Requiem for a Dream (2000)

        I have never looked at life the same since I first watched Requiem for a Dream. It is the story of four different humans on the pursuit of happiness all intricately linked together throughout the movie. All four of these characters fall into drug addiction and completely lose control of their lives before they even realize what has happened to them. You see them rise up to the top then fall straight back down to come crashing into thick concrete. Watching this movie gave me a better understanding of what it means to be addicted to drugs.
        You see the perspective of people addicted to street drugs and over the counter medication, both of which have very similar consequences. You can become addicted to almost any drug and this gives you a good idea of how depressing and controlling drug addiction can be. Drugs can make life seem better than it really is but only for a short period of time, you will eventually realize that none of which you perceived was real. Trying too hard to be happy can be very bad especially when you do so with drugs, one character was so caught up in trying to be happy she completely lost control of here mind and for a second thought she was happy until she was in the emergency room receiving a lobotomy.
        This movie is extremely graphic and combines a fantastic soundtrack with insane video effects to make your brain spin. The ending is particularly trippy you are flashing between the characters hitting rock bottom, one is receiving a lobotomy, one is getting his arm amputated, one is being beaten in jail, and the other is getting gang banged in front of a group of old men for drug money. Every time I hear the theme song from this movie I have flash backs of some of the horrible things that the characters went through in this film.
        This movie is definitely worth watching, it can teach a person a lot more than they think. I had no idea what I was getting into when I first watched this film and I will never forget that day.

Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) 2011

        Human Centipede II is an insanely disturbing film, it makes the first Human Centipede look like a children's movie. It is not a sequel to the first film, it is directed to be a non-fiction account of a Human Centipede superfan after the fictional movie is released. It is a crazy concept that most people will never see because the idea of ten people being physically attached to each other is way too vile. Tom Six said that he held himself back while making the first Human Centipede and that he was going to go a little harder in the second and he was not lying, I can not even imagine what the Third Human Centipede will be like.
        The main character is a psychopath who does not speak one word throughout the entire movie, a fantastic acting job. Working security at a parking garage in the UK he repeatedly watched the Human Centipede on his laptop every single day, he even had a scrapbook and a pet centipede; he was extremely aroused by centipedes. This is the contributing factor to him kidnapping over twelve people and taking them to an abandon warehouse to begin his construction of what he perceives as God.
        The whole movie is filmed in black and white except a few select parts where color is added. I did not like the fact that it was in black and white at first but I soon realized that it adds so much to the feeling of the film. Having the film in black and white makes the parts where color is added much more intense. Tom Six did not even go all out in creating this movie and it is still utterly insane, this man must have had a terrible childhood.
        Human Centipede II has some of the best acting and directing skills that I have ever seen and it will probably never get the appreciation that it deserves. It is hard to play a part in a movie in which you are physically attached to another human, and the main character will truly convince you that he is insane. I understand that most people do not want to see such a horrible crime committed against humanity in a movie, but once you look past how disgusting the film is you can see the masterpiece that Human Centipede is. The ending of the movie will completely blow your mind, I did not expect it all, but if you want to know what happens you are going to have to watch the film for yourself. Good luck.

The main character in Human Centipede II.

Rain Man (1988)

         I did not know what a savant was before I watched Rain Man. I had seen videos of people reciting the days of the week on different dates from the past and future but i just thought they had practiced a lot. Savants have remarkable mental abilities but these abilities come with many disabilities.
         Raymond was living in a mental hospital the majority of his life and his brother did not even know he existed. Charlie kidnaps Raymond from the hospital because he had just inherited a large sum of money from their father and Charlie felt entitled to some of it. But as they traveled across the country together Charlie begins to enjoy having Raymond around, he had been missing out on having a brother his whole life.
         The hospital wanted to take Raymond back, they felt that Charlie was incapable of taking care of Raymond. The doctor said that Raymond did not fully understand what was going on and that he was incapable of making decisions for himself. I felt that Raymond definitely understood want was happening he just had a hard time expressing himself. Raymond had experienced more in the short period of time he was with Charlie than his whole life at the hospital, he definitely would have chosen to stay with him. He is not going to get better staying in a hospital separated from society for the rest of his life.
        Charlie was devastated when they took Raymond back to the mental hospital, he truly enjoyed spending time with him. Taking care of somebody with mental disabilities is definitely a challenge but it is not impossible. No one should be restricted and forced to live in spot for their whole life, they deserve to see the world and live as normal of a life as possible. Raymond was deemed unfit to live a normal life on his own but he had a close relative that wanted to take care of him and they would not let him leave.

