Capitalism: A Love Story (2009)
Dog Eat Dog Films

Description

On the 20-year anniversary of his groundbreaking masterpiece Roger & Me, Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story comes home to the issue he's been examining throughout his career: the disastrous impact of corporate dominance on the everyday lives of Americans (and by default, the rest of the world). But this time the culprit is much bigger than General Motors, and the crime scene far wider than Flint, Michigan. From Middle America, to the halls of power in Washington, to the global financial epicenter in Manhattan, Michael Moore will once again take film goers into uncharted territory. With both humor and outrage, Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story explores a taboo question: What is the price that America pays for its love of capitalism? Years ago, that love seemed so innocent. Today, however, the American dream is looking more like a nightmare as families pay the price with their jobs, their homes and their savings. Moore takes us into the homes of ordinary people whose lives have been turned upside down; and he goes looking for explanations in Washington, DC and elsewhere. What he finds are the all-too-familiar symptoms of a love affair gone astray: lies, abuse, betrayal...and 14,000 jobs being lost every day. Capitalism: A Love Story is both a culmination of Moore's previous works and a look into what a more hopeful future could look like. It is Michael Moore's ultimate quest to answer the question he's posed throughout his illustrious filmmaking career: Who are we and why do we behave the way that we do?

Tags

2000s, USA, Economy, Finance

Collected reviews and ratings

8.8 Chicago Sun-Times | Roger Ebert

The loudest voice in Michael Moore's latest film speaks to us from the grave. It belongs to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, less than a year before his death, calling for a Second Bill of Rights for Americans. He says citizens have a right to homes, jobs, education and health care. In measured, judicious words, he speaks gravely to the camera.
Read full review (Cinema)

8.8 Rolling Stone | Peter Travers

Moore is a populist, not an academic. He knows how to wield a camera like a blunt instrument. He also knows how to put a human face on statistics as we watch banks foreclose on the homes of families who never read the fine print. Moore's fireball of a movie could change your life. It had me laughing with tears in my eyes.
Read full review (Cinema)

8.8 Combustible Celluloid | Jeffrey M. Anderson

As ever, the people who need to see this most will probably avoid it, but those that will see it won't soon forget it.
Read full review (Cinema)

8.0 Los Angeles Times | Kenneth Turan

At the end of the day, perhaps the most startling thing about "Capitalism" is that Moore stands revealed not as some pointy-headed socialist but as an unreconstructed New Deal Democrat who admires Franklin D. Roosevelt, believes in increased democracy and opportunity, and feels that the decades-long weakening of unions has fatally weakened America. The fact that this will be a controversial stance says as much about today's political culture as it does about Moore's place in it.
Read full review (Cinema)

8.0 San Francisco Chronicle | Amy Biancolli

What Moore does - feature-length partisan invectives, dressed up with comically apt archival footage - he does better than any one. Call them documentaries, but consider them essays: one-sided, hyperbolic, heatedly persuasive works that broadcast a single viewpoint for a single cause.
Read full review (Cinema)

8.0 DVD Talk | Brian Orndorf

Whatever it lacks in a red-target focal point, it's still Moore doing what he does best: chipping away the layers of fraud that have calcified America, hoping to inspire others to storm the streets and question authority.
Read full review (Cinema)

8.0 New York Times | Manohla Dargis

In the end, what is to be done? After watching “Capitalism,” it beats me. Mr. Moore doesn’t have any real answers, either, which tends to be true of most socially minded directors in the commercial mainstream and speaks more to the limits of such filmmaking than to anything else. Like most of his movies, “Capitalism” is a tragedy disguised as a comedy; it’s also an entertainment.
Read full review (Cinema)

6.0 filmcritic.com | Chris Cabin

Moore's ambition, more than ever before, gets the best of him, but I find myself simply unable to dismiss or debase someone who very simply believes, after the turmoil and absurd entitlement of the Bush era, that we can do better.
Read full review (Cinema)