Nick Schager Movie Reviews & Previews

Critics » Nick Schager

Official Websites:
slantmagazine.com

Nick Schager

Agrees with the Tomatometer 73% of the time.

Publications:: Boxoffice Magazine , Cinematical , DVD Angle , Filmcritic.com , House Next Door , L.A. Weekly , Lessons of Darkness , Matinee Magazine , MovieWeb , Nitrate Online , Paste Magazine , PopMatters , Slant Magazine , The L Magazine , The Screengrab , Time Out New York , Village Voice
Critics' Group:: Online Film Critics Society

Total Reviews:: 2761
Total QuickRatings:: 1

Location:: New York, NY

Listing Of All Reviews & Articles

Showing 1 - 50 of 2761

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Rating	T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date
	38%	The Samaritan (2012)	" Weaver's story slowly begins to buckle under the weight of its own self-seriousness and familiarity, concluding with a showdown and resolution marked by one implausible and unsatisfying been-here-done-that twist after another." — Village Voice Posted May 15, 2012
1/4	42%	Battleship (2012)	" Shamelessly mimics Michael Bay's larger-than-life dialogue, sweeping cinematography, cornball romance, and military fetishism." — Slant Magazine Posted May 15, 2012
2.5/4	100%	Indie Game: The Movie (2012)	" makes a compelling case for games as not only clever hand-eye coordination exercises, but also as manifestations of their creators' emotional and philosophical viewpoints." — Slant Magazine Posted May 13, 2012
4/5	66%	The Dictator (2012)	" Fleet, funny, and smart enough to not overstay its welcome, it's a commentary-coated R-rated comedy with supreme box office potential." — Boxoffice Magazine Posted May 11, 2012
1/5	60%	A Bag of Hammers (2012)	" The real scam was the filmmakers tricking Rebecca Hall (and a cameoing Amanda Seyfried) into participating in this blunt instrument of an indie." — Time Out New York Posted May 9, 2012
2.5/4	55%	Safe (2012)	" It's the imposing Statham's badass grimace and combat acumen that primarily elevate Safe above your average direct-to-video genre work" — Slant Magazine Posted May 9, 2012
—	81%	Wish You Were Here ()	— Village Voice Posted May 9, 2012
	78%	You Are Here (2012)	" Overlapping story threads, voices, and imagery result in an atmosphere of disquieting psychological confusion." — Village Voice Posted May 8, 2012
	50%	Small, Beautifully Moving Parts (2012)	" Unfortunately, its tale is so slight and simple that it ... fails to say anything particularly poignant about life." — Village Voice Posted May 8, 2012
1.5/4	66%	God Bless America (2012)	" By wholeheartedly taking its main characters's side instead of complicating or censuring his homicidal vigilante crusade, it proves inanely one-note and preachy." — Slant Magazine Posted May 7, 2012
2/4	46%	Where Do We Go Now? (2012)	" Never achieves either the seriousness or playfulness that it alternately seeks." — Slant Magazine Posted May 6, 2012
1/4	29%	Girl In Progress (2012)	" Girl in Progress operates like a training-wheels melodrama for genre-uneducated tweens." — Slant Magazine Posted May 6, 2012
1/5	——	Deadfall (2012)	" A crime saga cobbled together from scraps of genre predecessors, Deadfall's unbelievable silliness escalates at every turn." — Boxoffice Magazine Posted May 5, 2012
1/5	27%	Jesus Henry Christ (2012)	" As precious as its prepubescent protagonist is precocious." — Time Out New York Posted May 1, 2012
	95%	First Position (2012)	" The result is a film that eschews in-depth insight in favor of easily digestible who's-going-to-win suspense..." — Village Voice Posted May 1, 2012
1/4	——	Meeting Evil (2012)	" Chris Fisher so over-directs his material that the action takes on the sheen of a parody or, at least, of a film that doesn't realize its clich�s are being exaggerated to the point of absurdity." — Slant Magazine Posted May 1, 2012
2/4	——	Replicas ()	" Class envy leads to Funny Games-ish home invasion in Replicas, a film whose title telegraphs its sole surprise. " — Slant Magazine Posted Apr 29, 2012
1/4	——	Arme Riddere ()	" Guy Ritchie may have creatively moved on from his Tarantino-inspired debut, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, but international crime cinema has not, as again evidenced by Jackpot. " — Slant Magazine Posted Apr 27, 2012
2/5	63%	The Five-Year Engagement (2012)	" The post-proposal blues strike a crushingly bland couple in The Five-Year Engagement, a romantic comedy lacking in both of the genre's signature elements." — Boxoffice Magazine Posted Apr 27, 2012
	73%	Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale (2012)	" The film's alternating talky torpor and frantic mayhem makes Warriors feel like it's operating in either fast-forward or slow motion..." — Village Voice Posted Apr 24, 2012
	100%	Booker's Place: A Mississippi Story (2012)	" Piercing..." — Village Voice Posted Apr 24, 2012
2/4	54%	Citizen Gangster (2012)	" Its commentary on our fascination with law-breakers is virtually nonexistent, except to the extent that the film itself revels in the doomed romanticism of its own protagonist." — Slant Magazine Posted Apr 22, 2012
2/5	8%	My Way (2012)	" The paeans about national pride and brotherhood may be regional, but constant slow-motion battle scenes and squishy sentimentality are strictly wanna-be Tinseltown." — Time Out New York Posted Apr 17, 2012
