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El American launched a new social media program called Spoilers Free. Each week we will use Twitter Spaces to talk to our audience about movies, series and pop culture. In this first program, held on Saturday, July 10, analysts Juan Felipe Vélez and Ignacio García recommended the following 8 must-watch movies for freedom lovers.
Demolition Man
This 1993 Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes and Sandra Bullock film has been gaining in popularity over time. Somewhat misunderstood at the time, the futuristic dystopian society depicted in the film increasingly resembles the present day. And it is unsettling to see how it predicted the loss of freedoms. Other than that, it’s an action movie with doses of humor that is very entertaining, but also makes you think.
Scarface
Also known as The Price of Power, this 1983 film, directed by Brian De Palma and starring Al Pacino, is already a cult classic, and one of the most important of the gangster genre. This film helps us reflect on the results of the “war on drugs“, as well as the perverse incentives that prohibition generates for crime.
The Lives of Others
This 2006 German film, which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, tells us about a period in the history of Germany in the last century little explored in cinema: the Soviet occupation of its eastern part. The film does not show the horrors of the communist political police, the Stasi, but does it so elegantly and masterfully, with a suffocating atmosphere and a captivating story.
Ghostbusters
Although almost all of us remember it as a nice supernatural humor movie about ghost hunters, the truth is that Ghostbusters hides an interesting message: the superiority of private initiative over the public function.
The Ghostbusters are not four government agents fighting ghosts, but four private entrepreneurs who help save the city, fighting not only against the spooks but also against a public official who only hinders their work. It’s worth a rewatch if you never noticed this detail.
Dallas Buyers Club
Dallas Buyers Club is the film that redirected the career of Matthew McConaughey, until then the handsome guy of romantic movies, but whose performance in this drama based on real events won him the Oscar and the respect of the industry.
He shares a brilliant performance with Jared Leto, who in this film plays a transsexual. Unlike many current woke movies, the transsexuality in this film is not shoehorned in to push the political agenda, but makes perfect sense to explain the struggle of HIV sufferers in the 80s against the Food and Drug Administration and the government.
American Gangster
Based on real events about what happened in the ’70s with drug trafficking in New York and the corruption of the NYPD, this film starring Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe shows an alternative and refreshing image of who are the good guys and the bad guys in the drug trafficking generated by drug prohibition.
Robin Hood
In this version of Robin Hood, directed by Ridley Scott, the true essence of the character is vindicated. Although the left has taken it over and made us believe that Robin Hood “stole from the rich to give to the poor”, the truth is that what he did was to recover the money that the tax collector had taken to return it to the taxpayers. The film is a staunch defense of private property and individual rights against the State.
Gran Torino
Although we could recommend all of Clint Eastwood’s films as a director, this one stands out for its sensitivity and subtlety when it comes to reflecting racial problems and cultural clashes between different people living in America.
Far from falling into the clichés of these social films, always leaning to the left, Gran Torino gives us a different look at this type of conflict, focusing on the values that unite us and not on the problems that try to divide us.
Where to listen to Spoilers Free?
From now on, every Friday on El American‘s Twitter account you will be able to access the Spoilers Free Twitter Space to keep up to date with recommendations of movies, series and all kinds of material from popular culture from the perspective of the ideas of freedom.
Ignacio Manuel García Medina, Business Management teacher. Artist and lecturer specialized in Popular Culture for various platforms. Presenter of the program "Pop Libertario" for the Juan de Mariana Institute. Lives in the Canary Islands, Spain // Ignacio M. García Medina es profesor de Gestión de Empresas. Es miembro del Instituto Juan de Mariana y conferenciante especializado en Cultura Popular e ideas de la Libertad.
Social Networks: @ignaciomgm