Reviews

Under normal circumstances, I might have given this title a slightly lower rating, but the criminally low scores given by some reviewers demanded a strong counterpoint.

This was an immensely intelligent and relevant film to come out of Hollywood, made by actors, celebrities in their own right, who are clearly sickened by the solipsistic egoism of the entertainment industry and its undeserved position of prominence in American culture.

The grotesque character Phoenix and Affleck bring to the screen, perhaps crystallized best in an instance where the former physically attacks a heckler during a performance and subsequently voids his stomach after all the exertion, instantly - and irrevocably - shatters the glamorous veneer that surrounds the category of 'the celebrity'. This, I suspect and fear, may be one of the reasons why some of the reviewers in these pages had an aversion to the film.

As a Brit, I've been brought up on slightly surreal, and often fairly, dark humour - a la Chris Morris's 'Jam' and 'Brass Eye'. But this really pushed things further, and I felt myself challenged as a viewer, which is always a good thing in my book.

My advice would be to watch this film and make up your own mind. Perhaps the best way to recommend this feature is to mention the fact that, almost 12 hours after having seen it, I still feel a warm sense of edification, a feeling that is rarely induced by watching movies (I'm more of a reader).

A timely satire that bursts the celebrity bubble.

This was a rather enjoyable and strangely touching action caper, with moments of genuine depth and truth.

Woody Harrelson proves once again that he's an incredibly versatile and emotionally astute actor, with an arresting performance that carries the story along with remarkable zeal and fun. And while the plot and direction skirt close to sentimentalism towards the end, Harrelson executes the last few scenes in a manner so as not to spoil the quirky edge of the film.

Another angle that I found particularly enjoyable were the deferred references to Don Quixote - if you've read Cervantes's hilarious Rennaissance series you'll no doubt notice uncanny similarities that suggest homage: In lieu of the outlandish chivalric tales that madden Don Quixote and compel him to forge his own suit of armour and 'sally forth' into the wilds of quiet old La Mancha, we have 'Defendor', who similarly loses what few wits he has to begin with by obsessively reading comic books and deciding to become a superhero in an anonymous post-industrial slum. Sancho Panza is replaced by a saner but similarly pliant crack-addict, Kat, and Rosindante is supplanted by his 'defendog' mobile.

There are other similarities the movie has with D. Quixote, but to mention those would give the game away. It will suffice to say, however, that the film is quite highly recommended by this viewer, if not just for the joy of seeing Don Quixote once again take to the streets in all his glory.

Reading some of the other reviews of Capitalism: A Love Story, it soon becomes clear that those leaving low scores either haven't seen the film or have a particular agenda to smear the movie - one reviewer seems to think Angela Merkel's Germany (a centre right politician!) is 'Socialist'! It is this deliberate dumbing down in America of issues surrounding what capitalism is and does (as opposed to socialism) that enabled the conditions for the banks to exploit the worst off in American society and force the taxpayers to foot the bill by bailing them out - and why Americans are still without a universal free healthcare system. Moore takes great pains, and succeeds, in highlighting how this culture of demonising anything that criticises rampant and unregulated free market economics has been firmly established in US society. He has clearly undertaken a measure of research in the production - numerous sources/interviews and facts are used in the narrative - but the best thing for me was that he still manages to keep the more complicated aspects of banking and loans extremely accessible (I'm hopeless at maths!).

Comments that Moore is a socialist are extremely juvenile - Moore is a socialist in the same way that Ghandi was a terrorist or Jesus was a trouble maker.

All in all a very informative and inspiring documentary that dares to mention the elephant taking a big dump in the room.

This film doesn't even profess to offer an objective or impartial account of contemporary events and shouldn't be dismissed out-of-hand for not aspiring to such a chimerical, and practically impossible, goal. Given the overt bias that pervades and plagues the mainstream media, perhaps such self-acknowledged subjectivity is a necessary, if not less deviant, methodological approach.

In terms of tone, rhetoric and visual presentation, this documentary issues a rather paranoid, anxious, but nonetheless credible view of the state of the world in which we and our subsequent offspring will live (or perhaps, be condemned?).

Jones uses well-researched, factually-supported arguments, most of which can be verified using mainstream media archives, to irrefutably prove the use of explosives to bring down the Twin Towers and (the third) Building No.7 on the 11th of September 2001. However, this aspect only represents a portion of the film's running time - the rest is dedicated to perhaps more shocking, obscure, (yet consistently supported and appropriately-cited) discussions on the subversive funding of Adolf Hitler by American Internationalists and their relationship with the Bush family: a family that today hold an increasingly arbitrary grip on power in the world's most powerful nation.

Critics of Jones' work tend to resort to two tactics. The first is 'ad hominem': instead of presenting a logical counter-argument to his well-cited and widely-researched discussion, they attempt to attack the character of the man himself, conveniently bypassing the facts rendered. The second is to ridicule the aesthetic presentation and format of his production: an approach which works toward the same end, and intriguingly avoids confuting the empirical arguments presented in the work.

Very much recommended. For more specialised and detailed documentaries scrutinising the official story of 9/11, see the fantastic (and very much BANNED in the Land of the Free) "Loose Change: 2nd Edition" and an equally authoritative lecture recorded at Wisconsin University, Madison and given by the respected academic Dr. Ray Griffin (author of "The New Pearl Harbour" and "The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions And Distortions").