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.