#5 of the Top Five Bizarro Films Countdown!

Hello loyal readers, Its time yet again for another Top Five Countdown! That is Dennis Hopper and Isabella Rosellini on the pic above, and that is a scene from Blue Velvet, one of David Lynch's strangest films (but not the strangest!) and I decided to put it up there for two reasons. Number one is to commemorate Dennis Hopper's career, he recently passed away and he will be sorely missed. And the second is because once again, I am working in collaboration with Shaun Anderson from the excellent film review blog The Celluloid Highway. If you remember, we collaborated a while ago on our Top Five Stand Alone Sci-Fi Movies, which was a success. We both knew it wouldn't be long before we did another one, so here we are again with one of our crazy countdowns. This time around we thought we could make things interesting by counting down our respective choices for top five weirdest and most bizarre movies ever. Of course, there are a lot of bizarre movies out there, some of which you have probably never heard of, but these choices we have made are the cream of the crop of bizarre, according to us. So if you haven't checked any of the movies we are going to be counting down and you are into the strange, the bizarre and the downright tantalizing, then do yourself a favor and check these choices out! 

As always, we are going to be giving a different choice ever day of the week, starting today with our #5. Tomorrow we will give our #4 and so forth, until next friday where we will be revealing our #1 most bizarre movie. These countdowns are interesting because Shaun gives his choices and I give mine, so you will have double the amount of bizarre movies to watch. So sit back, relax and enjoy our Top Five Bizarro Movies countdown! Remember to come back through out the week to see the rest of our countdown! Also, remember to check out Shaun's blog, The Celluloid Highway, a well written and informative movie review blog. 

The Celluloid Highway's #5 Bizarro Movie: MAN BITES DOG (Remy Belvaux, Andre Bonzel & Benoit Poelvoorde, Belgium, 1992)

Man Bites Dog is an outrageous and at times farcical film that is made all the more horrifying by the fact that so many of the events illicit laughter. This episodic narrative involves a group of amateur filmmakers documenting the exploits of an unusually philosophical and enigmatic serial killer. The rough documentary style, appearances of the filmmakers on screen and the killers regular addressing of the camera gives the act of murder an extremely disturbing intimacy. Furthermore the filmmakers throughout aid and abet the chilling events, realising as they do, that without more slaughter and mayhem they don’t have a film. The central character of Benoit is one of cinemas most engaging and unintentionally likeable of mass murderers. He has a strong family ethic, looks after his friends, helps the needy, discusses in detail art and politics, and moans frequently about the urban decay and poverty in deprived parts of the city. But at the same time he is a ruthless gangster, with a clown like appearance, that thinks nothing of scaring old women to death or murdering people on a busy commuter train. The opening murder aboard the train is one the most unpleasant examples of celluloid homicide I’ve seen, simply because it goes on and on, with an unflinching camera documenting every aspect of the victims desperate struggle. As alluded to earlier the real difficulty with the film is that so much of it is funny, treating death in an offhand and flippant manner. Of more importance is Benoit’s standing in the community and his regular apperances at swank art gatherings. This might not be bizarre in formal terms - the film is shot in black and white and aside from some shaky handheld footage there is very little visual experimentation - but the tone is one of the most peculiar I have ever come across. Central to the film are questions of truth and reality and the ethical responsibilities of filmmakers (that one of the filmmakers get shot dead should be warning enough, but the rest decide to carry on documenting these monstrous deeds in his honour) when faced with such material. Benoit holds the power because of their complicity and he controls almost every aspect of both the process of filmmaking and murder. An unforgettable experience that is refreshingly free of the self-conscious artiness that plagues many a cult film.

