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THE
TOP 5
PROJECT

WEEK NO. 27
Main Page (including links to all past Top 5 weeks)

THE TOP 5 POLITICAL FILMS (redux):

view full results       see how points are awarded
Rank Film Points L #1
#1 Dr. Strangelove: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964) 61 14 10
#2 JFK (Oliver Stone, 1991) 33 9 3
#3 The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer, 1962) 31 8 3
#4 The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966) 27 9 1
#5 All the President's Men (Alan J. Pakula, 1976) 25 12 -
L=How many lists each film appears on             #1=How many number one votes each film recieves

In no real surprise, Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb took home top honours this week with a grand total of 61 points. Second place was where the real battle was, with 5 films vying for the silver medal. The race lasted down to the final moments of this week's Top 5 deadline (and past, thanks to my procrastination). In the end it was JFK that came up aces, with 33 points, barely beating out third place The Manchurian Candidate with 31 points. In fourth was The Battle of Algiers with 27 points, just edging out fifth place All the President's Men with 26 points. Just losing out (aka. coming in sixth) was Nashville, which garnered 24 points. Other runners-up included Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Wag the Dog, Fahrenheit 9/11, The Fog of War, Bowling for Columbine and that film that seems to show up on all greatest films lists, Citizen Kane. Overall, 82 different films were voted for (second highest total in Top 5 history) with the majority of them garnering just one vote per.

Individual lists:

Michael Wilmington
Film Critic, Chicago Tribune
Professor & Film Scholar, University of Chicago

  1. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)

  2. JFK (Oliver Stone, 1991)

  3. Man of Marble/Man of Iron (Andrzej Wajda, 1977/1980)

  4. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Frank Capra, 1939)

  5. All the President's Men (Alan J. Pakula, 1976)

Runners-Up: The Last Hurrah (John Ford, 1958), His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks, 1940), The Great McGinty (Preston Sturges, 1940), The Mattei Affair (Francesco Rosi, 1972), Z (Costa-Gavras, 1969).


Kent Jones
Editor-at-Large, Film Comment

  1. Not Reconciled (Jean-Marie Straub, 1965)

  2. Kuhle Wampe (Slatan Dudow, 1932)

  3. The Last Hurrah (John Ford, 1958)

  4. France/tour/detour/deux/enfants (Godard/Miéville, 1977)

  5. Shoah (Claude Lanzmann, 1985)



David Sterritt
Chairman, National Society of Film Critics

  1. The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer, 1962)

  2. JFK (Oliver Stone, 1991)

  3. The Power of Nighmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear (Adam Curtis, 2004)

  4. Fahrenheit 9/11 (Michael Moore, 2004)

  5. Election (Alexander Payne, 1999)



Christopher Null
Founder, Publisher & Editor-in-Chief, Filmcritic.com

Wow, a tough category this week. (I'm not including Dr. Strangelove because it's on all my other lists and I'm not sure it's primarily about "politics.")

  1. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941) - The iconic KANE poster sears into your mind... is there a more notorious-yet-engaging politician ever put to film than Charles Foster Kane?

  2. The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer, 1962) - Not just a great story about politics, but a great thriller all around. Probably the best work ever from both Sinatra and Lansbury, and the 2004 remake is severely underrated.

  3. Advise and Consent (Otto Preminger, 1962) - A searing indictment of party politics, which was seen as broken way back in 1962.

  4. All the President's Men (Alan J. Pakula, 1976) - Think they'll do a remake, now that Deep Throat outed himself?

  5. All the King's Men (Robert Rossen, 1949) - Broderick Crawford is no Orson Welles, but Sean Penn is no Broderick Crawford.



Erik Childress
Film Critic, efilmcritic.com

  1. JFK (Oliver Stone, 1991)

  2. Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (Frank Capra, 1939)

  3. The American President (Rob Reiner, 1995)

  4. Wag the Dog (Barry Levinson, 1997)

  5. Nixon (Oliver Stone, 1995)

Runners-Up: The Manchurian Candidate (1962) & Bob Roberts

Honorary Mentions To: All the President's Men & Young Mr Lincoln, although not necessarily about politics.


