Sicko.

The entry on Michael Moore's Sicko turned out to be the longest of all Cannes entries last month. Now that the film has been screening at a single theater in New York (AJ Schnack's been tracking its boffo! biz there) and sneak previewing all over, another wave of reviews has bulked up "June 29"; both of those entries, then, could be taken by anyone with just a whole lot of interest in Sicko as supplements to this one.

Click on New York critic David Edelstein's name to read why he considers Sicko to be Moore's best film. For here and now, though, I'd rather snip this lengthy paragraph:

Michael Moore is a polarizing figure, by which I mean he polarizes me. He's a blowhard and a national treasure. His methods are suspect, yet his work is indispensable. Think of him as a Shakespearean fool - a court jester - with the slashing fury of a crusader. When the counterculture imploded in the late seventies, the left lost its sense of humor, and tools like Rush Limbaugh learned to appropriate its prankster spirit. (The Republicans reinterpreted speaking truth to power as razzing feminists and the liberal media.) At the height of Reagan/Bush I torpor, Moore's Roger & Me reclaimed the left's antic legacy. But there were questions: Was Moore using his camera to bludgeon ordinary people? Did he fudge the chronology? Yes and yes. The oaf was always undermining his own credibility. I tsk-tsked when he turned his 2003 Oscar win into an occasion for grandstanding about the invasion of Iraq: He had a point, but did he have to be so shrill? Yet in the end, he shamed many of us when he called Iraq a "war for fictitious reasons." No one had put it more succinctly. Why didn't we rise up?

"After the early tales of the system's failure, Sicko becomes feeble, even inane," writes David Denby in the New Yorker. "In the actual political world, the major Democratic Presidential candidates have already offered, or will soon offer, plans for reform. A shift to the left, or, at least, to the center, has overtaken Michael Moore, yielding an irony more striking than any he turns up: the changes in political consciousness that Moore himself has helped produce have rendered his latest film almost superfluous."

Logan Hill talks with Moore for New York.

For the Los Angeles Times, Gina Piccalo talks with Debbie Melnyk and Rick Caine about Manufacturing Dissent.

Updates: "Forget about the rescue workers [and the trip to Cuba]; here's one of the poorest countries in Central America, and they can afford to provide their citizens with basic healthcare - what's the problem with the United States?" asks Paul Matwychuk. "Moore is refreshingly unembarrassed to use the phrase 'socialized medicine' throughout Sicko, but what he's really calling for is civilized medicine - a system that recognizes that everyone deserves medical care, and that it's worth sacrificing a few million dollars in profits to achieve that goal."

At the SpoutBlog, Karina Longworth's got a slew of newsy items, "a brief sampling of the portly provocateur's latest tour through mass culture."

"This polemic about the corrupt nexus of health insurance companies, government and the pharmaceutical industry doesn't just expose the powerful as wanting us out of the way; it shows that they also want most of us dead," writes Steven Boone at the House Next Door. "Moore portrays workaday Americans collectively like the dutiful wife who has a faint suspicion about her abusive husband, but no idea that he's planning to have her killed for the life insurance money."

Updates, 6/27: "Looking at the problem from both the inside out and the international inward, Moore manages to do what his previous films have failed to accomplish," writes Bill Gibron before shimmying out on a limb at PopMatters: "Sicko, more than any other movie he's made, is guaranteed to provide a cinematic catalyst for change."

"There's so much dejection here - babies dying because hospitals won't treat them, Ground Zero volunteers being denied care, the exposure of corrupt insurance-company tactics, and worse - that comic relief is essential, Moore explained during a recent whirlwind visit to San Francisco," writes Cheryl Eddy for the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

"It's tough to generate much controversy here, as anyone who's been to an emergency room lately will loudly concur that the system is pretty much fucked," writes Sean Burns in the Philadelphia Weekly. "I appreciate that Moore's trying to make a case for socialized medicine, but his methodology is so crude, simplistic and redundant that you'll walk out feeling like you know even less about the subject than when you walked in. Of course we'll never, ever see a dissenting viewpoint in a Michael Moore movie, but how about offering even a cursory explanation as to how these other countries manage to pay for such lavish standards of care?"

