Speaker #0hello everyone and welcome to movie goodness where we examine life through cinema here on the kb radio network i am your host kevin reed and happy indigenous people day or native american day we don't we don't do the columbus day fiasco around here around these here parts here at the kb radio network we celebrate national indigenous people day because that's the people who needs to be honored those are the true honorees of this day because it still boggles my mind and it kind of infuriates me to think that i used to sit in the classroom like millions of others who sat there read in a book taught by a teacher that christopher columbus quote-unquote discovered america and we went with it i mean what other option we had around that time you know we were taught this that uh uh he came over he discovered it by accident because he was supposed to be going to the west indies or wherever he was supposed to be going and got lost like a buffoon ended up here and discovered this country that was already inhabited by people how you discover something that was already inhabited that's like me coming to your house and saying oh i think i'm gonna claim this house you have all your furniture your stuff up in there you're sitting on the couch watching tv but i'm like oh this is this is my house now i've discovered it you would kick me out if not shoot me and so it makes no sense to me why this was taught to me and millions of other children and probably still is being taught to millions of children around the world that this is what actually took place when it is a bald-faced lie and it's even worse now that the truth is more prevalent that is more out there that is more accessible uh when you just google it you know and it's like wait wait wait that's not how this played out it's the same thing as thanksgiving we we we used to celebrate that holiday like oh man yeah uh uh the pilgrims and and the uh native americans because we didn't call them that back then when i was in school uh but they got together and just had a feast to to enjoy each other's company and we know that that was a bald face lie and it's it's so upsetting bro to know that this is the stuff we were taught and there are still grown full adults who walk around right now as we speak and still believe this crap even though the truth is out there the truth is accessible all you have to do is just look it up no you rather accept the lie you rather you rather pay for the lie than get the truth for free and it's it's so upsetting but here you're going to get the truth for free uh it is national indigenous people day and we're celebrating this day the only way we can here on movie goodness and that is reviewing a movie and the movie we're going to review is an absolute banger of a film that came out 20 years ago this year it's the 20th anniversary of a film that kind of went under the radar the year it came out 20 years ago due to the filmmakers involvement due to the director of that film getting into some shall i say shenanigans it's some very controversial uh uh comments that were made by him and racist and misogynistic comments. that were made by him and pretty much ruined his career and it's upsetting because he is such a talented filmmaker uh i'm a big fan of his work you know maybe not him as a person but i do enjoy the films that he gave us up to that point and that is none other than mel gibson who directed probably the best film to come out of 2006 apocalypto But due to him making that movie, it was... pushed to the side you know it wasn't up for any awards or anything like that but it was such a well-made film and such a good film a classic film i watch it every i don't know besides the me watching it last week to in preparation to this show i've watched it at least once a year for the last 20 years and it still holds on it still holds up and i love that movie i love it and we're gonna go over it but first let's go over this holiday let's give a brief history of this holiday and then we're going to get into the review uh indigenous people day it kind of kicked off in 1977 when the international world conference on discrimination against indigenous populations in the americas which was sponsored by the un began to discuss replacing Columbus Day in the Americas with a celebration to be known as Indigenous People Day. Similarly, Native American groups staged a sort of a boycott in Boston instead of Thanksgiving, which we talked about a little while ago, which has been celebrated there as a mark of collaboration between Massachusetts colonists and Native Americans. which we know is not how it actually went down. But in July of 1990, at the first Continental Conference on 500 Years of Indian Resistance in Ecuador, representatives of indigenous peoples throughout the Americas agreed that they would mark 1992, the 500-year anniversary of the first voyage of Christopher Columbus. as a year to promote continental unity and liberation at least 14 states in the united states do not celebrate columbus day alaska hawaii iowa louisiana which is a shock to me but hey i'm proud of my of my native state for at least standing up and doing that right uh maine michigan minnesota uh new mexico oregon south dakota vermont washington and wisconsin those states do not celebrate columbus day as well as washington dc south dakota officially celebrates native american day instead various tribal governments in oklahoma designate the day as Native American date or have renamed the day after their own tribes in 2013 the california state legislator considered a bill ab55 to formally replace columbus day with native american day but it didn't pass while the california governor has recognized indigenous people day the holiday was eliminated by it. gonna blow your mind arnold