You know the kind of the movie. The kind that's tailor made for Oscars. The kind that a teacher may play for its students in class.

I'm actually drawing a blank here. But I'm currently watching Good Night, and Good Luck which is a pretty damn fine film albeit a sure-fire 'message film'.

I tend to hate heavy handed movies, so it would be hard to pick the best from that. The only ones I can think of right now that I enjoy are Pleasantville and 12 Angry Men.

Princess Mononoke and American History X

Boyz N the Hood.

I love Michael Moore but have to say he can he pretty heavy handed.
Hotel Rwanda
Fast Food Nation

The Passion of the Christ certainly applies.

my "favorite" heavy handed message movie: Requiem for a Dream.

The message I took from that was "Don't piss off the Romans"

Do the Right thing

Good Night, and Good Luck is very minimalist for a heavy-handed movie. My friend is a high school English teacher in North Carolina and he shows this as part of a unit on The Crucible. I was talking to him about what I liked so much about it (why it works), and I think it's because of a few factors. For one, the plot and dynamics are quite theatrical and don't have a huge scope, and the visuals exceed how play-like movies usually end up. Also, while The Crucible was a statement against McCarthyism about the Salem witch trials, GN&GL feels sort of like an indictment of the Bush administration using McCarthyism as a template.

There ARE a lot of these types of movies I admire:

Malcolm X
Forrest Gump (one of the few movies often cited as overrated that I love tremendously)
Mystic River
The Shawshank Redemption (my favorite movie ever)
Anything from Sidney Lumet in the 70's
All of Oliver Stone's movies

I wonder who's going to say Crash.

Network.

Michael Mann's The Insider

Grand Canyon

I'll second Boyz N the Hood. Sometimes overbearingly heavy-handed (the slow zoom on the Stop Sign), but definitely heartfelt and well-done.

Crash

Because racism is bad, mmkay?

Traffic

While I really enjoyed the film, I felt "The Kingdom" laid it on a bit thick.

I was going to say Crash, but something screwed up my post. I bet it was one of those Indians in tech support.

I think the definition of "heavy-handed message movie" should be cleaned up a bit here. Films like Traffic, Requiem for a Dream, or American History X have messages, but they are massaged and refracted through various positions on the same subject. I think the difference between a movie with a message and "heavy-handed message movie" is that the latter beats the viewer over the head with one (generally very shallow) opinion on a particular topic. The perfect examples of this being Edward Zwick's "white man's burden" movies, The Last Samurai and Blood Diamond, or sports equivalents like Remember the Titans.

With that being said, my favorite heavy-handed message movie is Elia Kazan's Pinky.

My most recently watched and probably one with the heaviest handed is The Marva Collins Story(TV), which had me laughing while getting beat over the head with the heavy dialogue.

A Few Good Men.

I'll say Crash, because I've rarely seen a film that so blatantly beat the viewer over the head to the point of unconsciousness than that fetid turd. No wonder dumbass voters gave it best picture, they were probably feeling like Michael Spinks after Tyson pummeled his ass so I can't blame them for not thinking straight.

2 Fast, 2 Furious

It's a message movie, but the message is somewhat ambiguous and certainly not heavy handed. Even the "villain" of the story (Lady Eboshi, if memory serves) is shown to be compassionate and to have legitimate motivations.

I typically hate manipulative, heavy handed message movies but a few are damned effective:

Paths of Glory- pushes a fairly obvious anti-war, anti-political hypocracy message but it works brilliantly

Koyannisquatsi- OK, we get it. Housing projects= ugly. Canyons= beautiful. people=bad. nature=good. The movie is still gorgeous and I still like it. Also, as Ebert pointed out, lots of the shots of "ugly humanity" actually backfire and we think "what a wonderful creature is man".

Schindler's List- If you watch this with a critical eye, it's hard not to notice all of the obvious, manipulative typical Speilbergisms the movie is loaded with. The movie make almost ridiculously blunt "goes-without-saying" points about the evil-ness of the Nazis repeatedly (Fiennes' performance is almost over the top). However, it still has validity. If you're not moved when you see the descendants of the survivors walking up the hill at the end of the movie, you don't have a pulse.

What's a heavy-handed massage?








Seriously, that's how I first read this thread title. Apparently I am dyslexic.