I’ve been trying to watch Oscar movies I hadn’t seen before and cover all the streaming services I typically cover. Hulu being the exception, because it would seem every film I find on there that has an Oscar nomination. I’m very familiar with. Tubi, which just started into audio description this year, has an atrocious list of films with audio description, rarely offering films people want to actually watch. Shockingly, none of them have ever been nominated for an Oscar. Broadening my search, while I would have preferred this review to be la Cage Aux Folles (even with English dubbing), it was in French, and DuoLingo hasn’t approved me as a French speaker yet. So, American History X it is.

I’ve been avoiding this film. Honestly, it came out at a time when I was a teen, and still trying to build my film knowledge, so I tried to watch it. I rented it, got about 15 minutes in, felt deeply uncomfortable, and passed on it. I also grew up in a somewhat racist area, so I can say that I think people took away the wrong message from this film. My continued interactions over the years have led me to believe that unlike other movies about white supremacists, this one has still oddly been embraced. Perhaps because it allows Norton to platform hate in a film that is telling two narratives.

We open on a young Norton looking very Nazi, and we follow him through a crime. Then, we jump forward, and he’s out, and because we know so little, his brother (played by Edward Furlong) begins his journey as the narrator by telling us all we need to know about the awesome history of his brother. Of course, Norton is different, prison changed him, and that’s what the movie is supposed to be about. but it can’t help but constantly be interrupted by hate.

Since this film doesn’t have audio description, in some ways I still feel like I have not fully experienced this, and I’m totally OK with that. Edward Norton received a Best Actor nomination for this, and the 90’s were a time he could have received many other nominations that weren’t this. The cast features heavy hitters like Ethan Suplee and Fairuza Balk, and the director went on to direct nothing even remotely memorable.

I don’t know what my grade would be for this, but it’s always been something I was hoping to avoid. Tubi needed a bigger bench for me to choose from.

Final Grade: unwatchable