The Emperor’s New Clothes documentary review: working-class wonk
Russell Brand’s angry-funny rant about the current system of widescale economic injustice is concise, comprehensible, and newly infuriating.
2015 theatrical releases
Avengers: Age of Ultron movie review: mad science fiction
Not without problems, but continues the Avengers tradition of big, bold blockbusters that don’t need to toss away thoughtfulness to remain pure popcorn fun.
Child 44 movie review: Stalin glance
Overly complicated yet somehow anticlimactic, and constructed more with pat Hollywood pomp rather than the authentic grit it demands.
Monsters: Dark Continent movie review: war movie is hell
Suffers from a terrible case of cinematic aphasia. Clearly thinks it’s saying something important and deep, but makes no damn sense at all.
Alex of Venice movie review: no mess like home
Mary Elizabeth Winstead is eminently relatable in a compassionate, human-scaled movie of the sort that movies have almost forgotten of late.
A Little Chaos movie review: necessary fantasy
Romantic and funny and smart and wise and just plain different. This is a historical costume dramedy romp about gardening. How cool is that?
The Last Five Years movie rating: red light
An unpleasant couple sings ridiculously on-the-nose lyrics about the collapse of a romance that we are given no way to sympathize with or understand.
The Salvation movie review: manifest density
Nearly Blazing Saddles without the jokes: all genre conventions with none of the fun, just your inescapable expectations met around every sun-blighted corner.
The Reconstruction of William Zero (aka The Proxy) movie rating: red light
Thematically ambitious cloning drama wants to explore the personal ramifications of a new technology but falls down where it needs to be strongest…
Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 movie review: stupor hero
Hard to believe, I know, but this is a real movie that real people have unashamedly put their names to. Because a sweet paycheck trumps human dignity.
