There would need to be serious fall failures for Flight 93 to gain wide Oscar noms.

Like you would know better the facts than the director who has been researching this for the past 2 years.

OK...

Please re-read my statement and apply some thought to your response...

These scores should go higher as these reviewers are on metacritic as positive, that is not yet on RT:

Dallas observer-100
LA Weekly-100
Newsweek-100
Time-100
Christian Science Monitor-100
Austin chronicle-89
LA Times-80
New York Times-70

All of those should be ripe tomatoes (Unless RT considers NYT a rotten)

Thats five COTC ripes right there..

Are those hundreds up there highest grade one can give?

If so, all of them think it's the one of the greatest movie ever?

Those are Metacritic scores, and they normally translate review of 4 out of 4 stars to a score of 100, so a score of 100 isn't as rare as we think it should be. Still, only the most critically acclaimed films each year get more than 10 100's at metacritics.

Update:

51 Reviews Total: 47 Fresh, 4 Rotten

Overall: 92%, 8/10 rating

COTC: 96%, 8.1/10 rating

PEACE, Mike.

http://filmcritic1963.typepad.com/revie ... d_93_.html

United 93

Pandora’s Press Release

Hollywood’s 9/11 Propaganda Docudrama Opens A New Box of Demons
By Cole Smithey

"United 93" is an odd film by any standard. Filmmaker Paul Greengrass (notable for his terrific 2002 docudrama "Bloody Sunday" about the 1972 British Army massacre of 27 civilians in Northern Ireland) wrote and directed what is a disturbingly prosaic piece of dramatic conjecture about one of the most puzzling events of 9/11. As a fictionalized docudrama, "United 93" punctures all suspension-of-disbelief because of the intrinsic absurdness that the mightiest military power on earth couldn’t scramble a dozen squads of F-16 fighter planes to perform aerial escorts for the "11 commercial airliners" believed to be hijacked on 9/11. Greengrass disguises art as journalism by matter-of-factly declaring that United 93 crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania at the "heroic" hands of its passengers in spite of the fact that the now famous "crash site" produced not one human corpse or even a single drop of blood.

A somber prologue introduces four young Muslim men praying inside their hotel room in the wee hours on the morning of September 11, 2001. The scene divulges a subtly racist undercurrent that plays out during the film with the thinly concealed hubris that America’s Neocons have benefited from under the guise of false patriotism since 9/11.

In the film’s production notes, Greengrass gives his mission statement: "There are lots of ways to find meaning in the events of 9/11. Television can convey events as they happen. A reporter can write history’s rough first draft. Historians can widen the time frame and give us context…Filmmakers have a part to play, too, and I believe that sometimes, if you look clearly and unflinchingly at a single event, you can find in its shape something much larger than the event itself—the DNA of our times."

"Sometimes" is the key word that absolves Greengrass of his self-imposed responsibility for mapping out any DNA of falsification or rampant government and corporate corruption that permeates every dust particle left behind in the wake of 9/11.


In practice, the filmmaker leverages the contrasting estimable talents of Ken Loach’s devote director of photography Barry Akroyd ("Raining Stones") with three editors—Clare Douglas ("Bloody Sunday"), Christopher Rouse ("The Bourne Supremacy"), and Richard Pearson ("Men In Black II"). His "clear and unflinching" gaze at the "single event" diverts in telling ways from recorded facts. Greengrass gets a performance windfall from Ben Sliney the actual FAA Operations Manager on duty at Herndon, Virginia on 9/11, playing himself with the hard-bitten charisma that comes from years of experience. However, Greengrass still can’t help nudging out dramatic truth when he has Sliney give the order for a "national ground stop" for all air traffic in the country, when, in fact, it was FAA head Jane Garvey who gave that order.

The cell phone/air phone calls are an area of tacit fiction that the auteur fudges with discreet but significant treatment. The actual recorded calls from the "passengers" of United 93 are suspiciously vague and calculated. The calls were never more than a couple of sentences long and share a symmetrical brand of abstract logic that rings false in the context of a hijacked aircraft.

Transcripts of the "calls" reads like answers from a sixth grader cheating on a test he doesn’t know the questions to.

"It’s bad news. I need you to be happy."

"Ted, what can I do? What can I tell the pilot?"

"We’ve been hijacked. He had an Islamic book."

"It’s getting very bad on the plane… the plane is making jerky movements."

These examples taken, from the 9/11 Commission’s Report as referenced in writer/director Dylan Avery’s persuasive documentary "9/11 Loose Change," are telling for their clipped structure and ridiculously short length. They don't convey any of the mile-a-minute patter that a panicked person would use to call for immediate help in a hijack situation.

Greengrass fudges the notable call in which a "passenger" introduces himself to his own mother using his first and last name. The director’s "clear" gaze doesn’t extend to quoting the "actual" air phone dialogue, perhaps because he couldn’t compensate for its inherent falseness. He does however include the caller asking his mother if she believes him when he tells her the plane has been hijacked.

