It's kick-ass and kind of funny, but real serious.

| Mar 30, 2022

Alice is so skittishly afraid to offend that it borders on parody.

| Original Score: 0/4 | Mar 18, 2022

While Ver Linden’s ideas never quite coalesce, “Alice” is at least consistently challenging.

| Mar 18, 2022

"Alice" falls victim to its own implausibility and lack of logic.

| Original Score: D+ | Mar 17, 2022

“Alice” takes the historic struggles for Black freedom in America and exploits them in the most vapid ways possible.

| Mar 17, 2022

From a strictly conceptual standpoint, there’s a lot of potential here, which is why it’s such a drag to report that the film is, well, you know, a real drag.

| Mar 17, 2022

“Alice,” the movie, dares to go through the looking glass, but it doesn’t entirely know what to do once it gets there.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 16, 2022

Alice lacks the genre’s trademark energy and attitude. Instead, we’re forced to endure a lifeless plot and one-note characters whose own development is both everywhere and nowhere.

| Mar 16, 2022

Ver Linden never really decides what she wants her film to be, which suggests this story would have been much better off in another writer/director’s hands.

| Feb 22, 2022

The problem with this far-fetched fable is that it delves into a painful part of Black history, plays loose and fast with details and time jumps in ridiculous ways.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 8, 2022

Ver Linden's film telegraphs how much it wants to say about the Black experience in America but doesn't really bother to say anything at all about it, ultimately feeling more exploitative than empowering.

| Jan 27, 2022

Alice plays as an inadvertent parody of contemporary liberalism's fascination with and fetishization of '70s black radicalism.

| Original Score: .5/4 | Jan 25, 2022

The horror in Ver Linden's tale is that Alice's mind has been held hostage, so it seeks true liberation through books, not guns. (Okay, some guns.)

| Original Score: B- | Jan 24, 2022

The potential excitement to be mined from translating Blaxploitation motifs for modern-day audiences is missing. "Alice" could've been so much more, but instead, it comes off like a lost opportunity.

| Original Score: C | Jan 24, 2022

While the ugliness of enslavement is always hard to watch, this film makes it more so with a hideous sludgy palette and flat composition.

| Jan 24, 2022

Does it look badass? Sure. Does it say anything new? No.

| Original Score: C+ | Jan 24, 2022

The queasy mix of realism and wish-fulfillment will set many viewers' heads spinning, or at least shaking with disappointment, in this well-intentioned but unpromising debut.

| Jan 24, 2022

Ver Linden never goes the commercial route here with her high-concept idea. Like Palmer, she stays true to her goal but does give the audience several satisfying moments that call for applause.

| Jan 24, 2022