King Corn

2007 "You Are What You Eat."
7| 1h28m| G| en
Details

King Corn is a fun and crusading journey into the digestive tract of our fast food nation where one ultra-industrial, pesticide-laden, heavily-subsidized commodity dominates the food pyramid from top to bottom – corn. Fueled by curiosity and a dash of naiveté, two college buddies return to their ancestral home of Greene, Iowa to figure out how a modest kernel conquered America. With the help of some real farmers, oodles of fertilizer and government aide, and some genetically modified seeds, the friends manage to grow one acre of corn. Along the way, they unlock the hilarious absurdities and scary but hidden truths about America’s modern food system in this engrossing and eye-opening documentary.

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Also starring Ian Cheney

Reviews

Tedfoldol everything you have heard about this movie is true.
Gurlyndrobb While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.
Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.
Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
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.
rogoemi This movie is a great movie in getting down to the core of what is really going on in the food that we eat. As American's we tend to sit back and trust what food vendors are providing us. However, after watching the film one might not be as happy or trustworthy about what the food vendors are doing to the food that we are ingesting. What I love about this movie is that they take such complicated material and break it down so that the average person can understand what is going on. They do this by using demonstrations, actually doing something, pictures, graphs, and interviews with individuals. This movie will really get you to start thinking about what you are eating, why you are eating it, and how you can start to make a change.
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.
cvminwi Corn used to be food. Now it's a food product. This is the point of this excellent documentary. Cattle, one of the main consumers of corn, were never meant to eat corn. It makes them sick. It kills them. Humans were never meant to eat High Fructose Corn Syrup. It's making us fat and killing us. This is what happens when we turn food into food products and growing food into agri-business. Worse, government subsidies, meant to help farmers grow food to make people healthy, are now paying multinationals to manufacture food products that make people sick. This is one of several excellent warnings about where BigFood is taking us. Also read Omnivore's Dilemma; Animal, Vegetable, Miracle; and In Defense of Food. This ain't your grandpa's farm (or corn), people!