schwarzenegger when he was the governor of california and uh i think it was from 2008 to 2012 thanks arnold that he dropped the ball on that one but on august 30th 2017 following similar affiliated votes in ohio followed later by maine In the earlier weeks of that same month, the Los Angeles City Council voted in favor of replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous People Day. In October of 2019, just a few days before Columbus Day would be celebrated in Washington, D.C., the District of Columbia Council voted to temporarily replace Columbus Day with Indigenous People Day. although this isn't a federal holiday under u.s law the biden administration has formally recognized indigenous people day the first white house proclamation on the holiday was released in 2021 written with input from indigenous activists and so this is the formation of the holiday uh finally coming into play indigenous people day which is quite frankly long overdue which is to be honest with you a holiday that we all wish was unnecessary we all wish that we didn't have to have an indigenous people day because their every day should have been their day here because this is their country at the end of the day they are the native americans this is their country which uh i know blows a lot of maggots minds because oh this is our country now no it ain't no no it is not this is not your country and your hatred towards immigrants is is hypocritical because you're you're an immigrant everyone is an immigrant it. if you're not a native american point blank period so uh yeah uh happy indigenous people day to all of the native americans all the tribes that stretch from here and there across this country and i wish that the indigenous people here got more respect than what they they get now you know it's not it's rare that you see someone indigenous at least where i'm at you know we don't see too many and it's crazy because my great-grandmother was native american believe it or not but she was and i never met the woman you know she passed away long before i was born but it's it's crazy to think that uh my entire bloodline is ostracized here in this country no matter no matter how you how you slice it uh my bloodline is not welcome here so it is it's it's weird man it's hard to grow up in a country or show respect for a country that does not like you and does not want you here but that's neither here nor there that's a whole nother show uh that i could dive into but once again happy indigenous people day happy native american day however you want to slice it but not columbus day you you can kick rocks with that with that crap and so let's get into our review let's jump into the film that i wanted to review today this is one of my favorite movies of the early 2000s um i'm i'm hesitant to say ever i don't want to say ever give me a few more years on that. Let's see how I feel. 10 more years uh once the film turns 30 maybe then i'll i'll make that claim if i still feel the same way but this is truly an amazing movie by a man that is not so amazing personally mel gibson directed and produced the 2006 epic historical action adventure film apocalypse though this film uh it is set in uh i think 1502 was the year this was set in in gralla mala and it tells the the hero's journey of a young man named jaguar paul and he's a hunter and his fellow tribesmen who were trapped or captured by this invading force after a raid on their village they are brought to uh on this perilous journey to uh this this i think a mayan city for human sacrifice at the time when the mayan civilization was at decline and it was this was a film that similar to similar to passion of the christ no words of english was spoken in this movie uh another movie by mel gibson he i don't know how he does it i don't know how he makes these movies and and have them come out relatable no matter what the language barrier is you can still follow the story still engage in the story still uh cheer for the characters or hate this character or really know the motivations of everybody you know that's that's what made mel gibson special around time. as far as his directing he he knew how to connect his characters or the characters he were uh directing uh because he co-wrote this film as well and even though there's no lines of dialogue still find a way to connect them to the audience with their emotions through their acting through their actions and bro it's brilliant not not too many directors can do it That's why it's so heartbreaking that he fell from grace like he did. You know what I'm saying? It really stinks that he turned out to be such of a douche. so i i really wish i really wish in a perfect world that the man wasn't such a moron in real life to whereas we would have got more films like this because we haven't seen a movie like this since from anybody because i don't think anybody can make a movie like this mind you this film is pretty straightforward. You know, it's not a complex story. uh we're in this small village small of of a small group of hunters families they get taken over by this larger group of people more powerful group of people uh they go on this journey you know we follow them through this this journey through the wilderness through the woods i should say uh or jungles and going through all of these obstacles and uh Oh. Avoiding being murdered by this Mayan culture that was just butchers. And finally get to these temples and there's human sacrifices. And one man whose motivations are not just to survive but to get back to his family. And that's his whole goal. It's no other goal other than getting back to his family. And that's his motivation. And. He escapes, and now the journey is to go right back through what we just went through before, that was set up