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Bowling for Columbine

Bowling for Columbine

List Price: $14.95
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Low rent, manipulative, entertaining--at times.
Review: This film is an odd duck, even for a documentary. It's equal parts farce, propaganda, amateur speculation, and over-the-top public spectacle. It's also a film that goes no where in particular, other than to cynically manipulate and poke fun of its targets in ways that embellish, but don't always support, Michael Moore's meandering, undisciplined commentary.

And in the end, this film is about Michael Moore, more than anything else. His hulking figure, and bitter persona, is the centerpiece. If there was another thesis here, it was lost in all the rambling, in all the making sport of sad figures--like the aging, semi-incoherent Charlton Heston.

The ostensible theme is that Americans are too violent, especially teens who think nothing about bloody school rampages. Okay. What does Mr. Moore think? He's all over the place. For example, from long, intermittant stretches, one would think that the availability of weapons and ammunition are the cause. After all, Moore makes a spectacle of getting K-Mart to stop selling bullets. But then, he marshalls compelling evidence that countries with far greater weapon ownership and availability--like Canada--have far lower violent crime rates, particularly with firearms. (Okay, so what was the point of the K-Mart exercise?) This kind of sloppy thinking (and acting), coupled with an ending, smug tone of, "Gosh, we don't know why Americans are so violent and stupid," is the film's consistent flaw.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: First documentary I have seen..
Review: I usually never bothered with documentary's because they always seemed so lifeless to me, but not until I saw 'Bowling for Columbine'. Micheal Moore asks the impossible, "Why are there more gun killings in the United States than in any other country?" I was shocked to see the scene in the movie where they showed several countries and the amount of people killed by guns each ear comparing to to the United States' number which was in the 11 thousands, a much vast difference from the other countries. He also explored Canada, our nieghbor in the South and noticed that noone locks there doors at night even in the city. It makes him ponder, why? Why is America bieng driven by fear and paranoi; one answer is the image the news are presenting. An excellent piece of filmmaking Moore explores a subject not seen in many movies and the footage from Columbine security cameras was haunting. The ending was fantastic with the final interview with Charles Heston, Moore grips his sense back to reality and asks why the hell did he do pro-gun ralleys immeadiatly after Columbine and the 6-year-old girl who got shot. Heston walked right out of the interview shying away from answering common sense. This movie flowed perfectly and I hope to see more work from Moore as compelling as this was.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A Sour Piece of American Pie
Review: It is unfortunate that a film like this was made. Not that I didn't like it because I did. But because there's a chord that this documentary struck that seemed to set Americans (and maybe others) against each other. Some have called this a "fictional documentary", or tried to blast it for being unpatriotic or anti-gun. Other's have said that it's an instant American classic that speaks volumes about the current psychology of the masses in the USA. I'm kind of in the middle. . .

The film--as the title suggests--focuses primarily on the school shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado; two teenagers barging into classrooms and the cafeteria, killing any who got in their way. Michael Moore (the star, narrator, director and producer) doesn't say "These boys had guns and if they didn't have them those poor kids at Columbine would still be alive today." What he DOES say is that there's an inherent fear factor that has oozed into the American mainstream and invaded our homes. And this fear has spilled over to our kids as they see us go off to work for companies that build missiles ("For Defense"), handguns, semi-automatic weapons, and fully automatic weapons ("For Home Defense"), and security features for our homes ("Burglar Alarms and New Locks"). Mr. Moore also shows us that Canadians don't seem to have as much of a problem as their southern neighbor. Canadians don't lock their doors, or focus on shootings on CNN, or run out to buy a gun every time something bad happens in their area.

Why is that?

This documentary opens up new dialogue for parents raising teens, I think. And it should open up their own minds, making them wonder why they have to "defend" themselves so fervently from the unknown.

I have a unique insight into school shootings, as I was a paramedic for many years and was in one of the first ambulances to arrive at the Cleveland School shooting in Stockton, California. 35 elementary school children were hit by bullets from an AK-47 rifle. A horrible sight that I never wish to see again, and that I sometimes still dream about (believe me, you don't want these nightmares). Even after witnessing this horror and seeing the gun laying on the ground near Mr. Purdy's body (the shooter), I still believe that Americans have the right to "bare arms." But not AK-47's and the like. Let's stop this kind of nonsense and look at WHY we feel we need weapons like this in the first place.

B+ film/documentary

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: What a hack!
Review: IF you had done this UNBIASED, it MIGHT have been worth watching. You twist history to your own ends. This is a waste of media. It would be best used to keep the coffee cup rings off the desk, or perhaps to make a clock out of.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Intellectual Capacity of a Fruit Fly
Review: Why people get worked up by Michael Moore is beyond me. All he does is point fingers, mock others, and sit back and try to make his audience laugh. There is no substance to most of his arguments and never does he answer his charges because it is quite evident that Mr. Moore is incapable of intellectual thought. We live in a real world with real problems that have a much higher priority than Moore's baseless crusades. The man and his work are so insignificant, that he hardly even deserves a review on Amazon.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: A Documentary is Not Fiction. this is propaganda!
Review: This propaganda film is so full of malarkey, that Michael Moore even admits on his website that he felt compelled to make a number of changes to this DVD release. Don't believe me go see for yourself! Funny stuff coming from a guy who has the gall to say anyone disagreeing with him on the factual makeup of this film is commiting libel.

Haw the jokes on you!

In an animated history send-up, with the narrator talking rapidly, Bowling equates the NRA with the Klan, suggesting NRA was founded in 1871, "the same year that the Klan became an illegal terrorist organization." Bowling goes on to depict Klansmen becoming the NRA and an NRA character helping to light a burning cross.