The Film Connoisseur's #5 Bizarro Movie: Leolo (Director: Jean Claude Lauzon, Quebec, 1992)

This coming of age film is one of those that shock because they put a little kid going through all sorts of horribly sick situations in the early stages of their lives. You might think that thats kind of sick, but Im actually okay with this type of film. Why? Well, because some children out there in the world do go through a lot of situations that some of us dont imagine kids going through. Or some of us dont imagine kids should go through. Yet they do. This is the story of Leo Lauzon, a kid who has a mind of his own. His family might be bat shit insane (and they are) but he doesnt feel like he is a part of them. He hides away from all the madness by reading and writing....and dreaming. In his dreams Leolo escapes to an Italian landscape, because he once had a dream in which his father was an Italian. So anyhows, this is the kind of story that will show us how a kid grows through painful life experiences. Leolo grows and learns just how cruel and cold this world can be. Essentially, since Leolo has such unreliable parents, he has to learn everything about life the tough way, on his own. Which he does. This movie has some elements of magical realism to it, by this I mean that some of the characters in the film stick to the rules of magic rather then those of the real world. The film has elements that seem to come out of a Fellini film, specifically because its about a kid growing up in a very adult world, and its also about the sexual awakening of a teenage boy, a theme that Fellini addresses in films like Amarcord. Its a beautiful film to look at, but at the same time, some of the situations are so mundane, grotesque and downright gritty! So its that kind of strange film that mixes both the beautiful and the ugly. The beautiful with the shocking. Recommend it for lovers of the dark, the poetic and the artistic, but not to anyone who might be easily offended. 

Most Bizarre Moment: When Leolo starts to hang out with these teenage friends who get together to sniff glue, smoke cigarettes and get drunk, they all dare another one of their friends to do something. We hear everyone preassuring the kid to do something and his like "put five dollars on the table and Ill do it! Non of you got the balls to do it!" After they put the five dollars on the table, we find out, the kid was being preassured to fuck a cat. Which he does. Strange but true.

Outpost (2008)

Title: Outpost (2008)

Director: Steve Barker

Cast: Ray Stevenson, Julian Wadham, Richard Brake, Michael Smiley,

Review:

My search for that awesome Nazi zombie continues. So far Dead Snow continues to be the #1 Nazi zombie movie for me, nothing out there has topped it yet. Outpost was one of those nazi zombie movies that has managed to elude me. The other two being Oasis of the Zombies and The Bunker, but Im not in a huge hurry to see them. Still my Tireless Reader, I promise to get to them, just so we have that whole Nazi zombie sub-genre thing covered in its entirety.

Outpost is the story of a group of mercenaries who are getting payed by a private firm to search out an abandoned military bunker in Eastern Europe . They are promised that it’s a small operation, in and out, 48 hours the most. The leader of the mercenaries isn’t quite sure that they are going to search for minerals as he was told. The whole team suspects that the true meaning of their search is another. Soon, they discover that the abandoned military bunker used to belong to Nazis that were participating in some sort of experiment that deals with the re-animation of dead soldiers! It isn’t long before the team begins to get attacked by Nazi zombies! What exactly has this team of mercenaries been sent to look for? Can the team escape from the bunker with their lives?

So this low budget flick has a lot of good things for it. First of all, I have to give props to the filmmakers for making this film look better than it should look. This is a very low budget production, the filmmakers even mortgaged their home to make it, but their efforts paid off because the film got some critical acclaim and it was released in theaters in Britain, the films country of origin. These filmmakers were smart, since they had little money they cut back their costs by setting their film in the woods and in a claustrophobic military bunker, filled with shadows and darkness. The bunker setting made me remember films with a similar premise, like for example John Carpenter’s The Thing. You know the premise because its been reused to death in horror films. Basically you take a bunch of paranoid/scared dudes, you locke them up in a claustrophobic environment and then you have them go nuts amongst themselves. That’s what we get with Outpost. During the course of the film, characters get on each others nerves, they betray each other, despise each other, but they have to learn to pull together or perish.

