Name : Owen Gleiberman / Alias : Variety
A madly spinning top of a movie, powered by an eagerness to please that somehow comes off as more innocent than calculated.

Name : Dave White / Alias : TheWrap
For their next trick, they make a next trick sound like an attractive prospect.

Name : Mark Feeney / Alias : Boston Globe
Why make a sequel? Well, why not: This one is more fun.

Name : Mark Daniell / Alias : Toronto Sun
By the time we get to the London-based finale, the illusion the Horsemen pull off comes across as just completely implausible. It's almost as if the filmmakers were saying - didja get all that? Well, too bad.

Name : Tomris Laffly / Alias : Time Out
Forget what trick-debunker Morgan Freeman says: You don't have to see this to believe it (or see it at all).

Name : Matthew Lickona / Alias : San Diego Reader
And of course, there's no danger of mistaking computer-enhanced trickery for actual sleight of hand, so even the modest but honest pleasure provided by quality card work is compromised.

Name : Scott Tobias / Alias : NPR
This is no mere haunted house movie. This is a tour through a giant, spring-loaded funhouse.

Name : Randy Cordova / Alias : Arizona Republic
"Now You See Me 2" is a sequel that gets it right. It's as if everyone involved here analyzed what worked the first time around in 2013, and then decided to top it.

Name : Lenika Cruz / Alias : The Atlantic
But very little about this hollow sequel to 2013's heist thriller Now You See Me feels mysterious; its biggest set-pieces will make viewers ask not "Whoa, how'd they do that?" but "Wait, huh?"

Name : Jeannette Catsoulis / Alias : New York Times
The film is an emotional black hole, its insufferably smug tricksters augmented by Mr. Harrelson . as his character's identical twin. They never let us forget that their chief superpowers are glibness and ego.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : New York Daily News
Making a successful sequel is always a little bit like pulling a rabbit out of a hat. But the only magic trick here is how slowly they've made two hours of our lives disappear.

Name : Ignatiy Vishnevetsky / Alias : AV Club
Now You See Me 2 gets giddy on its own unreality.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
Twice as preposterous and half as fun as the original.

Name : Richard Brody / Alias : New Yorker
The movie offers neither the astonishment of the magicians' artistry nor a dramatic view of how they do it.

Name : Brad Wheeler / Alias : Globe and Mail
Just as cheerfully outlandish as the caper flick's precursor, with the acceptance of fancy tricks and misdirection twists dependent on an audience's love of a good hoodwink.

Name : David Lewis / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
There's no arguing that there's a clever concept that anchors the "Now You See Me" franchise - expect more sequels - but razzle-dazzle and the art of misdirection can take you only so far.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
Based solely on merit, Now You See Me 2 is a sequel that should never have been made.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
What it doesn't have is any kind of real magic.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
More than once, characters in "Now You See Me 2" make references to pulling back the curtain. And what's behind that curtain is just as much of an incomprehensible jab at the audience as everything else in this film.

Name : Michael O'Sullivan / Alias : Washington Post
The film is, at times, almost sinfully fun, assuming you have a taste for self-indulgently logic-free hedonism.

Name : Jake Coyle / Alias : Associated Press
Now You See Me 2 disappears with not a poof, but in a hyper-kinetic blur of hectic plot mechanics, ceaselessly nattering characters and so many ploys of misdirection that the film's own direction got lost up someone's sleeve long ago.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
Try to remember this movie, a few days after seeing it, and you'll find that - like magic - it's disappeared.

Name : Sara Stewart / Alias : New York Post
"Horsemen reappear in London; world holds its breath," blares a newspaper headline in this sequel, rather overestimating the world's fascination with magicians - as well as its recall of the first movie .

Name : Calvin Wilson / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Chu is more craftsman than poet, but the charismatic ensemble cast engages in the trickery with style.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
As the illusions mount, they don't amount to much, leading up to a big finale that piles on the improbabilities and quietly sweeps them under the rug.

Name : Sheri Linden / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
No less than in the glossy caper's 2013 predecessor, the plot rides a surging tide of ridiculousness and culminates in a pileup of unconvincing explanations.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
This longer, louder sequel to 2013's Now You See Me adds up to what one character calls "a sack of nada." You wish the Horsemen would make you disappear.

Name : Leah Greenblatt / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Pay no attention to the plot behind the curtain, Now You See Me 2 says, because it barely registers and hardly matters. Just go with it and watch two hours-poof!-disappear.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
My main problem with these movies is insufferably old-fashioned. With so much digital effects work guiding so many of the action scenes, the simple pleasures of sleight-of-hand are all but lost.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
It's all about mystery and suspense, deceiving the audience in entertaining ways. It's much more enjoyable than the typical summer sequel du jour.

Name : David Denby / Alias : New Yorker
The hard-focus clarity of the images (Bobby Bukowski did the cinematography) leads to an intimacy with anguish that passes into expressionism.

Name : Michael O'Sullivan / Alias : Washington Post
"Rosewater" doesn't hector, nor does it giggle about the issue of press freedom. It's an impressive and important piece of storytelling.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
Jon Stewart's filmmaking debut "Rosewater" has much in common with "The Daily Show" - it's blaringly obvious, it's naive, it plays to the cheap seats and it's enamored with cheap jokes.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
Stewart can never quite answer the question: Why this man's story, of all the ones that should be told? And why now, five years later?

