Author Topic: Newsmax's Top 50 Movies Celebrating American Values  (Read 3778 times)

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Offline TomSea

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Newsmax's Top 50 Movies Celebrating American Values
« on: August 03, 2018, 04:34:34 pm »
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Newsmax's Top 50 Movies Celebrating American Values

On a battlefield, in outer space, on the frontier, at hearth and home, anywhere and everywhere, films have portrayed American self-determination and self-reliance, belief in God, religious freedom, democratic traditions, patriotism, strong families, and respect for forebears, personal bravery and loyalty, and justice and forgiveness.

Newsmax selected these films as the Top 50 Movies Celebrating American Values to show what’s good about our nation and our way of life.

Read Newsmax: Newsmax's Top 50 Movies Celebrating American Values | Newsmax.com
https://www.newsmax.com/bestlists/movies-celebrating-american-values/2018/07/30/id/874445/?oRef=idealmedia

Take it or leave it, a hard-to-define genre I'd say. Sure, a few movies jump out and fit the description.  A few movies I wasn't too familiar with, some sound good.
« Last Edit: August 03, 2018, 04:37:10 pm by TomSea »

Offline Applewood

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Re: Newsmax's Top 50 Movies Celebrating American Values
« Reply #1 on: August 05, 2018, 06:23:58 am »
Haven't seen all these films, but I'd agree with Newsmax as to the ones I've seen. 

Offline AmericanaPrime

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Re: Newsmax's Top 50 Movies Celebrating American Values
« Reply #2 on: August 06, 2018, 02:31:02 am »
Yeah honestly I can’t argue with much of that, and it’s refreshingly devoid of a lot of SJW nonsense.
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Re: Newsmax's Top 50 Movies Celebrating American Values
« Reply #3 on: August 06, 2018, 02:34:18 pm »
12 Angry Men is so good--watched it over and over.  The remake with Jack Lemmon and George C. Scott is great, too.

Father of the Bride and My Big Fat Greek Wedding are great women's movies.  A lot of the westerns I haven't seen, since it's not my favorite genre.

But I'm gonna be honest and say that It's A Wonderful Life is unbearably cheesy.

Offline Applewood

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Re: Newsmax's Top 50 Movies Celebrating American Values
« Reply #4 on: August 07, 2018, 08:28:31 am »
12 Angry Men is so good--watched it over and over.  The remake with Jack Lemmon and George C. Scott is great, too.

Father of the Bride and My Big Fat Greek Wedding are great women's movies.  A lot of the westerns I haven't seen, since it's not my favorite genre.

But I'm gonna be honest and say that It's A Wonderful Life is unbearably cheesy.

I used to like It's a Wonderful Life  until TV stations started to play it 24 hours a day around the holidays.  Some movies I can watch again and again. Not It's a Wonderful Life. 

What surprised me  was how many relatively new films made it to the list.  I didn't think Hollywood made films with wholesome values anymore.  Some of these films were not familiar to me, so maybe they weren't made in Hollywood or made by the usual Hollywood suspects. 

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Re: Newsmax's Top 50 Movies Celebrating American Values
« Reply #5 on: August 07, 2018, 05:33:43 pm »
I'd replace "Wonderful life for "A Christmas Story"  An all American memoir of growing up in the midwest in the 1940s that follows 9-year-old Ralphie Parker in his quest to get a genuine Red Ryder BB gun under the tree for Christmas. Ralphie pleads his case before his mother, his teacher and even Santa Claus himself, at Higbee's Department Store. The consistent response: "You'll shoot your eye out!" All the elements from the beloved motion picture are here, including the family's temperamental exploding furnace; Scut Farkas, the school bully; the boys' experiment with a wet tongue on a cold lamppost; the Little Orphan Annie decoder pin; Ralphie's father winning a lamp shaped like a woman's leg in a net stocking; Ralphie's fantasy scenarios and more.
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Offline goatprairie

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Re: Newsmax's Top 50 Movies Celebrating American Values
« Reply #6 on: August 07, 2018, 07:45:39 pm »
I've never actually seen any movie or tv show that semi-accurately depicts the lives of average Americans.
Not the so-called goody-goody schmaltz from the fifties and sixties to what passes for modern families today on tv and in the movies.
But to be fair, I rarely watch any modern network tv shows or movies.
Hollyweird invariably gets everything wrong....then and now.

