Top 10 Films of 2019 for Me, my opinion, only mine, please don't be offended, it's just a list.

By Christopher Barr │POSTED ON DECEMBER 31, 2019

2019 has not been the best year in cinema but thankfully through all the discombobulation of political scandals, fake news and the overly sensitive, perpetually offended, online culture, there have been some damn great films that came out this year.  Some........

There were a number of films this year I missed for one reason or another.  There were films that I past on because I was either not interested or it looked dumb and not worth my time and money.  Hobbs and Shaw as an example.  There were a number of films I did get sucked into and was either expecting to be disappointed or hoping I wouldn't be.  Rambo: Last Blood and Pet Sematary are examples of unfortunate disappointments.

We had Terminator: Dark Fate this year and despite my initial apprehension, it actually wasn't too bad, it wasn't great, but it was a major step up from the absolute mess that is Terminator Genisys.  Zombieland: Double Tap was a pretty fun time at the movies and wasn't a bad sequel.  Spider-Man: Far From Home was action-packed but simultaneously bland along with Captain Marvel.  That movie would have been better if its lead had an actual pulse.  See Alita: Battle Angel for a far better action-packed movie where the lead has more heart and soul, being a robot, than Captain Marvel could ever hope to have.

Glass unfortunately was a let down, especially the pointless third act.  Unbreakable and Split both were so innovative, dripping with originality only to finish off in an underwhelming third film.  Another train-wreck was Hellboy, boy did that lifeless attempt at imagination go to hell.  Godzilla: King of the Monsters was a CGI mess that ended up getting covered up in so much dark shadow that, at times, you could barely even see what was happening. 

Brightburn, where do I start?!  This attempt at showing an alternative version of the Superman mythology sounded like it might be an interesting character study.  Sadly, it was gratuitous and meaningless.  I love me a good existential movie or one that explores an inevitable 'wrong-turn' were a character goes into darkness.  Joker is a perfect example of how this can be done effectively.  Brightburn become sadistic, nihilistic and irresponsible as the poor child at its center became cruel and murderous, just flying his mother up high in the sky and dropping her...the end.

Some films I enjoyed this year at the movies, Jumanji: The Next Level, which didn't capture the magic of the first one but was never the less entertaining.  Another sequel this year that didn't capture the same magic as the first one was IT: Chapter Two.  That film lost itself in the second act for a bit but came back around in an entertaining third act.  Crawl was a little gem this year that not too many people saw.  It was a simple survive-from-the-flood, filled with deadly, chomping alligators-kind of movie that had no agenda other then to scare and entertain, and not necessarily in that order.

Dolemite is my Name was absolutely hilarious.  Eddie Murphy was as funny as any of his classic movies and he gave one hell of a performance.  Ready or Not was another gem I'm not sure too many people saw.  That deliciously murderous movie was about a young woman marrying into the wrong highbrow family and having to kill them all to get away.  So good.  US was another crazy horror film this year about surviving the night while psychos, that look just like you, try to kill you.  Cold Pursuit probably had one of the funniest villains since the first John Wick movie.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker was a great improvement over the on-the-nose, propaganda mess that is The Last Jedi, don't get me started.  The Rise of Skywalker finally put a much needed nail in the Star Wars coffin.  The movie had a lot of entertaining, action-packed, CGI-saturated moments as most of the loose ends were tied off and the subtle and sometimes not so subtle, fuck-you-Last-Jedi back-hands were dealt out. "That is no way to treat a lightsaber." kind of fuck-you that JJ Abrams couldn't help himself but convey.  The result was a bitter end to a once beloved space opera.

Here are a list of my Top 10 films of the year.  As I mentioned above, there were a number of films I didn't see this year so the list below are the top ten that I enjoyed, personally, not universally, not in any concrete way, did I mention that this is 'my' list? 

10. MARRIAGE STORY

The performances are top notch in this story of a marriage coming to an end.  The film is quite raw and at sometimes hard to watch due to the heartbroken nature of it's subjects.  The film is about a separation followed by the unnecessary side of legal red tape at a great financial cost.  The film explores the technical side of divorce and the added hardships it compounds to those involved.  Their little boy who gets pulled in both directions is the real tragedy in the film.  Marriage Story felt like a Woody Allen film through and through.  Director Noah Baumbach clearly doesn't shy away from this influence.  It's probably his most Woody Allen since Baumbach's The Squid and the Whale. 

