Not that long ago, before Hollywood studios fell comatose from superhero syndrome and acute sequel-itis, imaginative film directors would sometimes bake uncomfortable truths about power, privilege and profit into their wide-screen entertainments.
Some of these films reimagined the recent past based on knowledge of the present. Some extrapolated from the present into a fictional future, or an alternate world. But all of them pointed to some kind of truth, whether current, historic or mythic.
Scenes from The Big Short, The Bourne Legacy, Margin Call, The International, The Matrix, Fight Club, Enemy of the State, JFK, They Live, Network, Chinatown, Three Days of the Condor, Seven Days in May and The Great Dictator.
The Big Short, 2015
In Adam MacKay’s entertaining rendering of the 2008 credit crisis, Margo Robbie explains the toxic mortgages at the centre of it all, while relaxing with champagne in a bubble bath.
The Bourne Legacy, 2012
The reference to dead lab workers in the genomics lab is pure fiction, but the idea of using viruses as delivery systems for gene therapy has gone from box office thriller to drug profit killer.
Margin Call, 2011
J.C. Chandor’s examination of the 2008 credit crisis took a police procedural angle, slowly but effectively unspooling the financial shenanigans that led to the near-suicide of the western casino economy. When the toxic mortgages (the ones Margo Robbie explained above ) are exposed as ticking bombs at the film’s close, there’s a frantic fire sale on Wall Street, aiming to unload them fast onto other professional grifters.
The International, 2009
This high-level whodunnit centered on a fictional merchant bank based in Luxembourg called the IBBC, a global outpost of organized crime and money laundering echoing the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) scandal of the 1980s. In this scene, a European arms maker and Italian prime ministerial candidate meets with an Interpol investigator and US district attorney (Clive Owen and Noami Watts). He patiently explains, the way you would to two intelligent children, how a transaction involving the bank and several nations is not what they think. (Trigger alert! It involves slavery.)
Shooter, 2007
Former singer and drummer for The Band, Levon Helm, owns this scene in a film plot constructed around the making of a patsy to an assassination.
The Matrix, 1999
In the Wachowski brothers’ clever and kinetic rendering of the simulation hypothesis, the mysterious Morpheus explains to neophyte Neo what The Matrix is all about. (Trigger alert! It also involves slavery.)
Fight Club, 1996
In the mid-nineties, David Fincher’s bruising psychological thriller fictionally spoke to a generation of disaffected and underemployed men the way Jordan Peterson factually does now to a newer generation.
Enemy of The State, 1992
Most moviegoers mistook this Will Smith vehicle as a conspiratorial confection without so much as a light sprinkling of fact. In fact, the surveillance state was up and running years before its release. The real-world revelations embedded in this high-octane chase flick now seem almost quaint.
JFK, 1991
Donald Sutherland’s Deep Throat character in Oliver Stone’s JFK was based on Col. Fletcher Prouty, Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President John F. Kennedy. He later wrote of his convenient temporary relocation overseas at the time of JFK’s Texas visit, and his belief the assassination was a deep state op.
They Live, 1988
The lumpenpole main character in They Live dons special sunglasses that allow him to see the subliminal programming in the environment, along with the nonhumans moving camouflaged among the hypnotized humans. John Carpenter’s wildly uneven film was distinguished not just by a clever premise but by stilted dialogue and possibly the silliest fight scene in cinematic history.
Network, 1976
Paddy Chayevsky’s brilliant script and a top-notch cast (William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Robert Duvall, et.al ) elevated director Sidney Lumet’s dark critique of broadcast entertainment to a masterpiece. Of the movies listed here it may be the most prescient, nailing reality television decades before The Apprentice was a twinkle in Donald Trump’s eye. In the film’s penultimate scene, Nick Beatty thunderously outlines how the world really works to a gaping and grokking Peter Finch.
Three Days of the Condor, 1975
“How do you know they’ll print it?” Exactly.
Chinatown, 1974
In disgraced director Roman Polanski’s film-noir mystery, Jack Nicholson’s private dick character, Jake Gittes, is violently bounced around like a loose bolt in a wheel well. He’s rattled even further after the big reveal from a client (Faye Dunaway again). Here, the client’s connection, played by the legendary film director Jack Huston, tells a battered Gittes what’s even more important than money.
Seven Days in May, 1964
During his tenure in office, President John F. Kennedy Jr. became progressively unnerved by unchecked military power and right-wing posturing in the US. In the early sixties, Twilight Zone writer Rod Serling wrote a script based on the novel Seven Days in May, about a political/military cabal’s planned takeover of the United States government in response to the president's negotiation of a disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union. The script didn’t just make it into production; it made it into JFK’s hands. The president offered director John Frankenheimer the White House as a film location, and this unusual executive decision was likely noted by JFK’s enemies in the Pentagon and the permanent intelligence establishment.
The Great Dictator, 1940
In the final scene of Charlie Chaplin’s black comedy, his reluctant dictator confesses to a streak of humanity. At the time of filming many Europeans believed their civilization was coming to an end at the hands of a real-world dictator. It very likely would have, had not Hitler made the insane decision to invade Russia. As I argued last week, this is how authoritarian regimes collapse, through hubris and overreach.
.
Aah. It was this article that got me wondering what is black stone.
https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/everything-you-need-to-know-about-blackrock-the-company-that-owns-the-world/
So this morning I read something about Blackrock. Doesn’t matter what as whatever they do it’s evil. So I went on a scan/search around. We all know how they swallowed up State Street and are major investors in Vanguard, Apple, Twitter, Tesla and so on and so on.
So Blackrock is the creator of and owns the ESG assessment ngo that all businesses must play lip service to. That is all except China. Of course. And Russia. So it’s not like they want to destroy the west or anything. It’s for Gaia.
Now Blackrock is run by Fink. Fink created the collateralised vehicles for those fake Subprime mortgages. And when they went belly up the Govn’t brought in—- Fink to straighten it up. Kind of like asking the wolf what happened to the missing flock of sheep.
And in 2019 they did it again to bring in Fink to sort out the brewing libor banking collapse by destroying the separation we all mostly think still exists between investment/commercial and domestic/savings/loans/cheque accounts. That way when they need to bail out they can bail into your cash. But they did this other slimy thing called going direct. Where your tax money goes directly into the hedge funds and bank’s coffers to cover their losses and that is used to buy their own shares. Catherine Austin Fitts has been going into details ever since.
So interestingly, Blackrock is an off-shoot of Black stone. And what is the BLACK STONE?
Well it’s actually some weird pagan black stone set in black concrete embedded into the wall of Mecca. Since pagan times it’s believed that by touching it or kissing it (or just point at it in modern time) then that person is cleansed of sin. So while all those going to Mecca go circling anti clockwise around a big black cube a’ la’ 2001 A Space Oddity, and in the UN Mediation room, they point to Blackstone.
I know spurious connections but it kind of fits. Hedge Funds. And that includes Soros/Taube’s Rockefeller investments Quantum Fund. They’re pagan. Evil. And working for the dark side. No news there then.