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Governments lie. They cheat. They steal. Sometimes the blame comes from within: corrupt individuals who’d conned their ways into the halls of power with no moral compass beyond their own self-aggrandizement. Sometimes, the fault lies within ourselves: We’re drawn to populist politicians who tell us what we want to hear even when we ought to know better.

The 1970s, in particular, loom large in movies about government corruption, even in later films. It’s not that no one had ever mistrusted the government before, but it’s the era when anti-government feeling truly entered the zeitgeist. Then, as now, people couldn’t agree on much, but they could agree that political leaders weren’t to be trusted. From there, the ‘80s saw Iran-Contra, the ‘90s saw the Clinton impeachment, the ‘00s the Iraq War—and those are just the marquee scandals.

The less said about the modern era of politics, perhaps, the better. But we may find it helpful to go back a bit in time, and/or overseas, to find movies that hold up a harsh mirror to government corruption.

Seven Days in May (1964)

John Frankenheimer’s follow-up to The Manchurian Candidate sees President Fredric March working on a nuclear disarmament deal with the Soviet Union, a development that doesn’t impress a popular general played by Burt Lancaster. He’s planning a coup, one that's uncovered by Kirk Douglas over the course of the title’s seven days. It’s another trenchant look at the ways in which both personal charisma and military power can have undue sway over American politics. You can rent Seven Days in May from Prime Video.

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The Conversation (1974)

The Conversation isn’t about Watergate or Vietnam, but it speaks as well as any movie to the well-earned political paranoia of the era. Gene Hackman (never better than he is here) plays surveillance expert Harry Caul, already desperately paranoid when he overhears a conversation he shouldn’t about a potential murder. Though ostensibly about private peccadillos, the film was released in the same year as Richard Nixon’s resignation (aided by his own White House tapes), and is prescient about the growing surveillance state, but also deeply conflicted. Harry means well, and there are clearly benefits to the work he does, but there are also the very obvious privacy concerns, as well as the potential to misinterpret situations and entire lives based on out-of-context bits of information. There’s nothing broached here that we’re not still grappling with, over 50 years later. You can stream The Conversation on Paramount+ and The Criterion Channel or rent it from Prime Video.

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A Face in the Crowd (1957)

If you only know Andy Griffith from Mayberry, prepare yourself for his greatest performance, one that's as chilling as it is prescient. Here, he plays Larry "Lonesome" Rhodes, an alcoholic drifter whose folksy good humor and facility for the guitar land him a radio deal with the help of journalist Marcia Jeffries (Patricia Neal), who becomes his promoter and girlfriend. It all ultimately steers him into the world of politics, with Jeffries discovering much too late that she’s created a monster. If you can imagine a politician telling his supporters everything they want to hear while sneering at them behind their backs, you might even say that the rise of populist Larry Rhodes foretells the Donald Trump era. You can stream A Face in the Crowd on The Criterion Channel or rent it from Prime Video.

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The Parallax View (1974)

Sitting squarely in the middle of the Vietnam War and sandwiched between the assassinations of the 1960s and Watergate, director Alan J. Pakula created a masterpiece of political paranoia that conveys a sense of mounting dread with each and every noir-inspired frame. Warren Beatty plays Joseph Frady, a journalist who gets caught up in an incredibly complex conspiracy after he witnesses the murder of a sitting senator and presidential candidate. There’s much more than simple assassination going on, but there’s also more to Frady’s quest for truth than simple heroism; unsettlingly, the movie’s thriller plot line conceals a believably complex world in which there are no easy answers. In a broken and corrupt system, even the best of intentions can make things much worse. You can rent The Parallax View from Prime Video.

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Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

What became Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove began life as a drama: Based on the thriller novel Red Alert, Kubrick intended, initially, to play it straight. It wasn’t very far into the screenplay-writing process, however, when the director realized that real-world concepts like the nuclear “balance of terror” and “mutually assured destruction” were better suited to farce than serious drama. The result is one of cinema’s most perfect send-ups of government overreach, personality politics, and the behind-the-scenes dust-ups that have frequently had devastating consequences for humans without the privilege of their own quiet war rooms. You can rent Dr. Strangelove from Prime Video.

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All the President's Men (1976)

The Nixon administration served as the wellspring of 1970s cinematic paranoia, and it's fortunate that one of the best of the decade's thrillers is based on the true story of everything that went down when a couple of plucky Washington Post reporters (played here by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman) started sniffing around a seemingly innocuous burglary in Washington's Watergate complex. The resulting investigation, involving secret recordings, slush funds, and a secret informant known for decades only as "Deep Throat" revealed a criminal cover-up tied to the President himself. A fun throwback to a time when we were bothered by such things. You can rent All the President's Men from Prime Video.

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Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

Clearly inspired by the paranoid thrillers of the 1970s, the Russo Brothers (and company) crafted a Marvel movie in the same spirit. The Disney-owned heroes typically fight to uphold, rather than upend, the status quo, so Winter Soldier is all the more impressive for seeing Cap as an outlaw. Working as part of espionage agency S.H.I.E.L.D., Steve uncovers a massive government conspiracy (Hail Hydra!) tied to Cabinet member Alexander Pierce (Robert Redford) that puts him on the wrong side of the law. Before it's over, he's hunted for having learned about a secretive surveillance operation with ties back to Marvel's version of Operation Paperclip, the real-life program that secretly brought German scientists (including Nazis) to the United

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