before, when they were traveling to, you know, this location. And no words, I mean, there were words of dialogue, but nothing to push the story forward. The dialogue didn't push the story forward. The action pushed the story forward. And the tension of Jaguar Paul. making it back will he make it back and cutting back and forth between his journey and his wife and his child who and his wife who is pregnant as well in this hole you know because they were hiding from this mayan butcher squad and it's rain it has rained after and the hole is starting to fill up with water and so now will they survive in the hole will he get back in time If he's able to even get back, it's just all that's going on. And the movie is just moving, is moving at a at a at a rapid pace. But it takes time, just little little moments to get those little subtle beats in, you know, the moments of of emotion, moments of reflection, moments of getting a character's motivations, even with our villains. and our antagonists in this film, when they are hunting Jaguar Paul, you start to understand their motivations. You don't like it. At least I hope you don't. You don't like it. And they're evil. You know, they're not redeemable. But at the same time, they are humanized. You know, they aren't just cardboard cutouts of villains. They are humanized. And this is this is the way it was and in some places probably still is you know but this this story did so much with so little time i mean well i say little time is a little over two hours i think it's like two hours and 10 minutes maybe two hours and 20 minutes maybe but it doesn't feel that way this it feels like it's an hour and a half they feel like it's 90 minutes long that's how fast the movie is moving uh but it's so much and there's so many characters and you get every little character even the supporting characters uh the characters that don't make it but the most intriguing one is our main antagonist and his son who's a hothead you know well he has two sons one is trying to you know get his father's approval but he gets it with ease you though, because he's the younger. I believe the youngest one out of them. And he's trying his hardest to impress his dad and whatnot. And he's doing a good job and his dad is cheering him on. But there's the hothead son who is just, he's just, he's just a wild animal, you know, can't be tamed. He wants his father approval the same way, but he goes about it a different way and his father ain't digging it. You know, he's not feeling them. And it's, it's, Becomes this father-son story, you know, and you're like, okay i didn't see this coming you know what i didn't i didn't know we were going to have family drama here but we get the family drama of it all and it still works and you still hate them you still despise these characters but it was interesting to see their story told and is told still in line with our main story our main character our hero our protagonist who is trying to get back to his family and it all connects in some shape form or fashion well i mean well constructed film that i i am just super impressed by is this the type of movie they just don't make anymore and it's infuriating because man if you just take the time and focus on character focus on your characters and then put the action around them it works you have a home run film if you do it in that fashion instead of having the action and then throwing in characters here and there just to have characters you know you know just to push the story along rather than vice versa and that's where a lot of films today mess up but this was so you So amazing. And then the big twist at the end, which wasn't really a twist, which brought me to why I wanted to review it for this particular day. At the end of the film, Jaguar Paul finally gets back in spoilers for a 20 year old movie, by the way, he gets back. But before he can really rescue his family, he's standing on the beach and he looks off at sea. And he sees the ships. He sees the colonizers arriving, which is a deeper threat than the Mayans. Because as he's standing there, so are the Mayans. And they're all looking, knowing that they're in trouble. That this threat that is arriving is more dangerous, more deadly than what they have experienced so far. And that's... scarier than anything anything that we've seen in this film and that's how the movie goes off brilliant it was such a brilliant movie i mean i really have no problems with this film through time you know when you read up on it you hear about the historical inaccuracies you know but like for instance uh some scholars feel that the depiction of the mass human sacrifices and the widespread slavery was more typical to Aztec rather than Mayan the so that that was kind of misconstrued uh uh matter of fact there's uh I think a a visor a Mayan advisor who said that human sacrifice was not rare and based on carvings and paintings that there were more and greater similarities between the Aztecs and the Mayans. So there's a lot of conflicting reports. We don't know. We weren't there. You know, that was over 500 years ago. So we don't know the real nitty gritty, but we do know that human sacrifices and whatnot did take place. Now, that was accurate. Aside from that controversy, some scholars also said that the film's highlighting of human sacrifices Because, uh... that occurred during the later years of the spanish uh conquest so it wasn't so much in what was it uh 1503 or whatever it was it was later on down the line but it happened you know probably didn't get the dates right all right whatever you know christmas isn't the correct date you know jesus's birth was not on december 25th but we rock with it and we're not gonna get dates right to times that we really don't have actual proof of what