It makes sense that one of Dreamland's lead characters is a jazz player because McDonald has made a Bebop movie, a deconstructed genre flick with a fast tempo and unexpected story angles with only occasional references to expected genre tropes.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 30, 2021

All over the place, but in a kind of interesting way...

| Nov 11, 2020

To have one Stephen McHattie in your movie may be considered a fortuitous accident. To have two is clearly casting genius.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Nov 11, 2020

While perhaps unsatisfying, there is a lot of pleasure to be found occasionally bubbling to the film's surface.

| Nov 11, 2020

A drab dive into a neo-noir landscape that, at times, flirts with grit but, often, just seems unmoored in a strange fantasy arena without anything to hold it in place.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Aug 17, 2020

Mobsters and junkies and vampires, oh my. Just like the best jazz songs, Dreamland has to go off the rails a little before it finds the melody.

| Original Score: 3.5 | Jul 30, 2020

Dreamland is a bit of a nonsensical film with some good performance, it allows Juliette Lewis to truly have fun and go nutty at times, something that is never not entertaining.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jun 24, 2020

Dreamland is remarkably disastrous yet instantly forgetful. An aimless blunder of foolery so ludicrous it makes one wonder how it came to be.

| Jun 20, 2020

Even if your film isn't afraid to get bizarre, there should still be a purpose to it beyond just being odd.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 13, 2020

The title forewarns you that anything goes, and it pretty much does, and over time the barrage-not so much a dream as a fever-dream in film noir mode-grows tiresome.

| Original Score: C- | Jun 11, 2020

Funny, strange, and violent. Less like a linear screenplay than it is a mood board full of sociopolitical resistance and grim, hilarious satire.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 11, 2020

It doesn't add up to much more than the sum of its eccentric parts, and it doesn't go whole hog enough into its craziness.

| Jun 10, 2020

The playful intersection of ideas does not, however, make a film effective and Dreamland loses its way once it starts repeating itself.

| Original Score: C+ | Jun 8, 2020

The dedication by the storytellers, and a fascinating dual, lead performance by grizzled Stephen McHattie makes it compulsively watchable.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 6, 2020

In the end, Dreamland never bothers to decide whether it's trying to be an elegiac, philosophical head trip or an over-the-top action thriller.

| Original Score: C | Jun 6, 2020

Its Lynchian vibe and sheer audacity make it one of my favorite films I've seen so far this year.

| Original Score: 9/10 | Jun 6, 2020

Midnight meets madness in a surrealist exercise in existentialism and deft satire that will unsettle the average viewer while exciting those with freakier tastes.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 6, 2020

Rather than create an immersive world, McDonald just throws a lot of random, inexplicable elements together.

| Jun 5, 2020

Dreamland has on its side an impressive dual performance by Stephen McHattie... [but] wants to offset this [darkness] with absurdity and magical realism, and just can't achieve the needed balance.

| Original Score: B- | Jun 5, 2020

Likewise, the actors do a surprisingly good job of finding just the right notes to make the thoroughly implausible material make some degree of sense.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 5, 2020