GREEDY LYING BASTARDS -- DVD Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 12/7/13

 

You pretty much know in advance that any documentary entitled GREEDY LYING BASTARDS (2012) is going to be pure propaganda, which this one is.  Whether you object to this or pump your fists and cheer depends entirely upon which side of the global warming/climate change debate you happen to be on.

If it's the latter,  then writer-director Craig Rosebraugh and executive producer Daryl Hannah have just the movie for you.  Rosebraugh kicks things off with a terrifying montage of natural calamities worthy of Cecil B. De Mille, including tornados, wildfires, hurricanes,  and floods, and blames them all on global warming.  Tearful accounts of lost homes and possessions by sad families are accompanied by mournful music, and one kid finds his mom's scorched Nativity stable, a precious family heirloom, while rummaging through their home's charred ruins.

After a few minutes of this, of course, we tend to stop listening critically to what's being said since the music is already giving us the gist of how we're supposed to react.  More effective in my opinion are the first-hand accounts of people living close to nature in Alaska and the tropics whose environments are being made uninhabitable by gradual changes that might or might not be caused by global warming.  I'm still not sure what to think about the midwestern farmer demonstrating how dry his drought-ridden field is by squirting a garden hose at it for five minutes.

Rosebraugh's trod through familiar Michael Moore territory also includes his own world-weary regular-guy narration as he appears in the film as both sympathetic observer and muckraking crusader.  He also includes old film footage in a funny-ironic way along with plenty of animated charts and diagrams, and offers various experts and other designated hitters who agree with him (and whom we are to believe without question) a platform to express their views and present their case at length.  This includes several Democratic politicians and representatives of organizations such as Greenpeace.

The other side--that is, those who claim global warming is a hoax based on unreliable or fabricated scientific findings--is represented by "hired guns" and "career skeptics"  working for such greedy, lying bastards as Koch Industries, ExxonMobil, and big tobacco.  The usual suspects, including Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly,  and, of course, Fox News, are demonized along the way, as are George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Mitt Romney, and Clarence Thomas.   Anyone else espousing a negative view of climate change is dismissed as either a charlatan or a moron, or both.

Rosebraugh, a long-time political activist whom Wikipedia tells us was once dubbed "The Face of Eco-Terrorism" by The New York Times Magazine and is a former spokesperson for the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front, comes to the fore late in the film when he tries to "get ahold of" the CEO of ExxonMobil by phone.  After failing to do so, his response is pure Michael Moore: "This was typical of trying to get interviews with big corporations.  I guess he was busy with world domination that day."

Later, he purchases some stock in ExxonMobil so that he can gain admittance to a shareholders' meeting in which he can actually lob a few words across a crowded room at the man in question, briefly giving the film a bit of that old ROGER AND ME vibe.  I kept hoping that he might also mention the irony of his getting from place to place by automobile, since there are several shots of him driving around including one in which he pulls up across a lake from an oil refinery and poses dramatically against it.  One of the film's final images is a montage of fossil-fuel-hungry consumers gassing up their cars, but we never actually see Rosebraugh himself doing it. 

The DVD from Shelter Island and One Earth Productions is in 1.78:1 widescreen with 5.1 surround and 2.0 stereo sound.  Closed-captions available.  Included are 18 minutes of bonus material that didn't make it into the final cut.

The end credits song,  "B.A.S.F. (Bastards and Swine Forever)" exclaims: "I want to kick and I want to punch...pain and suffering is never enough..."   If you bear similar ill will toward the GREEDY LYING BASTARDS that Rosebraugh rails against then you'll probably enjoy being a member of the choir that he's preaching to here.  But without the entertainment value which Michael Moore manages to instill in his own personal statements, this strident activist's message tends toward the dull side.

GREEDY LYING BASTARDS -- DVD Review by Porfle

BORDER RUN -- Blu-Ray Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 2/22/13

 

Sharon Stone as a conservative, "fair and balanced" TV reporter who's against illegal immigration?  Well, I just knew that sounded too un-Hollywood to be true, and sure enough, before BORDER RUN (2012) is over, her character has an epiphany that revs her overacting dial up to eleven and beyond.

