"Sirius": Greatest UFO Documentary Ever?

I recently wrote about the guy who disagreed with my dismissal of "Ata," the Atacama Human. Oid. What I didn't mention about his letter was his disappointment with the movie "Sirius."

"Sirius" is a UFO documentary that just premiered online a few weeks ago. I had a chance to view it the day it premiered for a mere $10, but I passed. From what I gathered, it was supposed to reveal that earth has been visited by aliens for a very long time, that they do not intend us any harm, and that the government has, for nefarious reasons, been keeping this all a secret from us. The connection here is that the film was produced by government coverup maven Dr. Steven Greer, the same guy who brought us "Ata." In fact, one of the big selling points of the film was that it was supposed to prove that "Ata" was an alien, although that didn't quite work out as expected.

My writer's big problem with the film boiled down to this: Greer funded the movie through crowdsourcing, to the tune of about $2 million, then charged the very same crowd ten bucks each to see the finished film. Adding insult to injury, Greer fashions himself as a powerful champion of free and open information... as opposed to, say, information that costs ten bucks.

How much is "the truth" worth to you? Ten dollars, you say? That makes you a sucker, my friend. A sucker and a sap. And  a fool.

I was struck by the irony of this, and that got me thinking that I had not read a single review of the movie since it debuted online a few weeks ago. Surely the film must have had some impact somewhere? A quick search revealed that there were, indeed, many reviews of "Sirius" posted online, but there was a problem: the reviews were all posted by UFO bloggers like me. Why would I trust their opinions?

Then I looked for reviews where I always look for film reviews: metacritic.com and rottenromatoes.com. Neither site seemed to know that "Sirius" even existed! What the...?

So then I looked "Sirius" up on imdb.com, and there it was!

The first thing I saw was that 242 imdb users have rated the film 6.1 out of 10, and 13 of them wrote reviews. Hot dog! Just what I was looking for!

The great thing is, you don't even have to plod through the 13 reviews. You just read the reviews' headlines and, boom, you're done!

• "Feeling Ripped Off..."
• "A Brilliant and Revolutionary Documentary (for those with the ears to hear...)"

Wow! Only two headlines in and opinions are split right down the middle! Let's see what the others have to say:

• "We were promised disclosure, but were hustled for $10"
• "Misleading and downright laughable"
• "Far bigger than any 'UFO' documentary that you've seen"
• "Not even close to 'groundbreaking' as promised"
• "The Greatest Documentary Who Many Will Miss Out On" (Editor's note: Huh?)
• "Garbage. Complete & Utter Waste of Time"
• "Awesome Movie!"
• "A compelling, somewhat clumsy stab at the truth"
• "Ordinary"
• "Oxy-Moron: but a fun to watch Paradox"

And the most eloquent headline of them all:

• "It's just bad"

Yessir, I sure am glad I didn't drop $10 on this turkey. It seemed pretty obvious to me that if Greer had anything of any value to announce, he wouldn't be charging people for it. Ergo, the film must be a complete waste of time. Going by the imdb reviews, I don't regret my decision.