Peter Sobczynski talks with Moore for Hollywood Bitchslap.

Updates, 6/28: "If any movie ever seemed capable of starting a revolution, Michael Moore's Sicko is that film," proclaims Godfrey Cheshire in the Independent Weekly. "Easily Moore's best, most skillfully argued film, Sicko arrives at a moment that's propitious both socially and cinematically. A decade ago, hardly anyone would have considered a documentary feature an instrument capable of having a major impact on public policy. Now, with the credibility of the mainstream corporate media besmirched by their acquiescence in the implementation of an unnecessary, drastically unpopular war, the nonfiction film has emerged as one of the few public forums where common sense and individual vision stand a chance against collective credulity and mass-produced disinformation."

Despite several caveats, for the LA Weekly's Ella Taylor, "the movie is a great piece of populist outrage and a dangerously good comedy about a looming American tragedy, as Moore details - step by step and case by unspeakably cruel case - the lock-hold on American health care by drug and insurance companies, and the eagerness of politicians (including, I winced to see, Hillary herself) to be bought into submission by them."

"Led by Old Labour politician Tony Benn, Moore suggests that early debt and the twin toxic myths of choice and individual power have stripped Americans of a belief in the collective will, the desire to get on the streets and demand change," writes Brian Gibson, who oddly enough, makes no comparisons with the Canadian health care system in his review for Edmonton's Vue Weekly.

The Boston Phoenix's Peter Keough talks with Moore. Via MCN.

For the Nashville Scene's Jim Ridley, this "may be the least amusing and artful of his agit-pop documentaries.... What Sicko lacks in mirth, though, it makes up in wrath."

"If the documentary's lack of confrontational interviews with representatives from greedy for-profit health insurance companies results from the possibility that nobody wants to end up in Moore's acerbic crosshairs, then the final outcome benefits from it," writes Eric Kohn in the New York Press. "In moving away from the dirty arena of polemics, Sicko accomplishes something Moore has sought for quite some time: coherence."

"If, as he seems to think, Americans are too consumed by their personal problems to find solidarity with their neighbors, then Michael Moore is as American as they come." Sam Adams explains in the Philadelphia City Paper.

"Where Roger Smith, Charlton Heston, and George Bush lined up for target practice, American citizens have to stand in the bulls eye for this one," writes SF360's Susan Gerhard. "Why - Moore asks - aren't we demanding our basic human rights, to be cared for, and to care for others, the way citizens of other civilized countries do? It's a bold move, and one that draws us back to the rest of the director's oeuvre. I would argue that all Moore's essays - in spite of the populist trappings we love to hate on (their spoofy soundtracks and glorious cheap shot jokes) - are elegant polemics that take us, as a culture, somewhere new."

Mel Yiasemide, blogging for the LA Weekly, catches Moore's appearance at the Directors Guild Theatre.

For the Pasadena Weekly, Carl Kozlowski reports on a most unusual Hollywood premiere:

In one of the more surreal movie events ever to hit Los Angeles, Moore arranged for a full-sized movie screen to be set up on a Skid Row street in back of the Union Rescue Mission and unspooled [Sicko] before a raucously appreciative audience of hundreds of homeless people, complete with popcorn and Pepsis.

[...]

[T]he chance to sit among the poorest of the poor as they watched a famous man actually show up and advocate for their needs was a powerful experience.

As Moore strode from behind the screen toward the crowd in his trademark baseball cap and sneakers, dozens of people in the audience leapt to their feet spontaneously, pumping their fists in the air and screaming his name while others ran toward him to shake his hand or attempt to hug him.

