Bowling for Columbine
Bowling for Columbine
R | 11 October 2002 (USA)
Bowling for Columbine Trailers

This is not a film about gun control. It is a film about the fearful heart and soul of the United States, and the 280 million Americans lucky enough to have the right to a constitutionally protected Uzi. From a look at the Columbine High School security camera tapes to the home of Oscar-winning NRA President Charlton Heston, from a young man who makes homemade napalm with The Anarchist's Cookbook to the murder of a six-year-old girl by another six-year-old. Bowling for Columbine is a journey through the US, through our past, hoping to discover why our pursuit of happiness is so riddled with violence.

Reviews
Cubussoli

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

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Sexyloutak

Absolutely the worst movie.

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Frances Chung

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

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Zandra

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

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RbDeraj

Bowling for Columbine takes you down the rabbit hole into Michael Moore's opinions on every subject he can fit into two hours.Moore brings his typical "documentarian" approach to his interviewing which includes arrogant self righteousness and implicating uninvolved others in crimes or as being part of the corrupt system just because they hold a different outlook than him.It's nothing more that an aimless rant, and even lacks the inspiring visual techniques that some of his other works showcased. Michael Moore pretty much sums it up in the film itself: "I'm doing a, I'm doing a, um a documentary on these school shootings and ya know guns and all that..."

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Amy Adler

As most of the world knows, in April 1999, two Columbine High School students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, took guns to school and shot thirteen students and one teacher dead. How did they get the guns? What does bowling have to do with anything? Those looking for an in-depth look at the two shooters will be disappointed. Although Mr Moore does record that Harris and Klebold went bowling on the morning of the shooting and later takes two of the wounded students, now recovered, to buy bullets at Kmart, this is not really about Eric and Dylan. Rather, it is more of an examination of the "gun culture" of the USA. The National Rifle Association, in this film headed by Charlton Heston, has ensured that getting a gun and ammunition is as easy as filling a prescription. Moore notes that we are unique among countries in that our rate of gun shootings and killings far surpasses that of Canada, our nearest neighbor, and other Western civilizations. Some have blamed violent video games, some singers like Marilyn Manson (interviewed in this film as a favorite singer of Harris), still others that "family department" stores like Kmart and Walmart have the weapons and the ammo. Interestingly, Moore also takes a look at Work-to-Welfare programs like the one near his hometown of Flint, Michigan. A young single mother was forced to work at a casino, 90 minutes away, to satisfy the welfare requirements but still couldn't pay the bills. When she was forced to move in with an uncle and had to leave her six year old son in his care, the young lad found his uncle's gun and took it to class, only to shoot a fellow student dead. what a tragedy! In short, anyone wanting to talk about the Second Amendment and gun control would do well to begin with this film. Those seeking in- depth information on the Columbine shooting should look elsewhere.

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brandon194666

It was Kmart that took out there bullets not Wall-mart and Kmart still sells guns and Walmart sells both. Get the facts right or do not post. So now you need to watch sicko. And I here there is one about trump coming out to. Some hate Mich but he is not bad by any means. People just think he is bad from what they here so they do not watch his films which is bad because his films should be watched by everyone. Top 3 films from Mich that should be watched no matter who you are is Fahrenheit 9/11 Sicko and Bowling for Columbine . I mean after watching some of these films I view things a lot different now. I hope the new trump movie will be even better to.

