The Culture High

I've seen their first film The Union, many other pot and drug documentaries and read books by Gabor Matè and Tom Feiling etc. but still Culture High managed to blow my mind.

Like the director Brett Harvey said, Marijuana touches pretty much every issue that is wrong in the world. It's not that legalizing pot would solve all the problems in the world, but it's all the injustices in the world that are actually keeping pot illegal.

And it's not just the topic and the content that makes this film so good. It's technically and storytelling-wise pure gold. These guys aren't really pot activist, they are film makers and at least in the field of documentaries, they are one of the best at the moment. I guess the only reason they aren't more known is because you can't really get critical acclaim in this world by making a movie about pot - yet ;)

This documentary really has potential to inspire change in the world. So thanks guys for incredible work!

First of all, I never usually write reviews, movie or product wise but having just finished watching this, I felt compelled to. I had no hesitation giving this movie ten out of ten! In order for me to feel like I haven't wasted 1-2 hours of my life watching a movie, I have one rule and at the end I ask myself a question. Did the movie I just watched make me feel anything. So many films that make the mainstream seem to be trying to stop us from feeling anything. The Cutlure High had the exact opposite effect on me. Despite what many might think, this movie is not just about pot legalisation. It is about personal freedom. Yours. Mine. Future generations to come. For when something such as a plant becomes illegal to consume, someone who doesn't even know you, who isn't even there, is taking away your right to decide what you may or may not put into your bodies. As explained in this movie, human beings only really learn from our mistakes. It's how we and Mother Nature have evolved. Trial and error. When the government takes away the trial, there can be no error and therefore no lesson. I am a live-in care worker. I look after a 92 year old man. When the doctors told him 2 years ago he had arthritis, they also subsequently told him there was nothing they could do but prescribe painkillers. I took to the Internet and started him on a regime of hemp oil shots twice a day every day. Since that very day, all swelling had disappeared. In the US it is illegal for just anyone to grow a plant like hemp just because it is too similar to its cousin. That is plain wrong. Watch this movie, I emplore you and once you have, care to share. It's movies like this that change the world! God knows we could do with some change. It's coming....

I enjoyed the documentary and liked how they managed to expand their topic from marijuana to a lot of the issues or society is facing nowadays, revealing shocking facts, some of which I ignored. I think it does a great job at informing people about the current state of the legalization debate and what social issues are in some way connected to it, how there has been a lot of manipulation, how it happened and how it continues to occur, after watching the documentary you realize that you didn't just watch a documentary about pot, that was just the starting point and it is just a example.

When I finished watching the documentary, I did what I usually do after watching a movie, opened IMDb, voted and checked out what other people had to say about it (my major is psychology and my minor is cinematography and took some documentary classes at the university). I was instantly amazed by the huge difference between user score and the metascore, so I continued to read some of the metacritic reviews and I was surprised by how unfounded and fallacy-based all the criticism was (reading some of the reviews I felt like they didn't even watch the full documentary or they were people with poor understanding of the subjects - cinematography, documentary and/or the topics discussed on the documentary).

Personally I rated the documentary with a 9, because I liked how they exposed their ideas in a fun and simple way, keeping it close to the public, sometimes laughing at a joke and other times feeling the pain and emotion from a heartbreaking story. Also I liked the footage they used, the only aspect I didn't like was it's length (I found it to be a little too long, extending too much on some topics) and that it was centered on the United States scenario (which I totally understand).

My personal conclusion was that those reviews are only more proof to what the documentary trying to point out.

Thank you for reading and please excuse my grammar since I am not a native English speaker.

I watched this documentary last night. Wow, it nails the reasons why marijuana is illegal in the USA. There are two very powerful lobby groups at work - the pharmaceutical industry who stand to lose billions if the natural plant gets a medicinal foothold - and, surprisingly, the US private prison system whose profits are in serious jeopardy if possession is decriminalized. Some states in the USA have legal contracts with minimum quotas of prisoners to supply to these commercial prisons...

Few politicians are brave enough to tackle the issue, and Obama has turned out to be the most manipulated President in history on this issue.

Not just the subject material, this is a really well made documentary that has meticulously sought out relevant archival material and conducted many interviews with experts and retired law enforcement personnel who can now speak their minds. A riveting two hours that really held my attention. Seek out this film and watch it.

The film's opening sequence of a man's house being raided, his dog being shot, and his family being terrified, by a SWAT team sent it for a weed bust aptly set the tone of this film. This film does not hold back in its attack against the forces that oppose the legalisation of weed. Naturally it's enemy is the Federal Government of USA. However in a broader perspective it looks at the influence of the prescription drug corporations and also the media.

Most of the points made in this film have been publicised before in other documentaries, articles, podcasts and interviews. However the academics and scientists interviewed manage to reinforce these ideas in an extremely compelling way, such that one can not feel like decriminalisation is an absolute necessity for the social wellbeing of our nature. The insights from other stereotypical "weed celebrities" such as Snoop Dogg and Wiz Khalifa offer little to this film.

Where the film lacks is in its limited discussion of the most recent policy changes in Colorado and Washington State. If we want to look at the need for policy changes nationally, surely a longer conservation on the reform in these two states would give weight to decriminalisation. In a similar vein, this film pays no attention to the legalization of weed in foreign countries.

Worth a watch if you're at all interested in the subject of legalisation.