Offline catfish1957

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Re: Newsmax's Top 50 Movies Celebrating American Values
« Reply #7 on: August 07, 2018, 08:12:05 pm »
I've never actually seen any movie or tv show that semi-accurately depicts the lives of average Americans.
Not the so-called goody-goody schmaltz from the fifties and sixties to what passes for modern families today on tv and in the movies.
But to be fair, I rarely watch any modern network tv shows or movies.
Hollyweird invariably gets everything wrong....then and now.

Forrest Gump?   Ooooookay.......... :cool:
I display the Confederate Battle Flag in honor of my great great great grandfathers who spilled blood at Wilson's Creek and Shiloh.  5 others served in the WBTS with honor too.

Offline goatprairie

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Re: Newsmax's Top 50 Movies Celebrating American Values
« Reply #8 on: August 08, 2018, 03:08:55 am »
Forrest Gump?   Ooooookay.......... :cool:
You think FG depicted real Americans?  How many people like Forrest Gump do you know? FG is on my list of movies of which I want  my money back. A total waste of time.

Offline catfish1957

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Re: Newsmax's Top 50 Movies Celebrating American Values
« Reply #9 on: August 08, 2018, 04:36:18 am »
You think FG depicted real Americans?  How many people like Forrest Gump do you know? FG is on my list of movies of which I want  my money back. A total waste of time.

The "okaaayyyy"....infered sarcasm.  Sorry you missed it.
I display the Confederate Battle Flag in honor of my great great great grandfathers who spilled blood at Wilson's Creek and Shiloh.  5 others served in the WBTS with honor too.

Offline Frank Cannon

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Re: Newsmax's Top 50 Movies Celebrating American Values
« Reply #10 on: August 08, 2018, 04:44:34 am »
Any list not including this is total garbage.....


Offline EasyAce

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Re: Newsmax's Top 50 Movies Celebrating American Values
« Reply #11 on: August 08, 2018, 07:50:20 am »
The only problem with including Pride of the Yankees on the list is that the film was just a little too distorted, especially the depiction of Lou Gehrig's famous farewell at Yankee Stadium, but elsewhere, too. Who says Hollywood got it right in the olden days before those pesky lefties hit town and yanked everything inside out? Either the fact checkers were on strike or Sam Goldwyn (par for the course?) decided not to let the actualities get in the way of rushing a tearjerker out. Consider, if you will:

* Lou Gehrig never hit two home runs in any World Series game in which Babe Ruth also happened to hit one out.

* Gehrig and his wife, Eleanor, didn't meet early in his career, never mind marry after his first World Series---they met after he was well-established with the Yankees, in 1931 . . . and married two years later.

* Gehrig didn't take himself out of the Yankee lineup before heading to the plate for a game at-bat to shock the crowd at Detroit's Briggs Stadium. The crowd got their shock before the game, when the stadium announcer told them Gehrig was out of the lineup. Gehrig actually made his decision that his time was up the night before, even going to Yankee manager Joe McCarthy's hotel room to give him the news. At the actual game, Gehrig walked the lineup card out to the plate umpire and then the word whipped around the park like wildfire. (On Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day at Yankee Stadium, where Gehrig would give his spontaneous "Luckiest Man" speech, McCarthy cracked while addressing the crowd and then addressed Gehrig directly: Lou, what else can I say except that it was a sad day in the life of everybody who knew you when you came into my hotel room that day in Detroit and told me you were quitting as a ballplayer because you felt yourself a hindrance to the team. My God, man, you were never that.)

