Realistic movies.

[Svengoolie 3]

Ok, this may shock some people here (boy do I hope so.  ) but I occasionally disagree with Bill Maher.

Lately he's had a bug up his butt about comic books and comic movies and how people need to "grow up" and watch more realistic movies. He cited avatar and xmen movies as unrealistic and movies like gone with the wind and the godfather as realistic movies.

Oh, really?

Are the happy, contented, well treated slaves and genial, kindly "massas" of Tara any less of a fantasy than beautiful blue alien catpeople?

Are the soft spoken, genteel, refined mafiosi of the corleone family any more unrealistic that super mutants with metal claws and laser eyes?

GWTW is so unrealistic a woman wrote an alternative look at slavery in the civil was called "The wind done gone" and was sued by people who hold the rights to GWTW despite the fact their grandparents weren't born when it was written.... The author hod to fight and pay tribute to get a more truthful book printed.

The godfather...Yeah, look at john gotti for a realistic mafiosi...

It came to me that the vast majority of movies were largely fantasy whether they admitted it or not. Jaws was a fantasy as the shark in the movie could not exist in real life or do what the movie monster did.

So then the flip side of that thought came automatically: What movies are actually realistic? What movies are more real than fake?

So I started thinking..


First off I think "In cold blood" was a very hardcore reality movie.

Also, "The longest day" was a movie that insisted on as much reality as possible in it. The things seen on the screen generally happened, and yes, in italy groups of nuns did calmly march into open combat zones and began providing medical aid to both sides. Yes, a german officer tried to fire a flare from on a bridge,  the flare hit an overhead girder and bounced back to the deck.

According to a marine in vietnam, full metal jacket was about as much reality about vietnam as a movie audience could take.

So, do you have any movies you consider to be very realistic? Let us know...

[indianasmith]

WE WERE SOLDIERS . . . . they actually hired General Hal Moore as the film's historical and technical consultant and when they were done he said that the movie pretty much showed the battle of Ia Drang Valley as it happened.

[claws]

[Alex]

The beach landing scene in Saving Private Ryan, where as soon as the landing ramp lowers, men are gunned down by machine gun fire. Many who escape death and are just wounded subsequently drown when their heavy equipment drags them beneath the waves.

Can't remember which number it is, but the Rambo film where a heavy machine gun is used and the bodies just explode into pulp when hit with that kind of weapon.

[Trevor]

The beach landing scene in Saving Private Ryan, where as soon as the landing ramp lowers, men are gunned down by machine gun fire. Many who escape death and are just wounded subsequently drown when their heavy equipment drags them beneath the waves.

Can't remember which number it is, but the Rambo film where a heavy machine gun is used and the bodies just explode into pulp when hit with that kind of weapon.

That's Rambo 4.

[RCMerchant]

COP KILLERS (1977)
Great movie!
The blood f/x were done by Rick Baker! 

http://youtu.be/3qV3m48zwH0

[Pacman000]

Would The Grapes of Wrath count?

Maybe Places in the Heart?

[The Burgomaster]

THE PANIC IN NEEDLE PARK (1971)

[Alex]

Trainspotting.

[Archivist]

I completely agree about fantasy vs realistic movies. Most movies are fantasy to the degree to which they portray things in an idealized or non-truthful manner. Gone With The Wind and The Godfather are realistic compared with superhero movies only at the level of setting and character abilities; most movies of every mainstream genre use the same kinds of plot devices, and often portray characters in an unrealistic manner.

I don't know the context of what Bill Maher said about superhero movies, but I assume his differentiator for fantasy is whether the setting can occur in real life; we're far less likely to face an interdimensional invasion by flying whales than an organized crime syndicate with a patriarch. Having said that, there's a line where a realistic but uncommon setting like the Moon Landing veers into fantasy, like in Apollo 18.

If we're talking about more realistic crime movies, many of the scenes and characters in the mafia films like Goodfellas and Casino were inspired by real life events.

[Svengoolie 3]

Well,  you are right,  we won't  likely get super powered peopel,  but still the portrayal  of slavery in GWTW is something modern audiences should laugh or sneer at.

Jftr this is what slafery really looked like.

[indianasmith]

Slavery was a multifaceted institution; its inherent nature immoral and evil but its practice varied widely.
Your picture is one example; there are others.

None of which changes the concept that one human being owning another is inherently wrong.

[Svengoolie 3]

Slavery was a multifaceted institution; its inherent nature immoral and evil but its practice varied widely.
Your picture is one example; there are others.

None of which changes the concept that one human being owning another is inherently wrong.

Well,  i'm glad you  feel that way.

[indianasmith]

My ancestors were slaveowners.  My grandfather was born in 1889; when he was a little boy our family's former slaves actually came to visit their former mistress every year at Thanksgiving and brought gifts for him and his siblings. She (his grandmother Elizabeth) died when he was 10 or 11; they quit coming after that.
I guess his grandparents must have treated their slaves better than most.

[Trevor]

Darfur (aka Attack On Darfur) is chillingly realistic, almost uncomfortably so. The film was made according to the so-called Zen film-making style where actors create their own characters and dialogue and the effects of this make it very, very real.

I'm not embarrassed to say that I ugly cried at the end of this but what is amazing is that Uwe Boll directed it!



David O'Hara - playing a very good guy for once - as the journalist Freddie.