Metacritic reviews

In building this mystery, and in proving herself as a major entertainer, Joy always has something up her sleeve, including her savvy ways to suddenly spike the plot with a slickly edited fight scene that builds the mystery instead of just taking a break from it.

Reminiscence is so very, very close to succeeding. Joy has a great visual style – there’s a fight scene in a flooded room with a piano that’s genuinely stunning to watch – and the noir/sci-fi mash-up is often enjoyable. But Reminiscence never manages to feel like a memory worth revisiting.

It’s a film about memory which itself feels like the kind of thing you vaguely remember seeing 25 years ago. I’m not sure future slow-burn classic status awaits, but at a time when few studio films even seem to be striving for it, you have to applaud the attempt.

The film falters mostly with its disappointingly one-note female characters ... It’s a shame, for Reminiscence has some impressive ingredients floating around in its murky mix.

Reminiscence is never not interesting, but Joy leaves a lot of the intriguing issues unsatisfactorily explored.

“Reminiscence” has all the ingredients for electrifying summer entertainment. But despite its considerable star power and impressive set pieces, the sprawling meditation on memory is simply an attractive mess.

Writer-director Lisa Joy (Westworld) seems to be aiming for an Inception-style metaphysical mind-bend, with the sci-fi jolt of Minority Report and a bleak splash of Waterworld. But her intentions get lost in some cloudy marine layer in between, sunk by hammy hard-boiled dialogue and a story that leaves logic at the door.

It’s an absolute slog to watch Jackman row this way and that in search of something to justify this movie’s labored metaphors.

The reminders of Inception become so distracting that the film starts to border on pastiche. ... It’s overwhelming, even suffocating at times, which is a shame because there are elements here that work independently, without the need for the Nolan playbook to be so obsessively followed.

In a movie this overloaded with plot, the revelations are like a leaky faucet, just like that purple voiceover. In fact, there’s so much going on, much of it behind the literal curtain of memory, that Joy leaves little room for the characters to establish themselves in the here and now.