Succession, Parasite, The Joker, Mr. Robot, How to blow up a pipeline, The Edukators… Would love to hear about more
Arrested Development
Schitt’s Creek comes to mind.
Righteous Gemstones if you want to focus on uber rich televangelists, specifically
TV - Loot, Fall of the House of Usher, White Lotus
Movies - Triangle of Sadness, Glass Onion
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There Will Be Blood. The acting is brilliant and you see the MC going from a poor miner to his own oil empire, showing just what sociopathic chameleon he is at many points. It’s longer than average, but it’d sure keep you engaged. I see it as a modern-made epic story that pretty much describes what (self-built) multi-millionaires are like.
I think I need to watch that movie a second and third time. The first I wasn’t expecting the journey from a little guy finding success movie trope to literally being an insane bad guy, with a fucking brilliantly nuanced acting job by DDL. All of the layers went right over my head until the closing credits like…… oooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Super interesting too visiting the oil exhibit at the Kern County museum…knowing that PT visited it developing the ideas…and seeing the modern day oil fields, pipelines and smog everywhere around the San Joaquin valley now.
I literally grew up there and never thought much about it. I need to watch it again.
I watched it like 7 times and wish you have a great time with it.
Coming from an oil-rich region I passed these soviet oil-pumps looking like hammers, coming up and down, up and down in any weather. They left me curious what’s that all about and I almost ended in that industry, but got something else on my radar.
I came to appreciate how good Eli at being a competition to Daniel here. The first time I saw this movie, the ending seemingly came from out of nowhere. But now I see and like how both of them represent different ideas. Eli is the old, conservative America, and Daniel is the new one, the face of the industrial revolution.
After watching it another time with my friend, I woundered, where it all came from. It seems, he escapes any question about his past, but he feels pretty connected to that blonde girl (his son’s future wife), that’s said to be beaten by father. Maybe it’s a little clue he’s too a victim of violence at home. Him them digging the earth alone and then dragging himself across the desert with a broken leg seems like a logical conclusion to that. He needs to be perfect, otherwise he’d be beaten hard. And so he goes for that, and hate, suspect everyone who is not as tryhard as he. The end scene speaks a lot of his hatred to himself. He’s alone in his mansion, and he sees himself both a rich guy and a piece of shit. That leads to being a fucking asshole to his son who has a slight possibility to even compete with him, it leads to a conflict with Eli. He hates this always happy dude. He hates the hell of him. He wanted him to suffer for so long time, but at one instance needed him to get an oil transit, and received these silly slaps. And he remembered that, and brought his hatred tenfold. He couldn’t forget this embarassment to his ego, and he punished him as he wanted. He first made him destruct his faith, and then make it physical. He couldn’t, in his depressive condition, see his happy preaching face anymore. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d eat a bullet right after that for all that hatred collected in him.
There are already a lot of good suggestions here!
I would add Eat the rich and The menu (not related) for movies criticizing the rich. Although the former just makes fun of them.
I would also argue for Andor even though it doesn’t focus on the super rich and instead on the rebellion and the people making up the cogs of the fascist imperium. It still shows the rich in a critical light. I haven’t seen any series that made me want to fight the system more than Andor.
Silicon Valley
In Time
“Killing It” on Peacock was a surprisingly dark comedy about the death of the American dream.
Triangle of Sadness, The Menu
Highly recommend both of them
TV: The White Lotus
Anything cyberpunk usually fits that bill. Like Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix sounds and is ridiculous in many ways, but also has some insights on the rich taking over the media and prison system.
Been a while since I’ve seen it but a movie called “A Day Without A Mexican” where rich assholes and middle class white people lose their nannies and field workers picking their food. I believe it was a dark comedy but like I said been a number of years since I saw it…
The good fight, but it’s a bit on and off. There are subplots about resistance movements, but it’s more against far right than rich. They are just aligned. Some is the imbalance of justice.
Leverage is one of my favorites. The reboot is pretty good as well.
Soylent Green, Them!, The Bad Sleep Well
