Review by Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times. The loudest voice in Michael Moore's latest film speaks to us from the grave. It belongs to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, less than a year before his death, calling for a Second Bill of Rights for Americans. He says citizens have a right to homes, jobs, education and health care. In measured, judicious words, he speaks gravely to the camera. Until a researcher for Moore uncovered this footage, it had never before been seen publicly. Too ill to deliver his State of the Union address to Congress in person, Roosevelt delivered it on the radio, and then invited in Movietone News cameras to film additional footage in which he advocates for the Second Bill of Rights. It was included in no newsreels of the time. Today, eerily, it still seems relevant, and the improvements he calls for are still unachieved. In moments like that, Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story speaks eloquently. At other times, his message is a little unclear. He believes that capitalism is a system which claims to reward free enterprise but in fact rewards greed. He says it is responsible for accumulation of wealth at the top: The richest 1 percent of Americans have more than the bottom 95 percent combined. At a time when America debates legalized gambling, it has long been practiced on Wall Street. But what must we do to repair our economy? Moore doesn't recommend socialism. He has faith in the ballot box, but believes Obama has been too quick to placate the rich and has not brought about substantial reforms.

The primary weapon that Moore employs is shame. That corporations and financial institutions continue to exploit the majority of Americans, including tea baggers and Town Hall demonstrators, is a story that hasn't been told. Here are two shocking revelations Moore makes. The first involves something that is actually called "dead peasant insurance." Did you know that companies can take out life insurance policies on their workers, so that they collect the benefits when we die? This is one form of employee insurance they don't have a problem with. Companies don't usually inform a surviving spouse of the money they've made from a death. The second is the reckless, immoral gambling referred to as "derivatives." I've read that derivatives are so complex they're created by computers and not even the software authors really understand them. Moore asks three experts to explain them to him. All three fail. Essentially, they involve bets placed on the expectation that we will default on our mortgages, for example. If we do, the bets pay off. What if we don't? Investors can hedge their bets, by betting that they will fail. They hope to win both ways. Our mortgages are the collateral for these bets. Moore says they are sliced and diced and rebundled and scattered hither and yon. He has an interview with Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), who advises her constituents: If a bank forecloses, don't move, and demand they produce a copy of your mortgage. In many cases, they can't. You may have seen that weirdo screaming on the financial cable show about shiftless homeowners who obtained mortgages they couldn't afford.

Moore says that in fact two-thirds of all American personal bankruptcies are caused by the cost of health care. Few people can afford an extended illness in this country. Moore mentions his film Sicko (*cough*). The film is most effective when it explains or reveals these outrages. It is less effective, but perhaps more entertaining, when it shows Michael being Michael. He likes to grandstand. On Wall Street, he uses a bullhorn to demand our money back. He uses bright yellow police crime scene tape to block off the Stock Exchange. He's a classic rabble rouser. Love him or hate him, you gotta give him credit. He centers our attention as no other documentarian ever has. He is also a working-class kid, no college education, still with the baseball cap and saggy pants, who feels sympathy for victims. Watch him speaking with a man who discovered his wife's employer collected "dead peasant insurance." Listen to him speak with a family who is losing a farm after four generations. The film's title is never explained. What does Moore mean? Maybe it's that capitalism means never having to say you're sorry.

• Official site & trailer

Review by Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times. I got a DVD in the mail, an animated film titled Sita Sings the Blues. It was a version of the epic Indian tale of Ramayana set to the 1920s jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw. Uh, huh. I carefully filed it with other movies I will watch when they introduce the 8-day week. Then I was told I must see it. I began. I was enchanted. I was swept away. I was smiling from one end of the film to the other. It is astonishingly original. It brings together four entirely separate elements and combines them into a great whimsical chord. How did Paley's mind work? She begins with the story of Ramayana, which is known to every school child in India but not to me. It tells of a brave, noble woman who was made to suffer because of the foibles of an impetuous husband and his mother. Paley depicts this story with exuberant drawings in bright colors. It is about a prince named Rama who treated Sita unfairly, although she loved him and was faithful to him. There is more to it than that, involving a monkey army, a lustful king who occasionally grows 10 heads, synchronized birds, a chorus line of gurus, and a tap-dancing moon. It coils around and around, as Indian epic tales are known to do. Even the Indians can't always figure them out.

In addition to her characters talking, Paley adds a hilarious level of narration: Three voice-over modern Indians, Desis, ad-libbing as they try to get the story straight. Was Sita wearing jewelry or not? How long was she a prisoner in exile? How did the rescue monkey come into the picture? These voices are as funny as an SNL skit, and the Indian accent gives them charm: "What a challenge, these stories!" Sita, the heroine, reminds me a little of the immortal Betty Boop, but her singing voice is sexier. Paley synchs her life story and singing and dancing with recordings of the American jazz singer Annette Hanshaw (1901-1985), a big star in the 1920s and 1930s who was known as "The Personality Girl." Sita lived around 1000 BCE, a date which inspires lively debate among the three Indians discussing her. When her husband outrageously accuses her of adultery and kicks her on top of a flaming pyre, we know exactly how she feels when Annette Hanshaw sings her big hit, "Mean to Me." There is a parallel story. In San Francisco, we meet an American couple, young and in love, named Dave and Nina, and their cat, named Lexi. Oh, they are in love. But Dave flies off to take a "temporary" job in India, Nina pines for him, she flies to join him in India but he is cold to her, and when she returns home she receives a cruel message: "Don't come back. Love, Dave." Nina despairs. Lexi despairs. Cockroaches fill her apartment but she hardly notices. One day in her deepest gloom she picks up the book Ramayana and starts to read. Inspiration begins to warm the cold embers of her heart. There are uncanny parallels between her life and Sita's. Both were betrayed by the men they loved. Both were separated by long journeys. Both died (Sita really, Nina symbolically) and were reborn — Sita in the form of a lotus flower, Nina in the form of an outraged woman who moves to Brooklyn, sits down at her home computer for five years and creates this film. Yes, she reveals in her bio that her then-husband "terminated" their marriage while he was in India. No ex-husband has inspired a greater cultural contribution since Michael Huffington.

One remarkable thing about Sita Sings the Blues is how versatile the animation is. Consider Sita's curvaceous Southern hemisphere. When she sings an upbeat or sexy song, it rotates like a seductive pendulum. Look at those synchronized birds overhead. When they return they have a surprise, and they get a surprise. Regard the marching greybeards. Watch Hanuman's dragging tail set a palace on fire. The animation style of the scenes set in San Francisco and Brooklyn is completely different, essentially simple line drawings alive with personality. See how Paley needs only a few lines to create a convincing cat. Paley works entirely in 2-D with strict rules, so that characters remain within their own plane, which overlaps with others. This sounds like a limitation. Actually, it becomes the source of much amusement. Comedy often depends on the device of establishing unbreakable rules and then finding ways to break them. The laughs Paley gets here with 2-D would be the envy of an animator in 3-D. She discovers dimensions where none exist. This is one of the year's best films.

• Official site     • Trailer