Fast, Cheap & Out of Control

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Audience Member Lessons in meaning making Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 04/19/25 Full Review S R 1001 movies to see before you die (1997, 2005). A bizarre movie to say the least. Morris' work is fascinating and informative, however I don't plan on seeing this again despite its unique narrative. Saw on tubi. Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 01/30/24 Full Review Thomas M The best documentary movie ever made! Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 11/25/22 Full Review William L Errol Morris has a distinctive and often effective editing style, minimizing the narration to the barest necessary context and supporting his interview subjects with interesting intercut imagery; at present, he has four films on the all-time 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, a major accomplishment. The difference between Fast, Cheap & Out of Control and some of those other films is that the former lacks a consistently compelling and unified subject, relying more on theme; it's a documentary of four initially unrelated individuals chronicling their passions (connected loosely around an animal theme), trying to rely on a combination of their eccentricities and particular enthusiasm for their area of study to carry the day, before stitching them together. Maybe it's the decades of network television post-2000 detailing subjects of such increasingly bizarre nature, like people that compulsively eat packing tape or whatever, that sort of takes the exotic nature away from a focus such as a lifelong lion tamer or hedge trimmer. While I was initially completely uninterested in the strange pastiche that Morris was creating, the film does develop with time, allowing its four subjects to demonstrate their understanding of their professions before gradually shifting to their slow realization of the fleeting nature of their work and existence (that doesn't take away from their value or intensity), but it's really a matter of personal preference whether this slow-burn, context-heavy thematic development is your particular cup of tea. There's nothing objectively bad about the film and it carries many of the Morris production flairs, but it doesn't bring the same weight that some of the director's more prominent works (particularly those that rely heavily on social interaction and injustices) do either. Seeing that the title didn't use the Oxford comma was a sour note to start the film. (3/5) Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 09/05/21 Full Review Audience Member My only problem with this movie was that it wasn't longer. I wanted to spend hours on end with these people. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 01/14/23 Full Review Audience Member Juxtaposing with the mise en scène of a circus, Errol Morris' idiosyncratic documentary captivates with intertwining intriguing interviews with a lion tamer, a hairless mole-rats expert, a topiarist and a robotics designer of bug-like robots on their idées fixes that have nothing and everything in common. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 01/22/23 Full Review Read all reviews

Fast, Cheap & Out of Control

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