1/5
Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story is a shocking movie for many reasons. First is the intimate albeit brief look we get into the innumerable families who lost their homes to foreclosure and the depression and anger they experience. Second is the revelation of the revolting practice of employers taking out life insurance policies on their employees (and in so doing making money off of their deaths). Third, and the most shocking to me, is how poor Moore's filmmaking abilities have become. The editing--perhaps the most crucial element in a documentary--is absolutely awful. It was made with simple cuts in what looked like a matter of hours by someone who first discovered Final Cut Pro. It was amateur hour in every sense of the word, and it felt like someone was peeing into my eyes with contempt, disregard, and laziness.
The story shows almost no coherence or progression. Not only does that make the movie confusing, it also makes it long (because we cannot predict when an end is approaching). I know from the title and trailers that its intent is anti-capitalist, but the movie itself fails to get that message across. Instead, Moore seems to have confused greed and cruelty with capitalism. Most people can agree that greedy, cruel men can destroy people's lives by putting them out on the street with little care for their survival, but greed and cruelty can exist in any economic policy. So where does capitalism come in?
Moore has lost his technique, and in so doing has also lost his subtlety and his subversion. We see the sad stories of people who lost their homes, we share in their pain and their occasional triumph, but we do not connect the dots. We are not compelled to get up out of our seats and change the world for the better (even though he verbally asks us to at its conclusion). Why? Because we feel tricked into thinking what Moore wants us to think. While essentially every single filmmaker's goal is to manipulate the audience, they are to do it without being discovered. Here Moore has made it so obvious that he is attempting to tell us how to feel and who to blame that it is hard to believe that he is doing it for our own benefit instead of his.
I normally enjoy Moore's movies and stand behind his provocative points of view, but here I think he has pushed this movie out too quickly with too little research and too little production. This is a film of little entertainment value and little social value. There is very little substance--just a lot of personal hatred and righteous indignation from a man who makes a lot of money through capitalism. The worst part about it is the inclusion of a few silly distractions and gimmicks that might make you laugh until you realize that their futility and worthlessness actually mock and belittle the people whose lives are actually affected by the situation. I'm not gonna stop you from watching this movie if you want to, but I will warn you that it's nowhere near as good as
Sicko, Fahrenheit 911, or Bowling for Columbine. Also, I think he got the title wrong. He mentions love nowhere in this story. And it's not about capitalism.
IMDb link:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1232207/
New Moon is a bad movie. This is the extent to which I know the plot: the vampire (Pattinson) makes up some reason to leave the town, which of course makes the pale girl (Stewart) depressed. She starts getting closer with her werewolf neighbor (Lautner) and then has to choose between them. There's little else in the 2+ hour movie, although I did learn a few things during the course of watching it. First, Kristen Stewart is ugly when she cries. I think she's ugly all the time, but apparently that sentiment is not as universally shared as I thought. Second, Taylor Lautner has a fairly fit physique. I know this because EVERY SINGLE SCENE with him in it had him shirtless. Kyle thinks his back muscles make him look like a camel or something. Third, Robert Pattinson has kind of a grotesque, gargoylish, sickly frame that makes me think he should see a doctor for anorexia or heroin addiction. Fourth, the CGI werewolves looked like they have really fat necks. It was weird. Oh, and I presume the director had a call for extra pauses, and asked the male pauses to have sex with the female pauses, because there are a bajillion pregnant pauses in this movie intended to simulate fierce thinking and emo angst. Nearly half an hour is wasted on long, drawn out dialogue where the teenagers cannot find the words they want to say. The movie has a lot of forced writing, forced acting, and forced action. It's a round peg of a book being forced into a square hole of a movie. I can't wait for the third one!
