top four films from Black Harvest Film Festival

For the last few weeks I have been attending the Black Harvest Film Festival at the Gene Siskel Film Center.

Destination: Planet Negro

Tonight I saw Destination: Planet Negro written/directed/starring Kevin Willmott. All of the independent feature-length films I've attended at BHFF have been good; Destination: Planet Negro was the best. D:PN was funny, thoughtful and endearing.

The premise is that in the 1930s, Black intellectual leadership bands together to devise a way to escape the BS in America. The inner circle takes the resources for the project and builds a rocket designed to take Blacks to Mars. George Washington Carver synthesizes a particularly potent fuel from peanuts and sweat potatoes.

Batman is Jesus; personal morality is the only hope for society

Today I saw in The Dark Knight Rises (IMDB) at some theater in western Cook County. My friend who leans toward a libertarian outlook and dislikes police saw the movie having a pro-police state subtext. I did not.

I saw the film as being mostly a Christian film. Batman is Jesus. And Bane & company are sort of an evil--or at least frustrated-at-humanity--version of God reneging on His promise to not destroy the world after The Flood.

Batman is the Jesus figure because he understands man's sins, but is willing to sacrifice himself to prevent the destruction of mankind. [Minor spoiler included after break.]

there's a movie about rape and sexual assault in the U.S. military

Last night, at the invitation of the head of the local Iraq Veterans Against the War chapter, I saw TheInvisible War (IMDB, Wikipedia), a documentary by Kirby Dick about both rape in the military and the military's response to rapes in the military. The movie is showing at the Music Box Theater until July 5.

This is going to be a long blog entry. So, I'm going to include an outline. You can skip to the points that are interesting to you.

1. The film
   A. The list of reasons why this is a good film
   B. Who are the “bad guys” in the film?
   C. Congress gets a pass in the film
2. Connecting the film to my military experience
A. I was sexually molested
B. Rape at Navy Recruiting District Chicago
C. M Division on USS St. Louis (LKA-116)
D. Kicking a waitress in Phnom Penh
3. Connecting the film to my activist experience
   
   A. Dorothy Mackey
   B. What could Congress do?

Continued below the fold.

Avengers: what I liked, what I would have changed

I saw The Avengers yesterday, and thought I'd share my observations.

Generally, it's a positive contribution to the superhero movie genre. It's better than most, but probably not on the level of the greats: Batman Begins, Dark Knight, Incredibles, Kick-Ass, Iron Man, X-Men: First Class, and Superman.

What does Avengers to well? Numerous specific things are done well. In the big picture, I think there are a couple weaknesses.

And since I watch movies with a political eye, I actually assumed Joss Whedon was writing from a Right Wing perspective. Actually, he's an atheist who has taken liberal positions and he's donated to Barack Obama.

I'm going to write about the whole movie below the fold. Consider this a spoiler alert. But I don't think I'm going to spoil the ending because it's not the kind of movie that can be spoiled any more than the trailer spoils it.

Hunger Games: how immoral does society need to be to justify revolution?

Hunger Games are a metaphor for any tool of social control that leaves young people worse off.

While the Hunger Games are the central concept of the book and trilogy (Hunger Games, Catching Fire, Mockingjay) by Suzanne Collins, one concept does not a (good) book make.