9. AVENGERS: ENDGAME

Endgame is the second part of one of the most ambitious films ever made.  It does it's best at managing the plot around so many characters.  Marvel was wise to put the film's villain. Thanos at it's center.  The movie is incredibly entertaining and has a couple of heartfelt moments, especially at the end with Tony's snap.  I'm always a fan when time travel is part of a story.  It's fun when characters travel back in time and see themselves from an outside perspective.  This was done beautifully in Back to the Future 2 and it was well done here.

8. DOCTOR SLEEP

I was worried about this film because I'm such a huge fan of The Shining and Stanley Kubrick.  But Doctor Sleep actually did not disappoint.  This film had me thinking about it for days after seeing it in the theater.  Not too many films these days can hold me like that.  It was legitimately creeping and thrilling, it was filled with horror and sadness but ultimately was a story about loss and redemption, as well as sacrifice.  Also you couldn't take your eyes off of Rebecca Ferguson.  

7. FORD V FERRARI

This film was about friendship at 200 mph around a race track.  The performances by Bale and Damon are some of the year's best.  The race scenes are so incredibly thrilling that after the movie I had an appointment for a check up with my doctor, he asked me why my heartbeat was up more then usual.  I told him I just got out of the theater seeing this film.  He immediately understood.

6. JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 3 - PARABELLUM

The first John Wick movie we got 'gun-fu', the second one we got 'car-fu', in Parabellum we got 'dog-fu'.  This movie solidifies the John Wick movies as one of  the greatest action movie trilogies of all time.  Keanu Reeves absolutely kicks ass in the role of John Wick.  The action sequences in this movie are some of the best of the series, especially the fight scenes with Halle Berry and her two dogs in them.   

5. THE BEACH BUM

This lazy ass movie will not be for everyone. The Dude in The Big Lebowski was tangled up in plot and Duke and his Attorney in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas dragged their asses but got to Vegas to report on the race, even if it was meaningless.  Moondog in The Beach Bum may even be more tragic because he really has no where to go.  That might be okay by him, but for us as a viewer, it isn't okay.  Moondog made himself an outsider because there really isn't much worth fighting for anymore.  The Beach Bum has cosmic implications.  It's the universe looking back at us without any answers, because there weren't any there in the first place.  Moondog lives in the now along with a universe that doesn't care about him, or anyone for that matter.  Everyone around him lives for the future and that breeds hope and hope becomes disappointment, and they have now lost what it means to live in the present. 

4. AD ASTRA

Brad Pitt's calm presents in this beautiful looking film is astounding.  The space journey into darkness where Pitt's character travels to the edge of our Solar System mirrors Willard's trip up the Cambodian river to take out Coronal Kurtz in Apocalypse Now.  Ad Astra is an existential journey to discover the meaninglessness of your life.  It's the pilgrimage that the Buddha took to rid himself of all the answers life claimed to have understood.  Like Dante's spiral into the Inferno, Ad Astra explores acceptance without hope, it explores reality and saves the fantasy from corrupting logic and reason.   
  

3. THE IRISHMAN

"It is what it is."

With three of the greatest performances of the year, The Irishman appearing at all award shows when the season kicks in will be a surprise to no one.  The film is long but you'd never know it due to Scorsese's camera moving around in this gangster world, filled with, maybe not back stabbing, more like sneak up behind gunshot blasts to the face.  It's an unquestionably sorrowful film about a man so loyal, so willing to please his bosses that he's willing to shot a long time friend in the back of the head and alienate his daughter, along with a number of other people that he cares about.  The last shot of the film has to be the saddest of the year, because in the end the one thing we all fear before our death........... is loneliness. 

2. ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD

"You're Rick... fucking... Dalton!"

Is it Quentin Tarantino's best, no, but it's one hell of a film.  It was overly indulgent, narcissistic and a bit meandering.  There were earlier points where it seemed undecided under all the snappy dialogue but then it started to focus and man, is it worth the wait.  Tarantino made a nostalgia film in his own image, gleefully.  He is a filmmaker that isn't afraid to show us what he thinks is cool, even embarrassingly cool.  The film let's us know it's a film and not a representation of reality.  Sharon Tate gets to live and the Manson family members sent to kill her by Charlie don't get to live because fuck them.  In the end we get the fairy tale the title promises, Once Upon a Time.....

