Defies Iran's theocracy in a variety of ways
this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2026
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Here's a list of tons of leftist movies.
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It's by Panahi, it's pretty good. He's an Iranian dissident that has been forbidden from making films in Iran, yet he keeps making movies in Iran (often about how much he doesn't like the Islamic Republic and its attitude towards women and freedom of expression), gets thrown in prison, everybody in the West goes "hey when you get out next, you should leave Iran," and he declines and continues to live in Iran and make movies because he loves Iran. His movie about his daughter dressing as a man to sneak into a football match because she's a football freak is fantastic. No Bears is probably my favorite of his. He opposes the Islamic Republic but under no circumstances is he a freak like the deranged Iranian diaspora who wants Iran to get bombed; during the Twelve Days War he supported Iran and condemned Israel, so I imagine he's doing the same now.
I have no doubt in this clear and non-negotiable point and I have stated my position explicitly and will say it again: an attack on my homeland, Iran, is in no way acceptable. Israel has violated Iran and should be tried in an international trial as a war aggressor.
Panahi is important because you can show his movies to people, and the overwhelming impression they get of Iran is that it is a "normal" place if that makes sense. It's not some foreign strange land with zealots and crazies and robes flowing and shit, it's just a normal place where people gotta pay bills and grumble about their government and go to parties.
Do we really have to pretend a theocracy is good and everyone living there loves it just because they're bombing israel?
They oppose the great satan but they still suck.
The worst movie I've seen this year was called 'Not Without Hope' and it was about a bunch of obnoxious rich footballers getting stuck in the ocean by their own stupidness and also it's about Christianity or something.
I have only heard of three of these movies (Avatar: Fire & Ash, Superman, K-Pop Demon Hunters), of which I have only seen one (the latter) 
I am begging you to watch sinners, it is one of my favorite movies ever
Sinners is a goood mobie
In looking it up I realized that Michael B Jordan isn't the most famous basketball player ever, but an actor. Clarifies some of that discourse around the tourrettes N word situation. I really thought the basketball player was involved
Sinners, One Battle After Another, Marty Supreme, and No Other Choice are the ones on this list that I'd say are must watches
Feel like I have to watch Uncut Gems before Marty Supreme because I've heard them compared to each other a lot.
FWIW, Uncut Gems is my favorite of the Safdie Good Time/Uncut Gems/Marty Supreme trio of movies.
Benny wasn't involved in Marty Supreme as far as I know. I think it was Josh's solo project after the split. Uncut Gems is fantastic.
Eh. They're directed by the same directors. Other than that they're unrelated. That's like saying you have to watch Star Wars to understand Indiana Jones.
Everyone here should watch Eddington because it's a hilarious snapshot of the BLM early pandemic moment and makes chuds look so stupid but also shits on liberals and faux left grifters
K-Pop Demon Hunters came out like 3 years ago and you cannot convince me otherwise
Unlimited Shaheds on the political compass
one battle after another #3
there's no way this person isn't weird about black people
It's a good movie. We don't have to do the online contrarian discourse thing of pretending something isn't good because of something else also being good or it not being good because a lot of people like it.
We don't have to do the online contrarian discourse thing of pretending something isn't good because of something else also being good or it not being good because a lot of people like it.
yeah i'm not doing that, it's a very well made film that is also super weird about it's black female lead. thanks for assuming that i can't think though, that's nice. do you think i'm mad on behalf of sinners or something?
do you think i'm mad on behalf of sinners or something?
Yes
you are entirely and wholly incorrect, i do not care about "awards season" or rating films against each other that aren't even remotely thematically related.
:ok:
Do we really have to pretend a theocracy is good and everyone living there loves it just because they're bombing israel?
why would i care about your opinion on film when your thoughts on real human lives has the nuance of a ham sandwich?
edit: i realize this might not be clear from my comment because you can't read, but no one thinks that the theocracy of Iran is a good and just system of governance. we all understand that Iranians can't effectively organize any sort of worker's revolution while being bombed by amerikkka and the zionist entity.
Im not saying or expecting iranians to overthrow their government at the current moment. Im saying that it's perfectly understandable why a director who's spent the last couple of decades in and out of the iranian prison system for making films the state disapproves of would make a film about the negative after effects of the iranian prison system on a person, and it doesn't make him right wing or pro-israel or a monarchist or something for disliking his government over it. To quote the man himself: "An attack on my homeland, Iran, is in no way acceptable. Israel has violated Iran and should be tried in an international court as a war aggressor."
The person I was responding to treated it as suspicious that he disliked his country being a theocracy.
Edit: also this is just generally an excessively combative way to respond to me saying i disagree with your OBAA opinion
someone signaled that they weren't sure how to respond to the quote "defies iran's theocracy in a variety of ways" and your response to that was a strawman characterizing that as "pretend[ing] a theocracy is good and everyone living there loves it just because they're bombing israel?" we're not in Iran. don't hide behind an Iranian filmmaker's nuanced opinions on his home country for your own unnuanced hyperbole. you deserve to be combated.
you want to disagree about my obaa opinion and have me care about that instead of disregarding your nonsense? write an actual defense of the film's treatment of black characters. defend PTA's faux-revolutionary nonsense. disagreeing with the concept of a downvote is so reviled here that we pulled it out of the software; give substantive critique a shot.
im sorry to the original user if i misinterpreted their comment of "" but to me that seems to be them being suspicious of a guy living in iran for disliking his own government. I don't agree with Panahi's political opinions, he wants a liberal democratic government more than any workers state and I think he's overly critical of his government in this current moment but like its the country he was born in (and would be living in right now if not for the fact that he's been told if he ever returns he'll be thrown back in prison yet again), all I'm arguing is that he's not some right winger or monarchist or zionist who just wants his personal favourite autocracy to replace it, he's just some guy and it shouldn't be treated as distrustful for an iranian to ideologically oppose the theocracy, especially when other users in the comment thread have already laid out his political position and that he isn't using as a smokescreen to advance pro-israel politics or whatever. I don't get why my comment was especially different from the other two users saying basically the same thing except that i was a bit snarkier than needed and also disagreed with you on an unrelated matter.
