Rating: 
Summary: possibly my favorite film. ever.
Review: it's hard for me to articulate just how beautiful this movie is or how profoundly it affected me. for weeks afterwards, my dreams literally played to the gorgeous score, and each was filled with morris' collage sequences, somehow intertwined with stuff culled from my own days. i thought about this thing constantly for weeks. it's huge. one of the most gifted works i've known. i only wish it were cheaper so i could buy a copy ... incidentally, if you're a fan of joseph cornell's collage films you'll find much to love here. i saw the two in tandem.
Rating: 
Summary: Barely watchable
Review: Mix 4 semi-interesting interviews with a great deal of banal filler, toss in some grating music, and voila, a few of the people who can sit through the whole thing will think you're a genius. The thing that irritated me the most about this film was how superficially each of the 4 subjects were treated. In particular, I would have liked to have seen more demonstrations from the MIT robotics lab, and less of the inordinate amount of footage taken from an insufferably cheesy black and white TV adventure series.
Rating:
Summary: It is impossible to overrate this film
Review: Rarely, if ever, have I seen a film so affecting as this one. The complex relationship between who we are and the work that we do is explored in conversations with four men whose seemingly unrelated professions all deal with other "life forms" (robots, plants, circus animals, mole rats). The filmmaker's use of stock footage, the incredible score by the late Caleb Sampson, and the affable weirdness of the film's four subjects result in an absolute gem of a film that is at times absolutely hilarious and at other times profoundly moving. I'm glad that the price of the video has finally dropped to a reasonable level.
Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant
Review: Telling the story of four unconventional people and professions, Fast, Cheap, and out of control is, at first glance, as odd as its subjects. However, half-way through the documentary it becomes clear that the focus of the film is much deeper than it first appears to be. Weaving through four very diverse characters, the eccentricities of each individual along with the stunning visual images succeed in lowering the intellectual guards of the audience. When the film finally slowed its pace and gave me time to think, I found myself wondering what it was that connected these people despite their overwhelming oddities. The answer was amazingly simple, hidden in the complexities of the individuals. Life. For me, Fast, cheap, and out of control served as a reminder. It is basic human instinct to distance ourselves from everything that seems strange or out of the ordinary. This documentary is brilliant in that it bridges the gaps between seemingly "odd" people, showing their professions to be a mere reflection of life-patterns and human nature. By the end of the film, the distance had lessened until I realized that I'm just as eccentric as they are, and they're just as "normal" as me. Everything an individual does, or is involved with, simply comes down to basic ideas of the human spirit, such as nature, emotions, and death. The documentary also explores the cheesy, age-old question, "What is the meaning of life?". God knows we've all seen this is countless numbers of cartoon strips, and pondered it ourselves in moments of hopelessness and then discarded it as over-thought and cliched. I had never put much thought into the question, finding it to be mostly independent to the individual.Fast, cheap, and out of control not only shows each character's meaning in life (i.e. mole rats, robots, gardening, etc.) but also the greater life meaning that drives them to be what they are: Independent, yet part of one.
Rating: 
Summary: not as great as I would have hoped
Review: The mark of a great film is whether I will ever watch it again (and possibly again and again). This documentary has its insights, points of excitement and I'm glad I watched it. However, I can't understand all the fuss some reviewers have heaped on this film. Sure, it is far more worthy of your time than about 95% of the films coming out today, yet I don't think I will ever feel moved to watch it again.
Rating:
Summary: An exploration of humanity's place in the natural world
Review: This film delves into the relationships between humanity and nature (which is the real fast, cheap, and out of control entity of the title, the source of the phrase notwithstanding). The four men interviewed by Morris interact with nature in four archetypal ways. The animal trainer deals with his charges much as people with each other, using empathy and concepts such as emotion, intelligence, and volition. The topiary gardener battles against nature-as-decay-and-chaos, waging an eternal war against wildness to fashion familiar images in an uncooperative medium. The mole-rat specialist is drawn to nature by a sense of wonder and curiosity that is deepened by his every discovery. Finally, the roboticist is inspired to the sincerest form of flattery; he borrows from the imagination of nature to solve his technical problems. The interleaving of the four interviews and the use of musical and visual effects to stress thematic unity is not a cheap device to appeal to the MTV generation, as has been claimed. On the contrary, it is essential to the communication of the film's thesis. These four ways of relating to nature (which might be called animistic, antagonistic, descriptive, and imitative) are often portrayed as stages in the progress of mankind, ordered in various ways according to one's ideology. Morris presents them as eternal and complementary aspects of humanity's relationship with (and place in) the physical universe. The lives of these four men illustrate that even in the present day, each philosophical approach has both shortcomings and a unique and irreplaceable utility. The interplay between a philosophical battle for supremacy and a utilitarian doctrine of complementarity is a familiar pattern. For years, scientists have struggled with the idea that biology is "really" chemistry and chemistry is "really" physics, an idea that succeeds and fails in fascinating ways. Morris generalizes this concept beautifully to the larger question of the relationship between humanity and the physical world.