I thought it was interesting how the film addresses the issue of belief. Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot films and documentaries that kind of question the way things are. I swear I’m not doing this on purpose! These are the kind of themes that are appearing in films today, questioning beliefs, questioning society, defying the way things are. For example, on Outpost we have two conflicting characters. One is a soldier who beliefs in god and country, going to church and all that, while we have another constantly defying his beliefs, telling him things like “nothing happens after we die, we just die” and this happens a lot during the movie, the questioning of the idea of god and what happens after death. This theme matches perfectly with the film because in essence this is a ghost movie. It’s never really explained very well, but apparently what we get in the film is a mix between zombies and ghosts. Kind of like the same thing that they did in Blood Creek, where we had a mix of zombies with vampires. So amongst other things, this film questions the afterlife and our belief in it, something that is commonly done in films that deal with the supernatural.

This movie handles suspense and atmosphere very well. The setting of the bunker is appropriately spooky for the kind of film this is. Lots of dark corners and passageways, you get a feeling of claustrophobia. My only problem is that the Nazi zombies take a little too long to appear. For a huge part of the film we don’t really see them up close and personal. This is another great way to save money in make up effects; you keep your characters hidden in the background, in shadows and silhouettes. On this movie, Id say that this worked great, it makes the group of Nazi zombies look more menacing.

On the downside, the film is so low budget that its scare techniques are very low key in nature. The Nazi zombies actually take a while to show up on screen, you get impatient when its been more than 40 minutes without a freaking zombie. But on the plus side, it does build up suspense very well, so I guess it compensates for that. Whenever the Nazi zombies appear in the forest, they do so with a blinding bolt of light that comes from the forest. The soldiers are attacked by a supernatural gust of wind. The Nazi zombies are some times kept far away in the woods, we see their silhouettes far in the woods, and whenever they get close and personal their faces are kept in shadows. Still, for a low budget flick, I say it could have been worse. If anything, what the film demonstrates is that all these filmmakers need is some cash to make a truly great film. So its one of those films that shows promise, but is set back by its budgetary limitations. Dead Snow is still my top choice for best Nazi zombie movie, followed by Shockwaves. Outpost could go on the #3 spot. Not a bad film, but it could have been so much more. Maybe things will turn out better in the proposed sequel: Outpost II: Black Sun.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Martyrs (2008)

Title: Martyrs (2008)

Director/Writer: Pascal Laugier

Review:

For those of you who cant take talking negatively about religion, I suggest you tune out and come back another day, because today were gonna be talking about Martyrs and well, that's what Martyrs is all about, dissecting the very nature of religion. Martyrs really blew me away, it's one of the finest French horror films I’ve seen in a long time. The French have been making some damn fine horror movies over the past few years. They have been so good that in my opinion, they have put American horror films to shame. Don’t know how many of you have seen Inside (2007) but if you haven’t, you are missing out on a damn fine scary movie! What about High Tension (2003)? Frontier(s) (2007)? If you haven’t seen any of these films, it’s about time you did. I mean, if you care about good horror films at all.

Martyr’s is the story of two girls, Anna and Lucie. The first one we meet is Lucie. When we first meet her, she has just escaped from a dungeon, she looks beat up, exhausted and demented. She runs around the streets screaming for help! What has happened to her? Who did this to her? Why is she running away? Will she ever be a normal person again?

 First, I’ll let you in on something about me, I was a devout zealous Christian. Yup, I believed in Jesus, I believed in golden thrown rooms and castles in the sky. I was one of the faithful. But one fine day, I decided to analyze what I was believing in, you know, really get in there and find logic to what I was investing so much of my time and life in. One question kept haunting me, where did all religions come from? And why are there so many of them? After conducting an extensive research and lots of thought to the subject, I came to the conclusion that I had believed in something that had absolutely no way of being proved. It was all based on a book that somebody wrote, it was some story though. I never heard “God” speaking to me. I never saw anything supernatural; there was simply no proof for what I was investing so much of my time in. So one day, after much deliberation, after much research, I simply stopped believing. I stopped going to church. I got out. I escaped! And now I was out in a strange new world, a world I would have to learn to adapt to and learn to live in. In a way, I was reborn into reality, I disconnected from the proverbial Matrix, I took the red pill! So this is probably part of the reason why I identified so much with this film. It got to me in a very personal way.