College Inc. (2010)

        College Inc demonstrates how large scale corporations are taking advantage of people around the world every single day. Some extremely wealthy people decided it was a good idea to buy some colleges and "turn them around," but they really just created money making machines that deprive people from receiving a real education. From a marketing perspective it is a great idea but it is completely immoral, educating people is not about getting rich.
         Higher education is becoming a multi-billion dollar industry fueled by the money of taxpayers. For profit colleges have been opening across America spending more money on marketing than they spend on teachers, their ad costs can rival or exceed those of multinational brands. The grandaddy of for profit schools,University of Phoenix spent over 130 million dollars on ads in 2008.  People who go to for profit colleges are left with a useless degree and thousands of dollars in debt. One university spends 25% of their total revenue on sales and marketing and only 10% to 20% on faculty. These colleges rely on an army of sales representatives who use illegal high pressure recruitment tactics and lies to get people to attend their school. Many of these sales representatives are paid based on how many people they recruit each month. "Create a sense of urgency, push their "hot" button, don't let the student off the phone, dial, dial ,dial..."
          Congress claims to be looking into these schools to make sure that they are doing fair and legal business but still after four years of "investigations" nothing has happened. With only a small portion of people who attend for profit colleges out of all college graduates they hold almost half of the defaults. They graduate with insufficient training in their field and most of time they have more debt than someone who attended a state school. There is definitely a major flaw in this system.
        The for profit college could be a great way to create affordable education for people around the world, but sadly they are owned and operated by greedy people who just want to scrap up every cent that they can before they die. If someone who truly cared about education opened a for profit college they could create a cheap institution with scholarships to help people with less money and provide all of their students with a quality education.

Born on the Fourth of July (1989)

Born on the Fourth of July is a great anti-war movie. Ron Kovic returns home paralyzed from the waist down and he has to stay in the Bronx Veterans Administration hospital. The hospital had very little funding with little supplies and machines that were outdated and barely working, and on top of that the workers did not care about the injured veterans. I saw what Kovic and many other men who fought in the Vietnam war experienced and the way they were treated when they returned home. Over 9,000 veterans of the Vietnam war committed suicide withing five years of returning home.Was the war worth all of the lives that it ruined? The government did not care about any of the people fighting in their war, it was a war funded by the rich but fought by the poor.

Raised to love to America Ron Kovic was willing to die for his country, but his view of America completely
changed after serving in the Vietnam War. During his time in the war he took part in killing a group of civilians including children, he accidentally killed his friend, and he was shot and paralyzed from the waist down. It is impossible for any movie to show how intense the Vietnam war truly was, but this movie will give you a good sense. He sacrificed his physical and mental health to fight a war for his country, but when he returned home he learned that there was no pride in that.

This movie showed me that the Vietnam war was a terrible decision. So many lives were wasted fighting to save South Vietnam, but in reality the majority of people residing there did not want our help. It was hard for US soldiers to distinguish the difference between the civilians and the Viet Cong who were very sneaky. Thousands of  civilians were killed unintentionally and even intentionally during the war that they did not want. The Vietnam war wasted the lives of millions of people and destroyed the lives of millions more.

District 9 (2009)

When I watch District 9 and see aliens being treated as second class citizens in Johannesburg, South Africa; being forced to reside in shanty towns on the outskirts of the city and having to live with unfair laws and abuse, I can't help but think about Apartheid. If aliens were to randomly come to Earth and have to stay I would not doubt if people wanted to treat them they same way they are treated in this movie. Especially if the aliens looked anything like they do in District 9, people would be way too afraid to have their kids go to school with them or even live in the same neighborhood as them and they would be outcast from society.

Black people in South Africa had to live in very similar conditions as the prawns in District 9 when South Africa was under Apartheid. They were forced to live in segregated ghettos, required to carry around passbooks with all of their personal information, and had to follow extremely strict and immoral laws.Black people have even been suppressed in the United States by the Jim Crow laws. Racism, segregation, and ignorance have been common traits in human society throughout history and that will ultimately lead to our demise.
Everyone deserves equal rights, even beings from other planets. The citizens of the world in this film were too ignorant to see that the prawns were actually quite similar to themselves, they had feelings and wanted freedom just as any human would. It is the same reason that racism still occurs today, people only see what they want and for a lot of people it is almost impossible to get past their perspective and see from another point of view.

