The Fifth Estate

This deadly dull story of the whistle-blowing WikiLeaks website and its enigmatic founder Julian Assange is the worst movie of the year so far. It's the cinematic equivalent of sitting through a two-hour long media-ethics class taught by a condescending pedant with no knowledge of the subject. The Fifth Estate will likely become notorious for its vapid attempts to “visualize” concepts like chat rooms and data encryption, but I found the smug social-studies dialogue infinitely more infuriating (actual line from a film set in the 21st century: “I thought Americans put free speech up there with Mom and apple pie.”). Benedict Cumberbatch bears a striking resemblance to the angular, blond Assange, and does a solid impression of his nasally Australian accent. It was probably inevitable that Cumberbatch would play Assange in a movie—t's just too bad this is the one he made.