1. JOKER

"I thought my life was a tragedy, now I know... it's a comedy."  

Joker is a polarizing and a deeply divisive film causing so much fuss for such an overly sensitive audience, that there is something actually funny about that fact.  The response to the film in real life confirms what the Joker had a problem with in his fantasy life.  Joaquin Phoenix, yet again, gave everything he had into playing the gloomy man becoming the troubled clown.  This film will echo through the aliases of movie theaters, coffee houses and film study classes for years to come.  Joker has effectively been able to leap out of the screen and into our world, exposing his contempt for our toxic environment as we enter 2020's.

 








  

JOKER and the World we Live in today

By Christopher Barr │POSTED ON OCTOBER 16, 2019
There will be some spoilers.

Put on a happy face

Joker was a film that itself was an agent of chaos.  The film and the character in the film were symbiotic, where one couldn't exist without the other.  They needed each other in the most beautiful poetic way, much in the same way as Travis Bickle and Martin Scorsese needed each other.  Joker was a weird film where the film was all about him and simultaneously wasn't about him at all.  The film was micro-sphere driven but had macro-sphere implications. 

A Brief History: Homo sapiens, us, have been around for about 200 thousand years, evolving for millions of years prior to that, give or take.  The agricultural revolution kicks in and us, hunters and gathers have finally found some level of stability.  Civilizations form, we agree to give up our freedom for security but at a cost.  The illusion of freedom isn't free, you have to pay to feel you are free even when you are not.  This becomes the foundation to our society, through wars and the fall of other civilizations, ours is the latest version of human beings that can and cannot get along when money is involved.

Plan and simple, Joker is about a failed system of who has and who is never allowed to have.  It's also about how we can't truly relate to other people.  We all want to believe we can, we call that being positive or optimistic, but in actuality we are in our own heads, viewing the world through our perspective and only imagining what another's life must be like.  In the end we don't know, we are not starving in Africa or a Syrian refugee.  

Arthur Fleck is a product of this failed society and that's what's pissing people off the most, because by accepting that prognosis is accepting that we live in a failed project.  All the decisions we make in our day to day lives whether sit in on corporate merger meetings or defending criminals in court or paying for our groceries at the supermarket or cold calling people trying to convince them into buying a lifelong subscription to some bible club, this structure is all we know, we are bound to it.  Joker holds a mirror up and we don't like what we see because when he is looking in a mirror we don't see him, we see ourselves.

I thought about going into the girlfriend neighbor is real or isn't or is any of this real by the end and then in my end, from what I take from the film, is it real or isn't, is missing the point.  The film is a mirror.

This film is Nietzsche's undoing everything you've been taught, it's Rimbaud's derangement of the senses, it's confronting Jung's shadow, it's Macbeth's rise to power.  Joker is the fallout of The Notes from Underground and Maldoror as well as Charles Baudelaire's Intimate Journals.  Joker is what Kierkegaard warned us about, the fear we have about our own freedom.  

Arthur lost all his support systems and fell into chaos, this isn't about condoning what Arthur/Joker became but it is a lesson to us all to touch the people in our lives.  It's about realizing when Plato said to 'be kind because everyone is fighting a battle', that he meant it.  It's not a cute saying but during his time it was meant to be understood.  That's where empathy comes in and where the system fails.  

The fact is our world has owners.  We never want to be thought of as something that is owned but we are, and are we able to get over how fucked up of a concept that even feels like, then we are able to start to peel back the layers of the onion.  Classism was a major focus in the film, are we equal, who gets to die on the Titanic and who gets away?   In the film there were all these little Joker-bots that claimed to have a cause and they were all full of shit.  Their recourse was destruction without any level of understanding of what they where even doing.

What is the point........

The Joker isn't the 'agent of chaos' he's the product of it.  Sadly he's in us all and that's why we hate him, but more importantly why we love him simultaneously is because he is us.  Our ying and yang battle is on going and within us all, so the film isn't an examination of this tortured man that evolves into this crazed joker killer.  The film is about our own fantasy.  Arthur Fleck was never the villain.  We are.

What is the point.....











The point of the film isn't to understand it.



