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MOVIE INFO

Director:
Michael Moore
Cast:
Michael Moore
Writing Credits:
Michael Moore

Synopsis:
To learn what the USA can learn from other nations, Michael Moore playfully "invades" them to see what they have to offer.

Box Office:
Opening Weekend
$897,034 on 308 Screens.
Domestic Gross
$3,801,054.

MPAA:
Rated R

DISC DETAILS
Presentation:
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Audio:
English DTS-HD MA 5.1
Subtitles:
English
Spanish
Closed-captioned
Supplements Subtitles:
None

Runtime: 120 min.
Price: $29.99
Release Date: 5/10/2016

Bonus:
• Previews


PURCHASE @ AMAZON.COM

EQUIPMENT
Panasonic TC-P60VT60 60-Inch 1080p 600Hz 3D Smart Plasma HDTV; Sony STR-DG1200 7.1 Channel Receiver; Panasonic DMP-BD60K Blu-Ray Player using HDMI outputs; Michael Green Revolution Cinema 6i Speakers (all five); Kenwood 1050SW 150-watt Subwoofer.

RELATED REVIEWS


Where to Invade Next [Blu-Ray] (2016)

Reviewed by Colin Jacobson (May 8, 2016)

Did Michael Moore peak with 2004’s Fahrenheit 9/11? Though he had success as a documentarian prior to that release, Fahrenheit hit a cultural nerve far deeper than any of his other films. Moore’s films immediately before and after Fahrenheit - 2002’s Oscar-winning Bowling for Columbine and 2007’s Sicko - both earned US grosses in the low to mid $20 million range, and that makes them his second and third biggest hits.

On the other hand, Fahrenheit earned a stunning $119 million US, a figure that makes it the most successful documentary of all-time – and by a pretty good margin. Since then, Moore’s films have struggled to find an audience, especially after Sicko. 2009’s Capitalism: A Love Story topped out at $14 million, while 2016’s Where to Invade Next ended up with a mere $3 million, a number that lands it as his second-lowest-grossing movie ever.

I admit that Moore’s brand of filmmaking has tended to leave me cold, but I still felt curious to give Invade a look. I don’t think I’d seen a Moore movie since Fahrenheit, so this seemed like a good time to check out what Moore circa 2016 could do.

In his newest film, Moore travels the world to “invade” countries to find out what they have to offer the US. This takes him to Italy, France, Finland, Slovenia, Germany, Portugal, Norway, Tunisia, and Iceland.

As Moore visits these locations, he meets locals, business leaders and politicians. Moore checks out worker benefits, educational systems, factories and the middle class, unpleasant histories, drug and prison policies, health care, women’s rights, and financial systems.

Like I alluded earlier, I go into Moore’s projects with a skeptical viewpoint. I saw three or four of his prior efforts and found these films to be about Moore first and his theses second. Moore shoved his views down our throats with his egotistical, one-sided screeds.

To some degree, Moore reigns in his tendencies here, at least in terms of how he forces himself on the audience. While Moore plays a key role in Invade, he seems to focus less on himself than usual, so he doesn’t come across like the center of attention in the way that occurred with earlier movies.

That side of Invade feels like a positive, but the rest of the film suffers from Moore’s usual flaws, especially in terms of his refusal to even vaguely attempt even-handed material. Early on, he acknowledges that he’ll ignore negatives in the societies he “invades”, as he tells us he wants to “pick the flowers, not the weeds”.

That’s a cute phrase, but it acts as a cop-out. This approach allows Moore to turn a blind eye to various societal drawbacks that might mitigate his assertions. Moore tends to present ideals and imply that they exist in typical situations, and even when he does acknowledge negatives, he handles the material poorly.

For instance, when in Germany, Moore “confronts” the country’s fascist past and discusses the continuing impact of the Nazis on modern-day Deutschland. This detour fails to fit the rest of the movie, and it also lacks any apparent connection to reality.

