Bowling for Columbine

Rating:
Summary: Witty, funny, horrifying, exasperating---and nearly right.
Review: Full disclosure: I can't stand Michael Moore's politics; I am about as far removed from the Great Yawping Gadfly of the American Left as it is possible for a man to be.

That said, I enjoyed, got a few laughs, and was (in spots) actually moved by Bowling for Columbine, which aims higher than Moore's previous blockbuster documentary "Roger and Me", but ultimately, due to muddled ideas and sloppy execution, falls short. That's not necessarily a bad thing, though: "Bowling" is both more ambitious and ultimately more entertaining that "Roger and Me."

Let's get the basics out of the way: "Bowling for Columbine" is ostensibly Moore's quest to find out what motivated Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the self-described 'Trenchcoat Mafia' who murdered 13 of their fellow classmates (and a teacher) in Littleton, Colorado in April 1999. The title of the film refers to the pair's unusual pre-massacre activity: they went bowling.

I say "Bowling" is 'ostensibly' about the Columbine massacre because the film is only obliquely, and shallowly, concerned with the horrific events in Littleton. The facts of the killing are dealt with briefly, and we never see pictures of Harris or Klebold; indeed, the security camera film that captured the massacre in the library (grainy, ominous, and horrible, with an instrumental version of Marilyn Manson's "Nobodies" in the background) is frustrating in that it is impossible to see either of the killers. Of course, Moore is making a larger point in "Bowling": that the Columbine massacre was not simply a unique incident, but symptomatic of some underlying American disease. "Bowling", then, is Moore's attempt to address and discover the disease itself. Unfortunately, along the way, Moore's diagnosis is hijacked by two of the filmmaker's favorite bugaboos: gun control and the National Rifle Association (NRA).

Michael Moore is himself a strange and highly filmable character, a huge, rangy, lumbering man whose physical presence, particularly when paired with cowering corporate drones frantically parsing their comments, is screechingly funny. Moore has the true documentarian's gift for capturing the absurd on film, and his timing, for the most part, is impeccable. Indeed, when Moore is not preaching and simply lets the camera roll, the film is at its most hysterical. The encounter with the K-Mart PR flak is wonderful; so too is the interview with a Michigan state trooper, who waxes on a bit too much concerning an accident where a hunter is shot by the rifle he draped around his dog's neck---all to get a "cute" picture. A snippet of dialogue will suffice:

TROOPER: "The picture would have been really cute."
MOORE: "But do you think the dog might have done it intentionally, had an idea of what it was doing?"
TROOPER: "Oh, I can't say, sir. I don't know."

Dialogue like this is in abundant supply, and how can you hate a man who badgers Dick Clarke (who escapes in a minivan)? Even better is Moore's interview with members of the Michigan militia: again, the brilliance in this sequence is that Moore's camera (and the idiotic comments made by the militia members) tells the story, without Moore having to say a thing. Slightly more uncomfortable is Moore's interview with James Nichols, who was indicted in the Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing along with his more infamous brother and Tim McVeigh. To me, this was one of the most disturbing parts of the movie; Nichols is so manic that I actually felt concerned for Moore's safety. This sequence is actually quite compelling, leading me to conclude that perhaps with certain folks (Nichols, for instance), a little gun control might not be a bad thing.

"Bowling" is not a bad film, but it is a muddled film. Moore wants desperately to bash the NRA, but by his own admission American gun ownership is not really the culprit behind the violence of American society. There are some issues where Moore's taste is questionable, of course: the heavily edited interview with Charleton Heston comes across as oafish, and the animated "Brief History of the United States" is deplorably racist.

But if anything, Moore hobbles his own movie by not addressing his own thesis: if gun ownership isn't the issue, then what is? What follows is Moore jumping from one causal link to another: violent video games, shock rock, Goth culture, drugs, sex, rock n' roll, and the focus-deprived American media, all linked by sequences where Moore bashes the NRA.

This is where the movie is most frustrating: Moore comes close, very close, to understanding Columbine, with two very keen interviews---and nonetheless misses the larger point. South Park producer/director/creator Matt Stone makes some very precise points about the nature of American high school culture, a time in wihch evolution seems in reverse, when those least fit to succeed in the larger culture terrorize those who are brightest, most ambitious, and most different.

By far the best interview in the piece is with Marilyn Manson, who suggests the best way of dealing with bullying and harrassment in high school is to grow up, to get through it, and to discover that life is dramatically different (and far more rewarding) after graduation. Matt Stone, Marilyn Manson, and Bill Gates, and even Michael Moore prove it: the geeks shall inherit the Earth.

Asked by Moore what he would tell Harris and Klebold if he could, Manson provides the film's best nuggest of wisdom: "I would say nothing at all; I would listen. And that was exactly what wasn't done."