* Gehrig's doctors didn't give him the grave diagnosis a doctor is shown to give him straight in the film. (Gary Cooper as Gehrig: Doc, I'm a man who believes in knowing his batting average.. Doctor: Lou---it's strike three.) Certainly not after his wife promised the doctor Gehrig would never know that she knew he was dying. If anything, we know now that the Mayo Brothers gave him an unrealistically optimistic prognosis---at his wife's insistence. (Plus, it was somewhat common practise in those years not to tell patients that they were suffering cancers or other degenrative diseases.) We also know now that Gehrig wrote a letter to his wife while he underwent the six days' testing at the Mayo Clinic that delivered the diagnosis, and he was quite direct about the news: The bad news is lateral sclerosis, in our language chronic infantile paralysis. There isn't any cure... there are very few of these cases. It is probably caused by some germ . . . Never heard of transmitting it to mates . . .  There is a 50–50 chance of keeping me as I am. I may need a cane in 10 or 15 years. Playing [baseball again] is out of the question. (Gehrig became a New York City parole official---moving to the Bronx from his New Rochelle home to satisfy the residency requirement---in 1940; he held the job and performed it out of the public eye until he resigned a month before his death, since his body no longer allowed him to do even that job.)

*Gehrig's wife and his mother are depicted as semi-friendly rivals with more distaste than real animosity in the film. In real life, they could barely stand each other, and their relationship even went as low as to challenge each other with accusations involving whom between them might actually have been responsible for his illness.

* This is Lou Gehrig's actual farewell talk at Yankee Stadium---which he gave off-the-cuff:

Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth.

I have been in ballparks for seventeen years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans.

Look at these grand men. Which of you wouldn't consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one day? Sure, I'm lucky.

Who wouldn't consider it an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert? Also, the builder of baseball's greatest empire, Ed Barrow? To have spent six years with that wonderful little fellow, Miller Huggins? Then to have spent the next nine years with that outstanding leader, that smart student of psychology, the best manager in baseball today, Joe McCarthy? Sure, I'm lucky.

When the New York Giants, a team you would give your right arm to beat, and vice versa, sends you a gift - that's something. When everybody down to the groundskeepers and those boys in white coats remember you with trophies — that's something.

When you have a wonderful mother-in-law who takes sides with you in squabbles with her own daughter — that's something. When you have a father and a mother who work all their lives so you can have an education and build your body — it's a blessing. When you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you dreamed existed - that's the finest I know.

So I close in saying that I might have been given a bad break, but I've got an awful lot to live for. Thank you.


And, the film's version:

I have been walking onto ball fields for sixteen years, and I've never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans.

I have had the great honor to have played with these great veteran ballplayers on my left - Murderers' Row, our championship team of 1927. I have had the further honor of living with and playing with these men on my right - the Bronx Bombers, the Yankees of today.

I have been given fame and undeserved praise by the boys up there behind the wire in the press box, my friends, the sportswriters.

I have worked under the two greatest managers of all time, Miller Huggins and Joe McCarthy.

I have a mother and father who fought to give me health and a solid background in my youth.

I have a wife, a companion for life, who has shown me more courage than I ever knew.

People all say that I've had a bad break. But today . . . today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth.


Numerous publications published versions of the actual speech, and it could have been given properly without once diluting the effect old Sam Goldwyn wanted for the big climax. Goldwyn made great entertainment out of a mishmosh of factual errors, which is about par for the course. Not letting the facts get in the way of a juicy piece of filmmaking didn't begin and hardly ended with Robert Redford's distortion of the 1959 quiz show scandals in Quiz Show.

For the record---if I had to choose the best baseball film of all time, it'd be a dead heat between Bang the Drum Slowly, Field of Dreams, and 42.

