Jeanskynebu the audience applauded

Cortechba Overrated

Yash Wade Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

Francene Odetta It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

maxwelldeux Undoubtedly, this documentary starts quite slow. They started off talking about how they were going to plant an acre of corn and follow it throughout its lifespan, including all the way to consumer. Nice premise, but over the first 30 minutes of this were talking about planting and growing corn, with no mention of where it was going ("it" being both the corn and the documentary). My wife even asked at one point where the heck this documentary was going.Once they sold their corn in the documentary, it started to get interesting. They actually started talking about where the corn goes, and all the various ways it gets into our bodies. Most of the rest of the documentary was devoted to this topic, and the makers of the film managed to explore this topic without judgment. While you could infer the filmmakers' position from the film if you're reasonably intelligent, they don't come out and say it explicitly. They allow the audience to draw their own conclusions. This is one of the bonuses of the film.Though a lot of the information in the film is old and relatively well known, especially if you watch some of the modern food documentaries, it's a nice introduction to a lot of the food issues we face as a society.

mcmillen-2 I wouldn't say this was a horrible movie, but it certainly wasn't a good one. I think a lot of people think that if the movie's informative or says something you agree with, that makes it a good documentary. I didn't have a problem with the subject matter, it's the way it was presented.The filmmakers made the choice of inserting themselves into the film. This can be a very effective documentary style (see Michael Moore & Morgan Spurlock for example) but in this case, no offense guys, you just don't have the personality to pull that off. You're not funny, you're not witty, you're not interesting, you're just two dudes floating through this film as if bystanders - which is fine, but then be bystanders, don't be in front of the camera. Don't take offense to that - a lot of people would not be suitable for this type of documentary, including me.One example: there was a shot in the taxicab where the camera lingers on one of the guys (I don't know their names - and it doesn't matter) presumably to capture his emotional response to some horrible story the driver just told him, yet he's just staring blankly. What emotion was that supposed to be conveying? Either have a reaction worthy of showing us or leave that on the cutting room floor.Second problem: The filmmakers try to make it look like they're just two schmoes who are clueless about this stuff and are just trying to figure out how corn got into the molecules of their hair. Right. That's insulting our intelligence and just got more & more annoying as the movie went on. You obviously were educated about this topic and that's why you did the movie in the first place.Third problem: I thought the point of growing an acre of corn was to see what happened to it. But since it's impossible to follow what happened to their one acre of corn because it gets mixed in with everyone else's, that makes that whole part of the movie pointless. At that point they're just doing a more traditional kind of documentary and it was even less important to have them in the story. Yes they still got to show some information about how corn is planted & raised, but they could have shown that, and to better effect, by hanging out with farmers handling real crops.Fourth problem: I don't remember all the details, but they calculated (spoiler alert?) that if not for the government's checks they would have lost money. Perhaps this is a valid point but using their calculations and drawing conclusions from that is complete B.S. If you were a real farmer, you'd probably own your own equipment, or if not you wouldn't be renting equipment in order to farm one acre of land for 18 minutes. Of course that's not economical!! Fifth problem: Munching into an ear of corn wasn't tasty... well duh, it wasn't sweet corn. There are different varieties of corn. Biting into raw popcorn wouldn't taste good either. That doesn't demonstrate anything one way or the other.Finally (I could probably go on but I'll just make one more point): What was that ending all about? It was silly and contrived.Note that nowhere in this comment did I say anything about disagreeing with their message. A good movie could have been made on this subject, but this wasn't it.

tsancio King Corn is an excellent documentary of the entire process of the corn kennel, from its genetic origin to its final use in food. The young protagonists start out from their worry that the junk food they eat will make them live less years than the previous generation and use this energy to investigate the main column of American food which is corn. As they decide to grow an acre of corn in IOWA, they interview people from all stages of the process and make sure that their work is not seen as a all-out criticism of corn. Reading between the lines, you can conclude that although the corn subsidies have made food much cheaper for Americans, it has also reduced its quality. Of course, you have to figure that out yourself since they don't propose a solution. However, they interview enough people to allow you to think. For example, when talking to a farmer that operates a cattle feed lot in which cows are given antibiotics so they can process the excessive amounts of corn that will make them fat, the man replies bluntly: "yeah, we can have our cows eat grass, but that would make it more expensive".They also give a primer on high-fructose corn syrup, the preferred sugar in the USA food industry. Heck, it's sugar. But since it's so cheap, tons of food products contain it.King Corn is an excellent movie for those who don't understand farm subsidies and why they were put in the first place. It's also very balanced and does not cast any of the participants as evildoers. It's just the final (baseball) scene that lets in their youth idealism and pretty much disowns the extensive work they did for the past hours.

