Best rated Michael Moore movies

Roger and me.
Photo: Taro Yamasaki / LIFE / Getty Images Collection

"One of the irritations of the mosquito bite on the left is to find your ideals represented in public by Michael Moore." vogue John Powers, the movie critic, about Moore's award-winning film Bowling for Columbineis all that is great and embarrassing about the famous divisive filmmaker. More often than not, Moore makes movies that speak to our personal political leanings – and yet, more often than not, we argue with them, lamenting easy jokes and cheap dummies that often substitute for incisive comments . And even in his best films, Moore's presence turns out to be a double-edged sword: all too often, he allows his own ego to influence creative decisions, putting himself above the stories he tells. Like Bill Maher, his toxic nonsense can be repulsive, even if you agree with every word.

But what remains Moore's saving grace is his great, messy sentimentality – his sincere belief in America as a nation in search of greatness. This belief can be very moving and it raises his weaker efforts while electrifying his most epic films. You can argue with his technique or lack of subtlety, but you can not argue. Michael Moore may be a fool, but he's our idiot.

In this perspective, the ranking of his ten films (including a feature film) can be a little scary. There are so many good intentions here – but also a lot of bum notes and failures. But let's be honest: his undisciplined and passionate works would be missed if he stopped making them. It may be an irritation, but we need his bulldozing spirit – if only because it is even more irritating to people than his just movies are aimed at.

Moore's third film and his second documentary are not at all an investigative film: it's more like a group touring film, except that the band is Michael Moore and the tour is conducted across the country to promote his book. Reduce this size. The film is as breathtaking as it sounds, with only a few highlights, mostly from Moore talking to the oppressed people he sees on his travels – but there are a lot of Moore's scenes complaining about all the people his book tour. In a nice piece of Roger and me symmetry, he ends up having an interview with a great CEO, Nike's Phil Knight, but Knight somehow dominates the interview and inadvertently asks you what would have happened if Moore had caught up with Roger Smith.

Moore is a filmmaker and expert who, since his beginnings, has needed a valuable opponent, be it Roger Smith, Donald Trump or his most famous career, George W. Bush. When he does not have one – or if he's just trying to hold Barack Obama, someone he admires otherwise, at the fire – he's a little adrift. The claim of this documentary is that every time the United States wants something from a country, they invade it, which leads to a series of overcrowded scenes where Moore travels to another country and praises him for what the United States does not have. It's far from a high concept – it takes a long time to explain, and even the title is clumsy – and Moore is kind of idling here. Do not worry: the real bad guy was coming.

A fiction film by Moore has a fairly obvious conjecture: an American president (Alan Alda, funny as always) who seeks an enemy with whom to go to war to increase his number of polls decides to invade … Canada. Madness ensues! The first half of the light-years is better than the second half; Moore knows how to set up his story more than he knows how to finish it. There is a fun scene in which several characters sing Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" without understanding what it means, and it's good to see John Candy (in his latest film), but this thing falls off completely. in splinters. end of his time of 90 minutes. It should not be surprising that Moore has never made another fiction film. A little astonishing, the cinematographer of this film was the great Haskell Wexler, the Oscar winner Flight over a cuckoo's nest and Bound for Glory.

As a general rule, with few exceptions, the less Michael Moore has a movie about Michael Moore, the better. So we are already behind the eight-ball with Moore's one-man show, filmed on the eve of the elections, imploring Americans to vote for Hillary Clinton against Donald Trump. As usual, you admire the cause of the execution, and with his long hair and his increasingly heavy behavior, he feels less like a man of the world than ever before. Nevertheless, he has become a relatively qualified interpreter and he is giving appropriate warnings about the upcoming Trump Storm with the families of the working class of Rust Belt. If only Moore could have more to listen to.

