Precious is a new-style weepie but one that is much more bracing than depressing
Precious
Theatre
Ian McKellen is captivating throughout. He delights in the play’s gallows humour, yet is also maudlin and poignant
Waiting for Godot
Theatre
Slight quibbles notwithstanding, this will set the West End’s stock riding high
Enron
Utterly, utterly brilliant. You really are in for a treat
Though 'Trilogy' has won rave reviews, I personally found myself exasperated after about an hour
We went on a quiet sunday evening and the food was excellent, but the experience let down by the service and ambiance
London,
Critic rating
Reader rating
Bravura: Michael Moore with his wife Kathleen Glynn
Capatilism: A Love Story is classic Michael Moore — at times annoyingly simplistic, but also galvanising in its ability to stir shocked laughter and indignation.
The lumbering provocateur from Michigan has honed his schtick by now, and in this steamroller attack on the culture of greed in America’s corporations and financial institutions he rolls out all the usual tricks: sentimental zooms on tearful faces, comedy montage sequences, the careful selection and editing of interview footage to make the good guys look better and the bad guys worse, the snarky voice-over.
It’s proof of Moore’s bravura that we can see through these techniques and still be swept along by the sheer force of the film’s righteous anger. TThe director’s critics tend to ignore just how well edited his documentaries are; Capitalism has the inexorable drive and surge of a Rossini overture. It shows Moore at his most earnestly heart-on-sleeve, backing the common man, the ordinary saver and the laid-off worker against fat-cat banks, corporations and mortgage gamblers.
Moore is a skilful polemicist, and this US-centric cine-pamphlet goes straight for the jugular, suggesting that the seeds of last autumn’s bank meltdown and the current recession are inherent in the capitalist system that has somehow become identified with democracy and social justice in the States, even though laissez-faire economics are never once mentioned in the American constitution.
The director comes up with some chilling examples to illustrate his point that capitalism and ethics rarely make good bedfellows, including an eye-opening passage dealing with “dead peasant” policies — life insurance contracts that companies take out in secret on their own employees, so they are literally worth more to them dead than alive. The only point where the director seems to hang fire is in his kid-glove, wait-and-see treatment of President Obama. Even Moore seems to realise that it might take the guy more than a few months to become the Franklin D Roosevelt of the 21st century.
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It never fails to amuse me that the "FAT ONE" sells ten times as many books inEurope as in the US. The same is true forhis "films". The numbers indicate that even the far left who agree with him iignore him. In the US we know the truth and he doesn't let truth get in the way of his story telling.
- Ray Reddick, gurnee, USA
terrific point at the end: "The only point where the director seems to hang fire is in his kid-glove, ( is) wait-and-see treatment of President Obama"
Doubt that the fat one will treat him as he deserve, which means as one of THEM he makes moves about...
- Ftabio, Sarajevo, BiH
Morning:
4°c
