Change Your Image
Nickolas52
Reviews
Religulous (2008)
Thoroughly enjoyed it, but either pure entertainment or Bill Meher just doesn't get it.
This is some of the funniest stuff I have watched in a very long time, even though the ending was a little over the top. I highly recommend it to anyone who is already an atheist or agnostic. It resonated in my old agnostic frame like a guitar string. Bill Meher uses his intelligence, wit and guile to shoot gaping holes in theism. Yeah, I happen to agree with all the stuff he said, but I'm not sure what the point is beyond telling me something I'm already in agreement with and making me laugh my ass off in the process. I really enjoyed it but I sure hope he's not expecting to convert anybody with this film. This film is sheer entertainment. Bill Meher will no more be able to make a religious person see what he sees and think as he thinks than he could take a crack-head home and turn him into a choirboy. People need to believe in something, and they just find and adopt what works for them. Some find atheism, some find religion, and at the optimum both find some semblance of inner peace. Who cares what anybody thinks, as long as he doesn't insist on me listening to him go on about it if I am an unwilling audience? Who cares what anybody thinks so long as it causes harm to no-one else? Ah, but there's the rub, and I guess that's the point. Could it be that Bill Meher doesn't abhor religion so much as he abhors the violence perpetrated by the religious lunatic fringe? I guess nobody's going to disagree with that. But surely he can't ignore that the worst atrocities in the history of man have been perpetrated by atheists who also happened to be psychopaths (and who also appear in his list of people baptized by the Mormons). The problem isn't religion, Bill, it's us. The human race is crazy. You and me included.
Halfway through the film:
Bill Meher: "So, how do you convince people of what's the truth?"
Father Reginald Foster, Senior Vatican Priest: "You don't. Forget it. You just have to live and die with their stupid ideas."
The Union: The Business Behind Getting High (2007)
An indictment against freedom in America.
I was pleasantly surprised by this documentary. As a non-user of cannabis viewing what had to be just another pro-cannabis argument, I had low expectations. My expectations were wrong.
This documentary has about as much to say about North American Society as a whole as it has to say about the legalization of marijuana. Taken in its greater context, the documentary is about how Society allows limits of personal freedom to evolve. The documentary uses the example of the 1920's Prohibition on alcohol to demonstrate how Society can change to allow something within its perceived bounds of decency, for which it previously tossed people in jail. I have seen in my own lifetime the legalization of homosexuality, which also finds its roots in Canada, initiated as it was by a visionary Prime Minister named Pierre Trudeau. What a less tolerant society once restricted through oppression to dark, secret places, it is now allowing freely, even if it is all still happening in dark, secret places. If Society had finally recognized that these prohibited things could not be eliminated, Society may have also recognized that they would at least not be promoted by legalizing them. Not everyone is happy with either societal change, but the majority are. We are now seeing the evolution of acceptance of cannabis in Society. But that's not the point. To me the documentary is not about cannabis. It is about disparities of freedom.
The point is driven home by an exposé on the United States penal system, a system run to a great extent by private corporations who's primary interest, by definition, is to make money. What the documentary helps the objective viewer to realize is America's is not as free a Society as many, if not most, others in the world, and it helps the objective viewer realize, if chillingly, the reason why.
Earthstorm (2006)
eek
I admit my wife and I watched this movie all the way through. Maybe it was patriotism? We were at first unaware it was a Canadian production but about 15 minutes into it we said "This movie *has* to be Canadian" - which means we had already paid for it whether we wanted to or not (tax dollars), and now we had voluntarily paid for it again (after tax dollars - here in Canada we call it "good money after bad"). We conversed little through the ordeal, silently exchanging incredulous looks from time to time. Other times we just laughed out loud, or shook our heads slowly while we stared in astonishment, mouths agape. This is easily one of the worst movies we have ever seen. Plan 9 from Outer Space was better (and *it* positively stunk). The acting is awful, the science is seriously flawed and the whole premise of the thing is just plain absurd. Put away your maple leaf flags, fellow citizens, nothing to be proud of here.
Zoo (2007)
boring
Aside from the cinematography, which is outstanding, this documentary is not worth watching. The subject obsession is incomprehensible, if not reprehensible. While I can certainly feel compassion for the man's family, I can only shake my head at what he subjected himself to, time and time again. What can a man be thinking to allow a half ton animal to mount him and shove its two foot long penis into him?? For those of you who are tempted to download and watch the actual footage of the featured encounter (which is flashed briefly a few times in the film itself) my advice to you is don't. I have to admit that I allowed my curiosity to get away with me. Now I wish I could unwatch it.