Moore appears to imply that Germany circa 2016 has no racism and has moved past all those nasty emotions Hitler exploited. Seriously? It doesn’t take much of an Internet search to learn about current racial/religious issues in Germany, whereas Moore tries to convince us it’s a model society that acknowledged/atoned for its past and moved ahead.

Moore also ensures that he can bash the US in the process, and that includes the perplexing implication that American society has never dealt with its own social issues. Once again: seriously? Does the man honestly believe that there’s been no effort to deal with past transgressions in the US and that no progress has been made? He can’t be that dense, can he?

Probably not, but Moore so desperately wants to fit the facts to his theories that he makes numerous leaps of logic, many of which again come back to his refusal to show any of the negatives that impact the countries involved. Cripes, the man posits Tunisia as a great vacation spot – a place where two terrorist attacks on foreign tourists occurred in 2015 and where the State Department warns tourists to exercise extreme caution!

Moore also ignores/alters material to make the US look worse. He holds up Virginia as a place where voting rights concerns turned the state permanently “red” – which would be awesome if Virginia didn’t currently have a Democratic governor and they hadn’t voted for Obama in two straight elections.

Moore does occasionally make some good points. In particular, I agree with him that US schools “over-educate” kids and leave them with little time for anything other than studying. I also agree that “teaching to the test” sucks and that the US overemphasizes standardized measures.

Unfortunately, Moore takes policies that prosper in small, homogeneous situations and fails to comprehend – or acknowledge – the complexity that comes with the US. I’m not saying none of the ideas in the film could work in America or that we shouldn’t try to improve, but Moore’s refusal to go beyond simple notions exasperates.

Because of this, Invade becomes more of a chore to watch as it goes. It starts with a modicum of promise but as it progresses, it turns more and more into a one-sided, narrow-minded lecture about How Much the US Sucks. Despite some efforts to redeem himself at the end, the movie suffers from too many fallacies and too many flaws to succeed.


The Blu-ray Grades: Picture B+/ Audio B/ Bonus D-

Where to Invade Next appears in an aspect ratio of approximately 1.78:1 on this Blu-ray Disc. The visuals worked fine for this sort of program.

Parts of Invade featured archival clips, and those varied in terms of quality. Most looked fine, though; occasional videotaped bits came across as soft and fuzzy, but these tended to seem adequate.

Most of Invade consisted of material shot specifically for the film, though, and those presented fine visuals. Sharpness was solid, with only the occasional soft spot among a mostly well-defined image. No jagged edges or shimmering occurred, and I saw no edge haloes. Print flaws also failed to appear.

The film went for a pretty natural palette, and the colors looked positive. The hues appeared vivid and full. Blacks appeared dark and tight, and low-light shots seemed smooth and clear. This became a satisfactory transfer.

I also felt pleased with the movie’s Dolby TrueHD 5.1 soundtrack, as it fleshed out the material fairly well. Much of the mix remained restrained and focused on dialogue, but more than a few exceptions occurred. The movie used occasional instances of war-related audio in a satisfying way, as those elements popped up all around the room in an involving way.

Other effects added some breadth to the proceedings, and music showed good breadth. The soundfield wasn’t a consistently engaging affair, but it boasted more activity than one might expect from a documentary.

Audio quality also pleased. Speech was especially important, and those components appeared natural and distinctive. Music sounded peppy and full, while effects seemed accurate and dynamic. In the end, I felt the soundtrack worked well.

The disc opens with ads for Capitalism: A Love Story. No trailer for Invade or any other extras appear here.

If anyone expects a new and/or different Michael Moore from Where to Invade Next, disappointment will ensue. While the filmmaker himself keeps himself out of the spotlight a little more than usual, he still creates a relentlessly misleading, one-sided piece of propaganda. The Blu-ray comes with generally positive picture and audio but it lacks supplements. A few good moments emerge here, but the movie seems so biased that it exasperates more than it educates.

Viewer Film Ratings: 3.1666 Stars Number of Votes: 6
35:
04:
0 3:
12:
21:
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Review Archive:  # | A-C | D-F | G-I | J-L | M-O | P-R | S-U | V-Z | Viewer Ratings | Main