Rick Curnutte
Film Critic & Editor, The Film Journal

  1. Dr. Strangelove: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)

  2. Tanner '88 (Robert Altman, 1988)

  3. The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer, 1962)

  4. All the President's Men (Alan J. Pakula, 1976)

  5. Reds (Warren Beatty, 1981)



Dennis Schwartz
Film Critic Ozu's World Movie Reviews

  1. Duck Soup (Leo McCarey, 1933)

  2. Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942)

  3. Dr. Strangelove: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)

  4. The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1965)

  5. Woodstock (Michael Wadleigh, 1970)



J.E. Snavely
Law Enforcement Cinephile

  1. The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer, 1962)

  2. Dr. Strangelove: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)

  3. The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966)

  4. Bob Roberts (Tim Robbins, 1992)

  5. Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (Frank Capra, 1939)



Peter Sobczynski
Film Critic, eFilmCritic.com

  1. Nashville (Robert Altman, 1975)

  2. The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966)

  3. Reds (Warren Beatty, 1981)

  4. Duck Soup (Leo McCarey, 1933)

  5. JFK (Oliver Stone, 1991)



Eric Enders
Film Critic, Out There in the Dark

  1. JFK (Oliver Stone, 1991)

  2. Dr. Strangelove: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)

  3. All the President's Men (Alan J. Pakula, 1976)

  4. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Frank Capra, 1939)

  5. Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee, 1989)



Film Prophet
Film Critic, FilmProphet.com

  1. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Frank Capra, 1939)

  2. The Birth of a Nation (D.W. Griffith, 1915)

  3. The Great Dictator (Charles Chaplin, 1940)

  4. All the President's Men (Alan J. Pakula, 1976)

  5. Election (Alexander Payne, 1999)



Carter Liotta
Filmmaker

  1. JFK (Oliver Stone, 1991) - Oliver Stone's magnum opus in my mind. I don't believe the conspiracy theories, but Stone's consistent, trippy direction makes for phenom storytelling. Back, and to the right.

  2. The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara (Errol Morris, 2003) - Finally got around to seeing this. I never thought I could be so ensorceled by stock footage and Robert McNamara's talking head. I got the feeling that I was watching a brilliant, sometimes dubious mind at work in front of me. Watch how often McNamara breaks eye contact, searches for a word, and says "umm... or uhhh..." Philip Glass's soundtrack takes center stage, even to McNamara.

  3. Dr. Strangelove: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964) - New to the list, now that I re-visited it after a decade. "Hello, Dimitri? Fine..."

  4. Nixon (Oliver Stone, 1995) - Who can forget the close-ups of flowers opening, and the CIA chief's predatory cat eyes? Anthony Hopkins plays an absolutely perfect, tortured Richard Nixon - a man both repulsive and sympathetic at once. And Madeline Khan makes a cameo!

  5. Wag the Dog (Barry Levinson, 1997) - David Mamet's screenplay is somewhat forgettable on first viewing, but gets better and better each time it's seen, as the tiny nuances of the script and language are studied. "He's okay as long as he takes his pills." "What happens if he doesn't take his pills?" "He's not okay."

Carter's original list (from June 2005): 1. JFK 2. Nixon 3. The American President 4. Wag the Dog 5. Clear and Present Danger


Michael Parent
Film Student

  1. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964) - My all time personal fav. Being a huge fan of the Kubrick’s movies that’a the one I can see over and over. Sellers and Scott a hilarious and the whole idea is crazy as reality.

  2. Nashville (Robert Altman, 1975) - I think it’s one of the most original movies I’ve seen. I recently read some interviews with Altman at the time they released that movie and it was a real revolution in the way the movie was made: the script (most of it was improvisation), the music, the sound, etc.

  3. Wag the Dog (Barry Levinson, 1997) - Another all star cast in a movie that shows how politics works and much much more on its time than ever.

  4. JFK (Oliver Stone, 1991) - Well I’m not a big fan of Stone’s movies but this one is a real documentary-fiction that interested equally the historian and the cinephile in me.

  5. Paths of Glory (Stanley Kubrick, 1957) - I much rather put a movie per director in Top 5s but this one is too important to be missed out. It could hit spot #1. The strength of this movie takes the viewer at a higher level than any other film.



