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REVIEW: Capitalism: A Love Story

Michael Moore and company in front of the New York Stock Exchange during the making of 'Capitalism: A Love Story.'

By Michael Esposito / Pioneer Times

Michael Moore’s new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story is a rare treasure. It will make you laugh, cry, and leave the theater feeling something. Movies nowadays rarely make you do one of those three. It’s Moore’s best movie, by far.

In the weeks leading up to the movie’s release, Moore talked about how he wanted to make a movie that would put himself out of business. When the opening credits rolled, I thought to myself “I can’t believe he’s going to get away with this!”

The opening credits show security footage of banks being robbed. A few minutes later we are shown a family that’s filming their house getting foreclosed on. The town sheriff and police officers break the back door and evict the family inside. Then he shows how people capitalize on foreclosed houses. It’s simple, “vultures” come in and buy the house at a steep discount and flip the property for a hefty profit. The bank gets its money, someone gets a cheap house, and a family is on the street. This is capitalism.

Moore takes aim at Ronald Reagan, mortgage companies like Goldman Sachs and his old standby, George W. Bush. Moore brings us to places like Pennsylvania, where a privately owned juvenile prison was used to milk taxpayer dollars and makes a mockery of the judicial system by extending sentences without the knowledge of the child inmates it was imprisoning. Moore shows us how companies could make money off their dead employees by taking life insurance policies out on them without their knowledge. He interviews airline pilots that make a measly $20,000 a year. He calls for a citizen’s arrest for the board of directors of AIG and wraps “crime scene” tape around buildings on Wall Street. Hell, he even offers up a practical solution to all of this.

Capitalism is a “game-changer” just like Sicko was. It will blow your mind and illicit the type of reactions one might get at a scary movie. Michael Moore, plain and simple, made the best American documentary film EVER. Go see it, like right now.