conspiracy theories in movies... post them here

"Day of the Jackal" about an OAS attempt to assassinate President De Gaul was an excellent film. The remake, "Jackal", with Bruce Willis was just sad.
 
We should probably mention the one that's literally called "Conspiracy Theory"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_Theory_(film)

Conspiracy-theorist New York City taxi driver Jerry Fletcher continually expounds his ideas to his friend Alice Sutton, a lawyer at the Justice Department. She humors him because he once saved her from a mugging, but does not know he has been spying on her at home
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Frank Sinatra, Suddenly:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suddenly_(1954_film)

Suddenly is a 1954 American film noir[2] crime film directed by Lewis Allen with a screenplay written by Richard Sale.[3] The drama stars Frank Sinatra and Sterling Hayden, and features James Gleason and Nancy Gates, among others.[1]

The story concerns a small Californian town whose tranquility is shattered when the train of the President of the United States is scheduled to pass through the town, and a hired assassin and his henchmen take over a home as a perfect location to assassinate the president.

Frank Sinatra, Manchurian Candidate:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manchurian_Candidate_(1962_film)

The Manchurian Candidate is a 1962 American black and white suspense thriller film about the Cold War and sleeper agents. It was directed and produced by John Frankenheimer. The screenplay was written by George Axelrod, and was based on the 1959 Richard Condon novel The Manchurian Candidate. The film's leading actors are Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey and Janet Leigh, with Angela Lansbury, Henry Silva, and James Gregory among the performers cast in the supporting roles.[4]

Noirish, it is set in a somewhat different social setting to the film noirs of the late 1940s.[4] The plot centers on the Korean War veteran Raymond Shaw, the progeny of a prominent political family. Shaw was a prisoner of war during the conflict in Korea and while being held was brainwashed by his captors. After his discharge back into civilian life, he becomes an unwitting assassin involved in an international communist conspiracy. Officials from China and the Soviet Union employ Shaw as a sleeper agent in an attempt to subvert and take over the United States government.

The film was released in the United States on October 24, 1962, at the height of U.S.-Soviet hostility during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was well-received by critics and was nominated for two Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actress (Lansbury) and Best Editing. It was selected in 1994 for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

Warren Beatty, The Parallex View

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Parallax_Vie

The Parallax View is a 1974 American political thriller film directed and produced by Alan J. Pakula, and starring Warren Beatty, Hume Cronyn, William Daniels and Paula Prentiss. The film was adapted by David Giler, Lorenzo Semple Jr., with uncredited rewriting and completion by Robert Towne and Warren Beatty, from the 1970 same-name novel by Loren Singer. The story concerns a reporter's investigation into a secretive organization, the Parallax Corporation, whose primary focus is political assassination.

The Parallax View is the second installment of Pakula's Political Paranoia trilogy, along with Klute (1971) and All the President's Men (1976). In addition to being the only film in the trilogy not to be distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, The Parallax View is also the only one of the three not to be nominated for an Academy Award.

Gene Hackman, The Conversation:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conversation

The Conversation is a 1974 American mystery thriller film written, produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola and starring Gene Hackman with supporting roles by John Cazale, Allen Garfield, Cindy Williams, Frederic Forrest, Harrison Ford, Teri Garr and Robert Duvall.

The plot revolves around a surveillance expert and the moral dilemma he faces when his recordings reveal a potential murder. Coppola cited the 1966 film Blowup as a key influence. However, since the film was released to theaters just a few months before Richard Nixon resigned as President, he felt that audiences interpreted the film to be a reaction to the Watergate scandal.

The Conversation won the Grand Prix du Festival International du Film, the highest honor at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival. It was nominated for three Academy Awards in 1974 and lost Best Picture to The Godfather Part II, another Francis Ford Coppola film. In 1995, it was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

The Gene Hackman character was based on a local investigator, Hal Lipset:

http://articles.latimes.com/1997/dec/10/news/mn-62582
 
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Tomtomkent said:
Watch the real interviews, too.
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The movie was adapted from the stage play, if I recall correctly. The same actor plays Nixon on stage and in the movie. The script for both uses the original source material. There was a lot of hours of AV recording.
 
Pope130 said:
That's a very impressive list! I guess paranoia sells.

For TV though, I notice they missed one of my favorites: "Leverage".
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Wiki lists are great. Individuals posting their favorites are interesting as well.
 
Pope130 said:
"Day of the Jackal" about an OAS attempt to assassinate President De Gaul was an excellent film. The remake, "Jackal", with Bruce Willis was just sad.
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Agreed on the original movie, I haven't seen the Willis remake.

However, does this count as a "conspiracy theory" movie? The movie - and the original novel by Frederick Forsyth - starts out with an actual, real-life assassination attempt associated with the OAS. There's nothing CT-ish about the OAS attempting another time.
 
ddt said:
Agreed on the original movie, I haven't seen the Willis remake.

However, does this count as a "conspiracy theory" movie? The movie - and the original novel by Frederick Forsyth - starts out with an actual, real-life assassination attempt associated with the OAS. There's nothing CT-ish about the OAS attempting another time.
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Good point. Perhaps we need to differentiate between stories about conspiracies, and those about conspiracy theories.

