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This movie promotes several gross distortions which CBS News Crimesider, for one, has identified. Example: in one scene Amanda knew too much prior to her interrogation, such as how her friend Amanda had died. CBS CrimeSider calls this one of the five biggest lies in the film. And yes, it was not in the trial either.

Why was Amanda's interrogation not recorded? Why did the prosecution's forensic team not testify in the trial about any crime scene cleanup? Why did the police, while testing, destroy the hard-drives of the computer which Amanda and Raffaele said they were using that night? Why are so many other facts misreported in newspapers and TV? The movie does not answer any of those questions truthfully, or even raise them. It is mysterious. It seems to be a commercial game. Or maybe they are just "giving Amanda and Raffaele a bad time." In this movie, a blonde Italian-American Hollywood woman acts out a screenplay to portray a red-haired Scottish-American honor student from Seattle as if she were a bratty, suspicious and brazen character. Someone has friends in low places.

Michael Moore's team has assembled a worthwhile film. The film is entertaining and delivers some good information.

Best parts of the move were the most gritty & real parts -- _some_ hard reporting and some "you-are-there" super-excellent film clips. Workers, home-owners & President FDR are luminous in their roles. Oscar-worthy performances.

Worst parts are: panders to old empires; has some totally uninformed theories about history; and blurs the line between "socialism" and "democratic socialism" for most of the movie. They don't mention a lot of information they could have read in David Halberstam's _The Reckoning._ They do not go very deep on why the workers in Germany & Japan received "The New Deal" since WWII. ... just that they did. Maybe it was because religious inertia was swept away there but not here. Just sayin'. I love the positive _feelings of religion, but read _Science and the Modern World_ by Alfred North Whitehead and see if you can fix some of religion's problems, please.

Quoting Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and John Adams in the movie was great! Uh, doing so only in print as the movie *ends* was okay, I guess. But when we observe the air-time given to Catholic priests and bishops condemning capitalism, then Tom - Ben - John seem slighted. Is it fair to credit the Catholic church with being our main hope? Michael Moore accuses capitalism of crimes -- yet does not document the religious backgrounds of the players. I guess the idea we're supposed to get is that Catholics are not to blame. Well, show that.... document it... fairly. Not as if this were a court at the Inquisition.

If workers could control their destiny, would they still have a modified form of capitalism? There are some structural problems with previous forms of socialism which the movie should have illuminated instead of creating an impression that the bogeyman was able to operate without opposition from the Catholic church until it was too late.

The movie also forgets until near the end that capitalism's link with the Constitution was not forged by the USA's founders. Apparently, the movie-makers chose to _equate capitalism with financial greed and corruption -- while the real problem is that capitalism has -- with tacit approval even from religious leaders, it seems, from "on high" -- been too _lax in allowing financial greed and corruption. The Constitution did not allow corruption. More likely, religion allowed it, since church says we're "all guilty" and therefore let's be forgiving. Forgiving is good. Being too lax is a problem.

Religion has sometimes focused on condemning the vices of the working class and all too often, it seems, religion allowed the vices of the rich.

I am very moved by my understanding of Christ and the story of Jesus, even though I wish I could read his autobiography. Contrary to what the movie songs said, if Jesus were in America today, the Bill of Rights would protect his freedom to speak.... and by the way, when I criticize the Catholic church, or any religion, it is with the desire they might experience the beauty and joy which is supposed to be life's companion eternally. I believe they mainly wish the same for us too. So all this is just a communication problem we're working out. That's why it is troubling that this movie still clings to the idea that insider Catholics are the answer and our Constitution's founders' intentions are a mere afterthought. I do not want to leave this review on a down note, so I'll just say "Galileo was Catholic" "Ben Franklin was Quaker" "Thomas Jefferson was Deist" "Isaac Asimov was Jewish, or perhaps atheist" and so on. Michael Moore made religious leaders an issue in this film and that's why I mention these other persons as examples. In this, no religion (or lack of religion) was ignored for cause -- it was just a casual list, okay?

Casting plus cosmetics equals....? It could have equaled historical authenticity along with a nice, worthwhile story. The film has some good ideas and some good production values.

Unfortunately, the producer's weird color agenda or fetish is revealed from the beginning to the end, as all basically all the Nazis are OSTENTATIOUSLY portrayed with pale skin and luminous blue eyes and the Jewish persons, of course, have "nicer" colors. The question that comes to mind is, "WAS THAT HISTORICALLY ACCURATE?" A second question is,"IF NOT, THEN WHY DID THEY PORTRAY IT THAT WAY?" .....A dark-haired, dark-eyed actor becomes a blonde, blue-eyed concentration camp commander. Was the Auchwitz camp commander a blonde, blue-eyed man with an all blue-eyed, pale-skinned family, as this movie suggests? .... If you care what's true, then how about researching this question at Amazon, wikipedia, google, ask.com etc?