This documentary is so new on Hoopla that there isn’t even a catalogue record for it … yet.

By the title of this documentary, and the accompanying image, you can probably guess the topic.  And if you can’t guess, I’ll tell you: it’s marijuana.  This is a very important film because we are about to (finally), have a serious political debate in this country about the legalization of marijuana.  This will be a campaign issue, maybe a big one, in the upcoming federal election.

The Culture High naturally focuses on the issue as it relates to the United States, and to a lesser extent, the UK.  But the issues presented are those that are already being discussed in this country: the failed drug war, overcrowded prisons and the privatization of the penal system, the political hypocrisy and corruption of politicians, the undue influence of pharmaceutical companies, the complicity of mainstream media, the militarization of the police.  On and on. Continue reading →

For true fans of baseball and all its lore, the names Ralph Branca and Bobby Thomson, “The shot heard ’round the world,” and the radio announcer yelling over and over, “The Giants win the pennant!” are as familiar to them as their own names.  What might not be so familiar is the real story behind that moment in baseball history.

The apparent backbone of this documentary is the writing of Branca’s 2011 autobiography, A Moment in Time, with ghost-writer David Ritz, and that story is very important.  But if that were the only story being told, it would have been rather dull.  There was a secret lurking underneath waiting to be revealed.  When it is revealed you’ll see that the New York Giants’ coming back from a seemingly impossible deficit in August to defeat the Brooklyn Dodgers for the 1951 National League pennant was not nearly so miraculous as has commonly been portrayed.

Truth be told, the secret was actually revealed in Joshua Prager’s 2006 book, The Echoing Green, and the author is interviewed for this documentary.  The irony is that the man who was most wronged, Branca, didn’t want to talk to Prager about it while the man who did the wrong, Thomson, treated the book as a confessional.

A must see for all baseball fans.

Directed by McG, Kevin Costner continues his career revival playing a CIA agent who, while recovering from injuries sustained during a failed operation, is diagnosed with terminal cancer and is given 3 to 5 months to live.  Hoping to reconcile with his estranged wife (Connie Nielsen), and daughter (Hailee Steinfeld), he returns to Paris after a five-year absence, only to find a large family squatting in his apartment whose eviction is forbidden by French law.

As if the attempted family reconciliation and strange living arrangements weren’t hard enough, he is coerced into completing the previously failed operation with the promise of a life-saving experimental drug with bizarre side-effects.

As weird as all this sounds, I could totally buy it, except for the fact that the CIA operative controlling him and the drug treatment is the most utterly ridiculous female character I’ve ever seen in an action movie.  Vivi Delay (Amber Heard), is presented as a leather-clad, stiletto-wearing dominatrix, who seems to be enjoying the look way too much for it to just be a cover.  Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, considering that this movie is also populated with such characters as The Wolf, and The Albino, who isn’t actually an albino, but has the skin condition alopecia universalis.  I guess the CIA couldn’t come up with a properly catchy nickname for someone with that condition.

In the end, the mission almost seems beside the point.  The better part of the movie is the father/daughter re-connection, which has some very touching and humorous moments.