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.