CheerupSilver Very Cool!!!

InspireGato Film Perfection

Lucia Ayala It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

btovene I have to admit I didn't read the book. However I don't really feel I had to as this screenplay was so sloppy in its attempt to create a story around the social commentary of the book, its characters seemed hollow, and plugged in, to fit an overarching theme that came out loud and clear - and much more loud, than clear.I have to admit I was disappointed in feeling like I was being force-fed a political commentary about illegal immigration, corporate corruption, and the lot. I always believed movies/stories were about carefully constructing an interesting tale, that is artfully created in a way that leaves you pondering the subject matter at its core. This big hot mess never came even remotely close to doing that.

Gordon-11 This film tells the stories of people who work in the fast food industry, including top management, store manager, cashier, and illegal workers in meat processing plants. "Fast Food Nation" isn't as interesting or funny as I thought it might be. The vast number of well known actors aren't really put to good use, as they mostly have very small roles. The stories they tell are not very interesting, with the exception of the migrant workers whose tough lives and harsh working conditions should evoke sympathy. The cashier's story is rather plain. It doesn't expose the horrors of the industry either, except in the final few minutes where they show what happens in an abattoir. If shock tactic is to be used, why leave it until the last few minutes? And slaughtering animals is not unique to the fast food industry. Hence, the augments against the fast food industry is weak and hardly convincing. "Super Size Me" does a way better job at alarming people while being entertaining. This film does neither. I frankly felt bored most of the time while watching "Fast Food Nation".

colour-me-kubrick Considering Linklater was at the helm of the affairs, it is fair to say this was a bit of a let down. The movie clearly has a very strong theme with enough facts and materials to drive home the point which it very well does for the best part."In California, the VP of Marketing of the Mickey's Fast Food Don Anderson is responsible for the hamburger "Big One", the number one in selling in Mickey's chain of fast food restaurants. When an independent research in the meat patties produced in Cody, Colorado, indicates the presence of cow manure, Don is sent to the facility to investigate possible irregularities in the meatpacking production plant and also the major supplier of kettle. Along his surveys, Don finds the truth about the process and how meat is contaminated. Meanwhile, a group of illegal Mexican immigrants arrive in Cody to work in the dirty jobs in the plant while a group of activists plot how to expose the terrible situation of the Mickey's industry." Therefore the film deals with subject of meat production from the whole range of different perspective from the retailers to the manufacturers of burgers to the meat producing agencies to the illegal immigrants who get employed and are exploited to the fullest and of course to the consumers who finally bear the burden. This broad spectrum helps to look beyond just the malpractices in the meat industry but a basic flaw in the modern mindset. The culture of "do what it takes" that has been instilled into the corporate house has made the everyone pay a big cost monetarily or otherwise, other than the elite who continue to grow bigger. Might is right as they say. "Fast" food in the film reflects not only the obsession and addiction to the quick food, but as a reference to culture which has been instilled in our system to produce the results, to earn the profits with any means necessary, moral or immoral, legal or illegal.The film is an "eye opener" and will make the audience more aware of the goings on in the meat industry. On the downside the screenplay gets a bit sluggish and could have been cut by at least 20 minutes. Still an important film for everyone to watch and form an opinion.

Robert J. Maxwell Judging from the title, I'd expected this to be something along the lines of a fable like "Supersize Me" or some documentary on The Learning Channel teaching us a lesson on hot dogs and french fries. But no. It's am ambitious drama about the illegal importation of Mexicans to work in a meat-processing plant to service a chain of burger joints called "Mickeys." There are multiple narratives. They cover the story of a marketing agent for Mickeys (Gregg Kinnear) who finds out more about how Mickey's burger patties are produced than he cares to know. Then there are the illegal Mexicans who include the magnetic Colombian actress Catalina Sandino Moreno from "Maria Full of Grace." Actually I got some of the Mexicans mixed up. Not Moreno or Luis Guzman, because they're familiar faces, but some of the other characters blend into one another, especially in the meat-packing plant where all of them wear the same uniforms and surgical masks. We get to know a little about some high school kids who are offended by the conditions the cattle live under, and by the fact that there excreta are dumped into ponds and eventually reach the river. There are relatively short scenes involving Kris Kristofferson and Bruce Willis.The movie is a polemic that demonstrates how money and the need to make as much of it as possible corrupts. "Everything's being taken over by machines," intones Kristofferson, an old curmudgeon who loves "the land." That's pretty much the point of the whole movie, as long as we can define "machine" broadly to include mechanisms made up of socially agreed-upon rules.I was generally sympathetic to the film's agenda but it might have been better if the script had stuck with one person and one narrative thread -- maybe Kinnear's. The script is guilty of pandering though. Mickey's Burgers corrupts, and absolute Mickey's Burgers corrupt absolutely. There's something hateful about everyone associated with Mickey's. The foreman bones all the good-looking young women. Even the guy working at the local outlet spits a ginder into one of the burgers before passing it on to the customer. (Cf., "Casino" in which the same thing was done.) And what, asks the film, can be done about it all? Nothing. The dice of the gods are loaded. The governor of Colorado received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Uniglobal Meat Packing, and the chief of the state's EPA is married to one of its executives. The high schoolers get a lecture from an experienced activist and they cut the wires surrounding the cattle pen. Alas, the cattle are too stupid to know they have been freed and they refuse to leave. That's one advantage cattle have over us. They don't suffer from ontological Angst. They don't ask themselves questions like, "What the hell am I doing, standing here up to my shakra points in my own manure?" They probably don't have any fear about their fates because they don't have the concept of "death". It comes as a surprise when one of them is beaned with an air gun, drained of blood, gutted, sawed up, slashed to pieces, and fed to happy families. The writers and director have the good taste to save this scene for the climax of the movie. I mean that sarcastically.Eating meat represents a low level of ecological efficiency. Instead of eating 100 calories worth of grass, we feed the grass to cattle, butcher them, and get 10 calories out of it. The rest of it goes to waste, in both senses of the word. Yet the movie is offensively preachy. Why must an important message be spelled out as if to a class of first graders, encased in lectures? Seeing the chunks of meat and fat being processed is enough to turn anyone into a strict vegetarian. The problem is that Homo sapiens is, and has always been, an omnivore. And the problem behind THAT problem is that there are too many Homo sapiens and their number is increasing exponentially. The more of us there are, the more pressure we must by necessity put on the natural and the economic environments. If things continue as they are, there won't be any Kris Kristofferson's boasting about protecting his land from machines. We'll all be chewed up and spit out like hamburger patties because people have to eat, don't they? The only nation on earth that seems to have this figured out is China. It doesn't take a computer to nail down the figures. An abacus will do.Something just occurred to me. Suppose you're a vegetarian restricted to a kosher diet? And in addition you were committed to organically grown food and averse to genetically engineered food, artificial additives, preservatives, and you avoided fats because they cause cancer, and salt because of concerns about blood pressure, and proteins because of the possibility of gout, and carbohydrates because they might lead to diabetes? That might ease the problem of overpopulation.