For the latter, I would nominate "Brass Target" as an excellent example, which sets forth the idea that Genera Patton was assassinated. It includes a plausible motive, a small group involved, and no actions which obviously contradict the historical record.
 
I'd never seen this one until last night, State of Play

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Play_(film)

State of Play is a 2009 political thriller film, based on the six-part British television serial of the same name which first aired on BBC One in 2003. The plot of the six-hour serial was condensed to fit a two-hour film format, with the location changed to Washington, D.C. The film was directed by Kevin Macdonald from a screenplay written by Matthew Michael Carnahan, Tony Gilroy, Peter Morgan and Billy Ray.

The film tells of a journalist's (Russell Crowe) probe into the suspicious death of a congressman's (Ben Affleck) mistress. The supporting cast includes Rachel McAdams, Helen Mirren, Jason Bateman, Robin Wright Penn and Jeff Daniels. Macdonald said that State of Play is influenced by the films of the 1970s and explores the topical subject of privatization of American Homeland Security and to a minor extent journalistic independence, along with the relationship between politicians and the press. It was released in North America on April 17, 2009. The film received generally positive reviews.

XXXXX

I enjoyed the movie, but as with anything wrt "contractors" in the post 9/11 world it's 99 % Hollywood ******** and 1% factual.

Confession: I'll watch anything that has Helen Mirren in the cast.
 
Halcyon Dayz said:
Sydney Pollack's Three Days of the Condor (US-1975)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Days_of_the_Condor

"A bookish CIA researcher finds all his co-workers dead, and must outwit those responsible until he figures out who he can really trust."
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Innocent Fugitive On-the-Run list.

"Not to be confused with just any old chase thriller or something of that ilk, this is a list which is very specific in its requirements - a character must be framed for a crime (but is actually innocent), he must be forced to go on the run from the police, and lastly he must also figure out who the real criminals are and how to expose them." ~IMDb
 
Dark forces within the international high fashion industry plot to kill the Prime Minister of Malaysia because he wants to abolish child slave labour. A three-time, Male Model of the Year, gets in the way. Zoolander. Derek Zoolander. The movie was banned in Malaysia and Singapore. Zoolander is played by Ben Stiller. Ben Stiller is Jewish, apparently.
 
Pope130 said:
"Day of the Jackal" about an OAS attempt to assassinate President De Gaul was an excellent film. The remake, "Jackal", with Bruce Willis was just sad.
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To be fair, Day of the Jackal never claimed the main plot to be factual,unlike some of the other films we are discussing.(although the opening assisnation attempt on De Gaulle pretty much follows the actual attempt to the letter.) It had no political agenda, it was just trying to tell a entertaining story, at which it succeeds admirably. The remake is not worth wasting two hours of your time on.
 
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dellarte said:
"Was Jack the Ripper in fact a 60 foot sea serpent from Scotland?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlURaumkAA8 (2min 40sec)

Did the presenter take that job for a quick buck?
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I hope he took it because it was funny, literally the only thing from that movie I remember.

Dave, high ranking US officials conspire to replace the comatose president with a look-a-like.

Enemy of the state, dumb aciton, I don't remember exactly what the conspiracy was, same with Erasure. Arnie actually has several if you are pretty loose with what counts. Total Recall, Running Man, the sixth day...
 
ahhell said:
Enemy of the state, dumb aciton, I don't remember exactly what the conspiracy was,
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Actually, that one was pretty good example of the classic Conspiracy Theory meme of "Why do something simple which will solve the problem when we can go over the top Evil instead?"


Zavits bumps into an old college friend, labor lawyer Robert Clayton Dean, and slips the disc into his shopping bag without his knowledge. Shortly after, Zavits is killed when he collides with a fire truck on a stolen bicycle. When the NSA discovers that Dean might have the video, Reynolds's team raids his house and plants surveillance devices. They then disseminate false evidence to implicate Dean of working with the mob family of Paulie Pintero and having an affair with ex-girlfriend Rachel Banks. The subterfuge destroys Dean's life: he is dismissed from his job, his bank accounts are frozen, and his wife Carla throws him out of the house.
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They could have just walked up to him, flashed a badge, told him that the Bad Guy had slipped him some stolen classified material, and asked for the disk back, and the movie would have ended there. What law abiding citizen wouldn't cooperate with government agents in that situation?

But no, that's too easy, let's just break the law, ruin his life, and make absolutely sure that he'll take a much larger interest in what we're doing.....
 
From what I have read, the new Jurassic Park movie manages to hit a number of major Hollywood Conspiracy tropes.
 
ddt said:
However, does this count as a "conspiracy theory" movie? The movie - and the original novel by Frederick Forsyth - starts out with an actual, real-life assassination attempt associated with the OAS. There's nothing CT-ish about the OAS attempting another time.
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I once told Forsyth how much I admired how he kept me guessing what was real and what was fictional. I did not know that The Dogs of War was based on his detailed plans for a coup in Equatorial Guinea.
 
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