Kick-Ass 2 review: the mask is empty

Like a Comic-Con cosplay event gone horribly wrong, this poor excuse for an action comedy has nothing to say beyond a few expletives and nothing to offer but a shocking lack of appreciation for its own awful irony.

Anna Karenina (review)

There is no pretense that we’re getting a realistic depiction of late-19th-century Russia. Director Joe Wright isn’t merely crafting a metaphor about the social structures under which we all live: he’s underscoring the artificiality of cinema itself.