With friends like these, who needs family? It’s exactly the problem Trengove’s feature highlights and tries to warn against. With that token, it bypasses all the deeper themes it could have used to flesh out its obvious warning signs.

| Dec 19, 2023

Muddled rather than provocative, this aimless drama about toxic masculinity and related ideologies is more compelling in the setup than the payoff.

| Dec 15, 2023

...there's an alluring quality to Manodrome, even if it’s not explored entirely, that provides enough ammo for a thought-provoking watch. And combined with a solid cast [...], it’s a movie that deserves a lot more recognition than it’s gotten initially.

| Nov 27, 2023

While it's far too intense, the film's pungent energy holds the interest. But some fresh air might have allowed the story to breathe more meaningfully, because it has a lot to say.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 21, 2023

Manodrome lacks depth as social commentary or character study, largely because of how it positions us in relation to its protagonist’s perspective.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Nov 16, 2023

An ambitious, unpleasant, and ultimately unsuccessful examination of toxic masculinity and cult mentality, this dark drama gets by for a long while on Eisenberg's aching, physical performance.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 12, 2023

Jesse Eisenberg is fantastic, even if the movie itself is rocky.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Nov 11, 2023

[It] ends on its least hyperbolic note, to graceful, even somewhat touching effect. But until then, it piles on contrary devices, some of a ripped-from-headlines ilk, without creating the organic character inner life or narrative that might unify them...

| Nov 10, 2023

The cast gives their all, but the film ultimately has nothing to offer.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Nov 10, 2023

Manodrome makes all the obvious moves.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Nov 10, 2023

With the help of a hideous haircut, Eisenberg gives a convincing performance as a repressed loser who never discovered who he is and has officially run out of time to start. But Trengrove’s script is as directionless as his protagonist.

| Original Score: C+ | Nov 10, 2023

It's Eisenberg who finds Ralphie in those narrative spaces, creating a whole and crushingly convincing portrait of a profoundly lost man, and the damage left in his wake.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 9, 2023

Trengove seems determined to defy the standard solutions to this sort of mess.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 9, 2023

Crude and sensationalizing, “Manodrome” is like an amalgam of all the headlines you’ve read about the kinds of men who succumb to warped ideologies.

| Nov 9, 2023

…a hard film to love, but it’s a fearless insight into the collapsing white-male mind-set, and features another scorching performance from Eisenberg, who shrugs off the bookish, sensitive aura that has been his signature...

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 9, 2023

Ambitious to a fault, Manodrome does remain unsettlingly gripping throughout delving into incel culture, with an exacting, tough-to-shake performance from Jesse Eisenberg

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 9, 2023

Dark and initially intriguing, but shallow, unimaginative and heavy-handed. In a double feature with Fight Club or Taxi Driver, it would be the inferior B-movie.

| Nov 9, 2023

Sadly, “Manodrome” doesn’t remain in an enigmatic state of mind, slowly growing unwieldly the more explicit Trengove gets with the details of this unraveling.

| Original Score: C | Nov 8, 2023

[A] missed opportunity [that] ends up more of a Taxi Driver lite than fully embraced its premise. It’s a pity because this is one of [Jesse] Eisenberg’s best performances I’ve ever seen in a long while.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Nov 6, 2023

Dark take on toxic masculinity.

| Original Score: B- | Nov 2, 2023