I went to see Michael Moore’s latest documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 last night at the Cobble Hill cinema in Brooklyn, and it pretty much lived up to my (fairly high) expectations. No real surprises, since anyone who’s followed the whole post 9-11 debacle at all will already know how corrupt, dishonest and greedy the current administration are, but it was nice to see that Moore has matured somewhat as a filmmaker since Bowling for Columbine; Moore himself is less evident as a character in this movie (a good thing, since he can be quite irritating in larger doses), and he sometimes foregoes the frenetic MTV-style editing so beloved by the ADD generation to give real people time to tell their stories properly. And as with Bowling for Columbine, he manages to take the audience smoothly from humour and laughter to sadness and outrage without really noticing the starkness of the contrast.

There’s some pretty strong footage from Iraq in the film; it won’t shock you if you’ve ever checked out the Al Jazeera website, but if your perception of the war in Iraq comes solely from American network news channels, you may be shocked by some of the imagery.

The film was well-received in trendy liberal Cobble Hill, with a smattering of applause at the end. However, it’s always easy to preach to the converted — it’ll be very interesting to see how it’s received in Middle America…