Sharon plays "hard-nosed right-wing journalist" Sophie Talbert, who, with a black fright wig emphasizing her pale skin, hardly looks like someone who lives right on the Arizona-Mexico border.  Like Jane Fonda's initially conservative TV newswoman in THE CHINA SYNDROME, she's on the wrong side of the issue at hand (by Tinseltown standards, that is) until shown the error of her ways--in this case, when her own relief-worker brother Aaron (Billy Zane) disappears in Mexico and she must enter the world of the illegal immigrant herself in order to find him. 

After Sophie arrives in Mexico, Aaron's co-worker Rafael (Rosemberg Salgado) offers to take her in his pickup to a meeting with someone named Javier who may be able to help her.  On the way there, they form an instant romantic bond that has them stopping off at a roadside bar to get drunk and dance while precious minutes in the missing Aaron's life tick away.  This odd passage indicates how awkward some of the tone shifts and scene transitions will be for the rest of the film.

Before we know it, Sophie and Rafael get separated and she meets up with Javier (Miguel Rodarte), joining a group of migrants whom he's smuggling across the border.  Naturally, Sophie's rigid attitude toward the whole thing begins to change when she discovers that some of the migrants are nice people with heartwarming personal stories (imagine that!), and that the process tends to be both dangerous and uncomfortable. 

Just how dangerous becomes clear when the tanker truck they're stashed inside gets diverted to a remote farmhouse well short of the border, where Sophie meets the film's main villain, Juanita (Giovanna Zacarías), a real piece of work who could easily be the poster girl for PMS.  We've already seen this mega-bitch-on-wheels repeatedly beating up the bound Aaron, who's also being held there, and now we get to see her kicking a pregnant woman in the stomach while one of her fat, sweaty henchmen has his way with the bound Sophie. 

This decidedly unpleasant rape scene gives Sharon Stone yet another chance to do some full-tilt emoting and it will be far from her last.  I won't go into everything that occurs next but after an escape, a chase, and the proverbial run for the border, Sophie ends up in a border station where her newly-found righteous indignation against U.S. immigration policy is given full vent.  Here, Sharon lets loose with a "big acting" moment by throwing a fit that is borderline (excuse the phrase) hilarious.

You might think that the film, having made its point, will fade out on Sophie's return to the USA to crusade against immigration reform, but this is when BORDER RUN pulls a plot twist on us that's worthy of a horror movie, with Sophie suddenly ending up in more grave peril than ever.  With this added sequence, the film finally lurches all the way into "so bad it's good" territory and makes me wish I'd been watching it as a wacky exploitation flick instead of a misguided message pic all along.

As mentioned before, Sharon Stone's performance here is wonderfully bad, especially since director Gabriela Tagliavini seems intent on photographing her as unflatteringly as possible from start to finish.  Billy Zane, who plays Aaron, demonstrates once again that if a project doesn't make him feel like turning on the old "Billy Zane" magic, he's Stiff City.  And as the monstrous Juanita, Giovanna Zacarías almost makes Al Pacino look like a study in subtlety.

The Blu-Ray disc from Anchor Bay is in 2.35:1 widescreen with Dolby 5.1 sound and subtitles in English and Spanish.  No extras.

BORDER RUN is ridiculously melodramatic where it means to be hard-hitting, and goes for big emotional moments that it hasn't really earned.  A weird combination of social relevance and pure exploitation, it fails as a "good" movie but succeeds, to some extent anyway, as a perversely entertaining train wreck. 

BORDER RUN -- Blu-Ray Review by Porfle

DEADLINE -- DVD Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 11/17/19

 

One thing 50s and 60s television did so well, and which seems to have been lost these days, was the powerful half-hour drama. This is especially true of the better written and produced anthology shows of the time, including the hardboiled, often riveting journalism drama "Deadline."

Film Chest's new 3-disc, 39-episode DVD collection DEADLINE ("When Reporters Were Heroes") contains the entire run of the show (which aired sporadically from 1959 to 1961), with each episode covering various true-life news stories and the dogged reporters who unearthed them, often putting their lives in jeopardy to do so.

Paul Stewart (CITIZEN KANE) lends the show a distinguished air as the gravel-voiced host who, while sitting in a busy newsroom amidst diligent reporters and other workers, introduces each front-page story and the journalist who broke it.

Most of the stories are crime-related, as the reporters often work alongside police detectives on cases involving murder, robbery, arson, kidnapping, extortion, prison riots, mad bombers, juvenile delinquency, shoplifting, and political corruption.

