Apparently, We're Mainly Conserving Intelligence

I realise that this is intended to be a light-hearted article/conversation-starter, rather than a coherent political argument, but holy lizard balls, this list is stupid.

(The tell of course, is the fact that his three criteria for a "conservative" film are patriotism/love of the military, a pro-free market message, and pissing off liberals.  Quite the set of principles you've got there, Gardiner: no wonder you're grinning like Dale Winton on Supermarket Sweep, ten seconds after he's eaten a locust and turd panini).

Ordinarily, there'd be a few things to say about this: the increasingly annoying idea that liberalism/leftism (delete as required) is a priori anti-military or unpatriotic (the latter in particular is never argued by anyone other than those who are convinced that loving one's country requires that you love their specific view of the world in general - which is to say: shitheads); the failure to distinguish between being pro-military and being slavishly pro-military to the point of propaganda (see A Few Good Men, for example, a film which rips apart those who abuse their power in the military precisely because of the respect it has for the institution as a whole); the endlessly idiotic suggestion that conservatism is something that automatically annoys the left, as oppose to annoying us when they stick together a list of films about white people shooting darkies and then pretending not to notice the recurring theme.

All of that would be redundant, though.  The only thing you need to work out Gardiner's opinions on cinema or anything else are objectively worthless is this quote right here:

 Zulu is one of the only films of the modern age that chose not to condemn or vilify Britain's imperial heritage, but instead highlighted the extraordinary courage of the men who fought and died in defence of the largest and most benevolent Empire the world had ever seen. 

Most.  Benevolent. Empire.

Aside from this being an award functionally equivalent to being crowned "most tall dwarf" (screw you, Stewart Lee!), we've apparently learned that being conservative means telling the Irish they can go fuck themselves.  I'm sure we can find a film about that somewhere, can't we?  Gardiner will doubtless love it.

(Also: The Killing Fields?  That's a film about how horrible Communist dictatorships are, and how they can get their foot in the door following the callous and murderous actions of Western conservatives.  So I'm fairly sure you don't get to claim that one, actually).