Without ruining the film for anyone, I just want to say that this is one of the best films about religion ever made. And I’ve seen a lot these! If you are interested in seeing films about this topic check out films like The Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001), Bad Dreams (1988), Silent Hill (2006) or Conan The Barbarian (1982). Believe it or not, films like the ones I've just mentioned and The Wickerman (1973) helped me see how dangerous religion can be, the negative side to the equation. My research taught me that any wacko can start preaching anything, and there are bound to be people who will join him in believing whatever it is he or she wants them to believe, even if it leads them straight to their deaths. Doesn’t matter if the stories are real or not, some people will simply follow without question. I mean, have you ever stopped to analyze just how many different kinds of beliefs there are in the world? How all of them say they got “the truth”! The magic solution to everything? My personal belief is that there are so many religions in the world precisely because nobody knows the real truth. But humans need to believe in something bigger then them, and religions offer them these deities to worship. Jesus, Vishnu, Buddha, Shiva, Jehovah, Chango, take your pick. Point of the matter is that all of these religions offer up a fantastic story about the origins of the universe, about how we all got here, and about where we go when we die. In my opinion, these perfectly packaged solutions exist simply to give us answers to what I like to refer to as “the great mysteries of the universe”, the big questions. These mysteries have yet to be answered; the problem resides in the fact that most humans can’t take the fact that we really don’t know anything about the origins of life and the universe. They can’t take the idea that maybe when we die, nothing happens. The idea that we simply die is too harsh on the psyche of some; so in comes religion and gives them a way out from all that uncertainty that unbelievers live with on a daily basis.

Martyr’s central theme is this one and it brings these themes forward through symbolisms and through the context of a horror film. And I think it’s freaking brilliant the way the film delivered its points across. I mean, some religions catch you against your will. Think about Catholicism for example. With Catholicism you don’t even have a choice, if your parents are Catholic’s, chances are they will baptize you into that religion without you even knowing it! While you are a baby! In a way, you are taken hostage into a religion! I enjoyed how this film represented the entrapment that some religions submit their parishioners too. How you feel constricted, restrained, held back. Controlled. It isn't long before all the rules and regulations they hammer into your life start to drive you nuts. The crap they feed you and keep feeding you gets to be nauseating after a while, in the film this is represented in the slop they force feed the prisoners that are tortured. Some people take that slop for the rest of their lives, but some will want to escape it, run away and be free.

One of the topics the film touches is, can a person who escapes a religion be normal again? Some religions will leave you scarred, battered, psychologically destroyed, like the characters on Martyrs who are literally scarred. After an event like that, can you be normal again? Can you rejoin society? You can. I did. But like the characters in this film, you will always have those psychological scars. After you wake up to reality, you feel you wasted so much of your life in that dark lifeless dungeon of the mind! Some might feel that not all religions are like this, that some of them are good. But in my opinion, this is not the case. There are no good religions in the world because at the base of all these religions is a BIG, FAT, HUGE, STINKING LIE. Why would anyone want to live a lie? I’d much rather live by logic and reason instead of faith, which is just another word for believing in something you have no proof for. I would rather be in control of my own life. I would rather do good to others simply because this is the right thing to do. Not because I’m afraid someone is going to come and punish me. I’d rather learn from my mistakes then feel guilty for them all my life. Accept life is just one big mystery, after all isn’t that what makes it interesting? The mystery? The fascination with the wonder of life? The wonder of it all? 

