I freely admit that I am ignorant about movies, for the most part. The reason: the majority of them suck so bad I can’t be buggered to sit through them. I came to this realization in high school and, as far as I can tell, despite ballooning budgets, the movies are getting worse.

Sure, good films are made all the time. I tend to watch these eventually on rental or Tivo. But just about any time I decide I’m going to give in to the pressure of everybody saying, “you’ve got to see it” and go see a new release in the theater, I almost invariably regret it.

I know a lot of people in the film industry. They all admit that movies suck, for the most part. I think everybody does. Yet somehow, people just can’t stop themselves from going. I rarely here anybody say that a movie they just saw was “worth the money,” yet they still see just about every movie that comes out. I’ve even studied film a good bit in a formal academic setting, and I still can’t get that into it.

Perhaps individuals who are like Roger Ebert, who love film and enter a movie with the basic premise that movies are all good, and that some are better than others. I suppose if you had infinite two hour chunks of time to waste, that’s as fine a way to waste it as any. God knows I’ve been known to surf the web for two hours with no redeeming or intellectual benefit whatsoever other than reading about what some guy in New Jersey ate for his last six meals or checking out some gadget freaks moblog consisting almost entirely of pictures of his monitor and “sweet” GNOME settings.

I say all of this to set the stage correctly for what I’m about to say: Oliver Stone is the worst film director IN HISTORY.

I could write about his existing films for years on end and never run out of bad things to say about them. And I also admit to living under a rock when it comes to what the meager director is planning next, but apparently, from what I’ve read, his newest release is a fawning documentary about none other than cigar-chomping dictator-for-life Fidel Castro.

I haven’t seen the film. I won’t see it, because it’s a total waste of time. What a total piece of shit. I’m sure Olly paid a good bit of money to “educate” the masses about what a great guy Fidel really is. I wonder what percent of that money went directly toward the suppression of political discourse or maybe the execution of a political dissident. I’m sure Olly doesn’t care, because sometimes, the story is more important than human life.

Read this review of the documentary by British journalist Johann Hari in order to get an idea of why it was so important that Oliver Stone make this film.

I know a few people who’ve been to Cuba lately. It seems to be the “hip” travel spot. I won’t be heading there, however. I don’t care where you sit on the political spectrum, supporting a brutal dictatorship financially is not okay. A lot of Europeans point to the fact that the economy of Cuba needs stimulation and that Castro is just a victim of vast anti-Cuba conspiracies designed to hurt Cubans. These Euros feel that they are helping the situation when, in fact, they are sustaining the brutality and single-party monstrosity. It’s typical.

Europeans have two faces here. Of course they are for the “cubans,” but since Cubans are not allowed to own property, Europeans are left owning the valuable coastal properties. When Cuba does eventually open for investment, the Europeans will have a leg up on everybody, which is admirable from a business prospect. But how long can they hold back the poverty-stricken and pissed-off masses in their modern day colony?

People can justify just about anything in their minds, including me. I’m not shining example. I buy non-shade-grown coffees and use paper plates on occasion. I support democracy yet do little to help my own. I gave my wife what were, most likely, war diamonds on her wedding ring. In the ultra-globalized, horribly unstable and unspeakably brutal world we live in, choices are rarely clear-cut. But to choose to glorify and support the second-most brutal dictator on the planet cannot be rationalized.