A pity that Mr. Moore, for all his cinematic talents, didn't heed that advice. That said, "Bowling for Columbine" is well done, informative, provocative, and entertaining. And by the way, is it really that easy to get an interview with Heston?

Rating:
Summary: Incredible
Review: Bowling for Columbine was the most incredible documentary I have ever seen. It really shed light onto the whole gun situation in America. I can;t see how anyone can argue against his tone of FACTS and STATISTICS.

Michael Moore was right at the Oscars and he is right in this film.

Rating:
Summary: I really like Michael Moore but...
Review: I really like every thing Moore has done; all his movies, tv nation, awful truth, and his books; but you can not deny that he is really one sided. I agree with almost everything in this movie and in his other materials but he really only presents you with what he wants you to see. he does not show you the other side. when he does or disscusses it, it is very biased. Overall I think this is a very good film that everyone should see, it just might make some people upset that not both sides are represened, as my freinds were when they saw it. However, it is a very important movie that you should see never the less.

Rating:
Summary: Michael Moore is unbelievable
Review: I had never heard of the guy before the Oscars and wasn't really into politics etc.. but after hearing all the hoopla the right wing came out with i decided i would go check it out... what a great movie to watch. I was blown away... it had to of been the best documentary in a long time and rightfully it won an Oscar. funny, yet sad... it really makes you think.

Michael Moore is gonna be a great filmmaker.. i look forward to his next movies since i'm not a big book reader. thanks to all the Conservative Republican radio shows, Fox News, and biased media for giving Moore free publicity so that people like me (who have never heard of him) can buy his stuff and enjoy GREAT ENTERTAINMENT. even my gf who is a republican is in love with this guy and is eager to watch his next movie.

thanks Mike!! i cant wait till next years new movie!!

Rating:
Summary: Every American should see this film!
Review: Michael Moore is courageous in his exploration of the greed, violence and political bullying which have brought our once great nation to its current [...] state. [...] Just this week I learned that the studio that owns the rights to this brave film is not releasing it as planned -- somehow they must believe they are serving the values of our country in silencing Moore -- what sad irony -- they clearly don't know what those values are. See this film! It's funny and sad and above all else, honest.

Rating:
Summary: A Long, Hard Look at the American People
Review: Conservative gun toaters need not apply. Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine" is a fantastic doumentary-type film which opened my eyes on how [bad we really are](in the U.S.). I enjoyed the film a lot! I loved watching Michael walk into a bank to open a CD account and walk out with a rifle! Even better, the relatives of The Oaklahoma City Bomber are made a fool of, but not as badly as was Charlton Heston. What a fantastic interview! This is a greatly entertaining and enlightening film. I think I am a better, more aware and skeptical person since watching it.

Rating:
Summary: Guns N' Moses loses face to Marilyn Manson!
Review: I never seen a movie that so articulately expressed some of the most pointless, terrible problems facing America today. I found it hysterically ironic that Marilyn Manson turned out to be the most well-spoken person Moore talked to throughout the course of the film, making Charleston Heston look feeble and racist. The most eloquent part of the film, I think, is when K-Mart agrees to ban the sale of amunition in all their stores. The looks on those two men's faces were uplifting and sad at the same time, because you know what price bought their victory. The animated history of the KKK and the NRA provokes thoughtful laughter, which is the best kind sometimes. I've also never seen anything that so deeply inspired the desire within me to move to Canada.

Rating:
Summary: I Plan on Watching the DVD with a Nice Bottle of French Wine
Review: First off, I have actually seen this film. I enjoyed it but feel it lack the cohesive argue of his brilliant first film "Roger and Me" and the work he did on TV Nation.

But let's be honest. These reviews that sharply divide between excellent and poor are not about the film's content. After the Oscars, Michael Moore has become demonized along with French wine as the symbol for ideas that threaten the union. Behind all that double speak, it's about the polarization of free speech attitudes.

After the 911 tragedy, the public unaware that its' security was an illusion all along hungered for voice in the woods. Black and White. Good and Evil. They wanted a clear worldview with out messy entanglements that would save them from the chaos. But there is a price all this Homeland security and it seems to require giving up freedoms like speach and rights to privacy. Not to mentioning allowing a right wing agenda to sweep through when normally it would be met with opposition.

The one thing you can't have is people questioning authority. Oh, they will say it's because we are not supporting our troops and endangering them. But if we are engaged in another war at the time of elections will debate of ideas be suspended. I think not. The real reason is for them to be secured everyone has to go along with the flow. They just can't risk an alternate view that might put them in perceived jeopardy. And yet the reasons for war remain unclear and world is still hopped up on worry.

I applaud the Mr. Moore for standing up and not allowing themselves to be bullied by those who want to use public opinion to stifle a dissenting view. In that light, I will add my 5 star review to out weigh those with an axe to grind.