Rating:
Summary: All about the 'nature of things', inspiring.
Review: This film is WONDERFUL! It's about the 'nature of things', and passion, and 'to thine own self be true'. It makes me glad to be a human being. I love the men that are featured. I DID NOT want to return this rental. I WILL buy this movie. I've told everyone I know about it. I sense it may have changed my life...
Rating:
Summary: Four Men, Alive
Review: This film reminded me of two different writers whose ideas I find compelling: Joseph Campbell and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Campbell is well-known for his saying "Find your bliss," while Csikszentmihalyi's research examines the phenomenon of "flow." Both concepts highlight the importance of finding challenging things you enjoy doing, and keeping at them until you've attained some level of proficiency. Campbell and Csikszentmihalyi argue that once you achieve this, you'll have found meaning in life through doing something that is not work, but play. To have challenging, absorbing activities in which we can lose ourselves is perhaps one of the greatest pleasures of being alive, and it is this idea which Errol Morris illustrates in Fast, Cheap & Out of Control. What the four men in the film do--create topiaries, build robots, tame wild animals, and study mole-rats--is not the point of the documentary. The point is that each of them has found something in this world which completely engages him. The more he gets involved with his calling, the more he learns about it, and the greater the drive becomes to delve deeper and deeper into his chosen passion. Watching this documentary, I found myself thinking "how lucky these men are...!" Really, though, their circumstances have almost nothing to do with luck. It was by working hard that they developed their interests into full-blown passions. In the end, Errol Morris proves that it doesn't matter what you're interested in, or how weird or boring it may seem to others. If you find something to do in this world that lights a spark within you, and you work to turn that spark into a four-alarm blaze, then you've made the shift from merely living to being alive.
Rating:
Summary: Four Men, Alive
Review: This film reminded me of two different writers whose ideas I find compelling: Joseph Campbell and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Campbell is well-known for his saying "Find your bliss," while Csikszentmihalyi's research examines the phenomenon of "flow." Both concepts highlight the importance of finding challenging things you enjoy doing, and keeping at them until you've attained some level of proficiency. Campbell and Csikszentmihalyi argue that once you achieve this, you'll have found meaning in life through doing something that is not work, but play. To have challenging, absorbing activities in which we can lose ourselves is perhaps one of the greatest pleasures of being alive, and it is this idea which Errol Morris illustrates in Fast, Cheap & Out of Control. What the four men in the film do--create topiaries, build robots, tame wild animals, and study mole-rats--is not the point of the documentary. The point is that each of them has found something in this world which completely engages him. The more he gets involved with his calling, the more he learns about it, and the greater the drive becomes to delve deeper and deeper into his chosen passion. Watching this documentary, I found myself thinking "how lucky these men are...!" Really, though, their circumstances have almost nothing to do with luck. It was by working hard that they developed their interests into full-blown passions. In the end, Errol Morris proves that it doesn't matter what you're interested in, or how weird or boring it may seem to others. If you find something to do in this world that lights a spark within you, and you work to turn that spark into a four-alarm blaze, then you've made the shift from merely living to being alive.
Rating:
Summary: Strange, Yet Fascinating
Review: This intriguing documentary takes a look into the lives of some strange and interesting people. Like GENGHIS BLUES, it examines people that you might never encounter -- or perhaps ignore in real life and does so in a utterly fascinating way. For those completely curious, FAST, CHEAP AND OUT OF CONTROL is definitely worth consideration. For those put off by people that are "different," you may be best to stay away. If you do, too bad. For the rest of us, enjoy what this film has to offer. Perhaps you'll learn a thing or two about yourself in the process.
|