i dont care enough about your personal opinion of OBAA to write out a long message defending it in response to you saying that people who liked it are "weird about black people", i care about your personal opinion just about enough to reply with "" to your comment, I definitely don't care about it enough to go looking for unrelated statements you've made to argue against them as well.
kpop demon hunters is about coming out
No the movie's core message was NEVER COME OUT YOU WILL NEVER BE ACCEPTED. MAIM KILL PURGE THE UNCLEAN! BETTER TO DIE FOR THE EMPORER THAN LIVE FOR YOURSELF!!!!.
The movie's other messages were: fuck women with stretch marks, you're worthless without plastic surgery.
Seriously fuck that movie.
Superman is visually ugly? It's no Roger Deacons but I liked my cape slop of 2025.
I liked it as well. It doesnt look amazing but good enough imho and it just feels super upbeat which is nice.
Hell, that movie was the best cape slop in twenty years imho
Ranking seems actually accurate based on the handful I've seen.
I haven't thought about it enough to articulate why, but I really liked Train Dreams.
I liked Bugonia, but I didn't think it was incredible and was surprised when it was shortlisted for Best Picture at the Oscars.
Marty Supreme, OBAA, and Sinners were all good.
F1 was the worst movie I saw in theaters last years. Enjoyed Eddington, If I had Legs I'd Kick You, and Caught Stealing. Disliked Companion and Mickey 17.
If I was John Oscar I would've given my Oscar Award to 28 Years Later in 2025 and 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple in 2026.
Really want to see Sentimental Value, The Secret Agent, and the Filipino(?) film Magellan. No Other Choice wasn't on my radar before awards season, but now I want to see it. It was Just an Accident wasn't on my radar until this post.
One Battle After Another
Deserves the ranking, entertaining and in many ways provocative and familiar. And as someone who has a decent grasp of security culture - painful at many parts. If one observes, there were many many many slip-ups from many people - and the antagonists didn't even use many of them.
opsec rants: partial spoilers, don't open unless you've watched
Just from memory, wasn't taking notes:
- "Leaving DNA at a scene" (euphemism), selfishly delaying escape to have sex during operations, and other extreme unseriousness
- Panicked speeding escape from bank heist, crashing through many cars, drawing attention to themselves and generating dozens of witnesses to the getaway cars (rule of thumb: commit one crime at a time)
- Mr. Pyrotechnics didn't rig the house to blow. Maybe that's too extreme of a precaution, but it would disrupt enemy efforts and possibly decrease their numbers, but also disrupt evidence gathering later (see - martial arts ad, calendar)
- Pat ignoring codewords and openly sharing sensitive info on the phone. Codewords aren't an excellent tool, especially one like that which a state eavesdropper can probably crack after a few calls, but if they're there for a reason, you don't just work around them on an untrusted line, even in an emergency. Imagine being a fed who finds this call log (through the unencoded keywords, or just tapping a known node of a political social network). Even Comrade Josh dropped the facade, no more plausible deniability for the hotline. Willa has it right - if someone doesn't countersign, terminate the exchange. Is Pat getting to the rendezvous worth the damage they potentially did to all the other operatives?
- Pat being extremely open with the curious Sensei Carlos. I know they have some history, but what if Carlos was interrogated like many others were? For example, that music signal is a "trust someone with your life, no questions asked" key, among other didn't-need-to-know things like disclosing membership of the French 75. Over a decade of protection work down the drain. Who needs a truth serum when we have recreational drugs? We know from history that even close people break or slip - don't share secrets to anyone unless it's truly necessary for them to know.
- lol phone (definitely should have known better after recognizing the seriousness of the situation in/after the school escape)
- Carlos making leads during the hospital getaway: "Let's do a selfie. [...] Siri, Sisters of the Brave Beaver". For someone who is head of some serious operations, this is just a sad 1-2 combo. Disclosing the location of a secret compound is insane (although I believe Pat could have also been captured with directions?)
meme
I get everything's gotta go somewhere, but there is nothing even remotely right authoritarian about 28 Years Later. 
It's a bunch of people living in a village who can all just.. do whatever. And the people we see outside that village include "Guy who just does whatever", "Family who does whatever" and "Roaming bunch of thugs". If anything the films strongly embraces ideas like humanising the enemy, the value of rejecting violence where practical, and giving a shit about disabled people. Fun films though.
Unfortunately your entire well written comment is invalid, the film takes place Britain
I know, I used to live very nearby
I've heard weapons was written as a way for Zach to deal with the grief of Trevor Moore's death. Anyway good ranking, though the political compass is kind of weird way of doing it, but it's funny and that is the most important part.
Sucks you decided to depict lex Luthor as a Chad though. Hes the biggest soyboy around.
Ngl really mad that ive seen literally no talk about the mastermind online except in this meme, its literally so good but nobody's heard of it seemingly smh
Love the authoritarian right 
Tallied up how many of these id watched and it was 20 smh, it may be over for me
I thought K-Pop Demon Hunters was a netflix series until I saw this.
I don't think I've watched a movie that has come out in the last...3-4 years. This political compass thing is making me think I'm not missing anything.
One battle after another is incredibly funny. Sinners is a good action flick kind of a la supernatural Green Room, with less pressure. Also the latest mad max (2024 I think) is great too, check it out.
Honestly the top ten movies in this list are definitely worth watching