The Worst Film Ever

Pretty Good

People are voting emotionally.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

The sequence of events and reasoning behind them in this film are up for debate, as has often been the case ever since September the 11th, 2001. Moore is good at striking people emotionally, and without even showing that iconic image of the burning towers that we've all seen before, he manages to really hit home, not in a peachy "we're still proud, strong, good ol' USA" way, but in a surprisingly tasteful and timely way without stooping to exploitation, gore or offensive jokes. I was also very surprised to learn that Moore lost a friend in the Twin Towers that day. Not to be an attention wh*ore, but my family was heavily affected by 9/11 and my uncle lost a lot of good friends that day, so I'm glad to see that Moore has retained a certain level of compassion and seriousness for the many people who lost their lives or lost loved ones in the Pentagon and World Trade Center. He also raises a good point about the "War on Terror", which my dad was deployed into back when I was ten years old - is it worth it to pursue justice if we go about it by killing innocent people? Why have we left such a startling amount of "collateral damage" in Iraq while hunting down one specific terrorist group? Isn't it all rather futile and hypocritical of our country to destroy another that didn't even have anything to do with 9/11 in the first place? Though this film does raise many good points and gets the ball rolling on some genuine discussion on a taboo subject, I didn't like the way in which some scenes were so heavily taken out of context, especially those regarding Bush. No, I'm not a Bush supporter, I'm Canadian anyway, I simply think that he was unprepared for such a devastating blow to the nation and he didn't know what to do. If somebody told me that the nation was under attack and I was President, I might have acted in a very similar manner. He was also in the presence of elementary school children at the time of hearing the news. I mean, what was he supposed to do, jump up and announce, "sorry kids, gotta run, some guys in planes just killed off 3,000 innocent citizens! Ciao, and don't forget to vote!" Give me a break. My guess is he didn't want to frighten the general public. There were really no plans to handle 9/11 or the bombing of such tall buildings at the time, and plans for terrorist attacks back then were geared more towards older, less organized concepts of it. Moore cherry-picks video clips of Bush "being lazy" (same could be said about Trump, Obama, Trudeau, any politician really, it's good PR to be frequently recorded having fun like a "normal guy" and not necessarily a sign of not doing any work) and spins together a story of a man who just didn't give a damn about terrorism and not only acted in negligence, but also outright took advantage of the attacks for political/financial gain. Some of this is indeed true as it presented the perfect opportunity for a war and money to be made on military involvement, but I still don't buy that Bush was an evil monster, nor do I believe that he acted alone on this stuff. It's just what countries do. They use tragedy as an excuse to cause more tragedy, perpetuating a bloody, violent cycle. I feel though like Moore opted to dwell so much on Bush that he was losing sight of the real message he was trying to get at, and a project that starts off as ambitious and important quickly dissolves into a mess of varying themes and frankly bizarre cutaway scenes. He acts very immature and obnoxious throughout, and repeatedly tries to make 9/11 all about him by dragging it back to the irrelevant topic of his obsession, his small Colorado childhood town in an economic depression. What does this have to do with 9/11 (if anything)? He spends more time rambling on about himself than about the teens being recruited by vultures-er, soldiers, in the shopping malls and community centers. What begins as a compassionate tribute to the victims of this terrible attack, soon becomes just another opportunity for Moore to don his tinfoil hat and ride his high horse off into the sunset, and it brought me to wonder whether this film was really about the events of September the 11th, or was it just about personal anger towards the malaise and bitterness of modern America? It's definitely subjective and up for debate, so while there's a lot of this film I found unfair and heavily biased, I can't bring myself to hate it because love it or loathe it, it's one of the most important nonfiction films of our time, not necessarily because it's true but because it will get us all thinking about our own feelings and opinions towards that horrible day and what 9/11 and terrorism in general means to us - not as Americans, but as human beings.

Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004): Dir: Michael Moore / Featuring: Michael Moore, George W. Bush: Michael Moore's fantastic followup to his previous hit Bowling for Columbine. This time he addresses issues that are kept from the public that resulted in one of the darkest days of the century. Moore targets U.S. President George W. Bush and various elements that surrounded the terrorist bombings of September 11th, 2001. According to the film Bush was warned prior to the incident but chose not to act. Moore interviews those who have lost family to the tragedy and even address those whose children were sent off to fight. One particularly amusing sequence involves Moore approaching members of the White House asking if they would send their children off to fight. Moore's film is powerful and sad but it is not without the trademark humour much of which makes Bush look like a jackass. One could just watch Moore make fun of Bush for ninety minutes and that may even suffice as a passable documentary. Moore is one of the best of documentary filmmakers whose physical presence has become familiar. Whether viewers agree with him or not, he certainly makes his point in his ploy against the media's desire to exploit this stuff. A must-see for anyone seeking understanding on what happened behind the scenes during that date that will long haunt our memory. Score: 10 / 10

Not being an American citizen' and trying to look at this documentary objectively its hard to believe that so many u.s. citizens voted for the Bush administration. Apart from the fact that this guy is a complete idiot, did people not learn anything from George Bush SNR? did people really believe jnr would be somehow the total opposite of daddy' who was a warmongering, moneymaking pirate, who was friends with the very family that allegedly killed thousands of Americans. I find this totally beyond logic and this is what Michael Moore,s documentary is about' regardless of the hundreds of other questions the the American people didn't get answered by the 9/11 commission, how can a country the boasts to have the best intel services on the planet miss something this important, never mind the attacks and subsequent invasions, there has to be more questions answered about the c.i.a. and f.b.i and any other sevices that lets a tyrant rule their country.

I remember seeing this in theatres as a Republican back in 2004. I voted for Bush that year. Four years later, I voted for McCain. This past election, I voted Libertarian, having come to the conclusion that the major parties were too corrupt to trusted. It's been so long, we keep forgetting the tenuous rationalizing, the weapons that were never there, the freedom that nobody in the Middle East (except the elite, I assume), ever got to benefit from. I've always been under the impression that the world would be better if democracy spread throughout it. But, you have to respect the ideals of that democracy, or it's a democracy in name only. "We don't have time to read the laws." 1 out of 535 representatives had a child fighting the war (and probably against his parent's wishes). There was a time in America's past (1870s-1900s) called the Gilded Age, where the government was vastly corrupt and we fought wars for corporations (the Spanish-American War of 1898, the annexation of the Philippines, etc). The difference between now and then? Information. The internet. The truth finds a way to get to you. I wouldn't presume to tell you how to vote in any future elections, but I hope you stick your ideals when doing so, and I hope you do not compromise those ideals in the name of safety and I hope you do not withhold rights from other people because their traditions and way of life is different from yours. That is all.