Previous

Contents

Next

Conspiracy Movie Reviews for the week of Feb 14, 2010
by Roy L. Fox
royfox@anonmail.de

Attribute to The Libertarian Enterprise

Zeitgeist Addendum Time 1:59
This is the eagerly awaited sequel to Zeitgeist, which was reviewed earlier here. It is a slick and professional production like its predecessor. But instead of building on the earlier film, Zeitgeist Addendum just leads the viewer out of one false paradigm and into another. Part I begins with another powerful segment on the fraudulent Federal Reserve System. While stumbling through a few factual errors, the message is still very powerful. In Part II, "Economic Hit Man" John Perkins discusses his former role in conducting economic warfare against many third world nations. If a country's leaders aren't corruptible, they are taken out. If that doesn't succeed, then the US military is called in under false pretexts as happened in Iraq. Perkins delivers his story masterfully and doesn't push all the Socialist baggage one finds in his books.

Part III is where the film goes horribly wrong. The main feature is a discussion of the "Venus Project", a utopian Marxist wet dream where money and business are abolished and presumably a governing body styled after Plato's Republic would benevolently distribute resources and technology to bring about a Star Trek^™ style heaven on earth. "Social engineers" such as Jacque Fresco display their profound ignorance of human nature and true free market economic theory, which they confuse with the mercantilist economic system we are saddled with today. Although Fresco is perceptive enough to notice that America is close to a fascist system, he clearly doesn't understand that a free market determined price is the only fair and equitable way for human beings to assess relative value and allocate resources. Left unsaid in the film is just how the enlightened and anointed few will make those economic decisions for the benefit of the masses.

One might suggest these dream weavers read Ludwig von Mises Human Action. But people such as these are change agents. They do not deal in facts, but in manipulating people through emotion. They hide their radical left statist beliefs behind the clever euphemism "Progressive". They are the true vanguard of the elite that they pretend to be against. They present us with the false choice of a New World Order built around the fascist American empire model or the socialist European model centered around the UN. Never discussed is the third option of a truly free human society, as envisioned in many of the science fiction novels of L. Neil Smith. The film attacks corporations and the monetary system as the root of the problem, but these are in reality the rotten appendages of the Frankenstein monster we call government. Our only true hope of escaping this modern system of slavery is if humanity ever recognizes the immorality of bestowing a legal monopoly on the initiation of force to a chosen few. The Venus Project does not solve this fundamental error in the human condition.

Part IV is mostly about the need to change paradigms. Some of the controversial discussion of religion from the first film is revisited in this part, but here the film goes a step further and promotes New Age beliefs as a substitute. The conclusion offers several solutions to the present system. Most of the ideas are pretty reasonable, with the exception of more promotion for their utopian Venus Project and a "Zeitgeist Movement".

How does one rate a film like this? There is so much good information, and yet it is used as bait to lure viewers into supporting yet another system of top down social management. True freedom will be found in a society organized horizontally, not vertically. While excerpts from the film can be very effective tools to educate people, the general message of the film is harmful to the cause of freedom. It elevates technology to a god-like status that, once released from a monetary system, will magically provide for all of society's physical needs. It resorts to thoroughly discredited leftist canards to reach its flawed conclusions. To wit, the so-called Venus Project sounds like a modern repackaging of the old communist mantra: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." This film is a bitter disappointment, and only the marvelous first half of the film saves it from a "one star" rating.
Rating:**

The Calling Time 1:06
The Calling and The Awakening are two recent films that originate from the website www.thecrowhouse.com. My version of the DVD made available from a duplication service includes both films. The Calling is essentially a minor reworking of Max Igan's earlier film The Big Picture, stripped of the distracting segment on Planet X. The film attempts to cover all the key issues of the Global Conspiracy and pack as much information as possible into a short time frame. Pictures are displayed in rapid fire style and also superimposed with other photos. There are several sections where images flash by without any explanation of their meaning. Those without the background knowledge on all the issues may find sections of the film unintelligible.

Having said that, the production quality and soundtrack are top-notch. It probably puts the pieces of the puzzle together as well as any film out there. There are summaries of the Illuminati power structure and their history, the CIA, the banking system, and the the false War on Terror. The sections on Codex Alimentarius and Mind Control are superb. The concluding segment is the only entirely new material, but I found it somewhat trite. It was not as compelling as the original summary section of The Big Picture, but that is partly because it was apparently written as a bridge to his follow-up film The Awakening. My inner cynic found the folksy musical ending anti-climatic and agonizing to sit through. My advice is to turn off the DVD player five minutes before the end and you have a great film.
Rating:****

The Awakening Time 1:05
Why is it that we continue to see great films that are followed up by films that head down rabbit holes? The Awakening is a wild journey into the realm of metaphysics and ontology interspersed with references to our present dystopic reality. Max Igan has clearly spent a lifetime exploring the outer limits of science, religion, space and time. He believes we are on the brink of a vast evolution in consciousness, one that the elites are trying to control and suppress through fear based mind control. The film posits that we are all manifestations of energy and are ultimately part of a collective consciousness. Igan's prescription to defeat the Global Conspiracy is Ghandi-like passive resistance and an understanding of ancient traditions and beliefs that have been passed down through the ages, such as the teachings of Native American tribal shamans.

The film is visually spectacular, with sparkling computer graphics, abstract projections, avant garde film techniques and the occasional naughty bit thrown in for grins. A few of the graphics such as the electric yoga figure get repetitious, other graphics remind you of the scenes in Kubrick's 2001 A Space Odyssey, when Bowman peers into the monolith near the end of the film. Peppered throughout are Dees' political illustrations, many of which are featured prominently on the website www.rense.com. They all center on various aspects of the elite's attack on humanity with his trademark grim humor.

Quite fascinating are the discussions on possible advanced ancient civilizations and the theories regarding energy channeling in pyramids and other geometric structures built many millennia ago. The druidic origins of the meaning of the word "Hollywood" is a real eye-opener. There is a great deal to contemplate in this film. But the purpose of these movie reviews is to identify films that clearly identify our political and economic problems and deal in conventional solutions that are based in the physical reality most of us are familiar with. There are undoubtedly spiritual aspects to this battle for freedom. This simple minded old curmudgeon will leave those issues for greater minds to contemplate. The Awakening is an entertaining and potentially enlightening film, but I can't enthusiastically recommend it as a film to awaken your relatives, friends and neighbors.
Rating:***

Help Support TLE by patronizing our advertisers and affiliates.
We cheerfully accept donations!