Ultimately, "United 93" is a regurgitation of suspicious media-fueled speculation about events on an airplane that we know very little about. This is a movie that does more to discourage raising questions about what really happened to flight 93 than it does to encourage debate over the bastion of lies that have been fed to the American people.

It is an interesting footnote that United flight 93 was not scheduled to fly on 9/11, and that the plane (tail number N5IUA) was spotted by United Airline’s employee David Friedman on April 10, 2003 at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, and that the plane is listed as still valid with the FAA. Dylan Avery provided essential information used in this article in his documentary "9/11 Loose Change."

Rated R, 111 mins. (C-)

Men didnt land on the moon, There was a gunman on the grassy knowll.

Propaganda? I've read enough reviews by respected movie reviewers who actually work for credible news outlets, and few if any of them say there is propaganda with this movie.

This is the one single worst review I have ever read.

This is what the reviewer has on his wall:

Deepthroat: Mr. Mulder, why is it that people like yourself who believe in the existance of extra-terrestrial life on this planet are not dissuaded by all the evidence to the contrary?

Mulder: Because all the evidence to the contrary, isnt entirely dissuasive.

not the best 'film' review as the writer spends more time dismissing controversial events than actually rating the quality of the film itself.

i have no intentions of watching this film though.

Even more reviews not yet added to RT (from metacritic)

Wall Street Journal-100 (COTC)
Film Threat-100


Metacritic now at 25 reviews

13 100's

and this doesnt include Richard Roeper, and several others that will surely be 100's

Great point.

arsi said exactly what I had in mind. That review reminded me numerous reviews regarding Memoirs of a Geisha, where the reviewer spent half of the article telling us about Chinese/Japanese history instead of focusing on the film itself.

dont get me wrong though ... the points that the reviewer has made are the very reason why i have no intention of ever watchign this film. As far as I'm concerned, this is a tale of fiction (because neither me or anyone else really knows what went on there and the stuff that is considered 'confirmed' is somethign i look at with a skeptical eye ... also, i hate true stories based upon current events because its always a distortion and in this case, the director has no choice but to show all 40 people on the plane as heroes and not just that but the best of heroes ... understandable but whatever .. it pisses me off) ... so yea ... the review sucks cause there is no measure of quality in the movie. however, it does reaffirm my decision of not wanting to see this film at all.

So what that it is a tale of fiction? The movie never pretends to be a documentary and never says that its point of view is a right one. It is still "just a movie", not more.

like i said in my above post ... i'm not a fan of it and it pisses me off. its a personal opinion really. i'm not quantifying nor am i expecting others to feel that way even though a few seem to (like loyal)

It has never been "just a movie". Movies don't donate a portion of their ticket sales. And no one with a name or following would ever dare trashing a film that's sacred ground.

I'll be seeing it opening week, I think. I'm just too interested, plus the reviews make me have to see this film, since they've put aside all the worries I had (about it being exploitative, hollywoodized, or unfaithful to evidence of what happened that day, since they all say it is none of those). I'm impressed by the number of 100's at metacritic and so on.

PEACE, Mike.

It is "just a movie". As far as donating goes, it was just obvious that it'd happen. They would have been slammed if they didn't do that and would have been called heartless bastards. This is society. There are certain things that are expected from you and you fulfil them.

As for the critics not daring to trash it? So? What does a critic's perception of the film change on the film itself? No matter what a critic says, it will still remain the same film. A fictional film at that.

Actually, doing things like casting some of the the men that worked in the airport that day as themselves in the movie means United 93 never saw itself as being "just a movie."

I didn't like that review at all. I pretty much only liked the Salon one that acknowledged there wasn't technically anything wrong with it, he just left being completely dissueded. Slant was all over the place, and that donation thing is silly. Everyone bitched about Roll Bounce's 10% Katrina fund too. They pretty much condemn any movie if it doesn't go 100%, they're encouraging it to not do anything except for pocket its own earnings in the future.

But I did think the Slant's reviewer, unfortunate for everyone's quick negation of it, did bring up some interesting comments on casting unknowns and especially some of the actual control room workers from that day. Its something I read a bit about when Jackie Robinson was cast as himself in a drama of his life back in the 50s, and its a tool often employed to lend credence to a crafted storyline. United 93 isn't new in this regard. Tons of movies have done it of course. But it was still an interesting observation if one removes the good/bad (some reviewers might find this good, some others bad) value assigned to it.

This "just a movie" belongs to a very specific sub-genre: the docudrama...

Let's review my statement as it relates to Slither:

- Slither had high critical approval represented by it's 83% Fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes.

- Slither's high Rotten Tomatoes rating failed to predict a successful box office run ($7,795,145 so far).

- Slither's Rotten Tomatoes rating is not related to any current slug-like alien invasion of Earth (to the best of my knowledge).



Dr. Lecter, can you please clarify your question/comment...

...and I just heard that in the background sky, behind the clouds you can see God and his heavenly chorus of angels singing "God Bless America" -- the guy who told me, said there wasn't a dry eye in the house...