#joker
#batman

IT: Chapter One and What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger

By Christopher Barr │POSTED ON SEPTEMBER 07, 2018

IT is a horror film based on the widely successful Stephen King 1986 novel of the same name.  It's a film about that twilight zone between childhood and adolescences and that leap one has to take, along with the strength to let go of childhood and grow up.  It's also about the weird world of adults, a world that these child find themselves being force to participate in.  

The film is creepy right from the beginning when little seven year old Georgie chases a paper boat, just made for him by his older stuttering brother Bill, up a flooding street in a down pour.  Georgie is wearing a yellow rain coat when the paper boat goes down a storm drain.  Georgie, clearly upset reaches for the boat and is met by the creepiest fucking clown you ever want to see, let alone one under the street in the sewer shrouded in darkness.  This clown, with bright blue eyes, powdered skin and red crazy hair, dips into the light as he introduces himself as Pennywise the Dancing Clown.  Oh my god, clean my shorts.

Poor Georgie is quite viciously murdered by this sick goddamn clown in the small Maine town of Derry in October of 1988.  The film jumps to the last day of school in June of 1989, where we meet the 'Loser's Club'.  A bicycle-riding group of kids that are pretty well picked on by 'older'- 'cooler' bully kids right from the get-go.  The asshole kids are truly cruel in their hatred toward the younger, and as they see it, the more weak.  This film is not setting itself up to go easy on anyone, it means to dig deep into your soul and rip it out through your eye sockets. 

These unfortunate kids are not only subjected to an insane clown fear-haunting them with charred corpses from a massive fire in Derry in 1908, but also all the terrifying adults in their lives.  Little Mike is told by his grandfather, just after he had fired a nail into the forehead of a bewildered sheep, that Mike has to make a choice, whether he wants to be a sheep in the cage or outside of the cage holding the gun.  Poor Bill is told quite firmly from his grieving father that his little brother Georgie is dead, and to stop believing that he's alive and might have washed up down river or something.

IT is about the painful reality of growing up in our state of society.  It's about dimming any light on hope and accepting the fact, childhood is but an early and often forgettable blip in the reality of adulthood.  Children in society are almost seen as these premature wastes of space.  They are often seen as useless and not ready to be taken seriously. 

Beverly, the only girl in their little gang, joins them while the investigate what's happening in their little town.  They do this while trying to avoid the older gangs who's only drive is to punish the younger kids, quite literally torture them.  Along with their investigation, they discover that many children have died or have gone missing in their little town over the years, they all start seeing more visions of ghoulish dead people, red balloons and that nightmarish goddamn clown, Pennywise. 
  
Beverly is the unfortunate one to have the most disgusting adult around her, her father, who is a piece of shit.  She even seems more alone then the boys.  She's been accused of sleeping around with many of the boys at their school so all the girls think she's a slut and has thus been ostracized by everyone.  These rumors are ways that cruel kids often play on each other as they grow in to their own.  The problem with that scenario is the adults around them aren't the greatest role models.  IT has trapped these kids from ever wanting to grow up.  It has truncated the possibility of any kind of peaceful transition from teenager to adult without losing so much along the way.  Beverly cuts her long red hair off to give her a feeling of control over her perverted, menacing father, but that control isn't real.  

The maleficent clown is getting to all of them, priming them to kill by marooning them in their own nightmares.  Beverly's bathroom sink explodes with blood and hair which her loser father doesn't see when he enters the bathroom, he just shames her and leaves.  Bill sees his little 'undead' brother Georgie along with the hair-raising Pennywise. Eddie sees a gruesome zombie-like corpse after him before he saw Pennywise with red balloons.  Ben saw a headless charred carcass coming toward him in the library basement,  Stanley saw a deformed woman in a painting come to life and chase him.  All these kids are being hunted by 'it' knowing at this point that this isn't 'it''s first time in Derry.  Every 27 years he appears, hunts and kills children and disappears into some form of hibernation after a year only to return again 27 years later.  Ideas do this as well, they appear in cycles, resting for a bit and then appearing again.    

Those poor terrified kids are on their own without anyone around to help them but each other.  They are being isolated by Pennywise, 'it''s trapping it's prey, but why?  In the story it was said to be an evil presents way back when the first settlers of Derry all went missing.

