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Author Topic: Top 5 Movies About Evil  (Read 2900 times)

zarodinu

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Top 5 Movies About Evil
« on: September 18, 2009, 12:22:14 AM »
I don't want to define evil, couldn't if I wanted to.  Maybe evil is some super villain in a volcano fortress, or maybe its the intangible and unstoppable biblical force of Cormac McCarthy novels, or perhaps its just a weed that grows in weak, ignorant, and apathetic people.   However you define it, which films do you think are best representations of it?

5.  The Heart of a Dog - Evil that is inherent in all of us, and the dangers of pretending its not there.  After the communist revolution in Russia, a bourgeois professor does a Frankenstein experiment turning a stray dog into a man.  The former dog now a man, becomes a cat exterminator and a passionate communist.  The professor quickly learns that science can turn a dog into a man, but it cannot turn an animal into a human being.        

4.  Princess Mononoke - Evil as myopia, all the characters are so warped up in their personal schemes and narrow goals, that they fail to see the bigger picture, picture hurting themselves and others in the process.

3.  Peppermint Candy - The rot of a nation personified in the fall of one man.  Filmed backwards Memento style, it gives a reverse account of the fall of man, from depravity to earlier innocence.  Interestingly enough alot more fascinating than the classic innocence to depravity story.  

2.  Mr. Death - A brilliant documentary by Errol Morris (Fog of War) which NOBODY saw.  Its about the trials and tribulations of an engineer who makes execution equipment for a living.  Never has the banality of evil been better portrayed.

1.  Andrei Rublev - Evil as despair, a complete an utter loss of faith in fallen humanity.  Hope and faith, both in man and in God being the antidotes.
      
« Last Edit: September 18, 2009, 12:31:47 AM by zarodinu »
I’ve lied to men who wear belts. I’ve lied to men who wear suspenders. But I’d never be so stupid as to lie to a man who wears both a belt and suspenders.

Junior

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Re: Top 5 Movies About Evil
« Reply #1 on: September 18, 2009, 12:23:13 AM »
A Touch of Evil, perhaps.

There Will Be Blood, also.
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skjerva

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Re: Top 5 Movies About Evil
« Reply #2 on: September 18, 2009, 12:33:50 AM »
Capitalism: A Love Story
Sicko
Fahrenheit 9/11
Bowling for Columbine
Roger & Me


 ;D
But I wish the public could, in the midst of its pleasures, see how blatantly it is being spoon-fed, and ask for slightly better dreams. 
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flieger

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Re: Top 5 Movies About Evil
« Reply #3 on: September 18, 2009, 12:47:54 AM »
Shoah
Nuit et brouillard

M
Benny's Video


zarodinu

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Re: Top 5 Movies About Evil
« Reply #4 on: September 18, 2009, 01:25:14 AM »
Capitalism: A Love Story
Sicko
Fahrenheit 9/11
Bowling for Columbine
Roger & Me


 ;D

Socialism, Obamacare, gun control, unions...  I approve your list.   ;D ;D ;D

PS:  Your list is a sausage fest director wise, add Triumph of the Will.  

M
Benny's Video

M is a great choice, totally forgot about that one.  Never heard of Benny's Video, but since its by Michael Haneke I will have to look it up.  Actually, now that I think of it, all his films fit nicely on this list.  Good choice.
« Last Edit: September 18, 2009, 01:29:24 AM by zarodinu »
I’ve lied to men who wear belts. I’ve lied to men who wear suspenders. But I’d never be so stupid as to lie to a man who wears both a belt and suspenders.

skjerva

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Re: Top 5 Movies About Evil
« Reply #5 on: September 18, 2009, 02:20:08 AM »
yeah, that list was for you  ;D
But I wish the public could, in the midst of its pleasures, see how blatantly it is being spoon-fed, and ask for slightly better dreams. 
                        - Iris Barry from "The Public's Pleasure" (1926)

flieger

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Re: Top 5 Movies About Evil
« Reply #6 on: September 18, 2009, 02:35:38 AM »
The Third Man

Hotel Rwanda

... and, erm, The Omen etc

1SO

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Re: Top 5 Movies About Evil
« Reply #7 on: September 18, 2009, 05:41:02 AM »
Ones that come to mind and speak to me when think of the heart of evil on film...

1. Night of The Hunter
2. Blue Velvet
3. Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom
4. I Stand Alone
5. The Omen

Emiliana

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Re: Top 5 Movies About Evil
« Reply #8 on: September 18, 2009, 06:27:58 AM »
Shadow of a Doubt could fit. How do you know where evil lurks? The most charming people you meet could have the most diturbing secrets and/or history.

Bill Thompson

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Re: Top 5 Movies About Evil
« Reply #9 on: September 18, 2009, 09:17:25 AM »
This is just off the top of my head, and in no real order,

Eastern Promises
--Is Nikolai who we find out he is at the end or is he the man he portrayed throughout the whole film? This ambiguity makes him the most terrifying kind of evil, the kind that you can't really define and the fact that you can't really peg or look at his actions in any sort of "knowing" light makes him all the more evil.

Children Of Men
--What's more evil than humanity falling apart at the pieces, how about killing each other to try and get the one thing that could put the world back together again. Once that baby hits the screen you get to see first hand the type of evil that humanity is really capable of.

Hotaru No Haka (Grave Of The Fireflies)
--There are two forms of evil on display in this picture, the evil of war and the evil of immaturity. The war parts are bad enough, but once you realize that the fate of the children could have been avoided simply by Setsuko taking one on the chin and admitting he was wrong to his aunt you realize how evil immaturity can make the world around you.

Det Sjunde Inseglet (The Seventh Seal)
--Because death is given a voice and seen as an apparition this movie drives home how random and utterly evil death truly is. Everyone will die, that is the one undeniable truth to our lives, but what Seal puts forth is how random and arbitrary death is. It is evil in that sense, maybe even the worst kind of evil, because nothing we do matters, one day death will come for us and there isn't a thing we can do about it.

El Laberinto Del Fauno (Pan's Labyrinth)
--I'm going a little more meta for this one. Depending on how you interpret this film it is either evil or a lot of meanness topped off with a happy ending. I'm not in the happy camp as I firmly believe it is all in the little girl's head. While I admit that is a brilliant move on del Toro's part it also creates a situation where the movie itself is evil. I'm not speaking of themes or allegories here, but the emotional reaction that the ending I have interpreted leaves with you. It is evil for a film to rip away all hope like that, to depress you so thoroughly in the end, to leave you knowing that you have just watched something fantastical and magical yet utterly evil in what it is willing to do with your hopes for a fairy tale ending.

 

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