Saving Private Ryan (1998)

Saving Private Ryan is my favorite war film. Based in World War II it is the story of one group's struggle to find Private James Ryan and bring him home safely to his mother. James went into the war with his three brothers and when all of his other brothers are killed in action Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) is told to take 8 other men to find Private Ryan. His mother was going to receive the telegram of the deaths of her three sons at the same time, imagine how terrible that would make you feel.  The men did not know if James was even alive anymore, he was stationed behind enemy lines and they had no contact with his unit. The group of men risked their lives traveling through Nazi occupied territory to alert Private Ryan of his brothers deaths and tell him that he can go home.
This movie brings the reality of one of the bloodiest wars that this world has ever seen into the homes of normal people across the world. Over sixty million people were killed in World War II, that was over 2.5% of the world's population at the time. This film shows how these deaths affected families across the world; so many families left without a father, a brother, or son. James' mother had already lost three out of four of her sons to the war and the government did not want her to lose her last son.
Captain Miller and his boys had to fight many intense battles where they had the disadvantage of having a lot less manpower, but they used their wit to come up with intricate strategies that helped them succeed. Seeing people risk their lives for the well-being of others is a beautiful thing.
When James and his mother reunited I was almost in tears, they were both sad that his three brothers were now dead but his mom was ecstatic knowing that James was still alive and in her arms. James was extremely grateful for what the men who saved him had given for the well-being of his family. The end of the movie shows James as an old man at the grave of Captain Miller (who died saving him) and you can feel the emotions echoing out of your T.V. James held onto the memory of what those men did for him for the rest of his life and it completely changed who he was as a person.
Helping people even with the smallest of things can have a huge effect on their life, it can even start a chain reaction. You can make the world a better place by helping others.

The Rum Diary (2011)

The Rum Diary is based on the novel by Hunter S. Thompson which is about a journalist who moves to Puerto Rico in an attempt to find happiness. I liked this movie because I felt like I could relate to the main character Paul Kemp, he went with the flow of life taking up any opportunities that came his way and he ended up having a bunch of insane experiences. The story of a man trying to live life to the fullest.

Life is what you make of it, your perception is your reality.

“Everything you see or hear or experience in any way at all is specific to you. You create a universe by perceiving it, so everything in the universe you perceive is specific to you.” – Douglas Adams

If you look at the positive things in your life you will be a lot more happy, but if you only look at the bad you will find yourself dissatisfied and unhappy.

You never know what life will throw at you so you need to be ready for anything.  I liked Kemp's ability to adapt to change, he was always willing to try new and unusual things. He was tired of city life in New York so he moved to Puerto Rico for a change of scenery. I have always enjoyed exploring new places and experiencing new things, it is an indescribable feeling. If you are close minded and are afraid of what you do not know you will live a very bland and boring life, trying new things will help you find yourself. You never know until you experience it for yourself, you may love it, you may hate it; experience is everything.

Live life in the now and don’t fear the unknown, face your fears, you only live once.

I read the book before i saw the movie and i definitely liked the book better. There is a lot more depth to the characters in the book and a lot of great parts from the book were not in the movie. The movie is still good, the director added some funny parts that were not in the book, but i recommend reading the book before watching the film.

American History X (1998)

American History X sends a strong message in a very blunt manner. It starts off with Derek a young kid in a white supremacist group and shows his movement from racial hate to racial tolerance. He goes to prison after killing two black males, one with a curb stomp, and he is out after just three years. He is released a changed man but he comes home to see that his little brother is heading down the same wrong path that he did.
Most extreme racists are completely brainwashed to that point of view and it is extremely hard to get out of that mindset. The main character in this film changed over a three year period in a prison full of African Americans, he saw life through their eyes for the first time. It seems almost unrealistic that that type of change could even happen over such a short period of time, but this movie gave me hope that it is possible. Ignorance and racism can be beaten it will just take a long time of spreading knowledge, education is the key to a successful and peaceful world.
Derek used his new knowledge to convince his brother to leave the life of a skinhead, he gets through to him but it was just too late. His brother was gunned down in the school bathroom by a black kid for revenge. I felt Derek's pain when he heard the news of his brother's death, he was devastated. But he was happy that he at least changed the direction of his brother's life before he died. His brother died with hate being the last thing on his mind, even when he was being murdered by an African American, he too changed just like his older brother. Anyone can change with a little bit of guidance from someone that they trust.

