"Attack The Block"

"Attack The Block" is set in South London, the movie opens up with a young women on the phone walking home through her neighborhood when she is then robbed at knife point by an underage group of hoodlums (gang members). During the mugging something suddenly falls from the sky and crashes into a parked car. The gang suddenly gets attacked by an alien who ends up cutting the gang leader Moses face, and in revenge the gang and Moses hunt the alien down and kill it. Shortly, after more aliens start to fall down from the sky and land on the estate. However, these aliens are different, they are bigger, more vicious, and kill any human they come into contact with. Moses and his gang become aware of what if going on and take it upon their selves to defend their block and retaliate against the aliens.

The gang in the movie are kids no more than 16 years old (despite there appearance). Moses the leader of the gang leads the viewers through many different emotions. At the beginning of the movie were made to believe that Moses is a common hoodlum with no feelings or morals. But towards the end we see this character and just exactly who he really is. I think the writer did a good job naming the main character Moses. Just like in the bible he saved his people from harsh enslavement and that is exactly what Moses in the movie did. Saved his community, at the end of the movie it is so touching and very symbolic when the people are chanting his name. "Moses!" "Moses!" Just like the in the bible Moses was made to look like a troublemaker when in all actuality he was a hero that saved many lives.
                           
                              
Attack the Block also carried an underlined message as well. Despite the dramatic, and comedic parts, the real message was judgement. The nurse pre-judged the kids and the kids pre-judged the nurse. They all lived in the same neighborhood, and building for who knows how long and not once did they ever speak or just say a friendly hello to one another. Just like the movie the world is filled with may stereotypes and many people go through life sticking to those stereotypes they have for one another. If there was never an alien invasion, who knows just exactly what would have happened. Moses nor the nurse would have not gotten a chance to redeem their selves and see each other for who they really were. The wall would have never been broken down.

 

This movie also shed a little bit of light on the issue of poverty. The kids lived in a neighborhood where in London seemed like one of the worst ghettos throughout the UK. They did not come from rich families, and the drug life surrounded them. Just like many people living in poverty, they were not blessed with many options. Especially Moses, he is a key example of just what poverty will do to you. He was the leader of the group, the top drug dealer in the neighborhood asked him to do a job for him, and when the police found the gang he is the one who got arrested. Not being blessed with many opportunities or even having some type of adult guidance in his life. From the beginning of the movie you can already see how Moses character is doomed from the start. Moses character represents many kids not only in London but worldwide, and how poverty is affecting their lives. Just like Moses many of those kids suffer in silence not making it aware of what they are going through, and having to survive by any means necessary. Even if it means robbing an innocent woman at knife-point.

Attack the Block also focuses on community and togetherness. When watching the movie I thought of Africa and the villages there. They work as a community looking after one another, focusing on one common goal, for the village to prosper and grow. In the movie, the people of the community had one common goal, to save their neighborhood from that invasion. The characters set aside their difference and worked together. Everyone played a part, and without everyone doing their part nothing would have been accomplished. This is definitely a feel good movie that will have you questioning yourself and the way you treat people. It is a family movie and I do recommend that everyone sees this movie. But when you watch it do not just watch it purely for entertainment but try to grasp the message the director wanted everyone to. Tolerance, because everyone needs a chance to redeem their self and show their true character in the end.

"Dead Presidents"

 "Dead Presidents" is the story of a young man who gets involved in too many complicated things and it all goes way over his head.  It is a very, brutal and intense film, and you are able to take a little bit of a sad story than I recommend to watch it. During the 1960s a young adult named Anthony can't take anymore school, so he drops out and works petty crimes at the billiard hall with the owner who has no legs. When he finally gets tired of that lifestyle, he decides to enlist in the army. Since the Vietnam war going on, he goes in and becomes mentally unstable due to the atrocities. When he gets back home, his girlfriend has had his child and he tries to support her and his daughter. Unfortunately, the food place with the part time job that he had been contending to has gone bankrupt, leaving him with no job, no money, no food, and no choices. His desperate search descends into a downward spiral of war flashbacks and his overall loss on morality.