Anyhow, speaking about the film itself and not just its themes, this is one solid horror movie. I loved the fact that the film isn’t preachy at all. Anyone can watch this movie and completely miss out on its symbolisms and thematic elements, because they are not in your face. For the casual viewer, this could pass for just another horror movie, but for the deep thinkers out there, this ones deep. This movie could even be mistaken for the "torture porn" that's been so popular lately in films like SAW (2004). In reality it’s so much more than that. Rest assured the film is not preachy at all. I will warn you that this movie is extremely gory. It has no remorse; it’s very unrestrained with its violent nature. Well, you know a film is going to be violent when the films director gives an introduction before the film, and he apologizes for the films violent nature. By the way, if your going to see this film, make sure it's the unrated directors cut of the film, any other version wont give you the full effect. But hey, I give the director props, he says he was being very sincere and truthful, and that’s one of the things that matters the most to me in this world, telling it like it is.

Rating: 5 out of 5

Daybreakers (2009)

Title: Daybreakers (2009)

Director/Writer: The Spierig Brothers

Cast: Willem Defoe, Ethan Hawke, Sam Neil

Review:

This weekend I saw two very interesting horror films. One of them commented on the evils of religion (which I will be reviewing tomorrow so be on the look out for that review) and the other one was Daybreakers, which comments on capitalism and the results of it on society. Daybreakers is a vampire film that comes to us from the mighty inventive Spierig Brothers. These two Australian bro’s were the guys responsible for the totally outlandish zombie film Undead (2003). Undead was an independently funded film about zombies taking over Australia. The film was made with under a million dollars, maxing out their credit cards, and doing everything very low key. In fact, the computer effects for their film were made on their own personal computer, at home! The final results, though not perfect, were very entertaining and proved to the world that these guys could make a film.

One of the Spierig's shooting a scene

Daybreakers is the first film they make with a real budget. Producers took notice that these guys loved making movies and would be capable of making a kick ass motion picture if given the chance. So Daybreakers was born. A very solid sophomore effort if I say so myself. They even managed to amass an impressive cast! Undead was a zombie film that actually put the whole zombie idea through a grinder, shredded it, and ended up with something that’s actually pretty offbeat and original. A hard thing to do when making a zombie movie, since so many of them have been made. But they pulled it off. Undead’s budgetary limitations are obvious at times, but the story line is so out there that it keeps you pulled in. The Spierig Brothers managed to do the same thing with Daybreakers.

Regain your humanity you evil corporate douche bag!

Daybreakers is a film that takes place in the year 2019, a couple of years away from our time. Vampires have taken over the world and humans are harvested so the vampires can feed on their blood. But some humans have managed to escape the vampires and are living hidden, scurrying about like cockroaches running away from the light. Humans are an endangered species, but they are getting organized and they have a plan! In the man time, vampire society is facing another problem. Vampires are running out of humans to feed from and out of this blood starvation, some vampires are starting to mutate into these horrible vampire monster things, rabid, violent, murderous and thirsty for blood! Will the world ever regain its humanity?

Again, the Spierig Brothers have managed to surprise me. Various factors amazed me about this movie but let’s start with the way the film looks. Daybreakers is a very elegant looking film. Since the film takes place during the future, everything looks slick and new. Vampires use a lot of technology. Neon lights, computers, futuristic looking cars and skylines. I loved it. As an added bonus, Daybreakers is pure film noir mixed with vampires and sci-fi. Like most film noir, the story takes place during the night, in the busy city. Staying true to its nourish influences, there are very few day scenes in the film. And when there is a day scene its very bright and colorful, showing us an anti-thesis of what it means to be a vampire, hidden in the darkness and shadows of the night. Whenever it is nighttime, the film takes this grey/blue look to it that fits perfectly with the vampire world. So we have a slick, elegant and stylish looking vampire film. Visually, it’s a one up on their last film.

Thematically speaking Daybreakers amazed me the most. It’s a movie that perfectly encapsulates what society is living through right now. The Spierig’s use of vampirism as an allegory for capitalism and how its bleeding society dry was pure genius. The main villain in the film (played by Sam Neil) is a vampire who is the big honcho of a major company that is in charge of draining humans of their blood. This character represents those big corporations that know the harm they are doing with their way of doing business, but they do it anyway, because the profits are just so high! I also loved how this movie is practically begging society to regain its humanity, by introducing the element of having a cure for vampirism. In this way, the film is sending out a message: don’t be cold hearted and turn a blind eye on humanity! Look at what you are doing, regain that warmth, that caring for your fellow human being.