Too bad the KKK was actually founded in 1866! lol!

Not only that but this work of fiction is so vain and perverse in it's need to drive a point home, it becomes propaganda in it's purist form in the way he takes the NRA meeting out of context...

FACT: At Denver, the NRA cancelled all events (normally several days of committee meetings, sporting events, dinners, and rallies) save the annual members' voting meeting -- that could not be cancelled because the state law governing nonprofits required that it be held. No way to change location, since under NY law you have to give 10 days' advance notice of that to the members, there were upwards of 4,000,000 members -- and Columbine happened 11 days before the scheduled meeting.

I found this story vastly informative... With a history book in hand! I learned that Michael Moore (Someone I'm ashamed to admit that I used to respect), is just another showbusinessman whom regards the people as mere carnival marks. A showman whose only regard is to exploit the feelings and issues we take seriously to heart, for the almighty dollar!

To close if you liked this do give the Blair Witch project a view.. Another finely crafted hoax documentary!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: If Thinking Gives You a Headache - Listen to Rush Instead
Review: I am a liberal (as title indicates) who didn't watch this movie for over a year because I thought it would be just another standard anti-gun rant. Moore's lifelong use of guns and NRA membership are just one very small reason that make this such a mis-identification. The actual content of the movie is the very large reason that it is not.

Moore's movie doesn't fit into ANY category, because it has elements of several. It is part documentary, part satire, part commentary, part drama, part comedy, and definitely part tragedy. His viewpoints do NOT fit into any nice, neat, pigeon-hole either, despite the lies and spins of those whose various oxen received various degrees of goring from Moore.

I have never read or seen a review or description that described this movie to a justly accurate degree, including mine. This is simply a movie that you must see. There are parts of the movie that everyone will like and dislike, and agree with and disagree with, with virtually no two persons doing so on the same parts. Moore doesn't offer much with which viewers can agree or disagree with, rather, he offers much that will stimulate viewers to form their own opinions and to simply react to.

This is a very good film that viewers have to bring their own personal experience and viewpoints to, because no reviewer can predict how YOU will react to it, only that you are far more likely than not to like it, unless you are braindead, in which case you will simply be confused (in other words, it will not change your present state of mind). If so, keep broad backside firmly planted on worn sofa and the radio dial permanently tuned to your favorite AM talk-show propaganda station.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Michael moore.
Review: Come on people. His other films as well are trash. The only film that is worth it is canadian bacon. The only reason i hate him, is becuse he is a Demacrat, did you hear his speech. we didn't ask for this war. Who is we mister moore? I'm sick of hearing about it. And his books. GET A LIFE!

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Not quite what it says it is
Review: "Bowling For Columbine" is doubtless a well-made, interesting movie that makes a few good points. However, it's not quite the documentary that it's supposed to be. Watch this movie if you must, and then go to the web site http://www.hardylaw.net/Truth_About_Bowling.html. And then make up your own mind.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The United Shakes of America
Review: After his two previous documentaries, "Roger and me" and "The big One", in which Michael Moore targeted some big company leaders (Roger Smith from General Motors, and Phil Knight from Nike) who's fired most of their workers and closed their factories on the U.S. territory while they made hundreds of millions (even billions) of dollars in benefits - Moore himself used to be a worker in General Motors factory in his native city of Flint, Michigan -, the filmmaker extends his action field and, from the massacre in the Columbine high school, in Littleton, Colorado (where two kids armed from head to toe, killed twelve pupils and one teacher after a bowling game), deals with his whole country addicted to all kinds of weapons (fire guns, bombs, missiles, etc.) with an average - and amazing - result of over 11,100 people shot dead every year - a world record.

'Whose fault is it, if the Americans are just a bunch of crazy cowboys?' Moore seems to ask in his film, edited like a documentary as well as an investigation. The fault of the whole political class, which since the end of World War II (and the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan) has been organizing illegal and bloody invasions and destitutions all over the (third) world, financing and giving weapons to dictators and terrorists, sending out bombs and missiles everywhere? Of the medias, which permanently keeps on an atmosphere of fear, suspicion and hate through violent and bloody pictures broadcasted daily, in TV news and shows, with an obvious commercial purpose? Of the huge poverty which hits mainly the Black people, who - as well as some hard rockers with weird figures and shapes, like Marilyn Manson - are put on an evil level in order to be used as guilty ones every time something wrong happens?

From the supermarket of guns to the bank which gives a rifle as a gift when an account is opened, through an exhilarating cartoon in the "South Park" style, resuming in a few minutes the history of America, based upon fear, ignorance of the other in front and blood, the interviews of some teenagers at school, all familiar with guns and bombs, of some adult 'gun nuts' (including James Nichols, the brother of Terry, one of the two people who destroyed a building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people - he sleeps with a 44 Magnum under his pillow!), who consider the carrying of guns as a duty and a responsibility as an American, and of a disgusting Charlton Heston, who used to play Moses in "The Ten Commandments" (THOU SHALT NOT KILL), and who's now the president of the NRA (National Rifle Association) which still keeps encouraging the free market of fire guns all over the country -, Michael Moore, within only two hours, manages to tell with strength and an undeniable humor about all the more serious problems in the so-called land of free and the result is an astounding shocker, a great demonstration of the American paranoia, the admittance of powerlessness of a whole manipulated country. A must see, as soon as possible. Doesn't the official, State violence, encourage and lead to the individual violence?


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