Fahrenheit 11/9

I've never posted a review before. I saw this film a couple hours ago. It's a typical Moore effort, minus the humor. He really blows up the BS in our modern society. His "feel good" bits trying to give us hope for a better future fall short. Pretty bleak. If you're looking for a rallying cry to action, it's not here. It's almost a eulogy for what might have been.

More striking to me than the the film itself is its incredibly bi-modal retribution reveiwer scores, ALMOST ALL.NEARLY 1 or 2 OR 10 or 9. This not only strikingly illustrates the ideological/political character of user responses, but the limitations of mean scores as statistical summaries of viewer favor or disfavor. In this case no use, except as a benchmark for the polarized responses.

As for the film itself, think 11/9 is probably the best film of one of our most skilled cinemantic essayist. It's free of Moore's occasional gaffes (e.g. the cruel interrogation of Charlton Heston in Moore's critique of US gun use, the 9/11 shot of joyous Iraqies in Baghdad cafes just prior to Bush-II's military intervention into Iraq). It's polemical but conscientious, if not unselective, in its use of facts. It's a powerful piece of rhetoric, like say the Gettysburg Address or Reagan's "tear down that wall" speech.

For better or worse, this feels like the final thesis statement for everything Moore has been trying to say for the past 15 years...though it certainly won't be. A provocateur that rides the line between downright entertaining & annoyingly self-righteous, this is maybe his best movie since Bowling for Columbine. Not because of the Trump stuff, which we're all well aware of, but the smaller, more bipartisan stuff like the Flint water crisis & the tongue-in-cheek Hitler segment.

This should be required viewing in school. Yes, of course Michael Moore uses all the tricks filmmakers use to tell a story in an engaging manner, but anyone who comes to this with an open mind will see that at its core there is a message that is deeply disturbing about our politicians. I take my hat off to all the brave people, from the left or right, who are prepared to challenge the "old boy" power structures that corrupt politics.

First off, its so obvious that many of the reviewers haven't even seen the film. One called it liberal propaganda. The movie spends just as much time attacking democrats - including Barack Obama, as it does Donald Trump and the Republican party. The reviewer that said it was "DNC Studios Biasedly Presents..." Again, couldn't have possibly seen it. 11/6 or 11/9. To that reviewer, the date is not in reference to upcoming elections, or even the election date of 2016. Its a reference to the date they called the election in favor of Trump (because it was like 2:30am when the election was called in his favor, the date was 11/9) And he is comparing Trump being elected as being an event as devastating for this country as the attack on 9/11 for those who did not get the title, hope that helps. Now for the actual film. This film does start off being about the 2016 election and quickly shifts focus to the Water crisis in Flint, Michigan, the school shooting in Parkland, FL, The West Virginia Teachers strike and several other recent events that are relevant and responsible for the state this country is in. Its not all about Trump, Michael Moore knew better than to do that. This film is important, urgent and needs to be viewed by every American citizen, but since so many have already drank the Kool-Aid it would probably have no affect on them. But anyone with a brain it could spark some serious, important discussions that we need to be having.