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ironhorse_iv

This movie is probably, filmmaker Michael Moore's most famous film. The documentary explores the reasons of gun violence, by looking into the gun culture of the U.S. In doing so, he learns that the conventional answers of easy availability of guns, violent entertainment, violent national history, & even poverty are inadequate to explain this violence when other cultures share those same factors without the equivalent carnage. In order to arrive at a possible explanation, Moore takes on a deeper examination of America's culture of fear, bigotry and violence. Furthermore, he seeks his own investigation and confront the powerful elite political and corporate interests in fanning this gun culture for their own greedy gain. With his signature sense of awkward humor, the activist filmmaker pretty much change, how documentaries are shown. Love him or hate him, he has been the most influential documentary filmmaker of the past 30 years. Gone are the days of monotone narrating lectures. In are the more playful, and colorful documentaries full of funny cartoons, cool graphics to transfer information and perspective, catchy music tunes, pop culture references, and celebrity talking heads interviews. Very entertaining. The documentary also has a lot of heart & sad moments, includes a number of disturbing scenes to illustrate its points, such as footage of real-life people being shot, gun suicides, assassinations, battle footage, and so on. Perhaps most terrifying, the movie includes security camera footage from the Columbine High School massacre. These scenes are brief, but effectively horrifying. It can be hard to watch, at times. Moore's techniques and message are so powerful and persuasive and his scruffy, paunchy everyman image so likable that it won the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 2003. Still, the movie is without its faults. I'm not a ring-wing propagandist, but I found a lot of doubt in Moore's credibility information. Moore was often called out for his somewhat deceiving practices. He does like to edit some of the interviewee's responses to make it seem like they agree with his statements. A good example of this is the sequence with South Park co-creator Matt Stone. Stone was just there to talk about high school life at Columbine, but the movie made it seem like he was for 'Gun Control' by twisting his words, and making it seem like Stone help created the animation sequence in the film about the history of guns. Clearly, South Park Studios have no hand whatsoever in making the segment and Stone thought the cartoon that Moore presented was complete BS. This disagreement, cause Matt Stone and Trey Parker to put a negative caricature of Moore in 2004's Team America: World Police as retaliation. Moore's investigation was supposed to carry out ostensibly to uncover subversive activities, but actually felt more like harassment and undermined those that of different views than Moore. Most of them, don't really have much of a connection to the problems of gun violence. A good example of this is when Moore tries to link television producer Dick Clark with really irrelevant evidence to the murder of a six-year-old by a six-year-old, because the boy's mother worked at one of Clark's restaurants in a welfare-to-work program. Yes, Clark did kinda dodges Moore's questionings, but I really doubt Dick Clark is to blame for this tragedy. He didn't really hand the gun to the kid and force him to kill the other child. After all, it's more like the gun owner's fault. Sad, to see the movie makes Clark look like the devil. Another bad judgment call by Moore, was his relentless questioning during an interview with a clearly memory-impaired Charlton Heston whom by this time, was suffering from both cancer & Alzheimer. Moore clearly took great advantage of Heston's weakness to make Heston look like a fool. When Moore asks Heston why he continues to taunt communities that just underwent gun-related tragedies by holding his ridiculous rallies, Heston couldn't provide any answers. The reasons for this is that Moore implied that the National Rifle Association deliberately scheduled its annual conferences to exploit the Columbine shootings, when the truth of the matter is the conference had been scheduled months or years in advance. Moore also accused Heston of holding an NRA rally right after a shooting in Flint; however, the footage he used was of Heston visiting the city almost a year later for a campaign event. Throughout the movie, Moore strung together snippets from several of Charlton Heston's speeches to make them sound like one arrogant speech. Moore has really gone to great lengths to misleading the audience. Another good example is where Moore goes to a bank which was giving away a free rifle to anyone who opened an account with them. What Moore didn't show, was the bank actually handed out, was an certificate for a free rifle at a gun store down the street, where the store performed the same background checks and waiting-period requirements as if a customer had walked in to buy a rifle with cash. There are way too much countless amounts of distorted information, throughout the documentary to noted, here. It's really up to the audience to decide what is truth and what's false, but I do advice people to do their research when going to see this movie, because this film clearly need further investigating. While, his research is up to debate and there are some good points that Moore brings up. My favorite is Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World" playing over footage of the atrocities by various US-backed regimes. To his credit, he's not exactly anti-gun – or doesn't seem to be; rather, just like me, just curious about gun-culture and believe a little gun-control is needed. Overall: I give Moore credit for this film as gun control not an easy topic to talk about. I just wish, his facts were a little more solid. Sadly, it was not.

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