Weekend Movie Forecast: Watchmen Vs. Frenchmen

In his youth, director Mark Webber squatted in punk squalor in Philadelphia for a while, so it makes sense his film Explicit Ills, a slice of life on the fringe in the city of brotherly love, sports a left-wing agenda. Produced by Jim Jarmusch, it's also got some noteworthy names in the cast, including Paul Dano and Rosario Dawson, who plays the working-class mother of a young asthmatic. Aaron Hillis at the Voice calls it "confidently polished and thankfully more sweet-tempered than preachy, given that every narrative thread has an underlying theme of social injustice. As it leads up to a neighborhood-wide rally that brings every character together, it's a shame that Webber (in a marching cameo) has already surrendered his drama over to a last-act tragedy (poverty's fault, of course). For that, I, too, protest."