bmoore-13

Why does IMDb allow a brown-nosing, Ayn-Randian, GOPer to write the featured summary of Moore's film? There is no indication that this person has even *seen* the film, which only came out the day I am writing this. Critics of Moore, of the Democratic Party, of leftists, Marxists, Socialists, Maoists, Stalinists, defenders of civil liberties, intellectuals (all these groups bundled into one ball by the Fox Newsers), and, well, any group that doesn't just LOVE the glories of interplanetary cut-throat capitalism just want to jump down the readers' throats from the get-go, shutting off the discussion that is so crucial to a democracy (like ours, in theory). Why does IMDb allow such a soapbox to someone who is so clearly ignorant of his/her subject matter (i.e., Moore's documentary)? I, by the way, have mixed views on Moore, but I mostly feel positive about him. He is positively NOT "fair and balanced" (to quote the most cynical of slogans heralded by the most cynical of cable "news" outlets). Moore is clearly a propagandist. He by and large preaches to the choir, just as Sean Hannity does. But Moore is much more talented--and funny--than Hannity and his ilk, and he has, deep down, an infinitely stronger sense of humanity than the Fox News crowd. I don't hate capitalism, but it could sure be improved, scaled back and regulated. Unregulated capitalism = piracy, not freedom! I agree with Moore that Reagan did some awful things to this country, most of all his production of policies favoring the rich and hurting the poor and middle class. Sadly, there are many middle class people and even some poor who don't realize that the policies of the Reaganites--pushed even further to the right by Reagan's heirs--do NOT benefit but in fact hurt them. The middle class is shrinking at an alarming rate, and this shrinkage is not the result of the policies of Carter, Clinton and Obama (though they are not free from a bit of blame) but the policies of Reagan and the Bushes. To inform us all of this curious turn that has occurred over the past 30 years, Moore is very much on target. We should heed his words, even if they are not completely fair. (Who says he HAS to be fair anyway? He doesn't CLAIM to be "fair and balanced.") He tells the truth--not the whole truth, but a crucial part of it that is tragically ignored by the so-called "liberal media." We ignore Moore at our own peril.

Most fans will wish for a more thoughtful bio documentary on the great SF writer Philip K. Dick. This is only one of several bio films on Dick; the only other comparable film I've seen is PKD; A Day in the Afterlife from 1994, and while it's not perfect either, it's considerably better than this film. The worst thing about this film is its silly framing device: a couple of FBI types in a darkened room examine tapes and dossiers on Dick to determine whether the writer experienced psychic episodes. This only serves to cheapen the subject. Take this away, and what's left is not bad, in its way. We receive accounts of Dick from old friends, fellow writers (though no one most viewers will be familiar with) and, most prominently, several of Dick's wives and girlfriends. (He was married six times in his relatively brief life.) We learn of the death of his twin sister at the age of five weeks--a loss that haunted him throughout his life; we learn of his impoverished existence in the fifties in Berkeley (living at times on cat food); we see his developing paranoia, the result of drugs and, likely, heredity; and his psychiatrist appears to give us inside info on private sessions. (Does this violate something, somehow?) The clips of Dick himself are few and far between, but we get a few snippets of his strange, if not disastrous, speech in France in 1977. We learn somewhere between nothing and very little about the fiction he wrote, but we can go elsewhere for that (K.S. Robinson's book, SF Studies articles, etc.). So this is a real mixed bag, worth seeing, but just that.