OMG dude, put down your banjo, get back behind the camera, and stay there. Preening storytellers who want to be "part" of their story are the bane of modern documentaries.

It's an interesting topic, and a necessary discussion, but Fox's documentarian skills aren't up the the job: it's a meandering, repetitive movie that appeals all too often to sentimentality rather than science, and the hokey, everyman familiarity of Fox, his banjo and his newfound friends versus the unmitigated evil that is Big Gas.

Subject matter trumps some technical issues.

I was interested for the first half or so and then it just got kind of boring and I felt like I'd seen all of this already in Erin Brockovich. It sounds like a real problem so hopefully it gets addressed, but as far as the filmmaking goes, it could use some work.

very good documentary about hydrofracking in america

"There's an acerbically straightforward, old-fashioned muckrake gurgling with righteous pugnacity beneath the mannered surface of Josh Fox's Gasland." - Joseph Jon Lanthier

Effective documentary that actually has something important to say. Very little of it feels forced or exaggerated (and there is some really shocking stuff) but it does seem to be a lot of the same story over and over. Fox also sounds slightly like Johnny Depp doing Hunter S. Thompson.

noble effort, quite a transparent documentary with a touch too much filler. methyl benzoate.

A somewhat meandering look into fracing and the natural gas industry. Can't fault him for not being well versed in the documentary field as it is a great effort, but I feel there was much more depth here that could have been explored (in lieu of the somewhat repetitive drinking-water stories).

A critical look at the pursit of Natural gas through hydro fracturing and is effects on ground water, which involves not only the gas itself but a combination of more than 200 toxic chemicals. Thankfully for the gas and oil companies are exempt from the clean water act and don't have to report on the contamination nor worry about the nature of the chemicals they pump into the enviornment thanks to Bush/Cheny administraition.

I always thought using natural gas was 100 times better than extracting oil etcetera. But that's only because I was never presented with "the other perspective" behind extracting gas. I must say it was quite a revealing and informative documentary. The only negative thing was its length (~1h 40m), about halfway through it gets a bit repetitive when he continues to present more and more personal disaster stories from families affected by the whole gas drilling business.

I have to admit, I was immediately alarmed when the filmmaker, Josh Fox, started a film about natural gas with a mini-biography. Thankfully, 'Gasland' picks up immediately after focusing on the human element, making it easy to place yourself in the situation. The middle does sag, reiterating information from every small town Fox visits, the doc picks up at the end with a decent payoff. I knew nothing about "fracking", but after watching 'Gasland', I felt like an expert - a concerned one at that.

I really hope that this becomes the "Silent Spring" of our generation. Although there are some well-intentioned politicians that are currently struggling to regulate the oil and natural gas companies, the threat to American livelihood is way too severe to think that this is a debate we can prolong. My score is really based on significance alone; the relentless onslaught of facts and evidence that Fox presents from across the country can be extremely disheartening, but is absolutely necessary.

In these kind of documentaries its easy to get carried away on a personal level and I hope that everyone is, cause once again it seems like coorporate America doesnt give a FUCK about its citizens. Its all about the money! With that said its time to rate the documentary. Halfway through you get a bit tired of hearing story after story and some confrontation ala MM would have helped to the overall structure. There are some great images, the editing some times distracts you but a great eyeopener!

Eye-opening, even if Fox does sometimes stoop to needless provocations.

Great subject, but the execution was murky.

The execution is not perfect, but the subject matter is very important. Another prime example of US of A fucking it up.

It's a sad state of affairs when a documentary about evil motherfuckers like Dick Cheney and soulless corporations out-and-out lying to people and government agencies that turn a blind eye feels like "Oh, another one." I'm not sure how much more liberal outrage I have left in me, but this is definitely a subject worthy of some outrage. Josh Fox takes a personal approach that's effective without stooping to the grandstanding of a Michael Moore. Some of it is a bit repetitive, though.

Gasland addresses an interesting issue with charming compassion, although its focus on the human side of the story left me looking for a few more hard facts and a clearer picture of what's going on. However, that is just a preference, and the film does an excellent job of laying out the important emotional side of this issue, which seems like the only aspect of it that may eventually drive change.

The handheld approach with endless zooms and images of silos becomes repetitive, as does Fox's journey. Focussing on the victims, his new found friends are never ours, and while there's no detracting from the unfairness of their suffering, they don't add to the initial argument. That the evildoers are never directly confronted seems a missed opportunity, as does Fox' lack of interest in the bigger picture of the world's energy crisis. But his findings are undeniably chilling.

This is what activist filmmaking should look like: off-the-cuff, endlessly inventive, eye-opening, pithy and smart.