MonsterPerfect Good idea lost in the noise

Beystiman It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Livestonth I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Tyreece Hulme One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

joe-1661 Although this film is no masterpiece, Chomsky discusses topics everyone should be thinking about. Filmed just prior to the start of the Iraq war, he describes the mechanism of fear as a means of controlling the masses.His words are eerily prophetic; "When the fear runs out of Iraq, then it'll be Iran who becomes the imminent threat."Wow.Chomsky understands the ways of the world, Republican-style; create fear, disseminate fear, use fear for corporate growth, make fear the ultimate tool of ultimate ignorance. If it were made today, the content could be waved-off as trite, but these are words from 2003! Chomsky predicts results of events of actions of those days before the Iraq war, and we see those predictions become uncanny reality before our eyes ...sadly, because it reveals the ultimate truth: Americans are cattle.

groggo There are some poor production values in this documentary, but I'm a Chomsky devotee, so it didn't bother me that much.Chomsky is dazzling as usual, a man of effortless eloquence. Almost everything he says is interesting, well-researched and well-considered. Chomsky is very persuasive because he so often bases his arguments on government documents and news reports that are already in the public domain. He analyzes them and displays the blatant fallacies behind them. This is one of the principal reasons why he's deemed a 'dangerous' thinker who isn't welcome in the U.S. mainstream media. He USED to be welcome at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), but that once-great public broadcaster has been looted and neutered over the past 15 years or so. An annoying feature of the DVD extras was that questions from the audience were barely audible, and in some cases INaudible. What it creates are rather silly scenes: Chomsky staring at the camera for 30 seconds or so, listening to a question DVD viewers cannot hear. Then he responds, and we must wait for another 30 seconds before we can understand what question he is responding to.Still, it doesn't really matter that much. Chomsky can distill 20 years of reading and analysis into five minutes. His mind is brilliantly ordered, and his memory is prodigious.Chomsky comes across not as a pedant or a shrill master of dogma, but as a quiet voice of radical reason. He reminds me of everyone's favourite grandfather: a kindly, gentle, soft-spoken man who rarely needs to raise his voice. He just tells you what he knows, what he has learned, and you can use this as ammunition for rebellion against the state, or, conversely, you can do nothing. (This has been one of the criticisms levelled against Chomsky by the so-called 'hard' left: that he doesn't vigorously exhort, he merely explains and quietly tells you to resist. In other words, he's not 'explosive' enough.)He is still a very impressive and persuasive voice of reason. But he's now 80 years old (born in 1928). How much longer can he keep doing this stuff?

igm A documentarist, like any filmmaker, must convey a compelling story. Will Pascoe fails utterly in this effort, cobbling together uninspired snippets of Chomsky's wisdom from a visit to McMaster University in Hamilton. The footage is shot amateurishly and in video. Pascoe's only effort at cohering the fragments into a whole is by periodically throwing a vague title on the screen: "9-11," "Activism," "Truth."Lame.Compare this with documentaries like "The Corporation" or "The Fog of War" which create a narrative drawing material from interviews, stock footage, and filmed footage. In the end each delivers a poignant and insightful message deftly and intelligently.The only saving graces of the film are Chomsky's nonchalantly delivered upendings of historical dogma, and the fact that the running time is only 74 minutes.One of the more interesting passages was Chomsky's recounting of his experience with National Public Radio. He describes the conservative media as more accommodating to dissenting views, while NPR's liberal dogma strait-jackets its interviewees and dramatically limits its permitted messages. Yet another media outlet to be skeptical of.This documentary is for Noam Chomsky completists only.

jeunet97 This is a really interesting perspective on Noam Chomsky that I haven't seen before. Chomsky is one of the most out-spoken critics of the US and it's government and this film really showcases him in his element. The film is broken into chapters on various issues with Chomsky discussing the issues with students and other intellectuals. This I thought was a really interesting because I have never really seen Chomsky engaged in debate with other people. It's funny how he challenges people on their views and is patient enough to listen to others try and attack his in return. Even at his age, his mind is as sharp as a knife and you can see him formulating in his mind his rebuttal to others comments. And when he unleashes his response it's often to the point and accurate (and right). I read somewhere that "Rebel Without A Pause" is the title Bono from U2 gave Chomsky and it's very appropriate. Having not seen any one else with the encyclopedic knowledge of Chomsky, it's easy to see why his is one of the great minds of the 20th century. It's sad that more people don't hear his views these days as they are really on the mark. And with what looks like an Iraq war made on false pretenses (of which Chomsky already suggests in this film which was made BEFORE the war happened) you can see how he's still ahead of the game. This is a great film and if you can find it in a indy theatre or on tv you should check it out because you'll be learning a bit more about the world you live in in the process.