"We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic cords of memory will swell when again touched, as they surely will be, by the better angels of our nature." - Abraham Lincoln

Blood Diamond (2006)

Blood Diamond is an intense movie that takes the viewer deep into the illegal diamond trade in Africa. It takes place in Sierra Leone, a war-ridden country on the West coast of Africa. Rebels kidnap children to force them to work in their diamond mines or they train them to fight in the war. Seeing small children being enslaved to do hard labor and being trained to use automatic weapons to kill is frightening. I felt bad for the kids going through so much pain and seeing all of that destruction at such young ages; they were taken from their families without warning and did not deserve to be treated like dirt.
This movie was based on what was really going on in Africa at the time and could still be going on today. Africa is the most beautiful continent on our planet yet it is full of corruption, hatred, famine, and war. Children were really forced to work in diamond mines to collect diamonds that were then sold to European companies, and they are still being forced to fight in wars across the nation. It angers me when I see all of these countries putting loads of money into things that do not really matter, such as the War on Terror, when Africa has been falling apart for so many years now. The United States has been at war with "terrorism" for over 10 years now and has spent over 1 trillion dollars funding it, imagine all the help we could have given Africa or even our own country with that time and money. Society as a whole needs to learn how to work together and help each other out instead of killing each other and only looking out for themselves. If we do not make a change soon we will face a terrible fate.

The Human Centipede (2009)

The majority of society is too afraid to watch The Human Centipede. Just thinking about three humans being  attached to each other surgically through their gastric systems to function as one centipede like creation will turn away most normal people. I on the other hand found this idea to be very fascinating and watched the movie as soon as I got the chance. It was nothing like I expected. This movie has not received the respect that it should, people will look back on this movie twenty years from now and say that it was way ahead of it's time and it will be known as a landmark film for our society.

Dr.Heiter takes his new pet outside to teach it some tricks.

The Human Centipede was very low budget and did not have great acting or special effects but those factors just made me enjoy the film even more. If you were on vacation in Germany and your car broke down in the middle of nowhere would your first instinct be to wander into the forest for help? I don't think that anyone in their right mind would ever really do that. When two girls wander off into the dark forest alone in a foreign country you know that something awful is going to happen to them very soon; such as being kidnapped by a mad scientist to be converted into a pet for his own pleasure. I found the ridiculousness of the plot and the stupidity of the characters to be very humorous.
But after i got past the humor in the movie I began to think about what it would be like to be part of a real human centipede. That would be a terrible way to go out. It is very possible that someone in the world would attempt to create their own human centipede or something similar and that is why I plan to avoid Eastern Europe for the rest of my life.
This movie has a much deeper meaning than most people would think. It shows how inhuman humans can be and gives us a glimpse of what the human mind is capable of creating when in the hands of a psychopath. A lot of people do not want to know or see how disturbed other people can be, they would rather just pretend that everyone in the world is at least partially sane. Sadly that is not the case. There have been and always will be many extremely sick and sadistic people throughout the world that enjoy causing pain to other people. This movie is a sharp reminder of what humans are capable of.

Inception (2010)

Inception is one of my favorite movies. It goes into theories about dreams most people have never thought about. The idea of being able to invade other people's dreams to steal information from them and being able to have a dream inside of another dream is mind blowing. Inception made me feel like any of this could be possible; we do not really know a lot about dreaming as it is a hard topic to study. I spent a lot of time trying to control my dreams after watching this movie, sadly I was unsuccessful.
Christopher Nolan did a great job putting this movie together combing a fantastic cast with insane special effects. This movie is a work of art. They put a lot of thought into the concepts used in this movie, who thinks of having a three leveled dream with the time being more distorted the deeper you go? The characters have to perfectly time waking each other up in each dream so that they do not get stuck in limbo forever, it was the probably the most intense part of the movie. All of the different things that come into play while working in a dream will really put your mind to work.
I first saw this movie in theaters which definitely made it much more crazy being on such a huge screen with awesome surround sound. Seeing the world get flipped up ninety degrees will change the way you view life, all I could think of while I was watching this film was "Imagine if this was possible." This movie is definitely worth watching, it is number twelve on Internet Movie Database's top 250 movies.

