Captain Mike Across America

Captain Mike Across America (Director: Michael Moore): Michael Moore’s latest film received a standing ova­tion at the Ryerson Theatre last Friday.

Republicans will see his latest work as a pro­pa­ganda film and some Canadians will call it a com­plete pile of rub­bish. Democrats will love the film and see it as the truth that has been sup­pressed by the media. This Canadian found it very entertaining.

During the last American elec­tion, Moore trav­elled the country encour­aging younger people to vote and more import­antly, to vote Democrat. His visits to col­leges across America became known as the Slacker Uprising Tour.

He takes the usual cheap shots at Bush, shows a number of Bush bloopers and invites musical guests to enter­tain the slackers (Eddie Vedder, Joan Baez, Steve Earle, REM and others).

One of my favourite moments in the film comes when Moore holds a press con­fer­ence. He points out that he had the courage to bring up the weapons of mass destruc­tion lie, at the Oscars sev­eral years ago. He goes on to lam­baste the reporters for being lazy and not doing their jobs — which is invest­ig­ating the truth instead of being a pro­pa­ganda machine for the White House.

He argues that Americans should be able to sit at home, eat a bag of Tostitos and get the truth for free on the evening news. Instead, he argues that Americans had to shell out 10 dol­lars to get the truth in from his film Fahrenheit 9/11.

As Moore went across the south­west in 2004, it was amazing to see how Republicans tried to shut him down. One busi­nessman offered $100,000 to a stu­dent group to not invite Moore to their school to speak.

Moore failed in helping to get Kerry elected but he suc­ceeded in get­ting younger voters out to the polls in record num­bers. For Democrats, Moore describes the film as “a cure for the hangover that fol­lowed” the 2004 election.

When asked if Moore would do a follow up to the film he said “no”. Moore claims that his life was threatened a number of times. At one event a guy allegedly got up on stage and tried to attack Moore with a pipe. At another event, some­body pulled a knife and while in Fort Lauderdale a man tossed a cup of hot coffee on Moore.

Love him or hate him, his films are enter­taining. The audi­ence at Ryerson couldn’t get enough of his stories. The film will have a lim­ited the­at­rical release in North America according to Harvey Weinstein who was in the audi­ence. Following that will be a DVD release which will include a lot of extra footage and a show Moore did in London shortly after 9/11. My guess is that all of this will come out next year just before the elec­tion (depending on how the Democrats are doing in the polls).

(7/10)

Tagged as: Documentaries, politics, TIFF