Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (1997)

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

Simply A Masterpiece

People are voting emotionally.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

A true test of the impression that a film makes is whether I remember that I've seen it before. I watched "Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control" on Crackle last night. About half way through the film, I had a moment of deja vu and realized that I had watched this same film many years ago. Clearly, my sub conscience had tried to suppress the memory for some reason.The film is a documentary about four men, a lion tamer, a topiary sculptor, a mole rat biologist, and a robotics engineer. I tried very hard to find the common thread between these various professions. Was it that filmmaker was trying to demonstrate complexity through much simpler systems? Perhaps a look inside the mind of several eccentric geniuses and glimpse at how they arrive at solutions to organic problems? Or, is it just an entertaining look at four unique professions which would have been less intriguing as four short films? The editing style bounces from man to man, from profession to profession, and has many cutaways to segment clips from various "B" (or maybe "D") movies. The key phrase in the film, and in the story telling, is said by the robotics engineer when he describes a proposed exploration system as "fast, cheap, and out of control." After thinking about the movie and what message, if any, it was trying to convey, my conclusion is that the film itself it was is "fast, cheap, and out of control" and that any deeper meaning than that is overexertion on the viewers part in trying to find connections that do not exist.

This documentary from Errol Morris is about four people and their jobs. They all share some common interest and I think Morris intended this to be "mankind's control over nature", though to me the connection was much simpler--all four had neat jobs and all four had an intense passion for what they did. Rarely have I seen people who love their work as much as these four men and because of this I found that there was a very likable sort of nobility about them. Some of the jobs seemed more exciting than others, but all four seemed intensely satisfied with their own particular job. There jobs were lion tamer, robotics professor, naked mole rat curator and master gardener/topiary expert.As for the style of the film, some of the negative criticisms others level against this film I just didn't agree with, though one I certainly did. The connecting archival film clips sometimes worked well and fit what was being said and done, though some just looked cheap and out of place--particularly the movie serial clips. However, despite this possible unfortunate choice, I loved the music, way of interconnecting the stories and overall format.Interesting and well worth a look if you like quirky documentaries. I liked this far more than Morris' first film, GATES OF HEAVEN (which was very stark and aimless compared to this one) and not as amazing as MR. DEATH--one of the best documentaries I have ever seen.

Four men are interviewed separately. One man studies hairless mole rats. One man is a topiary gardener. One man is a retired lion tamer. One is a robotics designer. Each has a passion (or an obsession) with their chosen subject but have seemingly little in common. With the collection of their interviews, Errol Morris explores the themes of growth, development and evolution of species.My plot summary suggests that I "got" what Morris was trying to do but really this is my guess. If that was his intension though then he has fallen short of it because rather than coming together to form a documentary, the film feels like it is all over the place with no real direction or control over the subject matter. Each of the men are reasonably interesting by themselves and the topics are unusual enough to hold the interest. However the way Morris uses them is poor and the film is cluttered with archive movie footage and a terrible musical score. I'm not totally sure how he was trying to get to where he wanted to be, maybe at one point he just decided to revel in the "weirdness" of his subjects and give up on pulling it all together.The men are mostly interesting even if their subjects aren't particularly. The gardener was probably the only one that I actively found pretty dull, the others had a bit of character and passion that endeared them to me. Maybe if Morris had tried to do more with the men themselves he could have done something interesting, but by going for the bigger theme he loses his way and ultimately his film shows it consistently throughout.Overall then a disappointing film from start to finish. Die-hard fans of Morris might find enough of his style and interest to carry them through but for me I found it to be a real mess of a documentary that doesn't seem to have any design or structure about and left me wondering what I was watching and why I was bothering.

Hiding within this movie are four fairly interesting mini-documentaries about four men, each with a vision - perhaps even an obsession - about one particular facet of life. The common thread uniting them is that each of the four is fascinated by the ways in which animals, men, plants, and even machines evolve, learn, and grow. A recurring theme is training or control.Unfortunately, these four interesting stories are chopped up and interwoven in ways that often seem arbitrary and pointless. Plus, about 25% of the movie is made up of clips from other, mostly bad, movies... and the soundtrack music is often intrusive and annoying. So I'm mystified why a number of critics thought this was the best documentary of 1997. Maybe there were just a lot of bad documentaries that year! Worth watching if you have nothing else to do, but nowhere near great.