Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Utterly conventional, this movie is barely watchable because of the shallowness of characterization. Like most popular movies, it is written by someone who seems blind to anything beyond cartoonish, simplified emotion. The sci-fi component is not original, convincing, speculative enough to compensate. The movie is ostensibly a love story, written by someone who gives no evidence of having experienced anything beyond self-love. I usually grant some artistic slack in the following regard, but here, females could not be more objectified, living only to serve the ego needs of their narcissistic creator; otherwise they get to be the one evil “bitch.” There’s a reason some writers can convincingly depict supposed genius in their characters, while in other writers’ hands, similar characters seem flat, intellectually limited, conventional. I watched “The Vast of Night” just before “Archive,” and what a contrast. The former movie has characters of deftly developed personality, written and directed with empathetic insight into both males and females from young to old within a thoughtfully observed cultural context. It expressed a uniquely integrated aesthetic vision, opposed to the oft-remarked but superficial beauty of the “Archive” terrain.