The reporters track down leads and confront bad guys like hardnosed cops, sometimes giving the show the feel of a "Dragnet" episode.  The low budget and abundance of location shooting in the heart of the city also give it a gritty, realistic look. (Listen for some familiar "Plan 9 From Outer Space" library music within the show's score.)

Some stories are particularly powerful, as when a man (actor/director Mark Rydell) is accused of planting a bomb in his mother's suitcase and killing an entire planeload of people for her insurance money.  In another, a college student's thesis on how to commit the perfect murder is tested with the cold-blooded killings of two innocent men.

In addition to these subjects are the ones more related to human interest and social justice, with the reporters often being portrayed as crusading angels and pillars of moral virtue. Indeed, the series goes to great lengths to dispel any popular notions regarding the profession which are anything but positive.

Here we witness stories of amateur spelunkers being rescued from a cave (a very young Christopher Walken is billed as "Ronnie"), a pair of Burmese nurses being saved from deportation by a reporter (Frank Sutton, "Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.")  whose life they once saved in a makeshift army hospital, and another reporter going undercover to expose the exploitation of illegal immigrants on the U.S.-Mexico border.  There's even a heart-tugging Christmas episode.

The stories are lean, terse, and to the point. They're also somewhat addictive, making them good binge-watching material for those so inclined. Like many anthology shows of the time, "Deadline" was a place for writers and actors to hone their talents, often doing work that is inspired.

The film quality of these black and white episodes is generally pristine save for occasional rough spots, which I think only add to their character. According to the promo information, these films were lost and forgotten in a garage in New Jersey for over 50 years before rediscovery.

Stewart himself plays the lead in many of the episodes. Other familiar faces include Telly Savalas, Peter Falk, Simon Oakland, Malachi ("Mal") Throne, Diane Ladd, Joanne Linville, Robert Lansing, George Maharis, Sydney ("Sidney") Pollack, Bibi Osterwald, Frank Overton, Lee Bergere, Jan Miner, Bob Hastings, Walter Brooke, Dana Elcar, Lonny Chapman, Jason ("Herb") Evers, Micheal Conrad, and Alfred Ryder.

As mentioned, the show glorifies the reporter's role as a crusader for justice and defender of all that is good, vowing (also quoting the promo info) to "uphold everything that our civil society stands for."

The text material found in the enclosed episode-guide booklet stresses how tarnished the reporter's image has become in recent years, blaming this not on any failing on the part of today's mainstream media but on its being undermined by alleged "fake news" being spread by the internet and other independent sources.

I find this either willfully naive or intentionally misleading, considering the fact that, in recent years, major print and television news sources seem to have relinquished a great deal of their former integrity while much of the actual truth one is able to glean these days does, in fact, come from the internet. 

Not only that, but the booklet's text as well as a DVD interview with a noted broadcast journalism professor seem to be just as politically biased as is much of today's mainstream media.

Putting such gripes aside, however, DEADLINE is a rich source of entertainment for vintage TV lovers, and Film Chest has done a fine job of preserving and presenting these exciting episodes that are such a valuable part of television history.



BONUS FEATURES
Episode Synopses • Photo Gallery • Trailer •
Trivia • Extended Synopsis: Journalism Past and
Present Overview • Interview with Broadcast
Journalism Professor Joe Alicastro


SKU: FC-647
UPC: 874757064796
SRP: $19.98
Street Date: 11/19/2019
Pre-Book: 11/5/2019
Discs: 3
Box Lot: 30
Production: Arnold Perl
Run Time: 1,006 Mins
Format: DVD
Color/B&W: B&W
Aspect ratio: 4x3
Year Prod: 1959 - 1961
Sound: Mono
Studio: Film Chest
Rating: Not rated
Genre: Television, Crime, Drama
Actor(s): Paul Stewart (narrator), Peter Falk,
Diane Ladd, George Maharis, Robert Lansing
and many more.               
Director(s): Various

DEADLINE -- DVD Review by Porfle

THE ROAD TO GUANTANAMO -- Movie Review by Porfle

 (This review originally appeared online at Bumscorner.com in 2006.)

