How to make The Deepest Movie Ever: Four Steps (without pictures)
by Wally Pfister

1. This is the golden rule. No one should be able to make heads or tails of your movie. How can you call a movie deep if it’s easily and simply accessible? So there you go. Never clarify what you’re trying to say.

2. Mix neuroscience, mathematics, philosophy, religion, politics, sociology, computer science, logic, romance and zombie action with each other. It will make your movie incredibly deep.

3. Your actors should act as if they are drugged. Your lead male actor should say "Last night we made a breakthrough." every five minutes, your lead female actor should look confused all the time (and she should…

Whilst it might not technically be the worst film of 2014 Transcendence must surely be a frontrunner for the most tedious movie of the year. Much was made of Wally Pfister’s move from Christopher Nolan’s goto cinematographer to director of his own big budget movies but on the basis of this dreary debut he might want to rethink his latest career change.

Transcendence feels like a rejected early ‘90s techno-thriller - a cautionary tale about the limitless power of technology and the hubris of the men who continue to push its frontiers - and just like those ‘90s thrillers (Lawnmower Man et al) it is also completely useless. The film’s story concerns a dying scientist (Johnny Depp) as his consciousness…

MOVIE RULE #34:

If your story is about the smartest scientists who've ever lived, don't have them act like the biggest fucking dummies on the planet.

This is what TRANSCENDENCE does. It is about the greatest technological minds of an era behaving like drooling morons. A dopey, lovesick scientist (Rebecca Hall, cursed with perhaps the single worst-written female character of 2014) realizes her husband, an even smarter technologist (Johnny Depp), is dying and makes the incredibly dumb decision to upload his consciousness into a "quantum" supercomputer. Within thirty seconds of coming online, the Depputer is like "I need to expand, and also get into the stock market, and y'know while I'm at it maybe get into some defense systems too."…