Dreamland

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

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.

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

Not bad enough to even have a good laugh, Dreamland exists on a plane of exhaustion, one that's too tired to be much of anything.

If you've never seen a movie luxuriate in eccentricity as thoroughly as a cat basking in a sun puddle, then you need to watch "Dreamland."

Shoddy and shabby.

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.

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

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

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.