The prolonged imprisonment without trial of suspected Islamic terrorists within the U.S. military base at Guantanamo, Cuba remains a source of heated controversy, and the same can most likely be said of THE ROAD TO GUANTANAMO (2006), Michael Winterbottom's award-winning docudrama about three British Muslims, known as "The Tipton Three", who ended up there for over two years before finally being released without charge.

 We are first introduced to the real Asif Iqbal in a close-up shot as he speaks into the camera and begins his story of the day he left England in September, 2001 to return to his native Pakistan in order to take part in a pre-arranged wedding, with his friends Ruhel, Shafiq, and Monir along for the ride. (Ruhel and Shafig will also appear in such interview segments throughout the film.)

Intercut with these shots is a documentary-style reenactment with actors portraying the actual people. We see them travel to Pakistan, where Asif meets his intended bride. By night they sleep in a mosque to avoid hotel charges, and by day they wander the city reacquainting themselves with their homeland.

 Then the four young men, along with Shafig's cousin Zahid, decide to take a long bus ride into Afghanistan just as it is coming under attack by the U.S. military shortly after 9-11. (Their intention, ostensibly, is to "help out", but why four young sightseers from Tipton suddenly want to travel into the heart of a heavily-bombed war zone is beyond me.) Conditions steadily worsen along the way, and one of them becomes gravely ill--he dreams of eating gooey pizza back home with his friends as they flirt with the girls in the next booth--as the bombing and subsequent chaos around them intensify.

After days of lying around a mosque in Kabul doing nothing, they become disenchanted with their mission and arrange for transport back to Pakistan. This ill-fated journey takes them through scenes of death, destruction, and horror that are presented largely as though filmed through the lens of a news camera, complete with night-vision shots of people huddled in a ditch for cover, their eyes eerily aglow. Indeed, much of it is interspersed with actual news footage whenever possible, and it's sometimes hard to tell where the reality ends and the reenactment begins.

 Seemingly unaware that they are being taken away from the Pakistani border and into the war zone, they soon find themselves captured near Konduz by the Northern Alliance while in the company of armed Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters and are eventually flown to the U.S. base at Guantanamo, where they will be held for the next two-and-a-half years as suspected terrorists. (The fourth member of the party, Monir, disappeared while in Afghanistan and was never heard from again.)

It's at this point that THE ROAD TO GUANTANAMO began to remind me a bit of Alan Parker's 1978 film MIDNIGHT EXPRESS, based on Billy Hayes' account of his ordeal in a Turkish prison replete with brutal guards and frequent torture. Just as damning and one-sided as that story was against the Turks, here we find the Americans depicted as sadistic, almost soulless tormentors subjecting our heroes to endless bouts of cruelty and relentless interrogation.

Although Billy Hayes portrayed himself as the good guy in his story, which seemed amplified even more so by Parker, he was still admittedly guilty of drug smuggling--here, the "Tipton Three" are portrayed with as much wide-eyed innocence as director Michael Winterbottom and their own first-hand accounts can muster, and it's appalling to see what they are subjected to during their stay in Guantanamo until their final release.  

But how much of what we are seeing is the truth? Even if one accepts the conditions at Guantanamo to be accurately depicted, there's still the problem of just what these guys were doing in Afghanistan at the time, and whether or not they're telling us the whole truth and nothing but. Shooting a fact-based film to look like a documentary doesn't make it any more of one than, say, THE FRENCH CONNECTION (or even THIS IS SPINAL TAP!), regardless of how much the viewer may be lulled into thinking so by a realistic visual style coupled with the filmmakers' point of view.

As a film, it's pretty involving and generally well-done, although the latter half tends to drag at times. But a brief look at some of the information relating to this story on the Internet yields a few nagging questions about the history of "The Tipton Three" and their possible motives. Some of it may be true, some may not be--but you'd never know from watching THE ROAD TO GUANTANAMO that there was ever any question as to the veracity of any part of this story, and thus it fails to present it in anything other than a single, biased point of view that can hardly be taken as the final word on the subject.

THE ROAD TO GUANTANAMO -- Movie Review by Porfle

FIRE ON THE AMAZON -- DVD Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 1/10/11

 

At first glance, FIRE ON THE AMAZON (1993) appears to be the usual Hollywood attempt to mix issues--in this case, saving the Amazon rainforest--with thriller elements.  But this Roger Corman production soon reveals itself to be nothing more than a cheesy potboiler, and not a particularly good one at that.

