Gelf, which regularly reads multiple reviews of the same movie for its semi-regular look at the racket of film ads, has noticed several critics are getting geopolitical. Perhaps tired of the confines of determining whether a movie is good or not, reviewers are weighing in on Africa's woes, China's rise, the Vatican's obfuscation, and British society in a manner beyond their job description. Here's a recent sample:

Jesus Camp, by Stephen Holden in the New York Times
It wasn't so long ago that another puritanical youth army, Mao Zedong's Red Guards, turned the world's most populous country inside out. Nowadays the possibility of a right-wing Christian American version of what happened in China no longer seems entirely far-fetched.

Fearless, by Nathan Lee in the New York Times
"Fearless" may come to be remembered as a late specimen in a different genre: the China-as-underdog flick. For the moment, the notion of a Chinese freedom fighter defending the honor of his nation against a seven-foot Yankee muscleman named Hercules O'Brien (Nathan Jones) remains more or less credible. But tomorrow? Such narratives may lose their punch when China rules the universe.
Perhaps the spate of Sept. 22 opinionating represents reviewers being emboldened by a rule starting two days earlier specifying that opinion in the Times's news pages, such as reviews, be differentiated in print by "a straight left margin and a ragged right one," as laid out in the New York Observer.

Flyboys, by Nathan Lee in the New York Times
Despite its empty head and arduous length, "Flyboys" is ever so nice, in the manner of a Norman Rockwell illustration. The director, Tony Bill, may not be a philosopher but he is a gentleman, moving things along with a tidy, well-mannered hand. In another context, such politesse might feel tonic. Given the state of things, it's nearly toxic.
This appears to be a reference to the war in Iraq.

The Queen, by Anthony Lane in the New Yorker
On the first evening after Diana's death, and again in subsequent days, I went down to Buckingham Palace, like an undercover Christopher Robin, and talked to the snaking lines of mourners. On TV, a well-known historian had suggested that, while Diana's plight and style had left a vivid symbolic imprint on British society, she herself had not been an especially gifted being. I found a pair of respectable middle-aged Englishwomen standing tearily in the Mall and asked if they had heard the historian's words. "Yes," one of them replied, "and if he shows his face down here I'll rip his fucking head off." Here was the new atavismâ€"or, at any rate, the old earthen British fury, spreading into parts of the body politic that it had not previously touched. As in many a mob, the swell of shared emotion lay on the knife-edge of violence. No wonder the Queen stayed away.

Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple, by Stephen Holden in the New York Times
How many of us are so desperate for a charismatic leader claiming to have the answers that we will surrender our basic instincts for survival, along with our reason? … the horror of Jonestown was caused by people's willingness to surrender their reason to a madman who was also a charismatic manipulator. And that can happen anytime and anywhere.

The Last King of Scotland, by David Denby in the New Yorker
He gets his comeuppance, of course, but, after this movie and "The Constant Gardener," one would like to whisper ever so gently into the ears of all Western filmmakers that Africa, in its tragic condition, is perhaps not the most appropriate place to stage the moral redemption of dopey Europeans.

Deliver Us From Evil, by Scott Tobias in the Onion's A.V. Club
The film also follows them on a Roger & Me-like stunt of presenting a j'accuse letter to the Vatican; of course, it goes unanswered. From an institution that's made obfuscation part of its policy, what else did they expect?