Werner Herzog turns his unsparing eye on the no-longer-uppercase (perhaps because of its unspecial ubiquity) internet. He starts with the good: never before have so many been able to share so much so easily. Heck, we’re crowdsourcing medical breakthroughs! Someday, we might make phone calls to a colony on Mars! But this is Herzog and this is the internet, so it isn’t long before we’re staring into the abyss: online gaming addicts, monstrous trolls, malicious hackers who could end civilization by disrupting the web (if a solar flare doesn’t do it first). And oh yeah: does anyone really think all this information and communication is somehow making us smarter, or better? Even so, the unsparing eye feels a little more sparing than usual — a little less focused, even. These are smart folks Herzog is talking to; here and there, it feels like they’re playing to the great documentarian, or at least playing along with him. And when that happens, the connection with the viewer loses a bar or two. (2016) — Matthew Lickona
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