Audience Member
This is a really great movie set in a really great town! AHHHHH! PHILOMATH IS FAMOUS! THIS IS SOOOOO COOL! The plot's eh, the acting's not so good, but the setting, oh wow, that was amazing. Best setting I've ever seen. Honestly, the setting puts it on level with movies like Chariots of Fire and It's a Wonderful Life. The theme of conservatives vs. evil liberal great too. This movie draws attention to the important issue of liberal bias in schools while being set in the best town ever. 10/10 I would definitely watch it and completely recommend that you do too.
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
02/23/23
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Audience Member
As an Oregonian and avid hiker, logging should never be allowed on our public lands.
Rated 0.5/5 Stars •
Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars
01/29/23
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Audience Member
A remarkable movie showing how stubborn pride plus personal resentment can tear a community apart. Peter Richardson followed this with another even more remarkable documentary, "How to Die in Oregon". Whatever he turns his attention to next, I'll be there to see the result.
Rated 4.5/5 Stars •
Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars
01/12/23
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Audience Member
A remarkable movie showing how stubborn pride plus personal resentment can tear a community apart.
Rated 4.5/5 Stars •
Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars
02/08/23
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Audience Member
[b]Loggers vs. School[/b]
Documentaries on the whole, politically tend to lean towards the left. [url="http://www.clearcutmovie.com/"][i][color=#0000ff]Clear Cut: The Story of Philomath Oregon[/color][/i][/url] walks the straightest line down the middle, that this reviewer has ever seen. Filmmaker Peter Richardson, gives each side of this heated argument their fair share of screen time; and doesn't input much, if any, of his own opinions on the controversy. The film is basically the story of present-day America, only it's focused on a small town in central Oregon. On one side you have the conservative loggers, on the other, the liberal school administrators. The fight is over the children and the future of our country.
At the beginning of the film we meet Steve Lowther; the owner of a fairly big logging company in Philomath, Oregon. He seems like a nice-enough-guy, a redneck to be sure, but his laugh is contagious. He and his two brothers (who the film never introduces) run the very unique Clemens Foundation. Their uncle Rex, a logging barren, and his wife, who never had any children of their own, loved kids so much that they set up this foundation to give away a full scholarship to every single student who graduates from Philomath High School. Wow. That's an amazing deal, it doesn't matter who you are or what your grades may be, if you're from this town you'll get a free ride. It might just be reason enough to move there.
[center][img]http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/truth/images/clear.jpg[/img]
[size=1]Steve Lowther[/size] [/center]
And that's exactly what's happening, this once small logging town is quickly growing. Not necessarily because of the scholarship offer, but because that is what's happening around the country. People are deciding to get out of the city and move to small towns just like this one. Philomath offers that small town feel, with some big city type jobs in close by Corvallis: at Hewlett Packard and the Oregon State University. And these big city folk are bringing their liberal beliefs with them. One of them is Philomath School Superintendent, Dr. Terry Kneisler from Chicago.
According to Lowther, under Kneisler's watch, teachers are pushing environmentally friendly; i.e. anti-logging, ideas on these young minds, while also questioning the use of the school's mascot: the Warrior, an old Native-American statue. The last straw seems to come when the school allows a silent protest, by a select few students, for gay rights. Lowther believes it's his job to step in and change what he thinks is the quick spiraling-down of these kids values. He uses his foundation's clout to bully the school's administration, threatening them with the ultimatum of pulling the scholarship out from under the student's feet. Soon the whole town is involved in this political tug-of-war.
[img]http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/truth/images/clear2.jpg[/img]
[i]Clear Cut: The Story of Philomath Oregon[/i] is a very intriguing film. It balances the argument incredibly well. I think who you're rooting for simply comes down to which side of the fence you sit. You may agree with Lowther on his methods for trying to keep his town's youth on the straight and narrow, and how he compares the "corruption" of these kids to Nazi Germany. You may agree with Dr. Kneisler and his teacher's live and let live policy. Or you may find yourself in the middle like the school's board of directors who are trying to come up with a way to please everyone. The film gives the people involved the chance to tell their story; each gets equal time to state their argument. How it all plays out in the end; may seem like a fair answer to the problem or you might find yourself filled with anger.
If the film suffers at all, it is because of the many the talking heads. I got a bit tired of seeing the same people, in the same clothes, with the same backgrounds over and over again. But really there's not much else to show in this film; it is about these people and their problems with one another. The filmmakers try to break this up with some decent photography of the school and the area, and some interesting uses of typography, but it always comes back to those same few guys talking to the camera. Thankfully the film is well edited and never lingers too long on any one of these folks, keeping the story moving along at a good pace. Filmmaker Richardson, an actual Philomath graduate and a former recipient of the scholarship in question, does an excellent job with this hometown story he's decided to share with the world.
[b]On a personal note.[/b]
The reason I decided, out of the sixty or so documentaries that the festival offered, to see [i]Clear Cut[/i] was because for me, it is a local story. Philomath lies a few hours north of Ashland, and I drive through there quite often on the way to my wife's mother's house. (The best tacos I've ever had, outside of Mexico, are found in a small roadside stop in Philomath.) From visiting the film's [url="http://www.clearcutmovie.com/"][color=#0000ff]website[/color][/url] I learned that this was a very small production, with only a few filmmakers besides Richardson involved; that they shot on the same camera that I use, the Panasonic DVX100A. That despite these limitations, the film opened at Sundance, something to which all us small time filmmakers aspire. This Oregon made film gave me hope for my own.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
01/30/23
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