Adam Trovillion
Film Enthusiast

  1. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)

  2. Ivan the Terrible I and II (SErgei Eisenstein, 1944-46)

  3. Nashville (Robert Altman, 1975)

  4. Week-end (Jean-Luc Godard, 1967)

  5. I am Cuba (Mikhail Kalatozov, 1964)



Jeff Cardarelli
Film Enthusiast

  1. The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966)

  2. Bowling for Columbine (Michael Moore, 2002)

  3. Hotel Rwanda (Terry George, 2004)

  4. The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer, 1962)

  5. All the President's Men (Alan J. Pakula, 1976)



Matt Severson
Film Enthusiast

  1. The War Game (Peter Watkins, 1965)

  2. Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925)

  3. The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1965)

  4. Titticut Follies (Frederick Wiseman, 1967)

  5. The Thin Blue Line (Errol Morris, 1988)



Kevin Cassidy
Film Enthusiast

  1. The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963)

  2. The Great Man Votes (Garson Kanin, 1939)

  3. Burnt by the Sun (Nikita Mikhalkov, 1994)

  4. The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1965)

  5. Advise and Consent (Otto Preminger, 1962)



Billy Wilson
Film Enthusiast

  1. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)

  2. Fahrenheit 9/11 (Michael Moore, 2004)

  3. JFK (Oliver Stone, 1991)

  4. Bobby (Emilio Estevez, 2006)

  5. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Frank Capra, 1939)



Mathew Viola
Film Fanatic

  1. Election (Alexander Payne, 1999) - One of the best films of the 90s, Election is a sharply written, hilarious, wonderfully irreverent satire. Among a great cast of characters (Broderick as the esteemed teacher of Morals and Ethics who secretly watches porn, commits adultery, and rigs the election; Klein as the likeably dumb jock who would have won the election had he just voted for himself; Campbell as the atheist, lesbian anarchist whose speech promoting voter apathy receives a standing ovation) Witherspoon stands out as Tracy Flick, one of the truly memorable characters of recent cinema. Hard working, ambitious, and goal-oriented, she seems like the ideal student/citizen, but underneath her all-American, go-getter attitude lies a vindictive, conniving little egomaniac who'll do anything to get what she wants and destroy anyone who stands in her way - just the qualities needed to rise to high political office! Using her cute-as-a-button looks, chipper demeanor, and school girlish attire to disguise the conniving, malicious, power-hungry monster within, Tracy Flick is a delicious creation, and Reese savors every moment of this juicy role.

  2. The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer, 1962) - Drawing on current fears of McCarthyism, communist infiltration, and psychological brainwashing/conditioning, The Manchurian Candidate is both a ripping good yarn and a savvy political thriller. Interestingly, the film doesn't endorse one ideology or party over another, but rather condemns fanaticism, both Right and Left, while reserving its sympathies for the victims of such extremism. Poor Raymond Shaw is one such victim, a man pulled from left and right until he's stretched to the snapping point. Finally reduced to a mass of twitches, by the end Shaw can barely tell the difference between the two extremes, and neither can we, which is Frankenheimer's point. That's why his elimination of both the McCarthyesque demagogue and the Communist mole, respectively representing the far Right and far Left, carries as much symbolic weight as it does emotional power.

  3. The Parallax View (Alan J. Pakula, 1974) - The Parallax View gives me the cold creeps. For one thing, there's something chillingly believable about the Parallax Corporation, which recruits angry, violence-prone social misfits to be used as patsies for political assassinations. Plus, the eerie visuals create a genuinely menacing atmosphere; even the buildings, like the Seattle Space Needle, take on sinister, otherworldly auras. Pakula often places investigative reporter Beatty in huge, wide-open spaces or next to massive architectural structures, as if to suggest that he's up against something far too big for him to handle alone; at other times, Pakula seems to be boxing him in by visually blocking out the edges of the screen and placing him in small, cramped spaces, which emphasizes the trap Beatty has stepped in. Either way Beatty seems doomed, destined for a far different fate than the reporters in Pakula's All the President's Men. All in all, this tingling political thriller taps deeply into our paranoid fears, confirming that behind every assassination there's a vast conspiracy.

  4. Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925) - With editing as revolutionary as the cause it was put in the service of, Eisenstein's classic is easily one of the most influential films of all time. His ideology may not have stood the test of time, but his montage techniques certainly have, and we don't need De Palma's homage in The Untouchables to realize that the spirit of Eisenstein survives in every juxtaposition of image and expansion of time through editing, or that the depiction of the Odessa steps massacre is the greatest montage sequence ever committed to celluloid.

