The irony of Anesthesia is that, while it uses interconnectivity as a storytelling mechanism, the characters do not really connect.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 29, 2016

Stewart stands out because her one big scene seems so passionate and genuine. It's the only moment when "Anesthesia" seems to be working.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 29, 2016

A grand gesture going nowhere.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 28, 2016

A stellar cast of serious-minded players...fight a losing battle against the characters' overwritten dialogue and unlikely behavior.

| Jan 28, 2016

A pile of incomprehensible existential gibberish by the vastly untalented actor-writer-director Tim Blake Nelson about the meaning of life in an age of technology, told in the tiresome style of multiple characters who intersect at odd angles ...

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 21, 2016

I want to recommend Nelson's film in spite of how misconceived it is simply because it asks interesting questions, albeit in some of the most banal ways imaginable.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jan 8, 2016

The effect of keeping the various subplots apart for so long is enormously frustrating, because we don't know what Mol's frustrated suburbanite or Stewart's morose student or Williams and Freeman's strained friendship have to do with one another.

| Jan 7, 2016

Like few contemporary films, "Anesthesia" distills the anxious intellectual tenor of the times.

| Jan 7, 2016

Employs a dozen or so cardboard characters as mouthpieces for singularly unilluminating thoughts about the ways in which people struggle to bury their unhappiness.

| Original Score: D+ | Jan 7, 2016

I wanted more time with almost all of the subplots - I got invested in their small, relatable agonies - which is both a complaint and a compliment.

| Original Score: B- | Jan 6, 2016

Overall the film plays like an annotated philosophy lecture, with Nelson using various interwoven characters to flesh out Waterston's talking points.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 6, 2016

"Anesthesia" is sincere but numbing.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jan 6, 2016

Tim Blake Nelson's film immerses itself into as many pain-induced (and painful) subplots as it possibly can.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Jan 5, 2016

All of the individual scenes, even the ones that resemble a play being workshopped right there on the screen, have sharp writing, good performances and are interesting in and of themselves.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 26, 2015

The characters may feel less like thesis-demonstrating pawns than Haggis's characters do, but the end result feels about as manipulative.

| Apr 25, 2015

Tim Blake Nelson's latest directorial effort is a heartfelt but heavy-handed essay on human interaction and isolation.

| Apr 24, 2015