Richo270 KING CORN: A REVIEW The film King Corn is a propaganda piece and full of misleading statements.First, the hair test that Dr Macko uses to estimate the percentage of corn in the diet, while useful for what it was intended, gives somewhat misleading results in this application. First, a little background on this test.The test Dr. Macko is using to differentiate corn from other plant materials in the diets of humans and livestock utilizes the fact that a class of plants, called C4 plants, which includes corn, preferentially take up a different proportion of these two isotopes of carbon to make their tissues than do the class of C3 plants, which comprise the vast majority of other plants including forages.. These ratios of isotopes of carbon continue on in the food chain, and their proportions can be measured in the hair to determine which proportions of plants have been consumed, either C3 or C4 (assumed in the film to be corn).What this film does not disclose however, is that livestock consume a number of other C4 plants in their rations other than corn. Sorghum is also a C4 plant. It is grown extensively throughout the West in dryer states such as Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and parts of Colorado. In areas where it is grown it is used almost exclusively for livestock feeding. Thus, the above test would be incapable of differentiating an atom of carbon as coming from livestock fed corn or sorghum.This same rationale would also apply to millet, which is also a C4 plant used for livestock feeding, grown in the northern central states, chiefly the Dakotas and Nebraska.When we turn to plant foods directly consumed by humans, we also find a problem with the test used. Sugar cane is also a C4 plant, and thus the sugar derived from it would be indistinguishable from corn in whatever form consumed as far as the hair test described.These factors thus makes this test somewhat unreliable as a measure of exactly how much corn is in our diet, either directly or in the diets of the livestock we consume.Next, I want to turn to their description of cattle feeding, and their reporting of its effects. It is somewhat disappointing that the makers of this film did not avail themselves of the opportunity to educate themselves as to the facts regarding the cattle feeding industry when they had a good opportunity to do so. First, as to their claim that feeding corn causes death within 120 days. Curiously, their reference for this appears to be a random passer-by they met during filming. The reality is quite different.The grain or energy component of the ration is balanced with whatever grain happens to be available and most cost effective locally. In the Mid-west that would be corn. In other parts of the western US, sorghum, millet or barley would be the energy component of choice, and in the eastern US soft wheat would often be the feed of choice.Dairy cows are also fed a high concentrate ration required for high milk production. They are feed high rates of grain over many milking cycles with obviously no early death, as a high value dairy cow obviously would not be fed such high grain diets if it would lead to early death.Now let us turn to the corn plant itself, which in the film is strangely attacked and demonized. One of the most reprehensible parts of the film was the interview with the Harvard professor, who repeatedly made statements to the effect that corn is a non-food, is nutritionally empty, and has been deliberately bred to be so. This is quite misleading. This Harvard professor should know quite well (or maybe he doesn't ?!) that corn, along with all plants domesticated by humanity over many millennia have been extensively selected for different varieties used for different purposes.In the case of corn, our North American native grain, it consists of a number of varieties hand selected both during prehistoric times and by many generations of traditional farmers. We currently have 4 major types; sweet corn, used for eating fresh and canning, flour corn, used for milling into corn meal for human consumption, the well known popcorn, and dent corn, also know as field or feed corn.Field corn has been selected specifically to produce the energy source or carbohydrate portion of animal feeds.Corn is one of the handful of staple grains producing the main food source for human beings. These grain staples, including corn, wheat, rice, barley and sorghum, produce collectively 90% of the calories required by human beings worldwide. World civilization as we know it could not exist without these staple grains. To say that carbohydrates, by far the greatest requirement in the human and animal diet and which are used for energy production, are "empty" calories is certainly a misstatement. There are no "empty" calories or "bad" foods. There are only good and bad diets. To expect that one food would have all the components of a healthy diet is naive. This is the reason all responsible nutritionists continually speak of eating a variety of foods.In summary, to think that farmers here or in other countries will stop planting corn is quite unrealistic. We have the lowest grain supplies worldwide today since the last days of World War II. We will be planting more corn going forward, or at least we will try.I salute these young college people for their idealism, and their concern for the HFCS issue. I can only say that their credibility on this issue would not have been damaged quite so badly if they had stuck to the facts.