Startup.Com (2001) Review

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(More customer reviews)"Startup.com" is a fascinating, but slightly flawed documentary following the lives of several men who founded a dot-com in 1998. (Work leading to its creation had started months earlier, but wasn't included in the documentary.) The principal dot-com founders were Kaleil Isaza Tuzman, Tom Herman and Chieh Cheung. Kaleil and Tom were high school friends. Shortly after the company's official launch, Chieh's involvement was terminated after Kaleil and Tom decided to buy him out. They believed Chieh wasn't doing enough, in spite of Chieh's time, work and money invested prior to the company's official launch.
For the most part, the first third of documentary is devoted to Kaleil's efforts to obtain venture capitalist (VC) investment into the new company. The combination of his efforts and unbridled VC risk-taking of the 1990's succeeded in Kaleil securing $50-million in VC investment. At the company's launch, it had eight employees. After several months of hard work and the hiring of a lot more staff, the company's website was finally launched. Within about a year, the company's total employment exceeded 200 employees, but the joy didn't last long. Personality conflicts between Kaleil and Tom lead to some unpleasant consequences. Also, like most of the dot-com's created in the 1990's, the amount of money earned through the company's website paled in comparison to the amount of invested capital and the money squandered by the company.
Sadly, the creators of this documentary (Chris Hegedus and Jehane Noujaim) focused far too much on Kaleil, not enough on Tom and very little on Chieh. The quality of the documentary would have been far better had more time been devoted to Tom throughout the film, and more to Chieh at the beginning (prior to the company's launch). No narration was provided in the documentary. Instead, it was shot much like a reality television show using small hand-held cameras, but occasional subtitles provide the viewer with time references and employee counts. Highlights in the documentary include an actual CNBC interview with Kaleil (when the company was worth $50-million with venture capital) and his brief meeting with then U.S. President Bill Clinton.
The real value of this documentary is fourfold:
(1) The eagerness of 1990's venture capitalists to willingly invest millions of dollars into companies with unsubstantiated and exaggerated business plans.
(2) The squandering by dot-com's of millions of invested dollars
(3) The strain put on long-term friendships when money and cutthroat business practices get involved.
(4) Seeing some of the faces and narcissistic egos behind dot-coms.
For these reasons, I rate this documentary with 4 out of 5 stars. I highly recommend it to any former or current dot-com employee, to anyone that invested and subsequently lost money in a dot-com or to anyone that wants to form his/her own company.

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The Secret of My Success (1987) Review

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(More customer reviews)I think a good test of how good or bad a movie is, is by how long it feels. Some 90 m. movies feel like three hours and vice versa. Secret of My Success feels like a half an hour. That's pretty good.
Brantley moves from Kansas to NYC in order to make it in the corporate world. Problem: he gets laid off even before he starts. He's a trooper, though, and doesn't want to run home with his tail between his legs so he goes to his Uncle Howard for a job. It's not exactly what Brantley envisioned as he is stuck in the mailroom. Using corporate bureaucracy against itself, he manages to swing a job as a vice-president. It gets pretty funny from there as Brantley tries to maintain two identities without being found out. The elevator scenes are priceless!
This movie is the definitive eighties comedy. Michael J. Fox gets to showcase his screwball comedy antics and the rest of the cast is equally fine. Helen Slater stands out as a female executive that manages to break through the glass ceiling only to be pressed up against it and fondled by the smarmy CEO. "Auntie Vera" is also a hoot as the sex-starved wife of Uncle Howard.
The DVD doesn't offer too much in the way of extras, but that's okay because the movie alone is worth having on disc. Get this one right away.

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The Corporation (2004) Review

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(More customer reviews)This is an extraordinary film about the creation of the American corporation, its legal organizational model, its global economic dominance and its psychopathic tendencies, and its incredible ambition to influence every aspect of culture in its unrelenting pursuit of profit.
The Corporation was spawned from Joel Balkan's in depth book, "The Corporation: A Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power". (Due to be released in March this year) The film and book begins in the 18th century, in the establishment of the 14th Amendment. Initially the 14th Amendment was designed after the Civil War to give ex slaves' legal rights, like any other citizen of the United States, but through a maze of legal precedents, the business corporation organization model was now deemed a "legal person" with all the civil rights accorded to a citizen. This highly absurd precedent has paved the way for corporations to literarily get away with murder, because a "corporation" is not an individual that you can put in jail. In effect, a corporation has no moral or social obligations; their only obligation is the pursuit of profit. This film offers numerous examples of unethical practices resulting in death for many people, and because of their status under the 14th Amendment, and endless legal loopholes, have gotten away with terrible crimes against humanity and the environment with no more than a fine, a mere slap on the wrist.
As the law treats corporations as "persons", Balkan thought it appropriate to put the various behaviours of these companies under psychological examination. What this psychological study illustrated is that corporations, as "persons" behave and display the symptoms of the clinical psychopath. A psychopath typically does not have a social conscience, is guilt free after committing heinous acts, and will destroy anything or anybody that prevents them from attaining the object of their particular obsession - in this case, the relentless pursuit of profit.
This documentary took several years to produce with over 650 hours of footage, director(s), Jennifer Abbot and Mark Achbar, had to chisel down this amazing amount of material into a comprehensible film. What is most astounding is the range of people interviewed for this film, that argue from all sides of the "corporation issue": Ira Jackson, Ray Anderson - CEO of Interface, the world's largest carpet manufacturer; Noam Chomsky, Richard Grossman, Howard Zinn, Michael Moore, Milton Freidman - Noble Prize winning economist; Jeremy Rifkin - President, Foundation of Economic Trends; Dr. Robert Hare - Consultant to the FBI on psychopaths, and many more individuals from all sides of the debate.
When Balkan wrote his book and then collaborated with Mark Achbar to produce this film, what they did not want was the film to appear as just some left-wing diatribe, attacking the corporations, but to illustrate to people how the corporation began, how they have evolved and what they could well turn into if the people do not become involved in the democratic process, ensuring our governments take back the reigns of power.
After viewing this film, it becomes all too evident that these large corporations have too much power, whose mandate is not the common good of the people, and who will go to any lengths, legally and otherwise, in the pursuit of profit and the bottom line.
I believe this is one of the best and most important documentary films to be made in many years.

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