Henry is the teenage bully that torments the Loser's Club with so much hatred.  This kid is a mean little shit but we later see that like father, like son.  Henry's father is a Derry police officer and is also a bully.  Pennywise attaches onto Henry's fear and makes him stab his angry father in the neck bleeding him to death.  Henry is one of the only cases in the film where we see the horrible influence a parent can have on their child.  Beverly is never like her lonely sick father.  She frees herself from his possessive entrapping ways.  But Henry is too far gone and he is, quite frankly, a lot dumber than the bright and emotionally strong Beverly.  

In the end they face their fears, form a tight friendship and defeat the clown.....for now.  The Loser's Club all get together and make a blood oath, after Beverly tells them of a vision she had about fighting the clown again but this time as adults, that they must return to Derry in 27 years if that dreaded Pennywise comes back for more children.  Like the children in The Goonies, Super 8 and Stranger Things, they found that working together unified them as Pennywise, One-eyed Willy, the Alien or the Demogorgon attempted so desperately, through fear, to divide and concur them all.

What is up with alluring clowns in the tormentor role in so many peoples nightmares?  All knowledge has a price and suffering is a requirement for growth.  These kids had to grow up and learn about this place they're in.  They have to learn that suffering isn't something that is wrong, in fact it is a part of our survival mechanism.  We need to fear and suffer in order to gain the strength to survive.  As odd as welcoming suffering sounds, it is liberating in the end because you come to realize, like the Loser's Club did when defeating the demonic Pennywise, is that most all the fear and then the suffering are in your head.  

Currently in our society there is this growing movement to eliminate personal pain and bubble wrap everyone and everything in padded rooms, with painted flowers and rainbows on the walls.  This movement wants to eliminate anything offensive throughout the culture by controlling what people can and cannot say.  I'm not so sure what the end game this movement thinks is going to happen but I would argue, and certainly advise, to pick up a psychology book.  If we sterilize the whole system we open ourselves up to a vulnerable position.  We need to scrap our knees and elbows to help strengthen our immune system.  We need shitty food so we can, on occasion, enjoy the good stuff.  We need to fall so we learn to gain the backbone to stand up.  We need to feel fear so we can teach ourselves to fight it.  We must understand that fear is apart of being human as much as we might want it gone.  Fear helps us avoid threats to our existence, whether it is a real threat or a perceived one, it allows us to recognize this threat, feel anxiety over it and then act in a way to avoid.  This process is hardwired in each and every one of us, and is unavoidable.

IT was a scary film that carried a huge message along with it.  This world isn't about our beliefs, they are opinions that you are refusing to reconsider.  You are not going to get handed anything worth holding on to.  This film leaves us with the fact that you are going to have to fight, claw and hold on to what you want.  Bubble-wrapped-baby-adults are in an illusion of safety and security brought to you by our friends at the highest levels of office and their corporate sponsors.  That's what the shape-shifting Pennywise tried to do, make them all feel weak, so he could divide them.  The number one problem facing us all is division.  We are all so horribly branched off fighting our little battles among ourselves, while all the real wealth is being absorbed by the real monsters residing at the tops of skyscrapers and 50 room mansions.

Solitude is fine in doses but as a species we need each other so we don't fall back and too deeply into ourselves.  We need connections and sounding boards with the people in our lives.  We need to understand our strengths so our weaknesses can dissolve away.  If we continue down this path of unbridled narcissism and socio-smugness, we will not have to wait 27 years for the horror show to start up again, we may not make it that far.  

"Time to float."

"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.  You are able to say to yourself, 'I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.'"

 - Eleanor Roosevelt

BLACKkKLANSMAN: Overcoming Racism and the Real War on Stupidity

By Christopher Barr │POSTED ON AUGUST 31, 2018
There will be some spoilers.

BlacKkKlansman was based on a true story from the 2014 memoir of Ron Stallworth.  In 1972 Stallworth became the first black detective at the Colorado Springs police department.  Stallworth requested to go undercover after being stuck working in the records room for longer then he'd hoped, while being mistreated by his co-workers.  He ended up going to a local rally to listen to a national civil rights leader, observe and report back to his department if there was any illegal activity.  Stallworth met Patrice, a president of the black student union at Colorado College at the rally, and decided to get to know her and get in deeper undercover but nothing nefarious is ever found so the investigation was dropped.

