Bowling for Columbine

Director: Michael Moore
Year Released: 2002
Rating: 3.0

Forceful agit-prop in a country so desperately in need of it; Moore has to be one of the only 'genuine' social critic filmmakers, taking America to task for the many things it does wrong, challenging ignorance, and comparing our trigger-happy psychopathic behavior to that of our gun-toting but genteel neighbors to the North. Despite the documentary's flaws - like Moore's sporadic egocentrism and the occasional story derailments (he's still going on about Flint) - it tries to consider both sides of the story, leading to the intriguing conclusion that we are a nation that lives in fear - a message constantly reinforced by the national media and numerous other sources. It's both funny and seriously depressing - when Marilyn Manson has more important things to say than people from Lockheed Martin and the NRA (the final interview with Charlton Heston shows his senility masks extremely racist ideas), you know something is wrong. (Post-Oscar Note: There have been numerous articles written since this picture's release about how fraudulent its facts and methods are, which may very well be perfectly true. But I, in this instance, don't take that into consideration for my review: I still like the picture, even though it is more or less (in Berardinelli's term) 'meta-fiction' - I tend to think of 'truth' in a purely Lacanian sense. Bowling for Columbine is effective in that it approaches topics and ideas others would like to ignore, and certainly no replacement for hard evidence. Moore is an exceptional provocateur, and should be appreciated as just that.)