« Last Edit: August 08, 2018, 07:52:21 am by EasyAce »


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Offline Applewood

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Re: Newsmax's Top 50 Movies Celebrating American Values
« Reply #12 on: August 08, 2018, 10:14:19 am »
@EasyAce

The problem with biopics is that Hollywood thinks it always has to "embellish" and outright lie for dramatic effect.  The powers that be think the real story would just be too boring.  I really wish they would just stick to the truth.  For most heroes and public figures, the true story would be interesting enough as it is. 

Offline goatprairie

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Re: Newsmax's Top 50 Movies Celebrating American Values
« Reply #13 on: August 08, 2018, 04:44:04 pm »
@EasyAce

The problem with biopics is that Hollywood thinks it always has to "embellish" and outright lie for dramatic effect.  The powers that be think the real story would just be too boring.  I really wish they would just stick to the truth.  For most heroes and public figures, the true story would be interesting enough as it is.
Plus, you have numerous quasi-Al Pacinos in Hollyweird who feel they have to overemote to be a "real" actor.

Offline EasyAce

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Re: Newsmax's Top 50 Movies Celebrating American Values
« Reply #14 on: August 08, 2018, 04:50:32 pm »
@EasyAce

The problem with biopics is that Hollywood thinks it always has to "embellish" and outright lie for dramatic effect.  The powers that be think the real story would just be too boring.
That sounds like Sam Goldwyn to a T.

I really wish they would just stick to the truth.  For most heroes and public figures, the true story would be interesting enough as it is.
@Applewood
If you've ever read Luckiest Man, maybe the best biography of the man available, you'd conclude that would be the case with Lou Gehrig. It might also have been the case for Preston Tucker decades later---he the subject of Tucker: The Man and His Dream, which likewise played a little too footloose with the facts (it only begins with the fact that the real Preston Tucker never actually met Howard Hughes, who likewise had reason to stick it to his political nemesis Homer Ferguson as well as he stuck it to Maine senator Owen Brewster at the fabled Senate hearings previously) about a genuinely fascinating man.


"The question of who is right is a small one, indeed, beside the question of what is right."---Albert Jay Nock.

Fake news---news you don't like or don't want to hear.

Offline EasyAce

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Re: Newsmax's Top 50 Movies Celebrating American Values
« Reply #15 on: August 08, 2018, 04:52:16 pm »
Plus, you have numerous quasi-Al Pacinos in Hollyweird who feel they have to overemote to be a "real" actor.
You had those in so-called "classic" Hollywood, too---the overacting in so many classic films is stomach curdling. Al Pacino was a great actor once because he didn't over-act in his younger years. The longer his career went, the stronger even he felt the urge to over-act.


"The question of who is right is a small one, indeed, beside the question of what is right."---Albert Jay Nock.

Fake news---news you don't like or don't want to hear.

Offline ABX

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Re: Newsmax's Top 50 Movies Celebrating American Values
« Reply #16 on: August 08, 2018, 05:03:09 pm »
One good one that isn't mentioned here but deserves a spot for many reasons is Lorenzo's Oil.

I probably would scratch half the classic Westerns off that list, very few come close to accurately representing the old west and some have created a distorted view.

Instead, add in Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee for one that is supposedly very accurate view of Native American Life. Also, one not well known is The Culpepper Cattle Co.

Offline EasyAce

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Re: Newsmax's Top 50 Movies Celebrating American Values
« Reply #17 on: August 08, 2018, 06:15:00 pm »
One good one that isn't mentioned here but deserves a spot for many reasons is Lorenzo's Oil.

I probably would scratch half the classic Westerns off that list, very few come close to accurately representing the old west and some have created a distorted view.

