Anonymous
Opens today at Quality 16
Review by Jeff Meyers of the Metro Times
Grade: B

Anyone who looks to Hollywood for a history lesson is a fool. The movie industry is built on drama and storytelling — often filled with sound and fury, usually signifying nothing. To read all the critical hand-wringing and scholarly acrimony over "Anonymous"' devotion (or lack there of) to historical fact seems woefully beside the point. Because if any director understands that the play's the thing, it's the guy who pulverized the White House ("Independence Day") and destroyed the world twice ("The Day After Tomorrow" and "2012"). So, much as his Godzilla laid waste to New York, director Roland Emmerich seems to want to blow up literature with the bombshell that William Shakespeare never wrote the Complete Works of Shakespeare.

With "Anonymous," the director, along with screenwriter John Orloff ("Band of Brothers"), make a far better case than Emmerich's 2012 made for high-tech arks saving humanity from the apocalypse.

Read the full review here