It was clear that this was no mere publicity stunt. The only press around was a cable movie channel and a crew from Noticias television, leaving the Pasadena Weekly with a citywide exclusive interview with Moore, thanks largely to the fact that that same night Moore abruptly called off the next day's scheduled press events in Beverly Hills in favor of participating in a health care reform rally at Los Angeles City Hall.

Updates, 6/29: "There are fewer jokes this time around, and Moore makes a point of not even appearing on-screen for a good 40 minutes, putting more emphasis on his arguments and less on his comic persona," writes Jonathan Rosenbaum in the Chicago Reader. "It's an honorable tactic and the arguments are strong. But when he finally turns up in the flesh, there's something even more rancid than usual about the way he plays dumb."

"Moore's entire post-Roger & Me career can be understood as a multimedia attempt to undo Reagan's great achievement: persuading blue-collar factory workers and other members of the working class to embrace his heady brew of jingoism, anticommunism, contempt for government and admiration for the virtues of unfettered capitalism," writes Christopher Hayes in the Nation. Hayes recalls a piece Moore wrote for the Nation in 1997, "Is the Left Nuts? (Or Is It Me?)," in which he asked:

"Who is the Nation readership? Is it my brother-in-law, Tony, back in Flint, who last night was installing furnace ducts until 9 o'clock?"

It is Tony the furnace-installer who haunts Moore's work like a specter, and for whom the rotund and slovenly Moore acts as a kind of aw-shucks proxy. But the central paradox of his career is that his success in reaching the Tonys of the world is spotty at best. Though he's always communicated his politics in a comedic, accessible, populist vocabulary, his public image is that of an ideologue, a lighting rod, a polarizing figure: more Barry Goldwater than Ronald Reagan.

In what may be a tacit acknowledgment of this unfortunate fact, Sicko is different from Moore's last two efforts. Not just because of an absence of gimmicky gotcha moments, or a reduction in screen time for Moore himself, but because its topic isn't fundamentally polarizing in the way his previous works were. There's a whole lot of Americans who love their guns, and in 2004 there were a lot of Americans who loved their President, but it's pretty hard to find anyone who loves their health insurance company.

"Sicko will scare people, and it probably should," writes Mick LaSalle in the San Francisco Chronicle.

"In one of the movie's best segments, insurance-industry insiders frankly admit that their profession is rapacious," notes Slate's Dana Stevens. "A former medical director for an HMO, testifying before Congress, delivers a scathing rebuke both of the insurance industry and of her own role in denying patients care. Another whistle-blower describes the industry's tactics with stark clarity: 'You're not slipping through the cracks. Somebody made that crack and swept you toward it.'" Ultimately, "Sicko is less a documentary than a clearinghouse of rage."

"It's likely his most important, most impressive, most provocative film, and it's different from his others in significant ways," writes Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I think we can agree on two things: The American health-care system is busted and Michael Moore is not the guy to fix it," declares the Washington Post's Stephen Hunter. "His Sicko, an investigation and indictment of that system, which is choking on paperwork, greed, bad policy and countervailing goals, turns out to be a fuzzy, toothless collection of anecdotes, a few stunts and a bromide-rich conclusion."

"He interviews privileged American expatriates in a Paris bistro, but where are all the immigrants' children hanging out in the banlieues?" wonders the Stranger's Annie Wagner. "I'm predisposed to admire single-payer systems, but this kind of fawning - that doesn't even have the courage to examine a system's challenges, much less address its critics - is embarrassing."

"Here's an issue that transcends politics and speaks to basic human need and collective responsibility; perhaps we need Moore's cudgel to make the case bluntly," suggests Scott Tobias at the AV Club.

"For all its flaws, it's about something far more profound than who's paying for Aunt Ruth's gallbladder operation," writes Bilge Ebiri at Nerve.

"Many of us who are exceedingly fond of the Constitution must surely admit that its checks and balances were not sufficient to prevent our wholesale takeover by thieves, liars, and cheats," writes Andy Klein in the LA CityBeat. That said, "If you expect Moore's films to adhere to the level of fact and proof of, say, daily journalism (at least, daily journalism as it's supposed to be practiced), you're going to be in a constant state of outrage."