Name : Soren Anderson / Alias : Seattle Times
A finely wrought, powerful drama that tells the true story of an Iranian-born journalist's imprisonment and torture by the Islamic regime in Iran.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
Stewart's wryly observant qualities as a TV star serve him well in his feature film debut.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
What makes "Rosewater" different from similar entries in what might be called the Triumph of the Imprisoned Spirit genre is that the hero is hardly an ideologue, despite having sympathy for the Iranian reformers and the Green party.

Name : Richard Corliss / Alias : TIME Magazine
The virtue of this movie is its commitment to political ambiguity and emotional truth.

Name : Joshua Rothkopf / Alias : Time Out New York
The film settles into the kind of sobriety you've seen too often .

Name : Geoff Pevere / Alias : Globe and Mail
It's a movie made for people who prefer to take their politics while sitting on the couch.

Name : Stephanie Zacharek / Alias : Village Voice
Rosewater is an earnest picture, but it's also got some juice - there's vitality and feeling in it, the secret ingredients so often missing from even the most well-intentioned first features.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
Stewart does a credible job of maintaining the story's immediacy, but I must say I felt relieved that the film wasn't a masterpiece. If it was, we'd have more reason to fear Stewart will leave The Daily Show.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
Stewart proves to be an able filmmaker in "Rosewater." But he also shows hints of being something more.

Name : John Anderson / Alias : Newsday
Earnest, well-acted, less than urgent, but more than a vanity project.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
A persuasive production despite its limited budget .

Name : Joe McGovern / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Rosewater, starring the geeky-charismatic Gael Garcia Bernal as Bahari, is a gripping drama, smartly calibrated for Western audiences who still need an education in the bright, progressive, fight-back impulses in Iranian culture.

Name : Jocelyn Noveck / Alias : Associated Press
A clear-headed, sensitive and thoroughly impressive directorial debut for the Comedy Central host.

Name : Esther Breger / Alias : The New Republic
The main question Rosewater grapples with is whether Stewart can hack it as a filmmaker. The answer: sort of?

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
For a first effort, Stewart hasn't done a bad job. There's just the nagging feeling with "Rosewater" that a better movie was possible.

Name : Dana Stevens / Alias : Slate
Though at times Rosewater is clearly the work of a first-timer still finding his voice, Stewart is indisputably a real filmmaker.

Name : James Rocchi / Alias : Film.com
"Rosewater" marks the debut of a director whose brains and guts are the equal or the better of his eye and heart .

Name : Tom Long / Alias : Detroit News
Stewart's enthusiasm for his story and passion about injustice ring clear, but throughout what could have been a dreadfully somber film, he remembers to breathe.

Name : Tomas Hachard / Alias : NPR
The result neither portrays the suffering of Bahari's incarceration adequately nor lampoons the absurdities of the situation.

Name : Calvin Wilson / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"Rosewater" is a reminder that America may have its critics, but at least there's little danger of the average citizen being arrested for appearing on a fake news show.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
The film goes slightly beyond rigorous earnestness and settles into a kind of stubborn atonement.

Name : Mary Houlihan / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
With Rosewater, Stewart proves he can pull back from the satirical comedy and become a thoughtful, incisive and questioning filmmaker.

Name : Kenneth Turan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Stewart acquits himself solidly, though not thrillingly, as a beginning director .

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
A strong, striking political drama.

Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
Mr. Stewart's interest in the material is obviously personal, but his movie transcends mere self-interest.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
Stewart does a solid job of handling the facts of the time; it feels true to the moment, like a filmed Newsweek story. Creative acting, dramatizedthemes, gifted cinematic styling? Not so much.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
Rosewater certainly has merit as an act of atonement on Stewart's part and a tribute to people like Bahari. In the end, however, the movie needs to stand on its own, apart from its noble intentions and the popularity of its writer-director.

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
While the film keeps telling us that Bahari survived his ordeal by freeing his mind from imprisonment and eventually outsmarting his rosewater-scented interrogator, we are told that he's doing so more than we're seeing it.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
That the movie is as tense and chilling as it is owes much to first-time director Jon Stewart's keen eye for the way humor surfaces even in the dark places.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Stewart lets the truth roll out, the best he can, believing in the sanitizing effect of sunlight and the inevitable fate that awaits all despots.

Name : Claudia Puig / Alias : USA Today
Stewart has created an informative, dark and witty story imbued with black humor surrounding Bahari's confinement.

Name : Bob Mondello / Alias : NPR
Rosewater . has an urgency that's all about the storytelling smarts of its first-time writer-director.

Name : Todd McCarthy / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Stewart and cinematographer Bobby Bukowski cover it all in a straightforward, watchable way, the performances are all sincere and solid and the situation is easy to respond to emotionally.

Name : Scott Foundas / Alias : Variety
A solid, powerfully acted political drama about human endurance in the face of ideological oppression.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
While it may seem like another triumph-over-adversity tale, the movie is really about what sustains us during impossible moments.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
In outline, Rosewater sounds earnest, one-note, relentless - something you'd watch out of a sense of duty. But it turns out to be a sly, layered work, charged with dark wit along with horror.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
This is Jon Stewart's directorial debut; the talk show comedian has a handle on the material and conveys it clearly.

Name : Ignatiy Vishnevetsky / Alias : AV Club
Centrist mush-basic, boilerplate human-interest stuff that's too shapeless to completely work as drama, and too depoliticized to be taken seriously as anything else.