What is the best anti-corporate power film ever made?

What do you think is the best film that is critical of the corporate elite? I'm asking among all genres, so it could include either dramatic works or documentaries.

My pick would by 1987's Wall Street starring Michael Douglas (whom won the Best Actor Academy Award for his performance in that film). It's the perfect critique of the mindest all too common in modern corporate America. Douglas' performance as the greedy Gordon Gekko was flawless. The film shows and ultimately criticizes these greedy minsets, such as the memorable "greed is good," a socially Darwinian view that only the wealthy deserve any place in our society, that ethics do not mean anything to many of the power elite, that profits are more important than people, and that life should be spent doing nothing but acquiring material possessions.

What would you pick?

But Michael Moore is good too.

'Wall Street' glorified corporate greed

No one could have put it as well as Ned Beatty! So ahead of it's time, it was...

not sure if that's my favorite -- just jumps to mind.

Howard Beale: I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad.

Howard Beale: You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, Goddamnit! My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell,
'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!' I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=8581952




Always FRESH.

"Because you're on television, dummy."

Ned Beatty does an amazing job. It's time to see that again.

Can't believe I forgot that one.

Fred MacMurray was brilliant as Mr. Sheldrake, the corporate sleaze.

I suppose you can add "It's A Wonderful Life," with the evil Mr. Potter, and "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," where corporate power corrupts a senator. "Meet John Doe" is another one, with Gary Cooper.

Hands down.

This telling documentary should be mandatory viewing for any future student of economics or business. No other movie I can think of spells out so plainly, the toxic nature of the corporate model.

:thumbsup:

Best would be hard to pick, but it belongs on the list.

I'm gonna record it. it's my favorite book (so far).

Burt Lancaster's finest role. Circa, 1968

Also see, "The Ice Storm", about the madness of corporate families in suburban Connecticut, circa 1974. Made in the 1990s, Kevin Klein, Sogourney Weaver.

Both are extremely accurate pyschological profiles of what corporate life in the New York suburbs was like. I'll attest to that - these films may as well have been written about my childhood.

I love the simple elegance of the plot, as well....

Your childhood was spent inside a Cheever/Updike story!?

Just down the road from where I was brought up.

Both the movie and the short story. I don't know how anti-corporate it is though. It's a little more personal than that.

Roger & Me...there lots of good ones

Grapes of Wrath, Matewan, Metropolis, Norma Rae, 9 to 5, Modern Times, Salt of the Earth, Silkwood, Strike, Take This Job and Shove It, Trading Places, Working Girl.

I watched it for the first time last weekend.

The movie seemed analogous to current society on several different levels, gun violence, cynicism, cold blooded greed, manipulation of the justice system, Big Brother;corporate wiretapping, sociology and psychology; all the fun stuff and great acting to boot by a cast of fine stars.

Metropolis (film)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Metropolis is a 1927 silent science fiction film directed by Fritz Lang and written by Lang and Thea von Harbou. Lang and von Harbou, who were married, wrote the screenplay in 1924, and published a novelization in 1926, before the film was released. Produced in Germany during a stable period of the Weimar Republic, Metropolis is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and examines a common science fiction theme of the day: the social crisis between workers and owners in capitalism. The film stars Alfred Abel as the leader of the city, Gustav Fröhlich as his son, who tries to mediate between the elite caste and the workers, Brigitte Helm as both the pure-at-heart worker Maria and the debased robot version of her, and Rudolf Klein-Rogge as the mad scientist who creates the robot.

More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolis_(film)



Modern Times (film)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Modern Times is a 1936 comedy film by Charlie Chaplin that has his iconic Little Tramp character struggling to survive in the modern, industrialized world. The film is a comment on the desperate employment and fiscal conditions many people faced during the Great Depression, conditions created, in Chaplin's view, by the efficiencies of modern industrialization. The movie stars Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Henry Bergman, Stanley Sandford and Chester Conklin, and was written and directed by Chaplin.

Modern Times was deemed "culturally significant" by the Library of Congress in 1989, and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Times_(film)




Take This Job and Shove It (film)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Take This Job and Shove It is a 1981 film, starring Robert Hays, Barbara Hershey, Art Carney, and David Keith, and directed by Gus Trikonis.