Stallworth, now part of the intelligence division, recruited his Jewish co-worker, Flip Zimmerman, to help him infiltrate the local Klu Klux Klan chapter.  Stallworth gets invited to join the KKK after a couple of phone calls, pretending to be white, with the president of the Colorado Springs chapter.  Flip, acting as a white Stallworth, goes and meets with them in person while Stallworth maintains contact with them by phone.

Stallworth and Flip get in good with these KKK guys and eventually in a position to meet the Grand Wizard of the KKK himself, David Duke.  Stallworth ends up saving his now girlfriend Patrice from being killed by a bomb haphazardly planted by one of the more radicalized KKK member's wife.  Stallworth is congratulated by the chief but is told to destroy all his files on the investigation.  Later at his apartment, Stallworth and Patrice are interruption and see in the distance, through a window, a flaming cross surrounded by Klan members. 

BlacKkKlansman, given its serious subject matter, is quite funny in places, if not absurd.  Director, Spike Lee likely wanted that absurdity present as a reflection of the madness of the film's very subject, which loosely is; 'what the fuck is going on in this country!!'.  

Albert Einstein's, General Theory of Relativity, his geometric theory of gravitation was published in 1915, promising a new understanding of the Nature of Reality and what betterment is possible for the human race to advance forward into the future.  Sadly that was also the same year D.W. Griffith's racist epic The Birth of a Nation was released to the public to see just how backwards we've become.  The film was responsible for the 20th century's resurgence of the Klan, glorifying them and promoting white supremacy.  The racist film was widely received and in fact screened at the White House.  

This juxtaposition in BlacKkKlansman between Grand Wizard David Duke and his fellow Klansman bombastically rejoicing over a screening of The Birth of a Nation, while in another location the black student union body listen to Harry Belafonte, with a heavy-heart, telling the account of a black farmhand named Jesse Washington, who was brutally lynched and burnt to death in front of 10,000 spectators, with children and policemen among them in Waco, Texas on May 15, 1916. 

"We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid." 

-Benjamin Franklin

I know this may sound trite but racism is stupid.  What I mean by this is racism couldn't hold up to reason and logic and hope to make it out the other side.  Racism is pure ignorance fueled by historical traditions and an over all lack of understanding.  What I mean by a lack of understanding, I don't mean a lack of understanding of a particular ethnicity or culture, what I mean is an overall inability to understand, to comprehend one's thoughts and have an ability to form constructive ideas out of those thoughts.

This is where the problem of racism and why it sticks around even though at this point in human history, we should have all moved on.  Racism isn't about hating other people that may or may not be like you.  Racism, at it's core, is a lack, or outright absence, of education and emotional intelligence.  Telling a racist to stop being a racist is an act of futility.  Racist are like villains, they don't see themselves as the bad guy.  In their ignorant, backward minds they believe that they are in the right, and this brings us back to stupidity.

"America would never elect someone like David Duke for President of the United States."

- Ron Stallworth

The white supremacist Charlottesville rally in Virginia that happened on August 11th and 12th of 2017 was an obvious low point in the recent history of the United States.  President Trump would have us all believe, certainly based on his long overdue statement, that there were bad people on both sides and some good people on both sides. (talk about taking a side by not taking a side)  This doesn't take a Rhodes scholar to quite quickly come to the conclusion that the white supremacists were on the wrong side of this race battle, as the Confederates during the American Civil War were.  This fight is never going to go away if we continue to tell or force white supremacist racists that they are wrong.  That may be frustrating when you come to the realization that simply asking people to 'do the right thing' isn't going to be good enough.  Doing the right thing is a relative proposition because the points of view of people often differ.

We do have a couple of ways to handle this seemingly endless problem.  We could all divide, go our separate ways, chalk it up as 'this is what's best for everyone'.  Or we can kill each other, fight back and forth, over and over again until we are all damn near dead.  Or we do what they do at CERN.  At the CERN facility in Switzerland there are hundred's of scientists and physicists from around the world, all working together to unlock the secrets of the universe both macro, micro and quantum.  One of the issues that plague most of our world doesn't really happen there.  The reason; they are beyond looking at people as categories.  They look at people as brains that are in the bone case of their skull, past their skin color and cultural traditions.  

