Michael Moore's Capitalism Love Story Well Received At Venice

Michael Moore's Capitalism Love Story Well Received At Venice
2009-09-06 05:31pm

Filmmaker Michael Moore appears to have pleased the critics at the
opening of his latest film "Capitalism: A Love Story" at the Venice
Film festival.

The film examines Capitalism in the wake of the global financial
crisis, attacking the free market, the cheerleaders of capitalism and
the US government bailout of financial institutions.

Moore concludes that ""Capitalism is an evil, and you cannot regulate
evil. You have to eliminate it (capitalism) and replace it with
something that's good for all people, and that something is called
democracy."

He said the film was dedicated to "good people who struggle, who work
hard and who've had their lives ruined by decisions that are made by
people who do not have their best interest at heart."

Guardian critic Xan Brooks gave the film four out of five stars,
saying "If the film finally lacks the clean, hard punch provided by
the record-breaking Fahrenheit 9/11, that can only be because the
crime scene is so vast and the culprits so numerous.

"Undeterred, Moore jabs his finger at everyone from Reagan to Bush Jr,
Hank Paulson to Alan Greenspan. He drags the viewer through a thicket
of insurance scams, sub-prime bubbles and derivative trading so
wilfully obfuscatory that even the experts can't explain how it
works," Brooks wrote.

Variety film reviewer Leslie Felperin said Moore had returned to his
roots, turning in "one of his best films" which reaped mostly ecstatic
applause at its first press screening.

But Felperin said Moore strives so hard to manipulate viewers'
emotions "that he's not so much over-egging the pudding as making an
omelet out of it.

"While it could be argued that Moore needs to milk the human-interest
stories for all their worth to get auds to engage with his
denunciation of capitalism, more often than not, such tactics just
patronize the audience and descend into cheap sentimentality. Moore
all but stops short of holding up dead puppies Hank Paulson personally
murdered," she said.

Writing on his web site before the screening, Moore said "The director
of the festival said that our movie was 'incredibly symphonic' and
that he was moved by its epic nature. Jeez, these Italians!
Everything's an opera to them!"

But Time reviewer Mary Corliss said the movie is not opera so much as
"impassioned journalism — a broadside fired at the good ship Free
Enterprise, with the hope of altering its course, and dislodging the
pirates who have seized it."

Corliss said Capitalism: A Love Story does not quite measure up to
Moore's Sicko in its cumulative power, and it is unlikely to equal
Fahrenheit 9/11 in political impact. "In many ways, though, this is
Moore's magnum opus: the grandest statement of his career-long belief
that big business is screwing the hard-working little guy while
government connives in the atrocity."

Moore will open the film on September 23rd in New York and Los Angeles
and on October 2nd everywhere else.

.

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