The film was named after a popular Country Western song, Take This Job and Shove It, which was written by David Allan Coe and sung by Johnny Paycheck, both men had minor roles in the film.

More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Take_This_Job_and_Shove_It_(film)



Nine to Five
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nine to Five, also known as 9 to 5, is a 1980 American comedy movie starring Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Dolly Parton, and Dabney Coleman.

The film concerns three working women living out their fantasy of getting even with, and their successful overthrow of, the company's autocratic, "sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot" boss.

Nine to Five was an across-the-board hit, grossing USD$103,290,500 in the U.S. alone. The film became the highest-grossing comedy of 1980. As a star vehicle for singer Parton, it launched her permanently into mainstream popular culture. Although a television series based on the film was less successful, a musical version of the film (also titled 9 to 5), with new songs written by Parton, opened on Broadway on April 30, 2009.

This film is number 47 on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies".

More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_to_Five



RoboCop
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

RoboCop is a 1987 cyberpunk themed film directed by Paul Verhoeven. Set in a crime-ridden Detroit, Michigan in the near future, RoboCop centers on a police officer who is brutally murdered and subsequently re-created as a super-human cyborg known as "RoboCop". RoboCop explores larger themes regarding the media, gentrification and human nature in addition to being an action film. It has spawned merchandise, two sequels, four television series, video games and two comic book adaptations.

More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RoboCop



Gung Ho (1986)
When a Japanese car company buys an American plant, the American liason must mediate the clash of work attitudes between the foreign management and native labor.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091159/


Soylent Green
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Soylent Green is a 1973 dystopian science fiction movie depicting a future in which overpopulation leads to depleted resources, which in turn leads to widespread unemployment and poverty. Real fruit, vegetables and meat are rare, expensive commodities, and much of the population survives on processed food rations, including "soylent green" wafers.

The film overlays the science fiction and police procedural genres as it depicts the efforts of New York City police detective Robert Thorn (Charlton Heston) and elderly police researcher Sol Roth (Edward G. Robinson) to investigate the brutal murder of a wealthy businessman named William R. Simonson (Joseph Cotten). Thorn and Roth uncover clues which suggest that it is more than simply a bungled burglary.

The film, which is loosely based upon the 1966 science fiction novel Make Room! Make Room!, by Harry Harrison, won the Nebula Award for Best Dramatic Presentation and the Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film in 1973.

More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green



The Ugly Little Boy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"The Ugly Little Boy" is a science fiction short story by Isaac Asimov. The story first appeared in the September 1958 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction under the title "Lastborn", and was reprinted under its current title in the 1959 collection Nine Tomorrows. The story deals with a Homo neanderthalensis child which is brought to the future by means of time travel. Robert Silverberg later expanded it into a novel with the same title published in 1992 (also published as Child of Time in the UK).

Asimov said that this was his second favourite of his own stories. Like most of his works the story centres on science fiction and other fiction based on futuristic science.

<snip>

In 1977, "The Ugly Little Boy" was made into a 26-minute telefilm in Canada, directed by and starring Barry Morse. London-born actress Kate Reid played the role of Nurse Fellowes. The film is noteworthy for its fidelity to the short story, as well as the pathos between Timmy and Nurse Fellowes which has gained the film praise from both fans and reviewers. It remains the best adaptation of Asimov's short stories to date.

More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ugly_Little_Boy



WALL-E
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

WALL-E (promoted with an interpunct as WALL•E) is a 2008 computer-animated science fiction film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and directed by Andrew Stanton. It follows the story of a robot named WALL-E who is designed to clean up a waste-covered Earth far in the future. He eventually falls in love with another robot named EVE, and follows her into outer space on an adventure that changes the destiny of both his kind and humanity.

After directing Finding Nemo, Stanton felt Pixar had created believable simulations of underwater physics and was willing to direct a film largely set in space. Most of the characters do not have actual human voices, but instead communicate with body language and robotic sounds, designed by Ben Burtt, that resemble voices. In addition, it is the first animated feature by Pixar to have segments featuring live-action characters.