I know, it's not that simple, but I'm here to say that it kind of is that simple because they are doing it.  So why does racism persist even though we know how to overcome it, capitalism, lack of education?  The problems we face runs far deeper than how we treat each other. 

In half of the commercials on American television, corporations are selling drugs to unwitting people to 'help' solve all their problems.  So how are people supposed to learn how to be intellectually honest with themselves about the problems that they face?  If we become convinced, through conditioning and propaganda, that we 'need' our government to look after our safety and security and that we 'need' mega-corporations to look after our mental health and livelihood, then how are we going to learn to think for ourselves?  If our leaders in office along with their corporate sponsors only want us to be dumb enough so we need them, then how are we going to be smart enough to know the difference?  Racism is a side effect of our stupidity and ignorance not the source of it.

"Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience."

 - Mark Twain

So now what, we go round and round and round?  Historically through rallies and speeches, leaders of all sides of the opposition preached and pontificated about, how do we solve this mass division and all get along?  We are all guilty of this because it is part of our defense mechanisms, where preconceived ideas and confirmation bias exist resulting in our brains dividing and filing away things, and often reducing people into heuristic categories for potentially later confabulations.  My point here is we must look inwardly and understand more about our own thought processes, so we can understand more about how the people around us think the way they do.  

This will not be easy, but other then killing each other, we have no choice but to learn how to understand ourselves so we can understand others.  This is not condoning racists, this is about exploring an idea and rising above it to such a point that it's seen by all for what it is; stupid.

Other Related Articles on this site. 

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Star Wars: The Last Jedi and the Death of History

By Christopher Barr │POSTED ON JANUARY 03, 2018

The Last Jedi was a movie that was an interesting addition to the Star Wars saga.  It had marvelous special effects, it had some exciting battle scenes......

Spoilers...Spoilers...Spoilers...Spoilers...Spoilers...Spoilers...Spoilers...Spoilers...Spoilers...Spoilers...Spoilers...Spoilers...Spoilers

Okay this movie was either so brilliantly done or it was a massive mess that we all want to believe was great because it had Star Wars in its title.  There is a third way of looking at it.  Was the movie just not a good movie, not because it's Star Wars, not because it's a massive budget blockbuster extravaganza, but because the pieces that work so well in a good movie were absent here?

Is The Last Jedi a victim of it's time?  Is it's concepts and discombobulating narrative subject to the fractured times that permeate the closing pages of 'who we are' and 'where we are at' as a people in the privileged first world circa 2017?  Is this just a movie?  Of course it isn't because no movie, no story, no narrative is just a thing in and of itself.  We watch these stories because they mean something to us, they resonate, hopefully.  We learn about how to be good to people and how others have struggled to live through this life.  We certainly learn much of our morality through educational means outside the dark theaters and flat screens of our home entertainment systems, but to suggest that a film has nothing to say, whether a comedy, a drama, a horror film, or in this case a science fiction film, is quite frankly losing the meaning of film, narrative and how we interrupt the world outside the mind.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens was a fun movie and was a valid addition, while introducing this 40 year old fantasyland to younger people it also paid fan service to the Star Wars fans that actually grow up watching them through 1977 - 1983.  Its weakness' and its strengths oddly coexist in this paradigm of the past and the present simultaneously.  J.J. Abrams had massive mouths to feed and for the most part, he achieved this.  He took a mega-franchise and was awarded the task to restart the heart of a dying star.  The prequels divided the fans where confidence was low and the expectations of a sort of heart transplant seemed dim.  Abrams ignited excitement to this new rebirth, this new window into this galaxy far, far away.

The Force Awakens opened with for the most part, approval by fans of the originals and the prequels alike.  Yes some people bashed it, but that was going to happen.  Why wouldn't they, the movie had some plot issues, it killed off Han Solo (at the request of actor Harrison Ford no less), it played the replay button many times over throughout its running time.  The question is; what did we get in the end?  We got a movie that celebrated Star Wars, probably with a little fan service over-kill, but we still got an entertaining movie on its own right.  