Online viewing tip. Eric Bates talks with Moore for Rolling Stone.

Updates, 7/1: "Google's 'Health Advertising Team' is trying to sell the health industry on buying ads to be shown opposite searches for Sicko," reports Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing. "The idea is to counter Michael Moore's amazing, enraging, must-see indictment of the health industry's grip on American society by running ads over search results for Sicko."

AJ Schnack gathers several answers to the question, "What's the Long-term Prognosis for Sicko?"

"Moore's films usually make conservatives angry," writes Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times. "This one is likely to strike home with anyone, left or right, who has had serious illness in the family. Conservative governments in Canada, England and France all support universal health care; the United States is the only developed nation without it."

Michael Joshua Brown recalls Moore's television shows, TV Nation and The Awful Truth: "Quasi-journalistic spoofs of primetime news programs with the aim of political satire, both were actually quite good. They were also too far ahead of their time, forerunners of The Daily Show." But: "There's something embarrassing about Moore's movies when viewed in a theater, like viewing a puffy, sleep-deprived face under bright lights. Flaws become magnified and horribly exposed: The stunts feel cheap, the montage sequences seem simplistic and Moore becomes an insufferable showboat.... Sicko is a strange beast of a documentary, at once lacking the intelligence to fully engage its subject while also lacking the imagination to find a creative populist language to frame its argument."

"If there's a 'Big Brother' out there, it's got to be the connection between US government and our nation's shamelessly backwards health care system," writes Scott Weinberg at Cinematical. "And frankly I'm pretty thrilled to see that someone's taking these mega-corporations to task for their money-grubbing and astonishingly callous ways."

Updates, 7/2: "[O]ne significant victim of America's market-based health-care system is left out: market capitalism itself." Timothy Noah clarifies his point.

Also in Slate: "Moore is right in his indictment of the American health-care system but overhasty in his readiness to blow it up," argues Austan Goolsbee, economics advisor to Barack Obama.

Gabriel Shanks: "The Best Film Of The Year (Well, So Far)."

Bob Westal agrees with David Edelstein ("Michael Moore is a polarizing figure, by which I mean he polarizes me"). Even so, as he sees it, a few conservative critics are firing blanks. He fires back.

Update, 7/3: Sicko's doing pretty well at the box office, notes AJ Schnack. And he collects commentary, too.

Updates, 7/4: "Didn't [Moore] get the memo that its some sort of scandal for progressives to actually make money while championing their cause?" asks David Sirota at Alternet. But seriously, he adds, "we need as many people as possible pioneering ways to do good for the progressive movement in an economically viable way, and we need as many people aggressively promoting their work for the progressive movement in a media environment decidedly tilted against us."

Online viewing tip. Moore on Larry King Live.

Patrick Goldstein profiles Moore for the LAT.

"Outside the restroom doors... the theater was in chaos. The entire Sicko audience had somehow formed an impromptu town hall meeting in front of the ladies room. I've never seen anything like it. This is Texas goddammit, not France or some liberal college campus." At Boing Boing, Cory Doctorow passes along Josh Tyler's great story at Cinema Blend. A must-read; it's short, you've got time.

Ray Pride reports on a rally for healthcare reform in Chicago featuring appearances by Moore and Studs Terkel: "The scene is readily caricatured, but by 5:30, the area teems, and the frail yet resolute Terkel is as inspiring as the pungent, impassioned polemic from medical professionals about how a single-payer system might cut greed from the medical industry and how Sicko could be activist equal to Uncle Tom's Cabin." The entry's accompanied by many fine pix.

Update, 7/5: "The film is unashamedly one-sided, superficial, overstated and occasionally suspect in its details," writes Philip M Boffey on the NYT's editorial page. "But on the big picture - the failure to ensure that everyone who needs medical care gets it - Mr Moore is right."

Posted by dwhudson at June 25, 2007 6:47 AM