Maps to the Stars 2014

Lou Lumenick, New York Post: This train wreck is nasty and mean without making any coherent point. Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: Mr. Cronenberg's reputation for daring defeats him here. Read more

Peter Debruge, Variety: Part showbiz sendup, part ghost story, part dysfunctional-family drama, the movie instead comes across as so much jaded mumbo-jumbo. Read more

A.A. Dowd, AV Club: Maps offers almost nothing but recycled insights, regurgitating ancient anti-Hollywood cliches. It's a movie you've seen many times before, just never in the perverse key of Cronenberg. Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: "Maps to the Stars" is an ugly little movie, unrelenting in its despair and depravity, which is exactly how director David Cronenberg wants it. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: A lot of the movie works, but enough doesn't for "Maps to the Stars" to go down as a lost opportunity and one of this director's braver missteps. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: Hollywood has been disemboweling itself since... Sunset Boulevard and The Bad and the Beautiful, but those movies seem like Cream of Wheat compared to Cronenberg's wicked vision. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: "Maps to the Stars" loses some steam near the end, and its resolution has the predetermined quality of Greek tragedy writ small. Still, I found it (as the Replacements song says) sadly beautiful. Read more

Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News: Moore delivers something remarkable here: a completely ego-free portrait of a woman who knows only ego. Read more

Entertainment Weekly: The goal here is cynical satire. The result, sadly, is just a yawn. Read more

Jordan Hoffman, Film.com: For a movie that has so many problems, it is one of the more watchable ones. Read more

Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter: Comes off like a prank more than a coherent take on 21st century Hollywood, even if there are crumbs of truth and wit scattered throughout it. Read more

Gary Goldstein, Los Angeles Times: Although the physical and emotional brutality on display is tough to take, it's hard to dismiss the film's pitch dark ironies, painful truths and incendiary metaphors. Read more

Lindsey Bahr, Associated Press: Ultimately, "Maps" doesn't take us anywhere we haven't been before, but it's an occasionally fascinating, if messy, ride. Read more

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: Cronenberg's elegant framing and camerawork are reminiscent of a photographer shooting wild fauna - he's fascinated and amused by this strange land - but his fondness for horror and disturbing imagery eventually seep into the picture. Read more

John Anderson, Newsday: Disturbingly excessive, but perversely funny and emotionally roiling. Read more

Anthony Lane, New Yorker: According to Cronenberg, the script for "Maps to the Stars," by Bruce Wagner, began life more than twenty years ago, and it shows. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: A dark and twisted Hollywood Gothic that - with its mixed-together helpings of incest, murder, madness and surreality - can feel a little more like David Lynch than Cronenberg. Read more

Graham Fuller, New York Daily News: For all its venom, "Maps" is one of the more compassionate movies from Cronenberg. Read more

A.O. Scott, New York Times: It's a little too chilly, and in some places too easy. But you may find yourself drawn back to it, and retracing its route from the familiar to the uncanny, from entertainment to revulsion, from dream to nightmare. Read more

Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times: This isn't a lousy film; it's a mediocre, ugly film about lousy people. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: Cronenberg's dark comic blast into the dazzle and depravity of Hollyweird. Moore delivers a tour de force of ego unleashed. You can laugh with Maps to the Stars, but you can't laugh it off. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: The acting is often as flat as the L.A. sunshine looks in this movie, and the whole thing just has a too-obvious feel to it; as if the makers watched "The Player" a few too many times. Read more

Dana Stevens, Slate: The cast offers up an impressive variety of grotesques, even if no performance seems to occupy quite the same tonal register as any other. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: Contains as much sex and gore as any film the Hieronymus Bosch of body horror has created, to less value. Read more

Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: An entertaining tour of Tinseltown served with poisoned popcorn. Read more

Jon Frosch, The Atlantic: So crisply directed, furiously paced and gleefully performed that you go along for the ride. Read more

Geoff Pevere, Globe and Mail: Cronenberg's vision is as bright as a sunlamp, sterile as an operating theatre and still as a morgue. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: David Cronenberg pans satiric gold from the muck of celebrity ills, in a Tinseltown where reality depends on your dosage. Read more

Dave Calhoun, Time Out: This creepy portrait of Beverly Hills screw-ups is deeply silly, but it has just enough venomous bite Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: If a pointless and nasty Hollywood satire filled with vile characters and no one to root for sounds like a good time, go see Maps to the Stars. Read more

Stephanie Zacharek, Village Voice: Whenever Moore's onscreen - which, thankfully, is often - Maps to the Stars works like gangbusters. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: There are scads of scabrous inside-Hollywood psychodramas, but never a festering pyre on the order of David Cronenberg and Bruce Wagner's Maps to the Stars. What a hyperfocused duo of ghouls! Read more

Stephanie Merry, Washington Post: The movie can be over-the-top and the characters are rarely anything more than vile. And yet, the whole thing is mesmerizing. Read more