BuzzFlash Reviews
"Sicko" DVD -
By Michael Moore
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Peter Travers
Rolling Stone
"This is essential viewing -- informative, corrosive, and even sometimes hilarious."
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Chicago Reader
Sicko, the professional provocateur's most accomplished and fervent film, is what the movie doc prescribes for temporary relief from the chronic headache that is the American health-care system.
Carrie Rickey
Philadelphia Inquirer
Sicko represents Moore's most mature work as a filmmaker.
Bruce Newman
San Jose Mercury News
I truly believe that the health care issue is one where we can find some common ground with those who may hold different opinions than us. After all, they're getting the shaft by the same insurance and pharmaceutical companies we are. And sooner or later, they're not going to take it any more, either.
Michael Moore
Includes 80 minutes of all-new material.
From Michael Moore's Website:
"The words "health care" and "comedy" aren't usually found in the same sentence, but in Academy Award winning filmmaker Michael Moore's new movie 'SiCKO,' they go together hand in (rubber) glove.
Opening with profiles of several ordinary Americans whose lives have been disrupted, shattered, and�in some cases�ended by health care catastrophe, the film makes clear that the crisis doesn't only affect the 47 million uninsured citizens�millions of others who dutifully pay their premiums often get strangled by bureaucratic red tape as well.
After detailing just how the system got into such a mess (the short answer: profits and Nixon), we are whisked around the world, visiting countries including Canada, Great Britain and France, where all citizens receive free medical benefits. Finally, Moore gathers a group of 9/11 heroes � rescue workers now suffering from debilitating illnesses who have been denied medical attention in the US. He takes them to a most unexpected place, and in addition to finally receiving care, they also engage in some unexpected diplomacy.
While Moore's 'SiCKO' follows the trailblazing path of previous hit films, the Oscar-winning BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE and all-time box-office documentary champ FAHRENHEIT 9/11, it is also something very different for Michael Moore. 'SiCKO' is a straight-from-the-heart portrait of the crazy and sometimes cruel U.S. health care system, told from the vantage of everyday people faced with extraordinary and bizarre challenges in their quest for basic health coverage.
In the tradition of Mark Twain or Will Rogers, 'SiCKO' uses humor to tell these compelling stories, leading the audience conclude that an alternative system is the only possible answer."
Roger Ebert Wrote:
"Moore sails to Cuba with three boatloads of sick people, some of them 9/11 volunteers who have been denied care for respiratory and other problems because they were -- well, volunteers. Unlike firemen and policemen, they had no business being there, I guess. One woman is on $1,000-a-month disability, and needs $240 a month for her inhaler medication. Moore's gimmick (he always has one, but this one is dramatic) is to take her to a Cuban hospital where she finds that her medication costs five cents in Cuba. At least that R&D money is helping Cubans.
Moore's original purpose in sailing south was to seek medical care for his passengers at the Guantanamo Bay prison base. He is turned away, of course, but not before observing that accused al-Qaeda terrorists get better (free) medical attention than 9/11 volunteers.
It's a different Michael Moore in "Sicko." He still wears the baseball cap, but he's onscreen less, not so cocky, not going for so many laughs. He simply tells one story after another about Americans who are sick, dying or dead because we have an undemocratic, profit-gouging health care system. Moore's films usually make conservatives angry. 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.
Yes, nitpickers can find fault with any attack on our system. There are four health care lobbyists for every congressman. But there's room for irony when the owner of an anti-Moore Web site can't afford to maintain it when his wife gets sick. And room for tears when a claims investigator for an insurance company tells Congress she knows she was her company's instrument for denying clients care they needed that might have saved their lives."
"But wait a minute. I saw the movie almost a year to the day after a cartoid artery burst after surgery and I came within a breath of death. I spent the next nine months in Northwestern Memorial Hospital, the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, and the Pritikin Longevity Center, and still require the daily care of a nurse. I mention this to indicate I am pretty deeply involved in the health care system. In each and every case, without exception, I have been cared for by doctors who are kind, patient, painstaking and expert, and by nurses who are skilled, wise and tireless. My insurance has covered a small fortune in claims. My wife and I have also paid large sums from our own savings.
So I have only one complaint, and it is this: Every American should be as fortunate as I have been. As Moore makes clear in his film, some 50 million Americans have no insurance and no way to get it."
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