1/5	70%	The Giant Mechanical Man (2012)	" A romantic comedy whose quirkiness is complemented by italicized exposition." — Boxoffice Magazine Posted Apr 17, 2012
	——	Snow on tha Bluff (2012)	" Frequently scored to hip-hop heard through car speakers, Bluff's portrait of street life has a grungy off-the-cuff realism that's only compromised by some obviously staged incidents..." — Village Voice Posted Apr 17, 2012
	15%	The Moth Diaries (2012)	" Lesbian desires, fears of mortality, and adolescent jealousies are all handled as bluntly as the unintentionally corny black-and-white flashbacks and gauzy dream sequences." — Village Voice Posted Apr 17, 2012
	67%	Downtown Express (2012)	" Whether to let go and follow your own path is a stock dilemma, and an implausibly hopeful conclusion winds up undercutting the realism of this immigrant song." — Village Voice Posted Apr 17, 2012
	73%	Inside Hana's Suitcase (2012)	" A documentary saga of heartbreaking concentration-camp horrors, Inside Hana's Suitcase attempts to preserve Holocaust memories through frustratingly fractured means." — Village Voice Posted Apr 17, 2012
.5/4	21%	Darling Companion (2012)	" A lost-dog drama so insufferable it makes one wish its human characters would also run off and never return." — Slant Magazine Posted Apr 13, 2012
2/4	86%	Oki's Movie (2012)	" Hong Sang-soo once again corroborates auteurist theory at the same time that he reveals the potential shortcomings of its practice." — Slant Magazine Posted Apr 13, 2012
1/5	28%	L!fe Happens (2012)	" Something happens here, but it isn't life." — Time Out New York Posted Apr 10, 2012
	40%	Last Will and Embezzlement (2012)	" Given the overarching structural messiness that defines its examination of elder financial abuse, the only thing Last Will and Embezzlement has in the right place is its heart." — Village Voice Posted Apr 10, 2012
	——	Life, Love, Soul (2012)	" Mannered dialogue and a limited number of functional set locations (living room, classroom, bedroom) leave the material feeling stilted and claustrophobic, constricting any sense of genuine tumult or passion." — Village Voice Posted Apr 10, 2012
2.5/4	36%	Lockout (2012)	" Who cares about subpar computer-generated work when Guy Pearce is a one-man cartoon badass spectacle all to himself? " — Slant Magazine Posted Apr 9, 2012
2.5/4	89%	Post Mortem (2012)	" Pablo Larra�n keeps the army's brutality off screen to amplify a sense of oppressive malevolence. " — Slant Magazine Posted Apr 8, 2012
	43%	American Reunion (2012)	" You can always go home again according to Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Scholssberg's American Reunion. " — Slant Magazine Posted Apr 4, 2012
	83%	Player Hating: A Love Story (2012)	" [Cuts] through the clich�s about "thug life" to capture how violence is an integral, corrosive part of inner-city life." — Village Voice Posted Apr 3, 2012
1.5/4	83%	Comic-Con: Episode IV - A Fan's Hope (2012)	" Morgan Spurlock has little to say about Comic-Con other than that its attendees value it on a par with Christmas." — Slant Magazine Posted Apr 2, 2012
3/5	87%	Bully (2012)	" Graceful cinematography captures the loneliness and isolation of these kids with understatement, even when the director succumbs to twinkling piano that pulls a tad too hard on the heartstrings." — Boxoffice Magazine Posted Mar 29, 2012
1.5/4	11%	ATM (2012)	" If both good and evil characters don't behave in ways that make sense vis-�-vis their circumstances, any sense of terror quickly dissipates. " — Slant Magazine Posted Mar 28, 2012
2/5	25%	Wrath of the Titans (2012)	" Wrath of the Titans delivers blockbuster bluster with single-minded blandness." — Boxoffice Magazine Posted Mar 28, 2012
3/4	100%	Scenes of a Crime (2012)	" A true-crime documentary of invigorating analytical clarity and evenhandedness. " — Slant Magazine Posted Mar 28, 2012
	——	Artificial Paradises (2012)	" Olaizola pans across peeling building facades to subtly enhance her portrait of characters crumbling under the weight of self-destructive habits and solitude-a weight that might only be lifted through the selfless compassion of others." — Village Voice Posted Mar 27, 2012
4/5	84%	The Raid: Redemption (2012)	" Already buoyed by festival buzz, it's sure to be received with enthusiasm by genre devotees, and word of mouth has the potential to turn it into a bona fide box office sleeper." — Boxoffice Magazine Posted Mar 27, 2012
1/4	82%	Goon (2012)	" A second-rate dude comedy in which an untalented knucklehead becomes a star through brute violence. " — Slant Magazine Posted Mar 25, 2012
	89%	Fear and Desire (1953)	" For all its heavy-handed gloom and stylistic unevenness, Fear and Desire has a certain fierceness that's hard to shake." — Slant Magazine Posted Mar 17, 2012
2/4	29%	Musical Chairs (2012)	" The schmaltzy and benign tale of a ballroom dancer who accepts and transcends her unexpected disability through the power of art and love." — Slant Magazine Posted Mar 17, 2012
1/4	24%	Seeking Justice (2012)	" The film's tossed-off look and clunky editorial construction are still secondary to the sheer silliness of its story." — Slant Magazine Posted Mar 11, 2012
1.5/4	39%	The FP (2012)	" The FP has a one-note joke of a conceit, and when that runs out, it has few actual jokes to fill the humorless void." — Slant Magazine Posted Mar 11, 2012

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