Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

FuzzyTagz If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

bob the moo Bitter Lake did not make it onto TV – not even BBC4; I guess this means that it is so highbrow that even those with free access to BBC4 have the chance to brag about seeking it out on the BBC iplayer rather than watching "public" television. It certainly plays out as something for the discerning viewer – constructed from endless footage, we have a documentary that builds a decades-long narrative around the conflict in the Middle East, and the collapse of our Western leadership, but yet still takes its time to let odd moments play out in silence.The effect is an engaging one. Visually it is impressive in the variety of the footage and the real oddity thereof. Curtis' intelligent tones go across all of it, and he does build an engaging case as he goes. The style and pacing of the film help hook you so you are very much with him as he talks, as opposed to sitting away looking to be sold. The problem I had was that the film does cover so much ground, and so much complexity, but yet it is very simple in terms of its message and content. The events are absolute and clear as this film would have it – which is ironic considering it is critical of the politicians in the West for making real life so binary.I did still find it an engaging experience, build with passion and style, but it is an Adam Curtis film and should be watched as such – it is not really a deeply factual and detailed exploration of a subject, so much as it is an experience to be taken on.

Viewer456 I really wanted to like this documentary but it frequently tried my patience throughout its bloated running time. Curtis takes an important topic (the oversimplification of the Afghanistan conflict by western media and politicians) and makes an absolute hash of engaging the viewer.In trying to go for atmosphere over narrative Mr Curtis has given us a film peppered with beautiful, horrific and funny individual moments that seem to have no place in the narrative. They seem to be there because they tickle Curtis in some way. Which is fine in a the sense that this is listed as an experimental documentary, but one can't help feeling there are strands that should have been bulked up. The British officer talking about how the Uk military on the ground had completely misidentified their enemy and were being used as pawns by local tribes - more of this please.The soldier delighting in being able to have a bird sit on his helmet? Lovely, but not really worth the indulgent screen-time Curtis gives it. There are numerous other examples of flabby editing throughout the piece.I think we can call this experiment an ambitious failure.

Mehdi Zouaoui After watching the documentary for about two or three times, it seems to me that Adam Curtis was in a mere stream of consciousness simulating what is going in our heads in real time. He tacitly promised that he will dissect what politicians and bankers have secreted away; however, he made the the truth truths by letting us in a tragedy of perspective where we look at the same object, Afghanistan, but with different eyes. Some will blame him for hyper-complicating the job of the viewer. I can identify this documentary with the canonical novel of Moby Dick where its canonicity comes from going against the grain and where what we have been taught or told is not the truth but a layer or mimesis. In his quest towards the East, Adam strives to highlight the idea that politicians are involved in this fiasco by letting it to bankers, bankers who would not let it go without any financial benefit taken from the commoners, commoners who believe in fairy stories more than in science. That is the world of Adam Curtis

smeltman Bitter Lake is for the most part a history of interventions in Afghanistan by the US, the UK and also Russia since halfway the 20th century.The film follows the extremist Islamic idea of Wahhabism. It was transported east through the Arabic world, influencing the formation of the Taliban, Al Quaida and ISIS. All because the US accepted the idea in the partners they dealt with while looking for oil.It's an interesting documentary, told mostly chronologically. This allows Curtis to compare events through time, for example the Russian invasion to the more recent western occupation.A lot of the footage that is shown is filmed in Afghanistan and this stresses the constant violence the land has to witness. Because of the many groups involved in each area, enemy is a diffuse term there.The film is advertised as epic on the BBC Iplayer but could have been shorter. In the first half there were shots in between the narrative that could have been left out. But all in all Bitter Lake offers a perspective that is great at telling us something about the modern world and a lot about Afganistan.