Him

Transcendence

Crit

Seriously? I spent good money (bargain matinee money, but still) on something drawing 19% on Rotten Tomatoes? Yes, I did, and I think there must be a conspiracy of tech nerds or antitech nerds, or maybe both, because this isn't that bad, and by some reasonable standards of entertainment, it's not bad at all.

 

Sure it's goofy, but is it any goofier than, say, The Matrix? Maybe less meticulous in squaring its various circles, but no less goofy. And like that canonized film, this one grasps at Big Questions: how does consciousness work? What is the self? Does the soul exist? Can we tap the hive mind? And perhaps the biggest question of all: Johnny Depp? That it doesn't have a clue how to answer any of those questions doesn't make it any goofier than The Matrix, merely less pretentious.

 

Meanwhile, it looks great and shouts out sweetly to sources futuristic (2001), apocalyptic  (pick any zombie flick), and digitistic (remember back when we were newly affluent enough to get premium cable, and all it had was 5 mediocre movies, softcore porn, and Max Headroom?). Oh, and appropriate to the season, to Jesus movies too: the transcendent Will makes blind men see and lame men walk.

Hey, I've done lots worse spending 8 bucks.
 

Dom Hemingway

Crit

This one leans just barely into the Rotten zone on RT--so a rating triple Transcendence's--and it earns its low marks more legitimately, I think. Not that Jude Law doesn't make it an engagingly noxious thrill ride for a while, never more so than in the opening scene, when Dom delivers a poetic, rhapsodic, priapic paean to his prick. Sadly, the film goes flaccid after a half-hour or so, and it seems not to have another go in it.

Trailers

• Locke--Imagine pitching a biopic of a 17th-c. English philosopher. That's not what this film is, mind; I'm just suggesting that you imagine it.
• Godzilla--Why did I skip the 1998 one? Because I lived with someone with critical faculties then, perhaps? Anyway, this one has people like David Straithairn and Juliette Binoche and Sally Hawkins to lure us art-house suckers in, and I may be lured. 
• The Drop--This looks like a pretty rote mob flick, but it may be the last chance to see James Gandolfini.