AboveDeepBuggy Some things I liked some I did not.

Console best movie i've ever seen.

Fulke Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Regina Zervou It may contain spoilersI saw this movie in the autumn film festival of Athens many years ago. It left me really astounded, surprised, marveled, my beloved Dylan co-produces a terrific movie, it starts with a scene referring to Chile's coup d'etat, tanks in the street, terror in the city, contains some of the most endearing performances of Dylan's songs (he doesn't sing any of them, opting for blue blues), such as 'the times they are a changing' by a sweet black girl who lisps, my favorite,a journalist killed by the guitar of Blind Lemon Jefferson, all that combined a mystifying tale that thrilled me. I thought tat, apart from the story, the glamorous cast, Bridges, Cruz, Goodman, Lang, would make it a hit for the winter film season and I started warmly recommending it to my friends. And then...nothing. The movie never found its way to the Athenian theaters. I don't know the reasons, but I thought that many really good movies never end in our screens. I give a ten to the movie for Dylan, the lovingly psychedelic plot, the performances of all those great songs and its depreciation.

beezus228 I am a HUGE Dylan fan, but this movie was a train wreck. It was so bad I had to watch it until the end. Kept hoping it would get better. It didn't. Even all the great cast members were flat in their roles. None of them could impart any emotion in their characters. Heck, I couldn't tell if it was a drama or a tongue in cheek comedy. The story line was weak and it was hard to figure out why most of the characters were even in the story line. Guess I'm just not that intellectual like those that gave this a high rating. The reason I gave it 2 stars was for the the music in the film. Which there wasn't enough of to keep me happy. If you have nothing better to do, I recommend that you do watch this flick. It's amazingly awful. Just like a train wreck. Sorry Bob, I've been to at least 10 of your concerts and your music has made me cry tears of joy, but acting is not something you were born to do.

jaybo_12 -this film makes me want to buy a passport and get the heck out of the USA.-i liked seeing how they used the masonic temple on Wilshire for the makeshift white house.-Was the president jack fates father? -The new president rocked as an evil man. He was everything G W Bush wants to be. He "friggin" knocked the podium over after his speech.-Val Kilmer is so charismatic, it makes me swoon. And I'm not even gay.-Let's see, what else can I say?-Apparently, Bob Dylan was supposed to sing "The Watchtower"/Hendricks but changed his mind. You know how Bob his.-The music still comes off well. I wish Angela Bassets character was delved into.-The DVD shows more of the supporting characters' background on the deleted scenes. The deleted parts aren't extremely helpful to the overall story. And one is just creepy.

Dennis Littrell The "mask" could be Dylan's face so stoically does he hold his expression. And the "anonymous" could be any tin horn banana republic dictator. As The Who phrased it years ago: "The new boss, just like the old boss." The surprising thing about this film is how good it is. Clearly experimental in form (which often equals boring) Masked and Anonymous is instead a fascinating work of art with outstanding performances amid a meandering chaos replete with cunning little speeches that defy analysis. I was not really surprised to learn that credited screenwriter "Sergei Petrov" is really Bob Dylan. Kudos to him and to "Rene Fontaine" (actually Larry Charles of "Seinfeld" fame) for coming up with this little gem.However I have to say that without Dylan's music and the fine cast this could have been an unmitigated disaster.One of the things I love about Bob Dylan is the intensity. It's always there. He never stops. It's as though the next lyric will be the line to end all lines (pun intended) or that the next musical hook will exhaust the music.Like Emily Dickinson he invented a new kind of poetry that confounded the poetic establishment and confused academia. When I first heard Dylan's lyrics in the sixties referred to as poetry, I was an undergraduate at UCLA and thought (apparently along with Carl Sandburg): this ain't poetry. It's all clichés. And it is. But what Bob Dylan did was to use the phrases and the clichés and the rhythms of our world as the poet uses words. The clichés became the building blocks of his poems. And of course they filled his head to overflowing, echoing and ricocheting around in his mind like the wares of Quinn the Eskimo running all around his brain. And they had to get out, and he tossed them out with tune after tune and a lyric to string them together, and he ended up writing some of best poetry of the latter half of the 20th century. But of course his poetry, like that of all song writers does not stand entirely alone without its music. Still his phrases that look into our soul and chronicle our times are as indelible as the color of our skin. It is no coincidence that in the age of the soundbite, Dylan wrote his poems in soundbites.Like the 19th century academics who wanted to edit Emily Dickinson's poetry and improve her meter and adjust her "imperfect" (slant) rhymes and normalize her punctuation, the academic world of the 20th century wanted to get Dylan to eschew cliché. But what they missed is the poet knows the language better than they and his clichés are in the modules of our minds. They are the wings of the zeitgeist and the linguist's meme.Goodman was perfect as Uncle Sweetheart who might be a deeply buried persona of Dylan with his cryptic one-liners and his desolation soul, his corrupted heart and his huge appetite for life. And Jessica Lange was also excellent as were the cameos by all sorts of name actors appearing on stage to confront a stoic Dylan. In a way they were intriguing and perhaps nothing more than that. Like Shakespearean players they came and had their time upon the stage and were heard no more.Yes, this film seems to signify in the final analysis not much, but, isn't that the point of life: there is no point. Life is that tale by an idiot signifying nothing.Here's a nice string of quotes from the cynic, Jack Fate, Dylan's alter ego: "I was always a singer and maybe no more than that. Sometimes it's not enough to know the meaning of things, sometimes we have to know what things don't mean as well...Things fall apart...The way we look at the world is what we really are. See it from a fair garden and everything looks cheerful. Climb to a higher plateau and you'll see plunder and murder. Truth and beauty are in the eye of the beholder...I don't pay much attention to my dreams...I stopped trying to figure everything out a long time ago..." I have only one criticism of this film: I wish there had been a lot more of the hauntingly beautiful Penelope Cruz.(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)