days it was uh but uh there was a lot of things that that they claimed that were a little off as far as the timing of it all but it was still a wonderful movie it was a wonderful movie it did get nominated for a couple of uh academy awards that year best makeup best sound editing and best sound mixing but they lost On all of them. I think the only awards that it won were, like, from film festivals. It didn't win any big. awards uh i think at the golden globes it was nominated for best foreign language film but it lost you know and i think a lot of that was because of mel gibson uh he did not do his film any favors because it deserved so much more recognition and credit that it actually got now it wasn't a box office bomb it did make his money back it made It made pretty good money on a $40 million budget. It grossed $120 million worldwide. So it did flip a profit. But I think the movie should have been more recognized than what we received in 2006. But nonetheless, it may not have got its flowers then. I'm going to give it its flowers now. Mel Gibson's Apocalypto. gets a letter grade of an A. It was and still is one of the best films in the last 20 years. It was phenomenal. It still is phenomenal. If you haven't checked out Apocalypto, please check it out. Please seek it out. Find it. Watch it in its totality. It is amazing. It is brutal. I'm going to tell you this now. it is brutal if you watch passion of the christ and you know that mel gibson does not hold back when it comes to brutality that that's not his thing he's gonna show you everything in his full glory and he does it in apocalypto and so just be warned there is there is some brutality in here but you had i feel like this and and for art's sake Sometimes you have to go full bore with it. You got to go all in with certain aspects of storytelling in order for the audience to really feel it. Going back to the passion of the Christ, and this has nothing to do with your spiritual or religious affiliations or lack thereof. Let's just talk about the movie there is. The movie itself, in order to feel the impact of what Jesus Christ was going through, through or went through you had to feel every lick that he went through and that's what he showed in order to feel the impact of him being nailed to the cross they had to show the nails going through the hands going through the feet and all this here in order for you to feel the impact of what he went through yeah was it hard yes it was that was hard to watch do you know because i'm a i'm a spiritual person i'm a man of faith so it hit me in the gonads it really tore me up to watch that you know i remember going to the theater to see that me and my wife and we were sitting in there watching it and it had got to the scene when he was being beaten you know the night before he was crucified and they had to stop the film in the theater they had to stop it because literally 99 of the people in that theater and i was in that 99 were crying there i mean we were bawling in that movie because we felt it we were feeling that the impact of that film they had to stop it it literally gave an impromptu intermission and then they restarted it after everybody got their composure back you know it the theater did that i don't know they were doing that randomly or or they knew that people were going to react in that way once they got to that point in the movie but they saw that and they stopped the film and in this film in apocalypto uh to to really experience how brutal these sacrifice and these uh uh the slaughtering of these people were he showed it all and you really get the point across you know that man this was some brutal stuff that they were going to this is what they're running from this is why they're trying to get away and it worked it worked it really did it worked to the point where you know i feel a certain way i feel differently about the indigenous people in that time than i did before you know i felt it was already i already felt it was a messed up situation but i felt it even more after watching this movie and so uh yeah man apocalypto an excellent excellent excellent film uh so that was In honor, in respect to Indigenous People Day, I hope... i hope this comes an official uh federal holiday i don't know if it's an official i know that uh government buildings uh post offices are closed uh this day but i mean official in the sense that we dropped the columbus day crap you know because you hear your president talk about he's going to celebrate columbus day he's not even of course this is no shock to anybody that he is not recognizing indigenous people he demands a buffoon and a moron it can't stand him but anyways uh i hope that we get to the point where we're able to remove the name of christopher columbus from the history books because he he does not deserve to be honored in no shape form or fashion and so i would like to know did you ever check out apocalypto uh what did you think of it do you think it's a classic it's a classic in my eyes and my god man i hope that uh if you haven't checked it out that you do check it out and speaking of checking out stuff check out the kbradiodetwork.com website where you can be notified of new episodes dropping here as well as previous episodes you can go back and listen to don't forget to subscribe to the kb radio network channel on youtube and like this video while you're there don't forget about the five stars the reviews and sharing this show if you're listening on apple podcast spotify our heart radio wherever you are currently listening to movie goodness here on the kb radio network everybody thank you for joining me as we commemorate indigenous people day want you all to know that i love you continue to love everyone and Until we speak again, you all be blessed.