Craig Sheffer plays R.J. O'Brien, who's in South America covering the murder of a rainforest crusader named Santo.  R.J. is one of those renegade American photojournalists who only care about getting the story, and not about what the story means.  But we know his neutrality won't last long when he meets cutie-pie Alyssa Rothman (Sandra Bullock), a Santo supporter who looks good in tight jeans.  When an Indian is framed for the murder and later found dead in his cell, R.J. and Alyssa enlist the help of the man's brother Ataninde (Juan Fernández) in a dangerous play against the corrupt local police. 

It's hard to believe this choppy, rinky-dink action flick was directed by Luis Llosa, whose ANACONDA and THE SPECIALIST at least had a measure of competence.  Bad editing works against the film throughout, but slapdash staging and unconvincing performances are major factors as well.  Visually, it resembles something you'd see at the drive-in during the 70s.  The script, interestingly enough, is co-written by one of my favorite actresses, Corman regular Luana Anders (EASY RIDER, DEMENTIA 13).
 

The environmental angle itself is given just enough lip-service to keep the plot moving while lending the film an air of respectability.  Ultimately, however, it's no more relevant than a Western about evil cattle ranchers and corrupt sheriffs versus noble sodbusters.  It does give R.J. and Alyssa an excuse to follow Ataninde deep into the jungle, where his brother's funeral allows director Llosa to film one of those weird tribal ceremonies where the white observers are given a hallucinogenic substance and trip out.

Here, right smack-dab in the middle of this guy's funeral, Sheffer and Bullock have a wildly-inappropriate softcore sex scene that's utterly ridiculous.  I'm not just talking about bare-shouldered groping and peekaboo stuff--it's the whole everything-but-the-genitalia routine, with the two tongue-wrestling leads humping away like they're in a Penthouse video.  At this point it becomes pretty clear that we're watching a standard exploitation flick that wears its loftier aspirations like a G-string. 

As R.J., Craig Sheffer is his usual Craig Sheffer self, neither very bad nor very good--his hair actually outperforms him--while Sandra Bullock gives her standard "I can't believe she's an Oscar winner" performance.  (In one scene she expresses grave concern by holding her nose.)  Judith Chapman of "The Young and The Restless" co-stars.


There's some pretty passable shoot-em-up action here and there, and an old-fashioned cliffhanger sequence with R.J. bound to a chair next to a ticking time bomb.  Most of the castmembers are held hostage at one point or another, with a gun or knife pressed menacingly against their throats.  This happens with such regularity that in one scene it appears as though Sheffer's character is holding himself hostage.  (Okay, I'm exaggerating.) 

The DVD from Anchor Bay is in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound and English subtitles.  The sole extra is a hilariously cheesy trailer. 

If you take FIRE ON THE AMAZON for what it is, a lively but dumb exploitation flick, you might find it somewhat entertaining.  (Especially if you just want to see Sandra Bullock naked.)  But if you're looking for a film with something genuinely important to say about the Amazon rainforest, you're barking up the wrong tree.

FIRE ON THE AMAZON -- DVD Review by Porfle

WILD IN THE STREETS -- DVD Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 8/16/16

 

What would happen if a rock-singing hippie in his early 20s could run for President?  And 14-year-olds could vote for him?  And Shelley Winters was his mom? 

These and hundreds of other questions are answered in goofy and sometimes scary psychedelic splashes of cinematic wonderfulness in the 1968 American-International classic WILD IN THE STREETS (Olive Films, Blu-ray and DVD). 

The film vividly depicts a Hollywoodized view of the 60s counter-culture era with its constant clashes between the younger and older generations--represented by bellbottoms, long hair, groovy lingo, and drug use on one side, and either straitlaced moral rigidity or sad attempts to remain "relevant" to the younger set, despite encroaching age, on the other--and is packed to the gills with knowing satire that skewers them both to the very core at every delightfully hokey turn.

If it seems dumb, it's deliberately so, almost in the same way that the "Batman" TV series with Adam West risked looking stupid to deliver its payload of delicious deadpan humor.  (Minus, that is, the more farcical elements of that show and plus a stern voiceover by Paul Frees.)

