mpp

The problem with this film is Foster's character: poorly cast and poorly written. For the film to work, the viewer needs some degree of empathy for Foster, despite the poor decisions, yet it provides none. The man is beyond selfish; he's a drug dealer, a thief, a child abuser, and not so hot at living off the land. I was rooting for him to be crushed by a tree within the first 10 mins of the film so that his daughter coukd be free of him.

While staying with friends I stumbled into the family room where this was on the screen. I honestly thought I was watching some low-budget Sci-Fi channel or WB TV series--low quality production, cheesy, formulaic, predictable, etc etc. But it kept going on and on and on, until I finally asked when this "show" ended. I do have to give one star to Shailene Woodley, who is a top-rate, though much underrated, actress, evidenced by her solid performance in "Divergent" despite awful writing and an even worse concept.

What a bad, bad documentary. Lot's of flaws, but 3 of the biggest: 1. A documentary meant to "shed light on an issue" of which most people are already aware, and which has been covered to death by the media, isn't very compelling. 2. The documentarian, if he isn't rock dumb, certainly comes across that way. He features himself in a lot of the film, but adds next to nothing. 3. Adding dramatic music to scenes with zero drama does not make them dramatic.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Painful. Nothing worse than a one-sided, sensationalized documentary...except when narrated by the most melodramatic voice ever. And while I am no fan of the power that big business and $ hold in the US, work product created while an employee of a company is pretty standard. The tradeoff is a comfortable salary and zero risk while losing the chance at big money should the IP become profitable. On the other side, companies are willing to eat the salaries of R&D employees whose research leads to little or no profit, with the idea that others' will generate enough profit to make up the loss and then some.