It would seem their little plan has backfired though. The Dixie Chick concerts still sell out. Michael Moore's book is on the bestseller list and he has been approached about starting up TV Nation again.

As for me, I eagerly await the Bowling for Columbine DVD release that I might enjoy it in the privacy of my home drinking a nice French wine. Lord forbid, but in my drunken state and exposure to such leftist ideas, I might even question our leaders motives. Oh my!

Rating:
Summary: Watchable.
Review: With the Academy Awards still fresh in my mind, I watched this film ready to condescend but to my surprise, I enjoyed it more than I expected.

The kid from the Air Force academy second on the list of being investigated for terrorism was one of my favorite parts. It started off that he was a victim of the silly potential terrorist witch-hunt, but turns out he wasn't an innocent after all. I loved it when Moore was standing uncomfortably by as he heard him out. Or the part where John Nichols, who was suspect alongside Tim McVaugh in the Oklahama bombings, sleeps with a gun under his pillow and-well, I won't spoil it for you either.

And the bit where Moore went opening Canadian doors, that was classic.

However, the part with the two Columbine victims confronting K-Mart headquarters felt as if it was all Moore's planning. They just didn't seem like the type who would've gone on this thing on their own.

It takes a while to realize Moore is serious, like that part when the school principal starts crying. The interview with Heston where Moore tries to get him to acknowledge the photo of the little girl, it's hard to tell whether Moore was trying to be funny or if he really meant whatever he was doing when he left the picture in front the house.

The interviews with Marilyn Manson and one of the creators of "South Park" provided the best information about our culture-which makes me suspicious of how heavily Moore edited everything else which contradicts his views.

I couldn't put my finger on what Michael Moore's argument was after I was done watching. My memory is not vague but gun control was not on my mind about two-thirds of the way through. I think his argument is basically, Why are there more deaths in American by guns than any other nation?-whereas deaths by knives or more imaginative weapons like a spoon were completely ignored. We get an unusual South Park-like cartoon chronicling our past that is basically saying America's love for guns arose from our paranoia and ignorance of blacks and other cultures dating back centuries. However, the cartoon can apply to selective people, but Moore uses the term "white man" rather abstractly.

All his stale arguments only enlighten ignorant people that hold Moore as some demigod. You shouldn't take a Michael Moore "documentary" at face value, and there are plenty of places where his chronic errors are well-documented territory-just search Google. However, I'm not terribly passionate about the gun-control issues-or guns for that matter-but even I can tell that Moore fails to critically evaluate his own arguments at times.

Ten minutes into the film he has The Beatles singing "Happiness is a Warm Gun" and actual footage of people committing suicide or getting shot to death. You know, where a guy puts a shotgun in his mouth and blows off the back of his head; the disgruntled husband shooting his wife, which was taken right out of "Faces of Death," in the back of her head; the man who killed himself on the freeway with live helicopter cameras airing by sticking a gun in his mouth and blowing off the back of his head.

It's hard not to erase it from your mind-I guess that's his whole point. It wasn't powerful, but done in bad taste. But Moore may reply, "Hey, I didn't create these gun-loving trigger happy paranoid Americans, I just report it!"

Then we get footage of war and the attacks on the World Trade Center with "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" playing.

But when you consider it's coming from a guy who thinks having a woman butcher a bunny-rabbit after clobbering it on the head with a pipe several times constitutes entertainment, it's not surprising.

Michael Moore was the fellow who, at the 2003 Oscars, invited the other nominees onstage where he proclaimed that his fellow documentarians "like non-fiction because we live in fictitious times...we are against this war, Mr. Bush. Shame on you, Mr. Bush; shame on you! And, whenever you've got the Pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, your time is up." There were only a handful of people that cheered but most of the house booed primarily because it was inappropriate rather than being against the war.

Backstage, Moore said to the press, "Don't report there was a split decision in the house just because five loud people booed."

If we can't trust this man for what happened five minutes ago, how can we trust him with this documentary medium in his control? He is able to add bulk with the impression that he has created something that can make the world a better place. I guess being vague with only the illusion of provocation gets you the respect of critics and garners the prizes these days. But without his "documentaries," I doubt Moore would be taken seriously. His instinctive accusatory righteousness is less provocative than it is purely infantile. It's scary what ignorant people would read into this movie without considering that his arguments are utterly lacking.

But even I have to admit Michael Moore is a likable guy. Not likable in the sense that I want him over for dinner, but likable enough that I can tolerate his vulgarities lightheartedly. He's the Left's Rush Limbaugh, but anybody with common sense should know never take clowns seriously.

So now that we've established that self-proclaimed speaker for the dead Michael Moore is as phony as a three dollar-bill, I can argue that his "documentaries" are less about the issues he raises than it is primarily about Michael Moore.