The film has characters who eventually resort to really desperate measures in order to survive. One of the focuses in the film were Anthony Curtis, played by Larenz Tate, a young African-American in the late sixties hanging with his other young friends Jose, and Skippy. All of them have finished high school and hope to enter some sort of employment  However two things require Anthony to grow up way before his time, the impregnation of his girlfriend Juanita and also him volunteering to go to Vietnam to fight the cause for America in the war. 

 One of the most interesting aspects of the film is the character Skippy, played Chris Tucker. Skippy was a childhood friend whose life ends up being worse off then Anthony's. He becomes addicted to heroin, has flashbacks almost all the time, and is about ready to self-destruct. Chris Tucker does a great job bringing out Skippy's as this tortured character.  

The film's war sequences are super gruesome. The film has Anthony jumped back into the world four years after Vietnam, where viewers witness the domestic turmoil the war brought upon Anthony and Juanita. The violence between these two characters in the film is very ugly. It is very believable, when they argue and fight with each other, viewers can really feel the two's hate for one another. 

The film's war sequences were very gruesome, but not as much as the bank robbery's. During the bank robbery scene a part of you hopes that Anthony and the rest of the characters involve steal the money, get off scott-free, and never being seen or heard from again. However, this movie had a message to convey and audiences would have not understood nor got it if that happened, One by one each character dies, Skippy's being the worst due to an heroine overdose. Until the only one left is Anthony who is caught by the proper authorities and later trialed, receiving a fifteen to life jail sentence. I think the final scene of the movie is very important, Anthony is sitting on the bus on his way to prison and he is contemplating. Questioning how a country he served for and gave up his life for, give him such a harsh sentence and not a second chance at life. Vietnam took away his first chance, and now America was taking away his second. 

Dead Presidents has many underlying messages but one of the most important ones of the film was that the Vietnam war veterans deserved way better than what they received when they came home. The government seemed to have done them no favors and granted them no opportunities. It is very sad, especially since people like Anthony come home to below poverty lifestyles and need government support just to be able to survive. Despite whatever circumstance that might have brought them to join the army, they are still human beings, and no human being should live their lives regretting something they thought was honorable and worth fighting for. 

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"Wattstax"

 Wattstax a documentary about African-American life in Los Angeles in the early 1970's. The concert is to commemorate the Watts riots of 1965, and some of the positive changes that took place in the area. Although there is a lot of humor to be found in some of the comments that the residents make about changes in their area, it's sad to realize that the lingering problems of racism and unequal opportunities still exist to this day. However, there's a lot of joy and hope expressed throughout the film. This is one of Richard Pryor's earliest appearances on film, and he is definitely entertaining. Ted Lange  and Raymond Lewis, are some of the Watts residents who give their thoughts about the political changes. This is also a concert documentary that showcased some of the biggest as well as some of the soulful groups and R&B singers during that time frame. This is also a true picture about US as a people too when we didn't act so crazy,and it shows. The overall beauty of this film is at the impact of seeing African Americans when we had some dignity as well as pride about ourselves and our culture plus we have a lot of soul and self respect in being what we were. We were one with our own music and we were able to express that individuality by feeling what was deep inside us. Wattstax was based on a two day event which was the Woodstock for African-Americans that was held in 1972 at the L.A. Coliseum. This was the kind of show that made you stand up and dance up if you wanted to and also to express yourself. Some of the people that are in this are a very youthful and radical looking Rev. Jesse Jackson who was incredible to watch and he gave various speeches as well as providing laughs from a young looking Richard Pryor. The acts that performed were very entertaining and it shows. You had acts that included The Staple Singers,The Emotions,Carla Thomas,Rance Allen,Johnnie Taylor as well as one of the greatest acts ever, the incredible Issac Hayes.t features lots of footage other than performances - crowd shots, interviews with the man on the street, a gospel performance at a local church, some B-list celebrities, etc, all of which help add to the atmosphere of both the concert and of Watts itself. There's even some very funny and casual footage of Richard Pryor in his prime, as he raps about all sorts of topics in a local bar. Wattstax, was released in the midst of the "blaxploitation" movie trend, was a then-unheard of snapshot of the state of black America as it moved through the music of its artists. There are many establishing shots of storefronts in black neighborhoods: ramshackle churches abound, as well as other starkly blighted structures. As one resident puts it, "some things have changed for the better... some for the worst... a lot of things have stayed the same.." Whatever the physical costs of the civil rights movement ,there is brief footage included of Dr. Martin Luther King's final speech and the emotional wounds were still fresh. "Black is beautiful" was the catchphrase of the day, and Afrocentric styles of hair and fashion were at a pre-disco peak. The film also captures "black power" at it's highest. The film offers many different definitions  of blackness that are featured as much as there are the different kinds of music performed at the show. it was also a very socio-politically charged event, with its emphasis on black pride and the simple opportunity for African Americans to assert that, in opening speaker Jesse Jackson's words, "I am somebody." This movie is a must-see. Aside from the [great] music, there are interviews with working-class black, which give you a look at the political and social climate at that point in time. Jessie Jackson's opening speech is inspirational. While Richard Pryor adds the comical relief to top it off.   

