Synopsis
From the acclaimed director of American Movie, the documentary follows former Los Angeles police officer turned independent reporter Michael Ruppert. He recounts his career as a radical thinker and spells out his apocalyptic vision of the future, spanning the crises in economics, energy, environment and more.
Your Movie Library
Cast
- Michael RuppertHimself
Recommendations
- 100
The A.V. Club
There are many layers to the man and the movie, and it’s hard not to leave the theater shaken. - 91
Entertainment Weekly
You may want to dispute Ruppert, but more than that you'll want to hear him, because what he says -- right or wrong, prophecy or paranoia -- takes up residence in your mind. - 90
Variety
Unnervingly persuasive much of the time, and merely riveting when it's not. - 80
The New York Times
His well-rehearsed rhetoric is shockingly persuasive, and since the majority of his premises are verifiable, any weakness in his argument lies in inferences so terrifying that reasonable listeners may find themselves taking his advice and stocking up on organic seeds. (Those with no access to land can, postapocalypse, use them as currency.) - 70
Los Angeles Times
A grueling peek at a doomsday prophet's rigorous mind but in a sly way also a compassionate look at the strain Ruppert endures from knowing he has only ever been right. - 60
Time Out
While this totally impartial approach is admirable, it also robs Collapse of any invested sensibility. Smith has given this bull a stage on which to rage, but why the filmmaker has bothered to mount the platform in the first place is, frustratingly, anybody’s guess. - 50
Village Voice
Smith lets Ruppert's plainspoken autodidactic skepticism get gradually shriller until his arguments dissolve into tears of grief and frustration. There's an element of Errol Morris in the film, which implicitly psychologizes its subject and watches as he talks himself deeper and deeper into the hole. - 50
NPR
If nothing else, while watching Ruppert, you'll believe he believes this stuff.
