NIGHTMARE ALLEY

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Insufferable, poorly paced, sterile melodrama with a double side of gore.

Yawn.

Guillermo del Toro has forgotten how to make movies.

Del Toro's script co-writer Kim Morgan shoulders some of the blame.

Bradley Cooper is awful. Cate Blanchett is awful.

Quel désastre. 

Richard Jenkins and Rooney Mara fair little better.

Paint dries faster than this movie gets around to the matter at hand, namely a high-stakes con game run by an overreaching mentalist.

Zzzzzzz.

Rated R. 150 very long mins.

ZERO STARS

ANNETTE — CANNES 2021

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Tedious, ill conceived, and pointlessly depressing "Annette" is a prime example of artsy fartsy Cinema gone wrong.

In spite of every other filmmaker's fawning opinion, there are limits to Adam Driver's acting, singing, and comedic abilities.

Cracks in Adam Driver's thresholds of craft appear in stark relief in this musical flop from French auteur Leos Carax, as co-written with Sparks singer Russell Mael.

Representational and presentational approaches don't mix.

ZERO STARS

MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION — THE CRITERION COLLECTION

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Opulent religious melodrama. 

Famous as the film that launched Rock Hudson's career, Douglas Sirk's soft soap take on Lloyd C. Douglas's Christianity tilted novel is a mid-century classic for other reasons as well.

Sirk's rich signature color palate is on full display for a winking adventure in high camp, in Technicolor no less.

Agnes Moorhead ("Bewitched") steals every scene.

Criterion collector's essential disc.