Masked And Anonymous 2003

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: The film is a train wreck, and an overbearing train wreck at that. Read more

Scott Von Doviak, Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com: There's a cracked integrity to the picture that eventually won me over. Read more

Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press: A fascinating mess. Read more

Connie Ogle, Miami Herald: This tarted-up mishmash of loopy ideology and pining for the old days makes you happy the 1960s are over. Read more

Richard Roeper, Ebert & Roeper: I haven't seen so many talented actors in such an utter mess since well, since Hotel. It's as if Fellini had a brain cramp and turned his camera over to a blind man. Read more

Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune: Would have been much better if the makers had included more music, shot their actors with Ingmar Bergman close-up minimalism and made something looser, simpler and wilder. Read more

A.O. Scott, New York Times: An unholy, incoherent mess. Read more

Keith Phipps, AV Club: The results have more in common with the rambling, stream-of-conscious liner notes that Dylan used to write, and which everyone used to skip to get to the great music. Read more

Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times: The look of the film is great, the soundtrack glorious, but more often than not the dialogue is atrocious, featuring a lot of long-winded gobbledygook. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: It requires tremendous restraint not to conclude that this entertainingly apocalyptic mess is about nothing, since it may well be about everything. But I doubt it. Read more

Jane Sumner, Dallas Morning News: If Seinfeld is the late sitcom about nothing, M&A is the feature about something. It's just that some of us out here in the hinterland can't figure out what it is. Read more

Chuck Wilson, L.A. Weekly: After a zippy first hour, the wackos wear out their welcome and the director, perversely, fails to show the big concert. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: Less the product of a '60s icon than a sixtyish crank, it tediously commutes between anger and inanity -- and whatever answers it pretends to offer aren't blowing in the wind, but merely carried along by a lot of hot air. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: A vanity production beyond all reason. Read more

Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com: An exhilarating and sometimes puzzling jumble that explores the dangers of power, the nature of Americana and the Bob Dylan myth, among many, many other things. Read more

Edward Guthmann, San Francisco Chronicle: Void of inflection, Dylan doesn't act, but stands and looks uneasy in whatever space the camera is pointing. The deadness in his eyes stops the movie cold. Read more

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: The results are heavy-handed and oppressive in the way that vanity projects and bloated collective theatre experiments often are. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: Dylan seems content to just recycle his old ideas. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: The biggest waste of talent of any movie this year. Read more

Todd McCarthy, Variety: A vanity project in which everyone looks bad, this wannabe sociopolitical-musical provocation comes off instead as hipster upchuck. Read more

Michael Atkinson, Village Voice: Predictably, the product is pretentious and self-destructive, as disinterested in storytelling as it is brimming with misanthropic speechifying only a pop Mahatma could get away with. Read more

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: A fascinating, vexing, indulgent, visionary, pretentious, mesmerizing pop culture curio. Read more