Casting against type can work well, but lumbered with a heavy-handed script, Wilson still feels like the guy who wants to crack open some Bud Light and make fart jokes.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Dec 10, 2024

A confusing entertaining film that you will forget exists

| Jul 26, 2023

Though a cameo from Bill Nye certainly brought a brief smile to my face, the film overall left me with the opposite of bliss.

| Original Score: D | May 2, 2023

“Bliss” feels like something that sounds really good as a concept but that doesn’t quite pan out on screen.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Aug 17, 2022

Somewhere in here, there's a remarkable film about an absent father trying to make good with a daughter who never loses faith. Unfortunately, that film is submerged by Cahill's distracted approach to make the film 'palatable'.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 1, 2022

Bliss novelty wears off about halfway through, as the film simply becomes a race toward a twist that we all saw coming. Still, at a time where many of us would welcome the news that this reality was simply a simulation, it offers some gritty escapism.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 1, 2022

Sascha is damaged with a complicated past and whether she will allow herself to be loved, becomes the focus of this naturalistic and hopeful movie, that is a real find, even in its disturbing moments.

| Jun 28, 2021

None of this film really makes sense. It was like watching "Tenet" again except, I could I hear the dialogue.

| Original Score: D- | Jun 22, 2021

Which world is real and which is the simulation? Director Mike Cahill opts for ambiguity. His willingness to let the audience soak in the uncertainty makes Bliss Cahill's strongest, most ambitious film to date.

| Original Score: 3.5 | Jun 8, 2021

[Bliss] would feel more at home in an elementary school's mandatory D.A.R.E. assembly.

| Jun 6, 2021

Cahill's future world just isn't convincing enough to spark much bliss in this one.

| Original Score: 2/5 | May 5, 2021

While trying to emulate the dizzying heights of the Matrix, Owen Wilson and Selma Hayek are left floating through the void of a derivative mess

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 18, 2021

Despite its inventive premise, Bliss is too convoluted and dull to make its genre mix and message work. [Full Review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Mar 9, 2021

Mike Cahill's ambitious science-fiction/psychological drama Bliss suffers from two extremely big drawbacks. First, its convoluted, minutia-obsessed "Matrix-Lite" screenplay...

| Original Score: 1/4 | Mar 9, 2021

While there are moments of engagement and some memorable images, Bliss simply doesn't hold together enough to make its ideas-however fascinating-stick.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 8, 2021

Outside of a few engaging visual techniques, Cahill only observes the film's meaningful conditions on a surface level.

| Feb 24, 2021

More bound to leave you confused and unhappy than in a state of bliss.

| Original Score: C | Feb 22, 2021

Fun? Quite tiresome, actually.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 22, 2021

There's nothing to pull Bliss together and make it feel like anything beyond new-age junk science.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 21, 2021

By the time the movie lifts the curtain to show its wizard, it's too late. The answers he comes up with would have been intriguing if the film's tired gimmick hadn't made the film so darn mopey.

| Feb 20, 2021