A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

In this interesting and informative documentary two young men, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, return from the east coast to the Iowa farm country of their ancestors in order to find out what it is like to be a corn farmer in America. Their plan is to plant an acre of corn and follow that corn to market and see what happens. They want to know what life is like for the farmers and they want to know how the corn is processed and eventually consumed. What they find out is mixed.They learn about the high yields that are possible today with the variety of corn that dominates corn production in this country. This plant has the property of being able to grow close to others of its kind, thereby increasing the number of plants per acre. This is good no doubt. However this variety of corn while ideal for the making of high fructose corn syrup and ethanol is lower in other nutrients such as protein and oil. For my perspective this too is okay. If that is what sells, the farmer really doesn't have much choice.But what is disturbing about the corn farming and processing business are the subsidies that go to big agriculture and the consolidation that has taken place turning small farms into huge farms. Monoculture is a disease of the land. If more small farmers were able to make a living planting different varieties of crops people would eat better and healthier.Cheney and Ellis also learn that much of the corn is used to fatten cattle. The natural diet of cattle is grass. Fattening them with nothing but corn makes them sick, but not sick enough to die before being slaughtered for the market.They also learn (if they hadn't already known it) that corn is in an amazing number of the processed foods in the supermarkets and is the basis of McDonald happy meals. In other words king corn is instrumental in fostering and abetting the obesity epidemic.The documentary is fascinating because it shows the exact details of how planting, weeding (chemically), fertilizing, harvesting and marketing of the corn is done. There are conversations with farmers and others and the famous food writer Michael Pollan makes an appearance.This is not a documentary that is going to please the corn industry, but it is not a polemic either. I thought it was fair and accurate as far as I know. I am on the side of more diversified farming organically, but I know that feeding the seven plus billion people on this planet isn't possible without mass agricultural methods such as seen in this video. The fact that our government insists on subsidizing a relatively unhealthy diet based on genetically modified corn and soy is the main culprit. If there were subsidies for farmers to plant a wider variety of crops using organic methods that would improve our diet and allow for sustainable agriculture. The problem with this is we would need a larger percent of the population to farm.—Dennis Littrell, author of "The World Is Not as We Think It Is"

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.

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!

Wow~ I mean this movie was just amazing. def. one of my favorite docu pics of last year.When I first heard about king corn I was convinced that it would basically be a typical look at how we, the American people, are over exposed and over weight from feeding on the "natural American diet" which is of course bad for you; much like that of what we saw in super size me. But that wasn't the case here. in short, king corn does a great job explaining the facts of the corn farming process, and the process by which corn itself ends up being part of our daily diets.king corn has its typical docu moments though out, including interviews with politicians, and confessional citizens whose lives have been affected by obesity. However, its not over done here. Instead were given an exciting look at agriculture in the United States, and good story telling which does a great job delivering its message in a very original way.