Magazine Dreams
Briarcliff Entertainment | Release Date: March 21, 2025 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
65
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 36 Critic Reviews
Positive:
23
Mixed:
12
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
91
Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattJan 21, 2023
Even as the pacing falters, Majors is impossible to look away from: a man who desperately needs the world to see him — and if they refuse, to feel his pain. Read full review
90
Film ThreatAlex SavelievJan 26, 2023
It is an intimate, somber, uncompromising cinematic portrait of a desperate soul in the vein of Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, if it were cross-bred with Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver. The film will haunt you long after the lights fade. Read full review
90
VarietyOwen GleibermanJan 21, 2023
Magazine Dreams creates a character haunting in his extremity. But his dream becomes ours, as does the heartbreaking prospect of it being snuffed before our eyes. Read full review
85
TheWrapJan 21, 2023
The film always has Majors on its side, pulling us back in right as we are ready to step away from the intense barrage of rage. Anchored in his greatness, Magazine Dreams can get away with most of its flaws. Read full review
83
ConsequenceClint WorthingtonJan 22, 2023
For all its unrelenting grimness, it’s impossible to look away from Majors’ incredible, titanic performance — every downcast glance, every nervous grin through blood-soaked teeth, every rabid bark of his frustrated outbursts is completely and totally gripping. Read full review
83
The PlaylistRobert DanielsJan 21, 2023
Magazine Dreams, even with some shortcomings, is dense, deftly composed, yet oddly overbearing. It’s uncomfortable and conflicting and may even prove divisive. And it’s unquestionably unforgettable. Read full review
80
Wall Street JournalKyle SmithMar 20, 2025
The contrast between the two Killians—mighty on the outside, meek within—makes Magazine Dreams a wrenching character study, by turns lovely and chaotic. Read full review
80
We Got This CoveredMartin CarrJan 24, 2023
Carving off a slice and stepping things up a notch, Jonathan Majors delivers another formidable performance in 'Magazine Dreams.' Packing on the pounds and dialing that drama up to 10, audiences will finally get what makes this actor so special. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangJan 21, 2023
A brutal study of physical extremity and psychological meltdown built around an entirely astonishing lead performance from Jonathan Majors. Read full review
75
Movie NationRoger MooreMar 24, 2025
Labeling Jonathan Majors‘s turn in Magazine Dreams “deeply disturbing” is the epitome of understatement. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperMar 20, 2025
With clear and obvious influences from films such as “Joker,” “The King of Comedy,” “Whiplash” and, most prominently, “Taxi Driver,” writer-director Bynum and Majors team up for a disturbing and blistering case study of a man who feels utterly unseen and is obsessed with making a name for himself. Read full review
75
Slant MagazinePat BrownJan 30, 2023
Magazine Dreams melds the alluring and the horrific in an unsettling mixture suited to its account of the peril of pursuing physical perfection. Read full review
75
ColliderRoss BonaimeJan 23, 2023
Magazine Dreams is a difficult and challenging watch, bolstered by an incredible performance by Majors that could easily end up being one of the year's best. Read full review
75
SlashfilmChris EvangelistaJan 21, 2023
Magazine Dreams will alienate some viewers, but even those who aren't able to get on board with what Bynum is doing will be unable to deny how incredible Jonathan Majors is here. It's the type of unique, highly memorable performance people talk about for years to come. Read full review
75
IndieWireKate ErblandJan 21, 2023
What Majors does here, how raw and vulnerable and brave he is not just with his craft, but his very body, is something to behold. This is true artistry, absolute commitment. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyJan 25, 2023
It’s an all-in performance for the ages, layered with as much vulnerability as anger, and it’s to Majors’ credit that our hearts ache for Killian even — or perhaps especially — when he’s out of control. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyJan 25, 2023
It’s an all-in performance for the ages, layered with as much vulnerability as anger, and it’s to Majors’ credit that our hearts ache for Killian even — or perhaps especially — when he’s out of control. Read full review
70
UproxxMike RyanJan 23, 2023
By sheer willpower alone Majors makes Magazine Dreams something to behold. This movie exists as a vessel in which to watch Jonathan Majors act his ass off. Read full review
70
Vanity FairRichard LawsonJan 21, 2023
