Documentary film-maker, Michael Moore, is more than a gad-fly. Controversial yes, and perhaps a publicity seeker - but nevertheless a telling, punchy and powerful maker of a point. Consider his powerful movie "Fahrenheit 9/11".
Now Moore has taken on the US health system, flawed as it is. By all accounts the new movie holds no bars. The film has just been shown for the first time at the Cannes Film Festival, as the IHT details.
"Three years after conquering the Cannes film festival and winning the Palme d'Or for "Fahrenheit 9/11," Michael Moore has returned the amour big time with "Sicko," his most fluidly crafted provocation to date. A persuasive, insistently leftist indictment of the American health care system, as well as a funny valentine to all things French - and many things Canadian, British and Cuban - the film shows that while Moore remains a radical partisan, he has learned how to sell his argument with a softer touch. He's still the P.T. Barnum of activist cinema, but he no longer runs the entire circus from directly under the spotlight.
To that shrewd end, almost an entire hour has lapsed before Moore lumbers in front if the camera in "Sicko," his aw-shucks grin and baseball cap firmly in place. By that point, he has introduced a wealth of evidence (photographs, news clips and archival footage) and a sprawling cast of characters (patients, health care workers and Washington politicians), each another piece in the evolving puzzle. How did we get here and why, Moore asks in his faux-folksy, at times icky-sticky voice-over. Though of course, there's never any doubt that Moore, the director of "Bowling for Columbine," a blistering attack on American gun culture, believes he knows who is to blame for the state of the nation's health care and why."
Now Moore has taken on the US health system, flawed as it is. By all accounts the new movie holds no bars. The film has just been shown for the first time at the Cannes Film Festival, as the IHT details.
"Three years after conquering the Cannes film festival and winning the Palme d'Or for "Fahrenheit 9/11," Michael Moore has returned the amour big time with "Sicko," his most fluidly crafted provocation to date. A persuasive, insistently leftist indictment of the American health care system, as well as a funny valentine to all things French - and many things Canadian, British and Cuban - the film shows that while Moore remains a radical partisan, he has learned how to sell his argument with a softer touch. He's still the P.T. Barnum of activist cinema, but he no longer runs the entire circus from directly under the spotlight.
To that shrewd end, almost an entire hour has lapsed before Moore lumbers in front if the camera in "Sicko," his aw-shucks grin and baseball cap firmly in place. By that point, he has introduced a wealth of evidence (photographs, news clips and archival footage) and a sprawling cast of characters (patients, health care workers and Washington politicians), each another piece in the evolving puzzle. How did we get here and why, Moore asks in his faux-folksy, at times icky-sticky voice-over. Though of course, there's never any doubt that Moore, the director of "Bowling for Columbine," a blistering attack on American gun culture, believes he knows who is to blame for the state of the nation's health care and why."
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