And yet, it's this quality that allows the story at times to sneak up on the unsuspecting viewer with a powerful emotional wallop which, especially during the film's downbeat climax, turns the improbable fantasy into a too-close-for-comfort Orwellian nightmare. 

The film's nominal "hero", Max Frost (James Dean lookalike Christopher Jones), who mass-produces LSD in the basement of his family home, rebels against his conservative father (Bert Freed) and dippy, clinging mother (Shelley Winters at her overpowering, self-deprecating best), leaving them to become a millionaire rock star with a loyal entourage that includes Richard Pryor, Larry Bishop (HELL RIDE, KILL BILL VOL. 2), and Diane Varsi as sexy acid-head "Sally LeRoy."

Ambitious senatorial candidate John Fergus (Hal Holbrook) makes the mistake of enlisting Max and his band to help him court the youth vote, but Max uses it as an opportunity to rouse his frenzied followers into a movement to lower the voting age to fourteen. 

When this (improbably) occurs, Max then rides his superstardom all the way to the presidency itself, whereupon he declares thirty to be the new mandatory retirement age.  At thirty-five, all citizens are to be interned in concentration camps where they'll be fed LSD to keep them docile and out of the younger generation's way.

Along the way, we're treated to some really great scenes that run the gamut from the ridiculous to the sublime.  Winters is hilarious in her bull-in-a-china-closet efforts--doomed from the start--to ingratiate herself with her newly-moneyed son and appear young and hip.  She's really amazing to watch.

Max's rise to power, taunting disrespect for the establishment, and easy manipulation of the masses are potent fantasy, while seasoned actors such as Hal Holbrook and Ed Begley, Sr. lend needed dramatic weight to their scenes.  (Seeing Begley and the rest of Congress tripping out on LSD after Max and his "troops" have spiked Washington, D.C.'s water supply is a trip in itself.)

The songs aren't half bad, either, including the haunting "The Shape of Things to Come" which follows a Kent State-style shooting during a massive protest rally. 

Director Barry Shear worked mainly in television and gives WILD IN THE STREETS the look of a gilt-edged TV movie with welcome bursts of color and style.  Scripter Robert Thom adds another winner to a body of work that also includes DEATH RACE 2000, BLOODY MAMA, THE LEGEND OF LYLAH CLARE, and ALL THE FINE YOUNG CANNIBALS. Importantly, his "generation gap" screenplay doesn't choose sides--it's a wickedly satirical putdown of both. Composer Les Baxter contributes his usual lively musical score. 

 

In addition to the rest of the standout cast, a major part of the film's appeal is its star, Christopher Jones, whose uncanny resemblance to James Dean (in looks if not acting skill) is of constant visual interest.  He carries the picture as its charismatic focal point and makes us feel a dramatic involvement in scenes that might otherwise seem insubstantial while deftly revealing to us his "Angel of Light" character's inner corruptness. 

The DVD from Olive Films is in 1.85:1 widescreen with 2.0 mono sound and English subtitles.  A trailer is the sole extra.

My older sister used to take me to grown-up movies all the time back in the pre-ratings-system days when such films, as does this one, carried a "suggested for mature audiences" disclaimer.  (It has since been rated "R" mainly for its depiction of drug use.)  I vividly remember watching WILD IN THE STREETS with her in our local movie theater then, and now, 48 years later, I still find it just as disturbing, just as crazy, and just as wildly whacked-out--but a whole lot funnier. 

WILD IN THE STREETS -- DVD Review by Porfle

CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY -- DVD Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 2/22/10

 

 

After spending years glued to the 24-hour TV-news networks and bending my ears with hours upon hours of talk radio--and agonizing over every sordid detail of each late-breaking political train wreck as it came screaming off the presses--I finally just turned it all off and started enjoying life again. For awhile, anyway. It's been nice.

So what do I find myself reviewing today? CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY (2009), the latest muckraking documentary by left-wing gadfly Michael Moore. Gaa!!!

Well, I'm not going to get into politics today because I used up my last good nerve on that stuff years ago. Instead, I'll try to focus on the film's entertainment value and watchability. First off, Moore starts the ball rolling with a promo clip for Hershell Gordon Lewis' BLOOD FEAST, with Bill Kerwin warning young, impressionable, and heart-attack-prone viewers to steer clear of the impending feature. That's worth some nostalgia points right there. Unfortunately, it makes me want to watch BLOOD FEAST.

