‘Riotsville, U.S.A.’ Review: Provocative, Half-Cooked Documentary Lacks Direction and Context [Sundance]
Seemingly a rejection of monocausal history in that it twists the firehose nozzle all the way open to spray from any and every direction, “Riotsville, U.S.A.” is no less problematic from where it sits on the other side of that theoretical chasm. Grabbing at anything that conforms to the half-cooked epiphanies the documentary has from moment to moment, the path of the film’s discussion weaves through about a dozen provocative ideas without betraying much of an attempt to critically analyze any one of them.