clicky
File size is ~650 megs. Quality is not bad; very watchable. It's only a documentary anyway, so it's not like you need the quality pimped out too hard.
Very well made but leftist documentary that explores America's gun culture. Recommended viewing but take with a grain of salt.
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Moderators: Abelard, Drolgin Steingrinder
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Millie
Very good, well made documentary. As Kyoukan said, Moore tends to be a bit of a leftist. He's also very into himself. Watching the film, you definitely get the feeling that some statistics were beefed up, some situations were "set up," and most interviews were edited to cast Moore in a heroic light.
Still, it's a highly entertaining and interesting documentary.
Still, it's a highly entertaining and interesting documentary.
Moore is a good director but he is definitely biased and any of his stuff needs to be watched with that in mind. I have seen excerpts form this one and he really pads the movie to fit what he wants the world to see. I saw another of his documentaries on a strike, can't remember the name, and found that one to be much better.
Deward
Deward
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Aaeamdar
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Put some of my opinions in the Oscar thread. Here is the critical flaw of this film, though flaw aknowledged, I'd still recommend it for the comedy parts.
The interview with Moses ruins any pretense that Moore is conducting an exploratory documentary. Moore has this half baked theory that "fear" is the source of all of America's gun problems, yet he fails to ever express this in a cognizable way. Bias is the problem with this film, but not a liberal bias. Roger and Me was heavily biased from a liberal perspective, but that was not a problem. The bias problem in this film is Moore's unwavering bias to a theory he cannot even congnize, much less express.
Moore makes it clear, repeatedly, that guns are not the problem (and interesting message from a liberal, frankly). He uses gun ownership in Canada as teh anecdotal evidence to drive this point home. Canada has more guns per person than America, but America has far more gun murders (and he focuses heavily on murders by childeren weilding guns) than Canada. Moore ask "why?" Unfortunately, he asks it as a rhetorical.
Enter the inteview with Moses and Moore's refusal to listen to any other theory screams. Moses offers two answers to that question.
1. The U.S. has more racial tension than Canada. Moore ignores he implications and simply shouts back that other Countries, Canada included, have racially diverse cultures as well. Of course, that was not the point. Moore ignores the history of those cultures. In the U.S., there is a history of violent oppression of these racial minorities. The backgrounds are just not the same. A better answer to this (and presumably Moore has done enough research on gun violence that he should be aware of this) is that while multiculuralism may (or may not) have some part ot play in the exceptional gun violence in the U.S., but statistics show that overwhelmingly, gun violence is intra-race, not between races.
2. Moses suggests that the U.S. has a culture of violence. Moore really misses the boat on this one. His response is that other Countries are violent too - pointing of all things to wars and particularly to Nazi Gernamy. Somehow the difference between government sanctioned violence (common to most nations) and unlawful violence (a trait significant in the History of the U.S. - particularly during our Western expansion and continuing to today) completely escapes Moore. Again, this might not be right, but Moore's answer to it was forced and fails to stand up to even the limitted attention one is likely to give it while watching a film.
Moses is a right-wing gun nut, but he isn't stupid and guns in America are something he cares about deeply and has done a fair bit of homework on the issues. This interview, to me, simply displayed Moore's own inability to efectively make whatever point he wanted to make with this film (again, some completely undefined and unsupported theory that America breads fear and that that fear is the cause of our gun violence problem).
Go see this film for two things: 1. there is a very touching sequence involving K-Mart. 2. There are countless hillarious parts where moore interviews several gun nuts, survialists, slippery corpoation PR people, and small town idiots. The film is deffinately worth watching, even for the very conservative. But don't go into it expecting to see the same quality of political/social commentary we saw in Roger and Me (the theams of which I also disagreed with, but at least there Moore was making sense and being more intellectually honest).
The interview with Moses ruins any pretense that Moore is conducting an exploratory documentary. Moore has this half baked theory that "fear" is the source of all of America's gun problems, yet he fails to ever express this in a cognizable way. Bias is the problem with this film, but not a liberal bias. Roger and Me was heavily biased from a liberal perspective, but that was not a problem. The bias problem in this film is Moore's unwavering bias to a theory he cannot even congnize, much less express.
Moore makes it clear, repeatedly, that guns are not the problem (and interesting message from a liberal, frankly). He uses gun ownership in Canada as teh anecdotal evidence to drive this point home. Canada has more guns per person than America, but America has far more gun murders (and he focuses heavily on murders by childeren weilding guns) than Canada. Moore ask "why?" Unfortunately, he asks it as a rhetorical.
Enter the inteview with Moses and Moore's refusal to listen to any other theory screams. Moses offers two answers to that question.
1. The U.S. has more racial tension than Canada. Moore ignores he implications and simply shouts back that other Countries, Canada included, have racially diverse cultures as well. Of course, that was not the point. Moore ignores the history of those cultures. In the U.S., there is a history of violent oppression of these racial minorities. The backgrounds are just not the same. A better answer to this (and presumably Moore has done enough research on gun violence that he should be aware of this) is that while multiculuralism may (or may not) have some part ot play in the exceptional gun violence in the U.S., but statistics show that overwhelmingly, gun violence is intra-race, not between races.
2. Moses suggests that the U.S. has a culture of violence. Moore really misses the boat on this one. His response is that other Countries are violent too - pointing of all things to wars and particularly to Nazi Gernamy. Somehow the difference between government sanctioned violence (common to most nations) and unlawful violence (a trait significant in the History of the U.S. - particularly during our Western expansion and continuing to today) completely escapes Moore. Again, this might not be right, but Moore's answer to it was forced and fails to stand up to even the limitted attention one is likely to give it while watching a film.
Moses is a right-wing gun nut, but he isn't stupid and guns in America are something he cares about deeply and has done a fair bit of homework on the issues. This interview, to me, simply displayed Moore's own inability to efectively make whatever point he wanted to make with this film (again, some completely undefined and unsupported theory that America breads fear and that that fear is the cause of our gun violence problem).
Go see this film for two things: 1. there is a very touching sequence involving K-Mart. 2. There are countless hillarious parts where moore interviews several gun nuts, survialists, slippery corpoation PR people, and small town idiots. The film is deffinately worth watching, even for the very conservative. But don't go into it expecting to see the same quality of political/social commentary we saw in Roger and Me (the theams of which I also disagreed with, but at least there Moore was making sense and being more intellectually honest).
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Dregor Thule
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