  5. Point of Order (Emile de Antonio, 1964) - This documentary of the televised Army-McCarthy hearings exposes McCarthy's paranoia over communist infiltration, culminating in a memorable confrontation between McCarthy and shrewd lawyer Joseph Welch, who famously asks McCarthy, "have you no decency?". In Good Night, and Good Luck, we see a fictionalized Edward R. Murrow take on McCarthy, but this is the real thing, and anyone interested in seeing the once fearsome McCarthy reduced to a prattling fool should check out this fascinating historical document.



Doug Pratt
DVD Critic, DVDLaser.com

  1. The Godfather: Part II (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)

  2. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)

  3. Ikiru (Akira Kurosawa, 1952)

  4. All the President's Men (Alan J. Pakula, 1976)

  5. Z (Costa-Gavras, 1969)



Jay Antani
Film Critic

This here's a real slippery slope of a topic. After all, isn't everything in life political? But I appreciate the wide berth you're giving re: how we define this topic. Anyway, here are five movies that I love that I think have political implications, in the conventional sense, i.e. deal with the political fate of a society at large...

  1. The Killing Fields (Roland Joffe, 1984)

  2. All the President's Men (Alan J. Pakula, 1976)

  3. The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer, 1962)

  4. The Weather Underground (Sam Green/Bill Siegel, 2002)

  5. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (Kim Bartley/Donnacha O'Briain, 2003)

Honorables: JFK (Stone, 1991), Nixon (Stone, 1995), Primary (Drew, 1960), The Fog of War (Morris, 2003), Fahrenheit 9/11 (Moore, 2004), The Ground Truth (Foulkrod, 2006), Primary Colors (Nichols, 1998), Secret Honor (Altman, 1984)


Jeff Vorndam
Film Enthusiast

  1. The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer, 1962)

  2. The Conformist (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1970)

  3. The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966)

  4. Death by Hanging (Nagisa Oshima, 1968)

  5. Blind Chance (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1987)



Jason Mlinarsik
Film Enthusiast

  1. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)

  2. JFK (Oliver Stone, 1991)

  3. Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1965)

  4. All the President's Men (Alan J. Pakula, 1976)

  5. Z (Costa-Gavras, 1969)



Lucas McNelly
Film Enthusiast

  1. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)

  2. Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1969)

  3. Farenheit 9/11 (Michael Moore, 2004)

  4. All the President's Men (Alan Pakula, 1976)

  5. M*A*S*H (Robert Altman, 1970)



Ricardo Luis Alvarez
Film Enthusiast

  1. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)

  2. Nashville (Robert Altman, 1975)

  3. Bananas (Woody Allen, 1971)

  4. The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Phillip Kaufman, 1988)

  5. The Blue Kite (Tian Zhuangzhuang, 1993)



Kevyn Knox
Film Critic, Essayist + Historian

When compiling this list, I looked back at when I first did the Top 5 Political Films list (back in July 2005), and decided that absolutely nothing has changed in my opinion of the top 5 political films (with the minor exception of juxtaposing numbers 4 and 5), so I hand them forth here just as they were then.

  1. I am Cuba (Mikhail Kalatozov, 1964)

  2. Nashville (Robert Altman, 1975)

  3. Week-end (Jean-Luc Godard, 1967)

  4. Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966)

  5. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)

Runners-Up (in no particular order): Battleship Potemkin, October, Strike and Ivan the Terrible (all Eisenstein), M*A*S*H and Buffalo Bill and the Indians (both Altman), Reds (Beatty), Cabaret (Fosse), Z (Costa-Gavras), All the President's Men (Pakula), Bowling for Columbine (Moore), Fog of War and The Thin Blue Line (both Morris), Paths of Glory (Kubrick), Duck Soup (McCarey), Birth of a Nation and Intolerance (both Griffith), The Blue Kite (Zhuangzhuang), Bob Roberts (Robbins), Election (Payne), The Great Dictator (Chaplin) and Citizen Kane (Welles) and about two dozen more that shall go nameless because my typing fingers are going numb.

