Cubussoli Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Curapedi I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Haven Kaycee It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

Geoffrey M. Young The first half hour of the film is wasted on a persistent urban legend - that backyard inventors developed a 100-mile-per-gallon carburetor 50 years ago that was bought up and suppressed by the multinational oil companies. If such an invention really worked, the auto industry would have developed and commercialized it to increase the market appeal of their vehicles and reduce tailpipe pollution. There would have been no way the oil industry could have prevented it. Conclusion: the 100-mpg carburetor (installed on a heavy old clunker of a vehicle) is a hoax. More believable documentation than the reminiscences and speculations of some old tinkerers is absent from the film because such documentation - independent successful test results, substantive assessments by real experts on engine efficiency, etc. - does not exist.From that inauspicious beginning, the film goes on to prove that the oil industry is ruthless, profit-maximizing, and indifferent to the interests of consumers. All granted. The same is true of huge corporations in general. Belaboring the point is simply boring. The lengthy scenes of Congressional hearings were predictable, uninformative, irrelevant, and tedious.The worst fault of the film is that its main thrust is untrue: that solving America's oil addiction is mainly a matter of overcoming political opposition and will be relatively cheap and easy once we get the evil oil corporations under control. The film omitted the critical fact that for biofuels to replace fossil petroleum would require all of the arable land in the US and more. We would have to shift our agricultural economy entirely from food to fuel, and even that wouldn't come close to doing the job. Hydrogen was given a fleeting mention, but the film omitted the fact that producing H2 requires a large amount of energy. Germany did not use hydrogen in vehicles in WW2, as one non-expert spokesperson said in the film; it used liquid fuels synthesized from coal at great economic and environmental cost. It would have been easy for the filmmakers to check this fact and omit the hydrogen enthusiast's misstatement from the film, but they didn't bother to do so. There is a solid reason fossil petroleum has dominated our transportation economy for a century. It is cheap, energy-dense, transportable, and convenient. When it runs out, there will be massive economic dislocation and worsening international conflicts. Worldwide energy use will have to decline precipitously, and fanciful carburetors installed in SUVs will not comprise any part of the solution.Do not waste your time watching this film; "The End of Suburbia" is much more informative and scientifically well-documented.

socialistpete The only good thing about this movie is that it draws attention to our energy crisis. While watching the movie I was enraged by the claims the film made about big oil companies hiding the fact that we could get hundreds of miles per gallon of gas. After it was over I did a little research on these claims. It is easy to find out that they are all untrue.Ogle debunked: I did not write the following but it wont let me post the link. "Is it really possible to get 100 miles per gallon? Absolutely; it just depends on what case you're evaluating. Did Tom Ogle achieve this on a 351 cubic inch Ford? How can it be proved, other than by skeptical claims that do not have concrete explanations? Considering we live on earth, the basic laws of physics are all we need to analyze and prove (or disprove) such a claim. These laws are essentially models of what occurs on our planet. For example, Force = Mass * Acceleration. This equation can be used to model how much force is required to accelerate a given mass. So, what are the laws concerning Ogle's scenario? Force = Mass * Acceleration is one of them - we're trying to accelerate a car to a certain speed for a certain time. Over the course of that time, friction is one of the resistive forces that impedes motion of the car. Gravity also impedes motion of the car. Without resistive forces, one could simply get the car up to a desired speed and it would continue at that speed until a resistive force acted on it. But as we all know, that doesn't happen on earth because there are numerous resistive forces. So we know there has to be a maximum mile per gallon amount that is achievable, since these resistive forces exist. Is 100 miles per gallon a plausible claim for a heavy Ford? To determine this, we need to know a few things: what kind of resistive forces is the vehicle trying to overcome while making its trip (the trip in which we are measuring its gas mileage), what kind of energy must the car exert to overcome these resistive forces, and how much gasoline is required to create that energy? For the first two parts of our analysis, the resistive forces the vehicle must overcome and the energy the car must exert should not be altered from any other vehicle. In other words, for our model to make sense in real world driving, the forces that resist Ogle's Ford and the energy that the Ford must exert to drive in regular road conditions are exactly the same for a Ford that does not have the Ogle system attached to it. Now, the energy part of the analysis is where Ogle made his supposed achievement. The energy equation is quite simple. Energy is composed of 3 parts (in simplified physics - that is, no nuclear power): Kinetic Energy, Potential Energy, and Internal Energy. Kinetic Energy is energy that results from a moving mass. Kinetic and potential energy are unimportant in this analysis and can be assumed to be zero. Internal energy is what is important in our analysis because it describes the amount of energy that a chemical reaction can produce (in our case, the reaction of burning gasoline). Gasoline has a specific amount of internal energy that is released when it is burned. There is a maximum achievable energy. For Olge's system to work, it must get more energy out of the gasoline than a normal car does. His system must come closer to the maximum achievable energy that exists in a specific amount of gasoline. The problem is that the maximum amount of energy in gasoline is not much higher than what an average car already achieves. Simply put, there is not enough 'extra' energy in the gasoline to be gained by burning it more completely, and there isn't enough unburned gasoline that goes through a car's engine to create a significant amount of extra energy. All modern car systems already have exhaust gas recirculation systems that recycle most of the exhaust fumes that still have small amounts of gasoline in them, and this is mainly for emissions reasons. Little gas mileage gains are seen in a properly maintained vehicle. To sum it up, Ogle did not design a device that made a Ford get excellent gas mileage while keeping the driving conditions the same. He would have either had to find ways to reduce the resistive forces (such as lowering the weight of the car) or he simply had an alternate fuel source hidden on his vehicle. Gasoline only has so much energy to give. Our cars already capture almost all of it. There aren't any significant gains to be made, regardless of how 'optimized' the system is. Significant losses don't occur from improper burning of gasoline, but rather from the resistive forces that exist in an engine and throughout a vehicle."

prberg2 This documentary brings up some interesting issues, and makes some good points, but seems to be poorly done. I agree with a lot of the ideas in the movie, but I wish they had more facts and show where they got their information. Also they don't mention other alternate forms of energy. The filmmakers focus too much on conspiracy theories and bio-diesel (which is still pretty dirty). I feel like they did not do enough research when they made this movie. The idea that we use too much gasoline is true. I also agree that there are great alternatives to old gasoline cars, but this movie just doesn't make a great case for those issues. I think they could have spent some more time supporting their issues and making the movie a higher quality.I had high hopes and I just feel disappointed. I liked "Who Killed the electric car better"

upadhyaykapil The documentary raises valid concerns. The presentation seemed inspired by a Michael Moore style, and certainly it does not live up to that: namely use of clips from other movies to convey a similar situation. Nevertheless, it brings about issues often missed in the debate over Peak Oil. The most interesting part was the history of Standard Oil, specifically the fact that the actual dissolution of the company brought them more profits! Also, one gets real sense of problems when one sees reactions from ordinary people. Watch if you ever had a concern for gasoline prices.