If you can't resist watching a dishonest film made by someone who capitalizes on the suffering of others, then take a chance and be entertained.

Overall, "Bowling for Columbine" had fun moments but no lasting rewards.

Rating:
Summary: Genius---or Looney Liberal Leninist?
Review: An otherwise excellent Academy Awards show was marred when the Academy gave an Oscar to Michael Moore for this political polemic about violence in America. The attendees roundly booed Moore's acceptance remarks, and Steve Martin joked about putting Moore in the trunk of his limousine. After the Award ceremony we've seen David Horowitz on CNN refer to Michael as an "ultra-left wing, anti-American Leninist." On Jay Leno we saw James Woods refer to Michael's acceptance remarks as "Chicken(bleep)!" So between those two and the Academy we have a pretty wide range of reactions to Michael and his movie!

He begins with Columbine and demonstrates that everyone looks at that tragedy and sees their favorite evils, whatever they are. A series of commentators on TV enumerate their respective favorite enemies: Satan; Bill Clinton; Marilyn Manson; violent video games; violence on television; violence in the news; violent gangsta rap; and on and on. It makes the point that the public reaction to the massacre was bewilderment, confusion, and BIG differences of opinion about what could cause such despicable brutality by a couple of seemingly typical teenagers. Michael makes the case that, since the last thing these boys did before they opened fire was to go bowling, why not blame bowling for the incident; hence, the name of this movie.

Moore conducts many of his patented self-promoting, sanctimonious interviews including James Nichols, unindicted co-conspirator in the Oklahoma City bombing and a member of the Michigan Militia (It's pretty funny); Marilyn Manson (It's pretty thoughtful, and a little touching); and Charlton Heston (It's so annoying, you wonder why Heston didn't pull out his long musket and order Michael off his property! Probably would have, had he not been in the early stages of Alzheimer's, as we learned later.)

He finds some easy laughs in a bank in the Midwest that was offering a free rifle to anyone opening a new account. He perhaps does some good by interviewing folks at Kmart about their sale of bullets. I understand they took them off their shelves after Michael's interview.

One of the most objectionable scenes in the movie is footage of the second airplane flying into the World Trade Center to a recording of Louis Armstrong singing "What a Wonderful World." It's a mystery what argument is being made here, or what purpose is trying to be served. For me it was horrifying and tasteless---perhaps more horrifying than when I saw it on live TV on 9/11!

Another low point is an ambush interview with Dick Clark, in which Michael is evidently blaming HIM for a tragic Michigan school shooting. It struck me as utterly unfair and dishonest, and NO ONE will believe that accusation.

This film attacks so many subjects so broadly that it has all the subtlety of one of those "anti-personnel" missiles that explode 100 feet in the air and spew shrapnel all over an area the size of two football fields, killing everyone indiscriminately. Military hypocrisy; media focus on violent crime; the gun industry; the NRA; the KKK; U.S. foreign policy inconsistencies; ALL the usual suspects. And nowhere is there any real insight into any of these "problems," and certainly no solutions.

He mentions that on the day of the Columbine shootings the U.S. dropped more bombs on Kosovo than on any other single day. So what are we to make of THAT coincidence? Michael doesn't say, but seems to imply some ominous, undefined connection.

This movie shows us a lot of Michael's anger but very little insight. Like his book "Stupid White Men," it comes across as self-promotion masquerading as investigative, crusading journalism in this movie, and as political humor in the case of the book. There is more and better humor in the movie than the book, but a few chuckles do not redeem either work, for me.

The movie is at times thought provoking, at other times mindless. Sometimes invigorating, at other times infuriating. Always confrontational, NEVER conciliatory. The hope of many media reviewers has been that the movie will stimulate more discussion of the causes for excessive violence in America. If that was the goal I think it has failed. Conservatives see the movie as despicable anti-American propaganda, while liberals see it as gospel (perhaps admitting to a little artistic overemphasis, at worst.) So, I think the effect of the movie is DIVISIVE in the extreme. And that makes it a very bad movie in my book---notwithstanding the Academy Award for best documentary feature of 2001. I've read that in the last few years violent crime in the U.S. is DOWN 20%, while media reporting of crime is UP 600%. This "documentary" goes a long way to INCREASE that kind of imbalance, and of course that's one of the things Michael skewers as a cause of the anxiety that underlies violence.

So--- is Michael a genius---or an ultra-liberal, anti-American Leninist? You'll have to decide for yourself. Some liberals have said that Michael Moore is the Rush Limbaugh of the left. If so, maybe some enterprising, struggling conservative mediocrity will follow Al Francken's example and make his fame and fortune with a book called "Michael Moore is a Big, Fat Idiot!" Worked pretty well for Al!