Baadasssss!

Melvin Van Peebles stunned the world with his making of Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song. A film that was turned down by every major studio including Columbia, where he had a three-picture deal, Melvin was forced to basically self-finance. Risking everything he had Melvin delivered to the world the first Black Ghetto hero on the big screen. More than 30 years later, history is being fashioned again in the telling of this very tale. In the movie "Badassss", Mario Van Peebles, Melvin's son, directs an honest and revealing portrait of his father. Mario tells the story of the making of Melvin Van Peebles' landmark 1971 film, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, including Melvin's struggles to raise money to fund the film under the guise of creating a black porno film. Melvin had ducked creditors, the unions and had to bail out his camera crew after they were arrested because a white cop decided a bunch of Negroes and hippies couldn't have come by that camera equipment honestly. Despite death threats and temporarily losing sight in one eye, Melvin somehow finished the film. The same film that would give birth to birth of a new era which was about to explode, the Blackxploitation era. 

The basic concept of the film works out like a documentary because Van Peebles takes us from the pre-production all the way up to the premiere and in between for a very exciting ride.This has been seen in countless films before but viewers are seeing it for the first time because we actually get to see . Melvin Van Peebles was very upset about how African Americans were being portrayed in films during that time, so he set out to make a film where the black man, fought back being seen as a hero, and got away with it. Mario shows a deep sense of love and respect for his father's achievement. 

But Mario definitely doesn't sugarcoat his depiction of Melvin. Some very serious issues dealing with his father's anger, cheating other cruel things are brought up. The Melvin we see in this film is a driven, obsessive man who loves his friends and family deeply, but won't let anything or anyone stop his film, including the weekend jailing of his crew. Mario's reluctance about being forced to be in a "sex scene" in his dad's movie is one of the film's highlights.Those scenes between the father and son are very touching, honest and interesting to view because we know they're real and it's all the more interesting seeing the director of this film work out problems on camera that he had with his father. 

Another interesting thing the film tackles is why Melvin wanted to create an independent film when he had offers from major studios. Black people in American movies were always used as comic relief, usually appearing on screen bug eyed and telling silly one-liners.The film has some wonderful flashback scenes where we see these stereotypes being played out in a theater with the white children laughing at them and the black children hiding their head in shame because they know what they're seeing on screen isn't how black people really act.

Mario Van Peebles, the actor, turns in the greatest performance of his career and easily one of the greatest performances I've seen in quite some time. I'm sure he knows his father inside and out, but sometimes  it's not easy playing someone you know or playing yourself. Van Peebles does a brilliant job at showing off various emotions and the scenes where he has to rally his crew is full of such monumental force that you can help but get pumped up. The best scene in the movie involves the father falling on the ground only to have his young son come to his help.

Baadasssss! is a beautiful love story from a son to his father but thankfully Mario doesn't hide anything and instead gives a film, which certainly looks and feels like the truth. In the film Melvin is shown as a hero for starting the Blaxploitation genre but the film never hides the fact that he did a lot of bad things and certainly shows the bad things he did to his kids. This movie took a lot of motivation and determination to make and it took even more by showing things how they really were. He said f-you to everyone who told him he couldn't live out his dream on his terms. This man did not take no for an answer. He bucked Hollywood, the machine, whatever.This movie was mind-blowing and very inspirational. Melvin Van Peeble's drive as well As Mario's was unbelievable. I recommend that audiences this film to learn about the true story subject, see it to get some courage to do something you are being told you cant do and also just see it you will be be glad you did Baadasssss! is a one-of-a-kind film.