Vampires have a dilemma on this film. There is good quality blood being sold to people at a very high price and there is bad quality blood, which is what they are feeding the masses at a very cheap price. But what happens when the masses don’t like the crap you are feeding them? This is one of the questions that this film asks. And what will you do when those masses revolt? These scenes talk about how in the world we live in, good food is too expensive and inaccessible to the masses while the unhealthiest food is cheap, and its what poor people have to end up eating. My solution is make good food cheap! You shouldn’t play with peoples health that way. But apparently things aren’t that simple in the real world.

The theme of the rich vs. the poor, the rebels vs. the sysmte is a recurring theme in films today. I recently did a post on Subversive Cinema, and it talked about films that criticize and comment on the way the governments of the world are running things. But these movies have become so numerous as of lately that I’m going to have to do a second post on these socially conscious films. Daybreakers is defenetly going to be on that list because its a film that speaks about the way capitalism and bad government affects us, and the direct results of this way of living. The ravenous mutations that start to appear as a result of blood starvation are a symbolism for the homeless, the bums, the drug addicts, the alcoholics and criminals that inhabit the streets of every country. What I loved about Daybreakers is that it shows us that these creatures are simply a result of the society that they come out of. You give the people shit all the time; and its guaranteed that they are not going to remain happy. You feed them crap, and they will begin to get sick. You don’t pay them enough to survive in the world and they will turn into homeless individuals. It’s no surprise that every country that has an oppressive classist government that stomps on the poor and favors the rich has rebellion on its streets. My question is, do these governments prefer to live with a rebellious population? Wouldn’t it be better for everyone if we were all treated with the respect and dignity that we all deserve?

This horror film is very influenced by Richard Matheson’s I am Legend. The way I see it, this is the Spierig Bros. version of I am Legend. Its closer to what I am Legend should have been like instead of Will Smith battling a bunch of bald cgi mutants. The Spierig Bros. captured the ideas behind the book way better in my opinion. But even though the film exists within the same situation as Matheson’s novel, it still goes its own way.

On the negative side, the only “been there done that” element that this film has is the rebels vs. the system angle. So you get that formula where we get to meet the rebels, see their hide out/headquarters and the ultimately the government finds them and then the good guys have to go on the run. It was similar to Alejandro Cuaron’s Children of Men (2006) in this way. But hey, what are you going to do? Art reflects life, and this is what a lot of people are going through right now. Its why there have been so many films with this same theme lately. The only other bad thing I can say about this film is that it ends with a whimper, it didn’t go out with a bang the way it should’ve. It blew its wad too soon as they say. But other than that, the film is solid! The Spierig Bros. are slated to direct the upcoming sequel to The Dark Crystal. I’m really curious for that one, these two directors have an eye for slick and stylish visuals and I cant wait to see what they do with a fantasy film.

Rating 4: out of 5

Capitalism: A Love Story (2010)

Title: Capitalism: A Love Story (2010)

Director: Michael Moore

Review:

I’m not a political person at all. In fact, I despise politics with every fiber of my being. Doesn’t matter what side of the fence politicians come from, they always lie, they always steal, and they always squeeze the life out of the very people they are supposed to be protecting. Take one look at today’s headlines and you will see what I mean. Look at the revolts going on in Thailand and in Greece. Take a look at what is happening in Puerto Rico. People are on revolt in the streets. Fighting to survive, fighting to request a bit more of the proverbial pie. A piece they very much deserve. After all, doesn’t every man and woman have the right to a job, and to have enough money to live and survive in this world? Problem is, the 1% who are rich are greedy selfish bastards who want to gorge on the pie all by themselves. And what about the poor, the needy, the less fortunate? The rich seem to turn a blind eye on these. They don’t care if their way of life, their way of doing business is destroying society; all they care about is making the cash, and making obscene amounts of it.

