Man.

The footage of Rodney King being beaten by police doesn't get any easier to watch with time. Either does the sight of not guilty verdicts being handed down for the cops. Or the sheer anger on the faces of everyone outside the courthouse, both white and black. Or the sight of old men crying at the news of the verdict because they've lived a long lifetime of this racism and abuse - and they just looked so tired.

Or the sight of Reginald Denny being dragged from his truck and beaten within an inch of his life, made even worse by the humiliation of his unconscious body being stripped and spray painted, and made worse still by the knowledge…

85

A vital archival document. No talking heads. All images sourced from news footage and home camcorders. Begins with the Watts protests and continues with Rodney King, but the film is structured as a ceaseless stream of pain and anguish, rage and fury. The filmmakers know that systemic racism, the failure of the justice department, and the brutalization of the Black community by the police state will continue, and it has. We have seen this again and again, and the film asks us to be emotional spectators, to recognize the patterns in coded racist rhetoric by officers, presidents, judges, and government officials, and to observe the minimal changes, the little differences that only further emphasize how hardly anything has changed…

When the film opened with the story of the Watts Riots, I was reminded of O.J.: Made in America. I thought the documentary was going to be thorough and cover some of the same subject matter and I thought it would be a little bit repetitive. But, not really.

Even though I was 10 when the L.A. riots happened, I remember watching it in horror on the television. People were looting and there were fires. And we lived about 2 hours away from L.A. So close, yet so far away. But being a child at the time, I didn't really know the full scope of what was going on.

The documentary was informative, but also extremely disturbing that police officers…

Watts Riots elusively documented in 65. LA burns in 92. America can’t breathe in 2020. When the frequency of mass public outcry against racial injustice becomes a regular occurrence every 28 years, nobody needs even note that the country has a problem. Through nothing but raw archival footage, LA 92 shines a blinding light on a nation of white guilt, a city of angels driven into hellish flames by an army of baton-bearing devils. The fact this was released in 2017 further proves how expected police brutality is by this point, and it’s just sickening. Please, America. See some sense, knock down that ridiculous wall, and secure the future through education of the people, not through electing playboy politicians. Although…

4000th Film BABY!!!

So just like my Bday bashing schedule, I really had a hard time getting the perfect movie to celebrate the milestone. Unfortunately many of my fave films have already been targeted as watched (I was planning on doing so cheating and logged out one of them, log in a new one and then watched that one and logged as the 4K), so I had a small amount amount of top tier movies I could watch and after seeing this.... well... I guess I should have gone with one that didn't have me losing the little ounces of hope I had in humanity, something like Megamind. But oh well...

Yeah, trying to keep this as short and simple…

Hi everybody, without any doubt a very, as sad as it sounds, actual and important topic, We still need to talk about, because nothing and I mean really literally nothing has change. The documentary shows rare footage of the 1992 riots. Shockingly hard to see, the violence and the injustice, in a really good quality. But the real shock, for me as a german citizen, is to see that the injustice never stops in the USA. I mean the people of the US had a civil war, because of the question how to treat the black people in the USA and they had a solution by giving any person of the United States the same rights, doesn’t matter what color…

Here Are Some Organizations You Can Donate To If You Have The Means: 
• NAACP
• ACLU
• Bail Fund Project
• here is a list of 137 organizations that benefit black communities, including victim memorial funds, policy change advocates, black LGBTQ+ groups, and youth-oriented groups

You Can Buy Consciously From Black-Owned Businesses And Restaurants: 
• here are eight ways to find black-owned resturants where you live
• We Buy Black and Official Black Wall Street are two other platforms that aggregate businesses owned by members of the black community

Some Fairly Easy Ways To Help Are By Signing Petitions, Sending Texts, Making Phone Calls, and Attending Local Events: 
• here is a handful of low-key ways to participate that offers some more involved options, like making phone calls or texts,…

The Letterboxd Era Catch Up 2: The Last Stand

Something that has always stuck in my mind, albeit as someone sitting thousands of miles away from where the 1992 Los Angeles riots took place, is the reaction to Rodney King's statement very soon after he made it.

Almost immediately it was turned into something comedic. Even over here in the UK. "Why can't we all just get along?" - misquoted as it was - suddenly became the punchline in a million jokes and parodies and mickey-takes. It struck me as so strange that a heartfelt statement from a man who had been subjected to a life-threatening beating and then seen his assailants acquitted in a court of law, despite the…

ABOLISH THE POLICE

NAACP
ACLU
The Bail Project
Petitions thread

LA 92 is a really impressive, stirring documentary about the abuse of Rodney King and the ensuing demonstrations and riots that followed. There’s no interviews with historians or politicians — everything is told through news footage.

This is a blessing and a curse — watching all the events unfold without any commentary makes the movie far more riveting, moving, and disturbing, but it also makes it seem like the movie is trying to appear completely objective, which it obviously is not.

Artistically, it’s incredibly effective, with some amazing editing that elevates tension. Morally and politically, it’s definitely imperfect — it seems to suffer from the both-sides-ism that plagues contemporary journalism…

Wrote a lengthy review and forgot to actually post it and it's now lost. So I'll just say this is a poignant and immersive look at one of the most historical moments in Los Angeles and American history in recent years. It's painful to watch especially right now. Skillfully starting off with the Watt's riots as a sort of introduction it hits really fucking hard and made me wonder if we're preordained to relive a travesty of this nature every 30 years.

As horrifically hard as some of the sights are to watch ultimately it ends with a message of hope with images of a community coming together. This mirrors my general views now seeing the number of protests, especially…

This is one of the best documentaries I've ever seen. Told simply through video clips that lead up to, and include the Rodney King riots back in 1992.

I was in grade 9 at the time, so I remember bits about these riots, and I remember everyone talking, but now as an adult, and with the help of this video, I understand a little more about what happened.

I think this documentary does an amazing job of showing the tension building as they hear the verdict of the police officers. They show the initial tension of getting them out of the court house, and then just how is spreads from the court house, throughout the city. You can just feel…

Had this on my watch list since 2018 and finally took the time to watch it. And let me say right away that I prefer John Ridley's Let It Fall: Los Angeles 1982-1992.

LA 92 is a montage of only archival footage, being it from the news, from the police or from personal recordings. It starts with the killing of Latasha Harlins and ends with the clean-up of the city after the riots. The footage is accompanied by music with some title cards between certain points to serve as narration. Since the footage is all in the moment, you feel the energy, the tension and the anxiety. And since it is all from 1992 or sooner it only reflects back…