Trilarion: So sneaking in political or religious viewpoints as side comments is okay as long as it doesn't distract too much from the entertainment? Maybe like kind of an advertisment which also only tries to send subliminal messages through happy faces?
I'm not sure this is so much better. Even the most idiotic entertainment movies have some kind of philosophical basis (some norms/moral/conventions) and promote some values (freedom, having fun, drinking a lot, free sex, ...) one way or another. They all want to tell a story. So how can you tell a story without basing it on some idea you have about the world?
Depends on how obtrusive the political, religious or philosophical viewpoint is. The worst ones of course are the films that deliberately set out to demonise or defame a certain group based on their ethnicity, religion or gender, but even the more well-meaning messages can be overbearing.
A few months back I saw a Turkish movie called Five Minarets in New York. It was marketed as an action thriller, but in reality it spent most of the first half telling us how stupid, belligerent and arrogant Americans are in the face of the mighty Turkish people, while the second half (being set in Turkey and involving practically no Americans) was basically "peace and love in the name of Islam".
It could have been a good film, but it had this overbearing negative nationalism in the first half, countered bizarrely in the second half with a happy-hippy-clappy "be excellent to each other" religious message that, as a non-Muslim, didn't really resonate with me. It's as if the film regularly pauses to give the viewer religious teachings in peace and tolerance.
There's also another Turkish film that you may have seen that was very popular among the "Asitürken" community here in Germany - Valley of the Wolves - which also had an overbearingly anti-American and anti-semitic tenor to it. Decent action scenes, but it was ruined by the makers trying to push their political message too far (I believe the director later said that it was deliberately filmed that way not because he believed in the anti-Americanism or anti-semitism, but to highlight the one-sidedness of the political messages a lot of American action cinema. If that's true, then it's certainly successful, as it does have a very conservative "us versus them" vibe to it like a lot of 80s action cinema).
But you're right that most films have a political or philosophical bent to them, and that the more subtle messages can be the most insidious. I was watching Kingsman recently and it dawned upon me how obviously it was supposed to be right-wing propaganda, but honestly, it was so entertaining and the message subtle enough for me to not really care.