It doesn’t work for the entirety of its run-time, but somehow, it makes you want to stick with it to see what it does next. Unfortunately, the ending is as bad as its setup.

| Original Score: F | Sep 8, 2024

All the quirks of the courts are on full display here. Combine that with Boyega’s performance and the result is a hit.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 10, 2023

Things feel too rushed throughout the film, and events get wrapped up too easily by the end.

| Original Score: 5/10 | Jun 21, 2022

The wait continues for a new movie worthy of the talents of John Boyega.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 2, 2022

Not even an impending apocalypse adds much in the way of urgency. Still, Boyega is very credible and at 29 he's beginning to look like a leading man with real gravitational pull. Likely he'll file this on his CV under misfire.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 31, 2021

Chase Palmer, the film's director and co-writer (with David Matthews), hacks away at this thick forest of high concepts and plot detail, but it all just keeps growing back, making for a tangled mess that's as irritating as a stroll through a nettle patch.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 31, 2021

De La Pava's surreal novel is lost in transition as the film version settles for an average heist caper. The solid cast makes it very watchable.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 7, 2021

A promising feature directorial debut for Palmer.

| Original Score: B+ | Aug 27, 2021

Naked Singularity is a perfect example of talented stars who are stuck in a terrible movie. This heist movie, which could have been thrilling to watch, is instead mired in a permanent creative rut filled with outdated depictions of women.

| Aug 25, 2021

Unfortunately, the movie opts for whatever.

| Aug 24, 2021

A very good cast makes a valiant go of it, but a hugely ambitious experimental novel has been boiled down to a tepid mishmash of genres: social-justice drama + black-comedy heist + sci-fi mind-bender.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 19, 2021

While not entirely successful, the film is very watchable, which can go a long way.

| Original Score: 5/10 | Aug 18, 2021

This is the simplest, clearest, cheapest statement on social revolution that Millennial Hollywood has brazened -- so far.

| Aug 18, 2021

Naked Singularity may wear the robe of a heist film with a message, but its collection of half-formed ideas shows just how bare it is underneath.

| Aug 15, 2021

Despite its eccentric, confident tone, Naked Singularity suffers from an acute identity crisis, leaving viewers wishing for more substance by the end.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 15, 2021

Linda Lavin's still got it.

| Aug 13, 2021

Some teens may lean into this crime drama as their version of The Matrix, but it's really much more comparable to The Butterfly Effect: not great, but memorable, with interesting ideas.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 11, 2021

Heady, inexplicable stuff that worked well in a book of 700 pages and only muddies what could have been an excellent film and instead is merely a good one.

| Aug 10, 2021

Naked Singularity is a bewildering mashup of social justice themes, science fiction, and hackneyed crime thriller. None of it makes a lick of sense.

| Original Score: 1.5/5 | Aug 10, 2021

Even as Mexican cartels, Hasidic money-launderers, modal realism explanations and a samurai sword pile up around the action, "Naked Singularity" stubbornly refuses to engage.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Aug 8, 2021