"Be honest! Be fair! Treat people with respect! Why cant we all just get along?"

Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story exposes Capitalism for what it is. A creature that is devouring people whole without remorse. I know many think that Michael Moore’s documentaries are not to be trusted, but usually, the ones saying this are the ones making the money. Of course they don’t want you to see this documentary, it makes them look exactly like what they are. Greedy bastards! There is a saying that says that “a picture can speak louder than a thousand words” and this is the case with this documentary. It has scenes that speak a truth that you cannot deny. Take for example the films opening sequence. A montage of people robbing banks all across the nation. Is this not the perfect example of the state of things? People are so desperate that they have no other choice but to turn to robbing banks. I live in Puerto Rico, and this it is no different here. The crime rate has gone up ever since the economy went bad.

There is another scene that was filmed by a family who’s home was being repossessed. The bank came to this family’s home with the police, bashed the families door down and broke in. The family was being notified that their home was being taken from them. Entire families are being left out on the streets because there are not enough jobs out there and the jobs that do exist don’t pay enough. To top things off, everything is way too expensive. When you have to decide between paying a mortgage of feeding your kids, what will you choose? Should you even have to be put in a position where you have to make that choice? As a result of the high cost of living, foreclosures have sky rocketed and an alarming amount of people are being kicked out of their homes and left out on the streets! There is a heartbreaking scene in which an entire family who was kicked out of their home is living inside of a truck. The community decides to give the family their home back! So the whole community decides to sit outside of the families home, and confront the police and the bank people. And this is just a small example of people fighting for their right to live. Im not an expert in economy, and I’m no expert in politics either. But I know the difference between wrong and right, and things just aren’t right in the world when this kind of thing happens.

What are they afraid of?

Michael Moore shows a letter that some CEO’s from Citibank wrote where they say that they are the new “kings of the world” the new feudalism. And what are they afraid of? As the letter says, they are afraid that the people will fight back, and request more money to survive. This is the way it should be. People shouldn’t have to live in such a struggle. The system happy to make you start life in debt by charging astronomical amounts for college education, so that when you actually get a job, you will be paying that loan your whole life. Lets not forget the fact that if the education is as expensive as it is, poor people wont be able to go to college. And keeping the poor uneducated is part of the plan. Believe me, I did my research on how much an education in film would cost me, trust me, it wasn’t pretty. This is the main reason why I am an independent filmmaker.  Screw the system, Im doing this on my own!

Billionaire CEO’s are running the world. The Presidents of our nation answer to them. They decide what the government tells the people, I guess their big plan right now is, fuck the poor, lets make as much money as we can. I really hate it when rich people think of the poor as something less than them. We are all human beings; we should think of each other collectively, we should all think about each other. With so much money being made by mega corporations, it makes one wonder why they don’t give a little back. Especially when it comes to the less fortunate. I’m all for starting things over or maybe modifying things. But the way things are, just isn’t right. Watching this documentary might get you sad, and even outraged. I was watching it with a friend of mine (Hey Manny, that’s you I’m talking about!) and it really got to us after a while. You just feel angry because they actually know they are doing a lot of wrong, but they don’t care.

The documentary does show a positive side to things. For example, there is a company that is showcased in which everyone in the company is an owner of the company. Everyone makes the same amount of money, every one is dignified, and there are no slaves there. The president of the company makes the same amount of money that some one in the production lie does. People work happily, with a positive vibe to them. It seems that part of the solution is not working for “the man”, but working for ourselves. Some might accuse Moore of being a little melodramatic, and what can I say, he is, but at least he drives the point home, he says what he has to say and isnt afraid to say it. So Mr. Moore, I salute you for becoming the voice of the people. I’m watching The Corporation next; I want to sink myself deeper in despair. But hey, at least Ill know what’s really going on.

Rating: 5 out of 5