‘Dishonest’ Films

I hate this ******* thread!

 

Huh. I read the book decades ago, but didn't get around to watching the film until last year. I thought the film stayed pretty close to what was in the book, and I did not perceive it as an anti-capitol-punishment polemic at all. The character of Perry came across as pathetic, not in any way sympathetic, in my view. And it is made clear in both the book and film that Perry did all the killing. I don't recall any soft-pedaling of that in either.

 

Take that back.

 

'Walk the Line' popped into my head too when I saw this thread. The film's depiction of Cash's first wife Vivienne as a shrew got right up my left nostril. I believe his daughters were also less than impressed.

 

The thing about "dishonest" films are that so many people think when they watch a movie they are seeing an accurate telling of what happened. They get their history from cinema.

 

agree, but what was the point... to be an Ahole director?

 

should you stay or should you go? : ) I like it...it's different.

 

My most dishonest film would have to be RED DAWN, an odd '80s take on John Birch level Cold War paranoia and standard issue teen sports drama. This movie is so bad, so ridiculous and so dishonest I actually kind of love it like a prodigal child.

In this film the United States is occupied all the way down to the Colorado township level by Soviet-led and equipped Central and South American and Caribbean troops. Basically what has been recently slurred as the "caravan," this time scaled up one-hundred thousand fold and packing Soviet armor.

The mind reels at how this could possibly be accomplished by a cooperative collection of poorer countries. How many tens of millions of men would have to be secretly conscripted, trained, supplied and transported to occupy a country as large as the USA, to a degree that each single-high school town/county has its own garrison and prison camp? How did the world's largest invasion force sneak through the length of Mexico undetected and assemble at the border?

The hysterical premise is a thin rationale to have a collection of twenty-something TEEN BEAT hunks pose with guns as patriotic underdogs, instead of a terrifying vision of future school shooters.

The right-wing paranoia is so by-the-numbers that the baddies use the court house's gun registration records to round up all the local ordinance -- take THAT, gun control nuts! I assume a scene about water fluoridation was left on the cutting floor.

What makes the movies so incredibly dishonest, though, is that it takes the people who'd been pushed around by history, including the USA, and casts them as the villians. Meanwhile the USA is depicted as plucky underdogs resorting to guerilla warfare waged by minors, 16 MAGAZINE Joan and John and Jacob of Arcs who lead a resistance that tops the 1980 Olympic men's hockey team gold medal for Greatest Upset Ever. USA! USA! USA!

 

Indeed! ; ) good catch.

 

Except it was based on John Milius's imagination, not "real" events.

 

I would say a movie that posits a world in which the USA is the victim of third-world despots in the Western Hemisphere -- as opposed to sponsoring them -- merits the label "dishonest."

 

Way too much of this, well along with the internet, twitter, facebook and news who get's all their info from the above.

Oh almost forgot about late night comedy.

 

I don't disagree with your comments about the film, but the thread starter intended this to be a discussion about films which intentionally depict real-life people or events in an inaccurate way. A story that is 100% fiction would not fit that criteria (and yeah, I know you're not the first person in the thread to cite a fictional film).

 

Lee's relatives complained, correctly, that Lee said the exact opposite about fighting Ali, that it wouldn't be a match due to their size difference: "His fist is as big as my head."

I thought the scene was Tarantino slyly reinforcing the Hollywood anecdote that an established actor is on the way out when his tough guy iconography is used to raise a younger star's profile by casting him as the loser in a confrontation with the new guy.

 

fair enough...

 

One could say the same about Top Gun.

 

Yes and what would you say was the Maysles point of view?

 

The English Patient is a movie adaptation of a Great NOVEL by Michael Ondaatje.

It is not a history book.

 

There's a lot of mentions of Tarantino in this thread. Yes, his movies are "dishonest" in that he often takes historical topics, which he then twists and alters into something different. But he never pretends to strive for historical accuracy. The topic is just a means to an end and the end is to have a great movie and most of the time he succeeds brilliantly. The movie I had most difficulties with in this respect was "Inglourious Basterds", simply because where I am from, the holocaust is still a very sensitive subject, something you shouldn't make lighthearted fun of and definitely not make up stories about it. So I found it initially hard to watch. But this is Tarantino and how he makes movies and in no way was he being disrespectful. So once I got over my own issues with the movie, I started liking it a lot more (although it will never make my top QT movies). I also think Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is great and I love how again he twists historical facts to serve the plot without being disrespectful at all. It's a fine line and he is a master at it.

 

Gimme Shelter
Let it Be

Both come up short in telling a true story.

The former obscures the Stones (and The Dead’s) responsibility for what went down.

The latter ineptly fails to tell any story at all. A mess of a movie.

 

No I’m not that naive or simple-minded. I can understand crunching timelines, but blatant rewrites of history that defame the reputations of key players (ie Vivienne Cash, as per my earlier example) are unnecessary when the real story is so much more interesting!

 

That's so true! The Patriot has a scene where there are innocent people burned in a church by the British, now there is no historical evidence of this. In fact it's based on what the Nazi's did to the French in World War II so not only is it factually incorrect it suggests a president for what the Nazi's did and reduces the shock of their act. Now a conspiracist may think this was done by a German director for a reason?
I have heard people talking about Braveheart as though it were historical fact! Whilst Elizabeth Ewan a Professor of History and Scottish Studies says it "almost totally sacrifices historical accuracy for epic adventure"!
In fact Hollywood seems to love British bashing.... There is no evidence that Third Class passengers on the Titanic were forcibly held below the decks and prevented from reaching the lifeboats.

 

You think the first burning of people in a church and in a war in history was in WWII and, of course, done exclusively by germans ? lol

What do you think the Vikings did ??

 

The point is the British Army during the American War of Independence most assuredly did not burn people to death in a church, There is absolutely no basis whatsoever in the historical record to suggest this happens. The nearest we have is that the Nazis might have done it in WWII (I'm not even sure there is definitive proof this even happened) and if it was done I'm pretty sure it wasn't the regular German Army doing it and it wasn't standard operating procedure...
Of course with the Vikings it might have been different...

 

Oradour-sur-Glane massacre - Wikipedia