Ooooof. The largely unspoken kernel of this writer’s argument is that Curtis is wrong. Once you take that as given you can disparage his style as much as you like.
Curtis's films are highly enjoyable for me, but much more art than argument. I find the criticism is valid.
That, and as you write: they’re art films; being frustrated as the author was for their lack of clarity or specificity as if they should’ve been straight documentaries is silly. If anything, many documentaries engage in a false determinism where their chosen subject matter is 100% consequential in the slice of history they’re exploring – something Curtis’ work doesn’t do by instead leaving the totality of recent history as a paradoxically more accurate haze of loosely connected events with unknowable detail.
The author takes on a ridiculing tone, painting Curtis as having big ideas but being too naive and infantile to actually develop them, a 16 year old raging at the shadowy elites, it's the system man, puts on RATM. That's the whole content of the critique, especially the first 3/4.
Which is fine, I can see that. And yet. Curtis _does_ have big ideas, just chooses to develop them in an impressionistic manner. He's an artist in a way, a polemicist maybe, philosopher certainly.
The writer is (for now) facing one of his betters, yet intuitively senses something is off, awash in a slight sense of superiority. The way this usually arises is because he's likely saturated by Curtis work, and has "cracked the code", the stylistic choices, the narrative structure. The veil has fallen, and now, as a God, he only sees the void. But that's because he's fully internalized Curtis' message, there's nothing new for him there anymore.