The 100 best conservative movies - includes list of 20 best liberal movies - Cover Story

Best Pictures about Personal Redemption: In Tender Mercies (1983), Robert Duvall (Oscar for Best Actor) rises from downcast drunk to husband and loving stepfather with the help of a devout young mother and her son. Two of the best scenes are the baptism of Duvall and the boy, and the last scene, where the wife contentedly looks out on Duvall and her son playing catch with a football, to the lyrics, "You are the best it could ever be / You are what love means to me."

In Three Godfathers (1948) John Wayne and his outlaw trio (the Three Wise Men) rescue a baby they find in the desert. Through their suffering they win redemption. Directed with powerful religious imagery by the immortal John Ford.

Best Picture about the Relation of Property to the Human Soul: The Bicycle Thief (Italy, 1949). A humble man searches for his bicycle and the part of his soul that was stolen with it.

Best Picture about Personal Achievement against Heavy Odds: My Left Foot (1989) The drama of an extraordinary Irishman, Christy Brown (Daniel Day-lewis's Oscar-winning role), who, afflicted with cerebral palsy, has the use of only one limb, yet becomes a respected artist and author. The hero's talent and will-power are formidable, but another theme is the indispensable role of Christy's strong and united family.

Best Pictures about Iner-City Youth Overcoming Heavy Odds: Stand and Deliver (1988) and Lean on Me (1989). The first is the amazing story Jaime Escalante, the Los Angeles teacher who inspired his students to climb the heights of mathematics. The second is a romanticized account of the battle by Joe Clark (Morgan Freeman) against drug pushers, hoodlums, and politicians to clean up Eastside High in Patterson, New Jersey. For success in life, he tells his kids, "the responsibility is yours." And in a line that echoes Steve Dangos, the all-American immigrant hero of An American Romance (see below), he declares, "You are here to work for what you want."

Best Pictures Celebrating Family Life. Today, when the traditional family has come under fierce assault, these films have a special poignance with their un-self-conscious embrace of bedrock values. In Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), directed by Vincente Minnelli), Judy Garland comforts little Margaret O'Brien, distraught at the prospect of moving away from her beloved home, with "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas."

Little Women (1933, with Katharine Hepburn as Jo March, directed by George Cukor). Dont patronize it; this film glows with feeling. "A beautiful movie, the kind they dont and couldn't make any more," wrote one critic.

Honorable Mennon. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945); I Remember Mama (1948, directed by George Stevens); Cheaper by the Dozen (1950); Father of the Bride (1950) and Fathers Little Dividend (1951), both directed by Minnelli; Sounder (1972), in which a black sharecropper family faces the Depression; and Baby Boom (1987), in which yuppie Diane Keaton finds true happiness the old-fashioned way.

Best Scene Celebrating Family life: David O. Selznick's Since You Went Away (1944). The opening credits, accompanied by Max Steiners Oscar-winning score, unfold against a background of a burning hearth; they close with the legend, "This is a story of the Unconquerable Fortress: the American Home... 1943." The camera then focuses on the only one at home in the Hilton household, the bulldog. The camera lovingly tracks past the family album, a pair of bronzed baby shoes, and other mementoes. We follow the dog to the front window, through which we see Claudette Colbert and her daughters, Jennifer Jones and Shirley Temple, trudging up the walk in the rain. They are just returning from the train station, where they saw their husband and father off to war.