Instead, add in Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee for one that is supposedly very accurate view of Native American Life. Also, one not well known is The Culpepper Cattle Co.
@AbaraXas
I'll throw a sleeper into that mix: Last Train from Gun Hill, with Anthony Quinn and Kirk Douglas. Cast as longtime friends, Quinn's wealthy rancher ran afoul of Douglas's marshal when Douglas's Native American wife was raped and murdered and their son escapes the ambush on one attacker's horse---a horse saddled with an elaborate saddle belonging to the rancher, whose son co-committed the crime, but whom the rancher refuses to turn over, setting up the marshal against Gun Hill, the town the rancher dominates. Future Addams Family co-star Carolyn Jones plays the rancher's lover who decides to help the marshal, instead. Apparently, Last Train from Gun Hill was co-released with Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (with Douglas and Burt Lancaster), but Last Train is the far superior film.


"The question of who is right is a small one, indeed, beside the question of what is right."---Albert Jay Nock.

Fake news---news you don't like or don't want to hear.

Offline GrouchoTex

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Re: Newsmax's Top 50 Movies Celebrating American Values
« Reply #18 on: August 08, 2018, 06:22:54 pm »
Not a bad list at all.

Offline Applewood

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Re: Newsmax's Top 50 Movies Celebrating American Values
« Reply #19 on: August 08, 2018, 06:36:39 pm »
I'd replace "Wonderful life for "A Christmas Story"  An all American memoir of growing up in the midwest in the 1940s that follows 9-year-old Ralphie Parker in his quest to get a genuine Red Ryder BB gun under the tree for Christmas. Ralphie pleads his case before his mother, his teacher and even Santa Claus himself, at Higbee's Department Store. The consistent response: "You'll shoot your eye out!" All the elements from the beloved motion picture are here, including the family's temperamental exploding furnace; Scut Farkas, the school bully; the boys' experiment with a wet tongue on a cold lamppost; the Little Orphan Annie decoder pin; Ralphie's father winning a lamp shaped like a woman's leg in a net stocking; Ralphie's fantasy scenarios and more.

I love A Christmas Story. Now that's another movie that's played over and over again around the holidays, but one I can watch again and again.

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Re: Newsmax's Top 50 Movies Celebrating American Values
« Reply #20 on: August 08, 2018, 11:19:29 pm »
I'd replace "Wonderful life for "A Christmas Story"  An all American memoir of growing up in the midwest in the 1940s that follows 9-year-old Ralphie Parker in his quest to get a genuine Red Ryder BB gun under the tree for Christmas. Ralphie pleads his case before his mother, his teacher and even Santa Claus himself, at Higbee's Department Store. The consistent response: "You'll shoot your eye out!" All the elements from the beloved motion picture are here, including the family's temperamental exploding furnace; Scut Farkas, the school bully; the boys' experiment with a wet tongue on a cold lamppost; the Little Orphan Annie decoder pin; Ralphie's father winning a lamp shaped like a woman's leg in a net stocking; Ralphie's fantasy scenarios and more.

@The Ghost

Every year I think this will be the one I'm finally tired of watching that movie.  Hasn't happened yet.

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Re: Newsmax's Top 50 Movies Celebrating American Values
« Reply #21 on: August 08, 2018, 11:24:46 pm »
@The Ghost

Every year I think this will be the one I'm finally tired of watching that movie.  Hasn't happened yet.

I know, right!  Never gets old!  Even Ted Turner couldn't wear it out when for years he ran it every christmas day all day and all night...24 hours.
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Re: Newsmax's Top 50 Movies Celebrating American Values
« Reply #22 on: August 08, 2018, 11:26:53 pm »
I know, right!  Never gets old!  Even Ted Turner couldn't wear it out when for years he ran it every christmas day all day and all night...24 hours.

Lol

Darren McGavin alone is worth it.  I love his stream of cursing that never really forms a word.

Offline TomSea

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Re: Newsmax's Top 50 Movies Celebrating American Values
« Reply #23 on: August 09, 2018, 12:13:08 am »
No "Gone With The Wind", I don't know.  Maybe I'd put it in the list. Nor "Grapes Of Wrath" which is kind of a commie film. All of the ones stated have an uplifting message imho, even the ones, the war ones mainly, that have some violence.
« Last Edit: August 09, 2018, 12:15:45 am by TomSea »