One final note about my omission of a certain film from this list: I once tried watching The Manchurian Candidate and fell asleep on my sofa. Thinking it was just because It was late and I was tired, I watched it again the following day, once I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. During that viewing I realized why I fell asleep. I never did finish the damned thing. I am still not sure why I did not like it. It was well written, directed and acted, so I should have enjoyed it, but alas...

Plus, the original lists:


Albert H. Muth
Cinephile & 5-time Oscar Contest Champion

  1. Ivan the Terrible I & II

  2. Nashville

  3. The Gospel According to St. Matthew

  4. Le Passion de Jeanne d'Arc

  5. Reds


Sherry Messimer
Cinephile and hater of politics (see below)

This was a difficult category for me, since I hate politics! I think that the most poignant view of politics is: how politics shape society, and how society molds the individual (and vice versa). Political structure shows most clearly what it means for man to be a social animal, and the responsibilities and problems associated with this condition.

Here's my best shot:

Strike (Eisenstein, 1924)
Fog of War (Morris, 2003)
The Bicycle Thief (De Sica, 1948)
In the Name of the Father (Sheridan, 1993)
To Live (Yimou, 1994)

Alexandra Hartman
Poet, Publisher and Web Designer

  1. Wag the Dog - I realized while making this list that the political films that have impacted me the most are those that connect to the insane what-the-fuck?? crap that's gone down since George Bush became president, and I've probably thought of Wag the Dog a million times since 9/11. I'm all about impact, so Wag the Dog goes at the top of my list.

  2. Hotel Rwanda - Devastating. Impossible to believe anything that horrible could happen while the US sat back and debated semantics.

  3. Fahrenheit 9/11 - I don't think Michael Moore is the genius everyone wants him to be, but Fahrenheit 9/11 opened eyes. Asked questions. Pissed people off.

  4. The Quiet American - A fine, powerful film with amazing performances from Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser. I think it's about futility and resignation. And politics.

  5. Life of Brian - "We're not the People's Front of Judea!! We're the Judean People's Front!! The only people we hate more than the Romans are the People's Front of Judea!!"

Bart
The Unknown Cinephile


  1. Dr. Strangelove (or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb)

  2. The Corporation

  3. Fahrenheit 9/11

  4. Paths of Glory

  5. Johhny Got His Gun



Alan Hochberg
Medical Resercher & Film Fan (obviously)

1. Dr. Strangelove (1964)
2. Fail-Safe (1964) The thriller, non-funny version of the political issues which Strangelove satirized. This one gave me nightmares all through adolescence.
3. The Candidate (1972) Robert Redford is wonderful in this one, even more relevant in today's spin-doctor age than when it was made.
4. Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) Completely over-the-top and biased, but great fun.
5. Red (1994) Interesting political and social overtones in Kieslowski's personal and beautiful film.


Julia Tilley
Poet & Performance Artist

Here are my top 5:

  1. Mars Attacks - My all time favorite movie, exploding alien heads and yodeling! Yet another example of know-it-all politicians getting it wrong and the arrogance of Americans.

  2. Silkwood - Cher and Streep, need I say more.

  3. All the President’s Men - The best mystery of the 21st century, blown. I liked not knowing.

  4. Bowling for Columbine - K-Mart anyone?

  5. Gandhi

I don’t really celebrate the 4th as it really wasn’t freedom for all.

Ron Tilley
Minister


1. The Fog of War
2. Malcolm X
3. The Decalogue
4. All the President’s Men
5. M*A*S*H




Jon Gaige
Bohemian Artist


  1. Bowling for Columbine

  2. The Mouse that Roared

  3. Wag the Dog

  4. Mel Brooks' History of the World - Part I

  5. Bananas



*points are given as follows: for numbered lists, first place recieves 5 points, second place recieves 4, third place 3, fourth place 2 and fifth place gets 1 point; for unumbered lists, each film will recieve 3 points; total points are then tallied up and a comprehensive Top 5 list is created


The Next Topic is:
Name The Top 5 Experimental
and/or Avant-garde Films

e-mail me at kevynknox@thecinematheque.com with your picks for week #28,
no later than 6pm on Sunday, November 26, 2006.

HOME * REVIEWS * AWARDS & PREDICTIONS * LISTS * MIDTOWN * FILM FESTIVALS * ODDS & ENDS * LINKS * CONTACT