| Bowling for Columbine AND 8-Mile Special Double Review!!! |
| For my thesis, I would like to propose that these movies are one and the same (as always, don't read unless you don't want me to spoil things. What kind of things? For example, at the end of 8-mile, ________. That kind of things. One movie is about the crazy white man in Michigan. The other is about a crazy white man from Michigan. They both have stunning and striking reasons why you shouldn't play with guns. Both are unexpectedly funny, given the subject matter. I think the same automobile plant is featured in both movies. Uh......both films feature racial tension. I'm not sure who did the sequence first, but both films had the exact same 30 second clip of abandoned buildings and houses in metropolitan Michigan. Both movies were better than I expected, and left me wanting more. OK, that's all I can think of. I guess I'll just do them separately. Crazy idea though, huh? Yeah. We'll start with Bowling for Columbine. This is a documentary (at this point, I got less excited as Phil tried to describe it to Cathy and I) about gun violence in America. Michael Moore directs and stars in it as he explores with us the possible reasons for gun violence, more specifically murder, in America. I hope no one has stopped reading. It is a documentary, but this could be the best movie I've ever seen. If not for entertainment value, then definitely for the impact value. Did you see Blackhawk Down in the theater? Dramatic, huh? Open leg surgery and arms being blown off and "tell my mom.........I tried my best...". Oy. Heavy. Anyway, this movie is easily heavier, but not depressing. It mixes up terrible implications with funny film of rednecks just enough to keep you smiling. At one point, I was convinced that I was moving to Canada. Then I realized that I would be sub-par compared to the Canadians. I wouldn't be an amazing teacher in the advanced culture that we know as Canada. I didn't even realize that this was crazy-talk. I'd like to point out that I was one of those guys who didn't approve of Canada, for no real reason. This movie, in fact a very small part of it, had me considering and weighing the factors involved in moving to Canada. They supposedly don't lock their doors, and while I don't totally believe it is that totally different over there, I couldn't help but notice the Canadians' confusion towards America. I can't put my finger on a good enough analogy, but it's like the city of Cincinatti watching the Bengals' management combined with people everywhere watching previews of Pluto Nash. They just think "Why?". They seem exasperated and past the point of trying to understand us. This leads me to Moore's style and sequence. Moore pieces footage together beautifully. I'll admit that he does put it together in a way that is unfairly biased towards his opinion, but it makes the movie all the more powerful. Whether it is a well-placed pause after an otherwise only slightly funny redneck scene or a creative link from quotes about America to Nazi regimes, it is a style that jumps out at the viewer. There is a funny little cartoon in the middle about the history of America, done by the South Park guy. I've found that for some reason "South Park guy" generates more interest than "best movie I've ever seen" in people I try to recruit to see this movie. Which makes me wish they could see it even more, and wish I was a Canadian. This seriously has a shot at "best movie I have ever seen". Why won't you listen to me? Aaaaahhhh!!!! Also, my life was going just fine with me not knowing anything or caring at all about Charlton Heston, but now I have a healthy lack of respect for this tool. Who holds interviews in a room with self-portraits everywhere? Not portraits. They were more like murals. And he showed up to Colombine right after the shootings, and then had a rally in Flint, I think. Maybe not. It was wherever that 1st grader accidentally killed another 1st grader. He showed up there within a week. Moore asked him if he'd like to take the opportunity to apologize to the community for being so insensitive. Heston looked at him incredulously and said "Me?! Apologize?!" No, Charlton, you are not some kind of higher-than-men guy. I think you're lower-than-men, and the more people see this movie, the more people will learn this. Moore starts the interview by showing Heston that he is a member of the NRA. He then brings him up to speed on where we are on our quest to figure out why Americans love to shoot each other. He asks Heston the question and even guides him with the fact that Canada and other countries have just as many guns, yet they don't kill each other. Heston then says something about the ethnic nature of our country. Then he paused. Then he got fidgety. Then he abandoned it after he realized that everyone in America knew he is a racist. He then scurried out of the Charlton room, bellowing "Get your filthy hands off me, you damn dirty ape!" Moore 1, Heston negative 1. There was also a point where Moore helped two of the Columbine kids acheive a huge moral victory. At first I was scared that Moore was going to ruin his movie by trying to seem selfless while doing his deeds. This part was sort of tense for me, but he did it sufficiently well enough for me to believe that he actually cared about the issue, and wasn't just trying to get more film. Anyway, I wish that this movie could be a prerequisite for getting a driver's liscense or something. It really should be viewed by more people than are going to watch it. Unfortunately, the only people who would watch this movie are probably already pretty intelligent. No one goes out to see a documentary. They hear good stuff about it from respected critics. Not Elliot in the Morning's retardo of a movie reviewer. He says things like "I laughed my balls....not just one....both balls off during Black Knight! Martin Lawrence's capstone to an illustrious career". This movie should be watched. This is the first time that I didn't notice a 2 hour movie is long. Usually, you walk out thinking "it didn't seem that long", but you did notice while in the theater. With this movie, you walk out of the theater, look at your watch, and go into an epileptic fit for some reason. Probably a combination of the light-hearted heaviness of the movie combined with the difficulty of reading a watch. Throw on top of it that you are confused about a 30 minute gap in your life and where it has gone. Bowling for Columbine: good stuff. 9.7 A little sidenote- I have since found out that Moore may have misled me just a tad. Some of Heston's speeches were altered, and he even brought in stuff from an entirely different speech and spliced it in. A couple of the facts were wrong too. Also, that part about missiles going by while they slept at night: those missiles were apparently only used to launch satellites. I knew this movie was skewed toward his point of view, but I didn't realize he straight-out lied throughout the movie. For this, Bowling for Columbine gets stripped of its "highest movie rating ever" title, and now gets 6.7 bastard. |