This is what I heard and experienced. Is the guy above just making shit up?

It's absolutely illegal in the USA to download a movie (or game, or song, or book, etc) that you haven't bought [0].

It could be argued that if you bought a movie, say on DVD, downloading another copy of it from an online source could fall under fair use, but this is more debatable.

[0] https://legalclarity.org/is-pirating-movies-illegal-what-are...