Abrams' job, not only as a fan but as a director, was to introduce this world to a young audience and he did that.  The thing is, he gave a gift to the older audience, him being part of that audience, he gave the location to Luke Skywalker.  The first Star Wars movie from May of 1977 introduced a story of a young man that pulled himself out of the modest farming life only to discover he was part of a dynasty of Jedi that were warriors who fought against an evil Empire.  He was like a boy plucked from the pages of a Horatio Alger's novel, where the poor boy is plummeted, through no fault of his own, into the world of the wealthy and knowledgeable.  

With the three originals and the prequels, family was a main artery throughout the saga.  It was the spine that barely held the prequels together.  This Skywalker mythology was very much a part of The Force Awakens.  Stars Wars is about Skywalker.  Rogue One: A Star Wars Story was a successful episode outside of the Skywalker linage that proved to be exciting and worthy of its place in the Star Wars Universe.  Which now brings us back to The Last Jedi.

Yoda: Delicate waters I tread, hhhmmmmm.

What was great about The Last Jedi?  Stowing wants and desires that have been painted on the walls of many of our minds and memories in the Millennium Falcon weathered rusty grey, what happened in this movie?

Star Wars: The Last Jedi was not a good movie.  It has it's moments, it has its twists, contrived yes, but they were technically twists.  Poe Dameron takes out all the exterior laser canons on a massive Star Destroyer and then bombs were dropped onto this Star Destroyer in zero-gravity, nit-picky for sure, but what was interesting just minutes before this attack, General Hux suffered through humiliating conference call issues with Poe. 

Issues with The Last Jedi are littered all over the internet, most of which we all know by now; what's up with running out of fuel, how can Leia come alive and float in space, why are the First Order so tactically stupid, why did Luke not give a shit as he drank milk from whatever that thing was?  

The problem here is The Last Jedi was a victim of its time.  It was a Star Wars movie that was not a Star Wars movie.  It was a movie for kids and teenagers that heard about this galaxy far, far away but they can never ever live there.  The Last Jedi did away with the fantasy that kids in the 80's clung so hard to.  It brought the fantasy home with all the animal rights and the corporate greed and left out the allegorical mythology of the originals.

Yoda: Luke Skywalker is dead he is, hhmmmm, nothing without effort it was.

What did we learn from this episode of Star Wars?  What did we get in the end, that last shot of 'family' on the Millennium Falcon?  What did we really get out of this 8th film outside of a couple of cool action scenes and a couple, very few, dramatic moments?  We all wanted to love this movie but yet we didn't, some of us lied to ourselves, convincing us that it was the greatest of all the Star Wars movies, some didn't like it but didn't know why and some hated it because it wasn't the 'Star Wars' they were expecting.

This all turns around and follows back to the most fundamental question that was mentioned before; is this just a movie?  This movie has been seen by more people than Citizen Kane, Midnight Cowboy, The Godfather, Apocalypse Now combined so yes, this movie means something, for better or for worse.

Worse is the more obvious approach, it's message was to forget the past, "kill it if you have to."  It advocates, like so many movies these days, to 'kill' the past like it is worthless.  The problem with the past, whether you need cuddles or not, is it defines who we are in the present.  To 'kill' the past is to kill the self.  We can learn from the past and correct wrongs and make them rights, but we cannot divorce ourselves from the past know more than a shark can separate itself from water. 

Along with the SJW (Social Justice Warrior) Kylo Ren not getting his way fits and the millennial agenda of receiving without earning, princess warrior Rey did nothing to become a Jedi, the message here is fuck Joseph Campbell, fuck actual sacrifice and everyone gets what they want in their cuddly warm blanket.  Nietzsche as angry as he was when he was alive would fucking die of the all sulking and the I-want-it-my-way movement of the modern human (not gender specific) in the first world.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi, without lying to oneself and getting over the spell that Star Wars holds over us, was not a good movie, but more importantly, the movie didn't have a good message.  With that little 'together' moment at the end doesn't erase the fact that this movie was about the killing of the family and the killing of trust itself.  Sadly in the end this movie was about the kids and the young people watching it.  It's no more a Star Wars movie than comic book movies are for comic book fans.  It has evolved into a monster corporate commercial that is never ending.  It's a circus now, oddly resulting from the first major circus, Star Wars (1977), the (Snoke) snake eating its own tail.  

Sadly here we get Mickey Mouse eating his own tail.  Purple haired suicide bombers and superhero princess Leia and a Rose that never blooms.  

The fight in the red room was cool, ......high note.......?