Liberated as a result of the financial crisis, Capitalism: a story of love is a jeremiad little targeted but properly angry against the structure of the company that led to the collapse. Moore sprays venom in all directions, from usual enemies like George W. Bush and his Republican allies to the entire political system and the way it is run by Banks and Big Money. He's right, and the film is convincing in Moore's usual way, but he's a little too close to the subject to do much more than just clench his fists. (The big court six years later, he would do a much better job.) He gets points for introducing Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders before either of them is a dominant figure. We would see them soon enough.

A heartbreaking documentary on Flint's water crisis was placed amidst this scattershot criticism of the 2016 elections to Donald Trump. Fahrenheit 11/9 is better when he finds Moore digging into the government's neglect that has paved the way for the poisoning of a Michigan community, and you can feel the wrath of the Oscar-winning filmmaker on what happened to his neighbors. In other words, it's the Moore we knew Roger and me – Reliable, restrained, propelled by his just fury. As for the rest of 11/9It's just like his other recent works, balancing good points with dopey appearances, telling you what you already know, and sometimes striking you between the eyes with the passion of his assault. 11/9 comes to a disappointing conclusion – perhaps the best America we dream of will never come true and is in fact already a lost cause – but the film is not really the life-giving and definitive portrait of life in Trumpland that defenders would have preferred

Moore's secret talent, when he departs from it, brings ordinary Americans to sit down and tell their stories in a simple and often devastating way. So, a whole film of frustrated and defeated Americans sharing their horror stories in the health field works extremely well, almost done; the stories are furious. Moore has some of his usual stuff, including a puzzling scene in which he uses a megaphone outside of Guantanamo Bay to demand that Americans get the care that prisoners receive (does he want them to get less? Or more?). And a scene where he pays the medical bills of the webmaster of a site that hates him feels particularly autonomous. But when this question focuses on the pain caused by the American health care system, it is hot. Especially when many of the same problems exist more than ten years later.

Moore won his Oscar for this study of the US fascination with firearms, a subject that has not lost its effectiveness over the next two decades. Bowling for Columbine does not provide many answers, but it does a good job in explaining the culture of fear and violence that allows such an obsession. Moore's lack of focus has often been his weak point as a filmmaker, but here everything he touches feels bound – there is something paramount in our desire for a rifle, woven into the national fabric and the documentarist wonders why we lost our heads. There are still jokes, but Columbine could be the moment when Moore consciously turned out of satire. After this film, anger and frustration would invade her sense of humor in the face of the nation's ills.

The most profitable fiction film of all time. One of the rare documentaries to have won the prestigious Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Fourteen years later, it is difficult to explain precisely what Fahrenheit 9/11 was at that time – a major artistic turning point for the fences of an important filmmaker taking on the most significant problem of the day. The current political documentary landscape is unthinkable without 9/11, which was a no-nonsense polemic aimed at toppling George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election. Spoiler alert: Moore failed in his task, but despite all his shortcomings and blows, 9/11 remains a time capsule of what it feels like living in America following the disputed 2000 presidential campaign and the war in Iraq. Moore does not synthesize so much the time that he raises these feelings, calling his audience to get angry and mobilize. 9/11 was a balm, if not an effective political tool.

It is important to remember the context of Roger and me Just like the Reagan's & 80's, and all the benefits of greed that followed, ended, here's a weekly bump editor with an old, busy baseball cap that showed us, in simple and fun terms, the result of all this excess. Closed factories, abandoned workers and big cities in decline: Roger and me saw the future. Moore is perhaps the only moment in his career, an incredibly likeable man, a guy who's just trying to get a basic answer to a fundamental question: Why did General Motors do it in my city? The film has felt a little Mark Twain-ish – spirit and rugged charm for a more satirical purpose, and a funny and sad look on a town whose inhabitants are now selling rabbits as pets or meat. Is it manipulative? Of course. But he plays much more right than later Moore's films, and for good reason: he has a clear villain, which replaces all other evils … but is pretty monstrous. Moore may have been the little guy once, but what a little guy he was.

Grierson & Leitch write regularly on movies and animate a podcast on film. Follow them on Twitter or visit their site.