Who knows what, if any, instructive value a film like Magazine Dreams has in this day and age. Maybe it needn’t have any of that—a gruesome movie can just be a gruesome movie. But I suspect Bynum is trying for more than just a gnarly couple of hours. I’ll have to mull over his film, and maybe force myself to watch it again, to get a grasp on what I think Magazine Dreams is really doing and how well it succeeds in that endeavor. Read full review
70
Screen DailyTim GriersonJan 21, 2023
Writer-director Elijah Bynum’s second feature is often riveting, its heartbreak and pain amplified by Jonathan Majors’ brilliantly anguished performance. But just as its subject risks imploding at any moment, this confident drama eventually starts to unravel, fumbling its final third while trying to find the right ending for such a damaged, raging soul. Read full review
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzMar 26, 2025
Like Majors’s chiselled physique, which is almost a special effect all its own, Magazine Dreams takes unironic pride in flexing its themes so nakedly and frequently that there’s little left to the imagination. Read full review
63
RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzMar 21, 2025
The homages and borrowings—not just from Scorsese’s oeuvre but other widely-seen films, including a brazen lift from “Boogie Nights”—constrict the movie and prevent it from breathing on its own. Read full review
63
The Associated PressLindsey BahrMar 20, 2025
While “Magazine Dreams” is an interesting character study, one many actors would love to play for all its dramatic opportunities, it also seems crafted entirely to provoke and shock — especially in the almost unbearably bleak final hour. Read full review
60
The TimesKevin MaherDec 12, 2025
Majors plays the central character, Killian Maddox, with subtlety and sensitivity. Read full review
60
The GuardianPeter BradshawDec 2, 2025
Magazine Dreams itself, though flawed by a cumbersome flashback structure in which he is talking to a counsellor, has powerful moments and Majors is very good, especially in the bizarre scene when Killian insists on going onstage at a bodybuilding event just after being beaten up. Read full review
60
IGNSiddhant AdlakhaMar 27, 2025
Writer-director Elijah Bynum fills the screen with some impressive imagery, but it’s all in service of an ugliness that Magazine Dreams cops out on depicting. Read full review
60
Screen RantMae AbdulbakiFeb 3, 2023
Powered by an incredible, devoted performance from Jonathan Majors, Magazine Dreams stumbles in its last act and repeats itself too often, but it is gripping and intense all the same. Read full review
60
The GuardianBenjamin LeeJan 23, 2023
Killian’s spiral is intense and unpleasant but we’re not left at the end with much other than respect for technique. The film, like Killian, is all muscle. Read full review
59
Paste MagazineJacob OllerJan 25, 2023
Not just an incredible waste of a spectacular performance, but a film more caught up in ogling tragedy than dealing with it. Read full review
58
The Film StageJordan RaupJan 21, 2023
A ruthlessly nihilistic beast of a movie, Elijah Bynum’s second feature Magazine Dreams provides a one-note powerhouse acting showcase for Majors, who ends up getting lost in the drawn-out second half as thematic points that initially sting get repeated ad nauseam and red herrings meant to shock become unnecessary side plots. Read full review
50
New York Magazine (Vulture)Alison WillmoreApr 1, 2025
Magazine Dreams certainly isn’t inept, and Bynum, who wrote as well as directed it, summons a devastatingly spare atmosphere that’s broken up with some arrestingly dreamlike compositions when Killian arrives at a show or competition. But it consists of the same idea, underlined over and over. Read full review
50
The New York TimesBen KenigsbergMar 20, 2025
Magazine Dreams bludgeons viewers to show off its sensitivity. Read full review
50
Washington PostTy BurrMar 20, 2025
The movie stands as a statement of a gifted, troubled actor’s intense commitment to his craft. Beyond that, it is a punishment. Read full review
50
Rolling StoneK. Austin CollinsJan 23, 2023
It fails as a character study because the murky inner workings of the character are all manifest, outwardly, in turns and attitudes that you can see from a mile away and are no wiser for being able to predict. Read full review
40
Los Angeles TimesAmy NicholsonMar 28, 2025
This downbeat drama is as overwrought as Killian’s muscles — it’s a steroidal portrait of a man in distress. Read full review
25
The A.V. ClubAndy CrumpMar 26, 2025
Bynum scaffolds the film with a narrative about failure, not one about the challenges of navigating life on the spectrum. Killian’s cognitive differences are there to be exacerbated by the many problems the script piles on his shoulders, as if Bynum has a torture fetish and means to exercises it on his lead. Read full review
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