’s civilization, where everything is neat and takes place according to the “laws and rules”. But there comes a Jewish messiah Salas (or Neo) who will break down all the rules, all the barriers and establish “equality” between the ghetto (third world mud civilization) and white man’s civilization.
When Salas gets his hands on some money first thing he does is visit a nearby casino. This reminds me of Rothschilds, who after gaining a starting money in Germany, sent his son to England to steal more money on the stock market. (stock market is a “casino” for the rich) After defeating Weis in poker game Salas tells him that he “knew” in advance that he will win. Just as Rothschild knew in advance that he will steal billions on the English stock exchange, because he first had information that England won the war against Napoleon.
Salas uses his newly acquired wealth to infiltrate into white society and seduce Weise’s daughter. In real world Jews do the same thing. After gaining economic wealth they infiltrate into white aristocracy to gain titles of “Lords”, “Counts” etc, and marry their daughters in all European aristocratic families.
Just as Neo destroyed the white Matrix, so does Salas eventually destroys white man’s civilization. By flooding it with third world poor immigration and breaking down barriers that separates the colored ghetto and rich “white” areas. White guardians of law and order see that they cannot fight against Salas because he has become too rich. (he stole millions of years) Same as white agents in the Matrix see they cannot fight against Jewish messiah Neo, because he has become too powerful. Same as white resistance fighters in real world see they cannot fight against the Rothschild Jewish messiah, because he became too rich. (and hence powerful because money equals power)
In the end Salas establishes a just social system (communism a.k.a New World Order), which is supposedly guided by rule “from each according to ability, to each according to needs”. This is the story sold to naive public, while in reality NWO is guided by the rule “from each according to ability, toward the Jews according to jewish needs”.
In conclusion i think that, In Time, like Matrix, is very ingenious promotion of the New world order, even though at first glance it seems to be fighting against it. This double meaning becomes clear only after several repeated viewings. I really must give credit to them, Jews are master mind manipulators. [end of my friend’s review].
When someone makes the claim that it’s the “BEST MOVIE EVER MADE”, it’s high time that I view it…lol
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