Walt Disney Pictures released it in the United States and Canada on June 27, 2008. The film grossed $23.1 million on its opening day, and $63 million during its opening weekend in 3,992 theaters, ranking #1 at the box office. This ranks as the fourth highest-grossing opening weekend for a Pixar film as of May 31, 2009. Following Pixar tradition, WALL-E was paired with a short film, Presto, for its theatrical release. WALL-E has been met with universal acclaim among critics, scoring an approval rating of 96% on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. It grossed $534 million worldwide, won the 2008 Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film, and the 2008 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, and was nominated for five other Academy Awards.

More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WALL-E


Prophecy (1979)
June 15, 1979
Screen: Frankenheimer's 'Prophecy':Mercury, Lukewarm

"PROPHECY" is a very small horror movie that pretends to be as big as all outdoors. It's about the dreadful effects of a mercury compound that has been used for 20 years at a lumber mill on the ecology of rural Maine. Raccoons lose their minds and attack tourists with the frenzy of rug peddlers. Tadpoles attain the size of salmon, and salmon the size of dolphin.

More:
http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9905EED61539E732A25756C1A9609C946890D6CF



The China Syndrome
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The China Syndrome is a 1979 thriller film which tells the story of a reporter and cameraman who discover safety coverups at a nuclear power plant. It stars Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon, Michael Douglas, Scott Brady, James Hampton, Peter Donat, Richard Herd, and Wilford Brimley.

More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Syndrome


The Running Man (film)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Running Man is a 1987 film adaptation loosely based on the Stephen King novel The Running Man. Directed by Paul Michael Glaser, the film stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, María Conchita Alonso, Jesse Ventura, Jim Brown, and Richard Dawson.

The film, set in a dystopic year 2019, is about a television show called Running Man, where convicted criminal "runners" must escape death at the hands of professional killers. The film differed significantly from the novel; it recalls some scenes from a French film with a similar theme, called Le Prix du Danger, about a television show where participants must escape killers live on television.

More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Running_Man_(film)







That's just what I could come up with off the top of my head for now.

Thanks for that! :hi:

I got my 7 year-old daughter to sit through and enjoy the whole thing.

from that list

But they did mock corporations so well as to be counted in my choices:

Putney Swope
The President's Analyst

and, believe it or not, Robocop I was pretty good, too

None of them were intended to be taken seriously, but they all made the same point, and forcefully.

Two of my most favoritest movies.

Putney says the Bormann 6 girl is got to have soul!

Great documentary about Enron.

:hi:

The last scene where the corporate headquarters are blowing up makes you think what we would do if everyone's credit cards very suddenly became totally useless. It would be a whole new world overnight.

2nd rule.

it's the one that contains his interview with Phil Knight of Nike. In one memorable moment, Michael Moore accuses Knight of using 12-year-olds in sweatshops, and Knight interrupts and says, "They're 14."

Oh, well!

I've always taken the first Terminator movie to be an allegory of corporate control run amok. Also, there is the movie The Verdict, with Paul Newman, and a lean and mean script by David Mamet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Live

Not the greatest - but recommended.

Just for the line...

"I have come here to chew bubble gum and kick ass, and I'm all out of bubble gum"

Robocop is good enough for me.

For some reason, I love that film even though I'm not a particular fan of Julia Roberts.

William Powell, Carole Lombaed 1936

Both the 1978 original and the 2004 remake.

"The corporation satisfies your every need; the only thing it asks in return is that you do not interfere with management decisions."

I assume you mean the original with James Caan, not the recent remake.

Yeah, the original.

:thumbsup:

My first choice is already listed, and I can't believe it hasn't made the list yet!

Great question!

of 'em. The performances were off the chart (IMHO); also Network comes to mind, The Corporation, The Smartest Guys in the Room, Roger and Me.... I'm only mentioning the ones I've seen and/or remember seeing. I haven't ever seen "Wall Street" but Gordon Gekko and the "Greed is Good" line encompasses what "Corporations" believe. Money over human life....it's sicking.

Mocks the corporatism (and especially the corporate media) of today, and the eventual future result of how the bastards are deliberately "dumbing down" the entire fucking country.

If you haven't seen it, rent it.

Great script, great cast.

Supporting role by Willie Nelson.

With no doubt.