Sicko opens withfootage of a guy describing how he cut off two of his fingers with a table saw. Having recently cut off a few millimeters of my own flesh, this was not a very welcome sight. But overall Sicko was entertaining and thought-provoking, and instead of getting fed up with Michael Moore as I feared I might, I only got mildly frustrated with him.

    Sicko is about how dumb our excuse for a healthcare system in America is. Joe and I don't have insurance (luckily my finger-cutting episode was covered by my workplaces on-site accident insurance) and we'd really like to have it.

    Sicko proves that we should, but it offers no solutions how to go about it. Moore has his funny moments and his compassionate ones, but his filmmaking is (even if I agree with the points he makes) blatantly propogandist, especially with his use of emotion-tugging music.

    And he totally oversimplifies things. It's easy to do that in a documentary--show some footage, show some splashy statistics, play stirring string music, there you go. But I have a feeling a lot of footage on the cutting-room floor would reveal that Canada's national healthacre system isn't quite as dreamy as depicted, and that life in Fance isn't like Shangri-La for everyone (he only talks to American upper-class expats).

    Yesterday I was waiting for the bus, and a crazy-looking lady asked me if I knew where to get free perscriptions. She had an infected spider bite (I saw her bandage) and no money to fill the perscription that the free clinic gave her for painkillers and antibiotics. She tried to sell me her wedding ring. I gave her $5, a direct result of me having seen Sicko. I hope she spent it on antibiotics and not crack or hooch.

    Sicko made me angry. You leave the theater and think, "well, I guess it's up to us now." I'm all for Socialism, myself. Capitalism sucks. Personal freedoms are great and everything, but not when only a few select ultra-rich families of fat white asshole men can enjoy them.