Moore's film, however, is pretty scary itself. It's a scathing indictment of how capitalism and free enterprise in America have long been corrupted by the rich and powerful for their own greedy purposes while us Joe and Jane Six-Packs get the shaft. Part of Moore's method is to show us some of those awesome 50s educational films that are so delightfully square and full of crewcuts and horn-rims, and contrast their chipper naivete' with contemporary horror stories of families getting thrown out of their homes, factory workers being fired en masse, and airline pilots on food stamps.

The old "American dream vs. American nightmare" stuff works every time, especially when it's accompanied by dramatic Beethoven music. Moore's goal is to make you scared, sad, and outraged, and also to make you laugh--an emotional smorgasbord. With deft editing of stock film and music, plus his own manipulative documentary footage and slanted observations, the filmmaker creates a chunky visual goulash that would have Bela Lugosi shouting "Pool da strink!"

Naturally, Moore is able to gleefully avail himself of clips from old Ronald Reagan movies, which is convenient since most of our Republican presidents didn't start out as B-movie actors. So we get to see Ronnie whipping out his six-shooter on the unions or slapping a woman around while Moore chides "Take that, feminists!" or whatever. Not exactly a strict documentary approach, but as comedy it scores on a MST3K level. Later, a clip of George W. Bush giving a doom-and-gloom speech on the economy is made hilarious with the digital addition of screaming people fleeing in terror in the background while the White House is beseiged by earthquakes, tornadoes, and monsters. Funny stuff, in an Adult Swim sort of way.

Interview segments are interspersed throughout, some (politicians, financial experts) more relevant that others (actor Wallace Shawn). Moore also recruits a few religious figures to solemnly explain to us why capitalism itself is inherently evil--refraining, as one might guess, from consulting any who might express a differing view. Most effective are the accounts of downtrodden victims of a crumbling economy, and a few minutes spent with his own father on the site of a razed factory back in Flint, Michigan where he once worked adds to the often melancholy tone.

Moore goes for the heartstrings in these segments, plucking away with sad accounts of personal tragedy and hardship caused by corporate greed. You can't help but be moved by shots of little kids crying and people finding out the hard way that refinancing their homes probably wasn't such a good idea when the cops start breaking the door down. Some revelations are guaranteed to outrage, such as the concept of "Dead Peasants" insurance, which is the practice of taking out life-insurance policies on employees so that a company profits by their death. Recaps of high-profile scandals and evidence of deep-rooted government corruption are also sure to make you feel either angry or depressed, or both. Not to mention powerless.

But then, of course, we're back to the classic Michael Moore schtick of him trying to wedge a film crew through the front door of a gleaming corporate fortress so that some fat, overworked security shlub will have to come out and deal with them. This is what Michael Moore fans love to see--the cavorting troublemaker "sticking it to" the bad guys with nought but his disruptive and rebelliously unkempt presence. "I'm making a citizen's arrest!" he yells into a megaphone at a building. Or he backs a rented armored truck up to the door and demands that the fat cats cowering under their desks return their billions in bailout money to the taxpayers. Or simply wraps the building in yellow crime scene tape.

Moore got a taste for this kind of street theater with ROGER AND ME, and, useless as it may be, loves to perform it for us while "documenting" it. And, of course, it's fun to watch in the same way it was fun whenever David Letterman used to go down to GE headquarters to stir up a little trouble with the suits.

The DVD from Anchor Bay is in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen and Dolby Digital 5.1 with English and Spanish subtitles. Extras include a substantial ten featurettes and two trailers.

The picture begins with a "what if"--what if we'd listened to Jimmy Carter (aka "Debbie Downer") back in 1979?--and ends with the comforting assurance that President Obama will wisely and selflessly strive to put things right again. Do I buy everything Michael Moore says? No. Does CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY accurately expose the evil machinations of a bunch of greedy, insanely wealthy bastards who play with our economy, and our lives, like it was their own private crap game? Yes. Does it make me want to abandon capitalism and embrace socialism? No. Is it entertaining? Well, to be honest, I was really bummed out after I watched it, but that was the point. And it was funny at times, and generally very well-crafted. And it made me think. I think I want to watch BLOOD FEAST.

CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY -- DVD Review by Porfle