The One Percent (2006)

The One Percent is a documentary created by Jamie Johnson, the great grandson of the founder of Johnson & Johnson; it is an extremely informational documentary about the growing gap between the rich and poor. I learned a lot from about the economy from watching this film. One percent of the United States population holds forty percent of the nations wealth. The average person in the one percent earns about $1,000,000 per year while the average person in the other ninety-nine percent earns only about $35,000 per year; the average ceo earns about $35,000 for less than one day of work.
There are areas in the United States where rich people are moving and the poor people are disappearing. In South Chicago, an area known for its poverty,  a lot of the public housing buildings have been closed down to be transformed into condos, leaving many people without a place to live. A rich person who recently moved into a condo in South Chicago said that there is a simple three step plan,  "First you build a big police station, secondly you tear out all of the basketball courts, and lastly if there's a school that poor people attend you tear down that school.", "It is easier to just cleanse the Earth of these people." He has similar ideas to Herbert Spencer, a social Darwinist who said, allowing the rich to get richer is good for society because it discourages the poor people from having a lot of children and basically surviving. These people are very wealthy and want to keep the wealth in their family and create a perfect society with only the few wealthy people.
There are so many wealthy individuals who are directly influencing politicians to do what they want, how is that a democracy? Alfie and Pepe Fanjul are the owners of Florida Crystals Corporation, a sugar cane company based out of the Everglades in Florida. The sugar program is a combination of import quotas and a guarantee that the government will buy any surplus, it limits the amount of foreign sugar available in the United States to almost nothing. If you want sugar you have to buy it from the United States resulting in the prices being artificially inflated. No one knows exactly what it cost to produce one pound of sugar in the Everglades but it is the second most profitable crop in the United States. For every pound of sugar grown in the Everglades the American tax payer guarantees a price of $0.22 per pound which is way above the world price of $.0.07 per pound. The Fanjuls basically made millions of dollars because of a government program.
The brothers had the support of the democrats and the republicans by Alfie being the largest contributor to the Democratic Clinton campaign and Pepe being the largest contributor to the Republican party Bob Dole. People with a lot of money can fund politicians to have them on their side making decisions that benefit the rich. When the sugar company needed cheap labor the government made an exemption to immigration laws allowing foreign workers to be imported on a special visa to cut sugar cane for third world wages. The figures show that during that time period about ten sugar cane workers died per year and the government found massive minimum wage violations throughout the sugar industry. These companies make millions of dollars every year and they still can not pay their workers decent wages, it is ridiculous how greedy these people are.
Jamie Johnson grew up in an extremely wealthy family and even he sees that there is a problem with how the wealth is distributed throughout the people. With only one percent of people holding the majority of the nations wealth the vast majority of Americans are living life without the luxuries of being able to afford a good education, living in a nice house in a safe neighborhood, eating healthy everyday, and many other things. The bigger the gap gets between the poor and the wealthy the more removed the wealthy get from the world around them, if you're always hiding from the problem you're never going to find any solutions. This film showed me that money will not alone bring happiness, you have to appreciate what you have and look at the bright side of life.

An American Crime (2007)

This movie left me feeling sick for days after I first watched it having flash backs of all the horrible things they did to this poor girl. An America Crime is the true story of  Sylvia Likens, a sixteen year old girl who was locked in a basement and tortured to death by a psychotic woman in 1965. Sylvia was accused of lying, stealing, and flirting with a boy at school; Gertrude, her guardian, wanted to make an example of her. Gertrude, in front of her six children and Sylvia's sister, forced Sylvia to insert a glass coke bottle into her vagina until it shattered. She then has Sylvia tossed down the stairs into the basement. This is the beginning of the end for Sylvia.
Sylvia is kept locked down in the basement and is tortured everyday until she died. Gertrude even allowed her children to bring their neighborhood friends over to play with helpless Sylvia. The group of kids would all go to the basement after school and take turns beating her and putting cigarettes out on her body like it was a game. But the part that bothered me the most was when Gertrude pinned Sylvia to the floor and branded the words, "I am a prostitute and proud of it" on her stomach with a hot needle. Sylvia was brutally abused to death.

An American Crime shows how twisted and heartless people can be. Gertrude raised her kids teaching them that violence and cruelty is normal and is okay ruining any chance of her kids living a normal life. This film waters down a lot of what Gertrude did to Sylvia as it was just way too brutal to be shown, but it really captures the mood and emotions of the crime. It can be extremely difficult to watch this movie but it is worth it, seeing the misery that Sylvia went through will completely change the way you view life. I still can not believe that anyone could be so cruel to such an innocent girl like Sylvia and that so many people just sat by and watched it happen.