Adam Nayman
Tomatometer-approved critic
| Biography: |
a 21 year old film critic at Eye Magazine in Toronto, Adam has been writing about movies for as long as he can remember, and just can't believe they're paying him for it.
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| Favorites: |
2001: A Space OdysseyGrand IllusionManos: Hands of Fate400 Blows
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| Publications: | Boxoffice Magazine, Cineaste Magazine, eye WEEKLY, Film Comment Magazine, L.A. Weekly, Sight and Sound, AV Club, Reverse Shot, Little White Lies, The Grid, The Dissolve, The Walrus, The Ringer, Cinema Scope |
| Location: | Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
Movie Reviews Only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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| 100% | Ash Is Purest White (2019) |
The two-way relationship between Jia and Zhao is the main attraction... Ash Is Purest White is about what it takes to keep love from burning out but its excellence, as well as its existence, is evidence of a genuinely incandescent artistic partnership.‐ Reverse Shot
Read More | Posted Oct 11, 2018
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| 91% | Transit (2019) |
In the final revolution of the plot, these polarities reverse, with the oppressed party reasserting her own persona and the auteur realizing the totality of his loss.‐ Reverse Shot
Read More | Posted Oct 11, 2018
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| 31% | Venom (2018) |
This is a paradox: Venom isn't good-nor so-bad-it's-good-and yet if there had been more of it, and if that more had been a little wilder or gorier, it probably would have been better. ‐ The Ringer
Read More | Posted Oct 8, 2018
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| 92% | Suspiria (1977) |
What lingers is not a sense of evil but exhilaration in how far Argento and his fellow filmmakers were willing to go to shock and delight; the movie's sheer exuberance is the cinematic equivalent of a blood transfusion.‐ The Ringer
Read More | Posted Oct 5, 2018
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| 94% | Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) |
A decade after the Summer of Love, Invasion of the Body Snatchers essentially weaponized flower power, hinting that the erosion of individual consciousness in favor of groupthink was as natural and ingrained as photosynthesis itself.‐ The Ringer
Read More | Posted Oct 2, 2018
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| 68% | Hold the Dark (2018) |
It would be nice to report that Hold the Dark extends the promise of Blue Ruin and Green Room, but it doesn't, at least not for me. ‐ The Ringer
Read More | Posted Sep 28, 2018
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| 82% | The Big Lebowski (1998) |
Lebowski's virtuosity serves a sense of modesty.‐ The Ringer
Read More | Posted Sep 20, 2018
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| 7% | The Death and Life of John F. Donovan (2018) |
Xavier Dolan's film is a mess, maybe even a hot one, and I can't say I had a bad time watching it-which is not the same thing as suggesting it works.‐ Cinema Scope
Read More | Posted Sep 13, 2018
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| 33% | The Predator (2018) |
The Predator is filled with visual and verbal callbacks to McTiernan's movie, but there's no Schwarzenegger and no subtext, and the movie suffers from the lack of both. ‐ The Ringer
Read More | Posted Sep 13, 2018
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| 93% | If Beale Street Could Talk (2018) |
Jenkins saves his most sociologically eloquent composition for the finale. It's a tableau that compresses a wealth of cultural, political, and spiritual commentary. I doubt I'll see a better final shot this year.‐ The Ringer
Read More | Posted Sep 12, 2018
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| 95% | Widows (2018) |
Widows' entertainment value is undeniable, and yet it's fascinating mostly as a case study of a supremely talented filmmaker test-driving his sensibility through a new and in some ways more constrained creative habitat.‐ The Ringer
Read More | Posted Sep 12, 2018
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| No Score Yet | Rojo (2018) |
The actual outcome speaks to Naishtat's resourcefulness as a storyteller; that his faux-Columbo fails to emerge as a hero cinches his film's deep and all-too-recognizably realistic cynicism.‐ Cinema Scope
Read More | Posted Sep 11, 2018
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| 86% | High Life (2018) |
As it turns out, Un beau soleil's practical, affirmative motto is also the best way to approach the more daunting object that is High Life: be open.‐ Cinema Scope
Read More | Posted Sep 11, 2018
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| 68% | The Front Runner (2018) |
Reitman mistakes glibly cornering all sides of the argument for complexity, on top of which some unfortunate writing and directing decisions make it seem like Hart was more of a victim. ‐ Cinema Scope
Read More | Posted Sep 11, 2018
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| 89% | Freaks (2018) |
I don't know if Lipovsky and Stein are budding genre whizzes or simply competent pros, but their co-directing debut looks, sounds, and moves (via some very nice editing by Sabrina Pitre) like a credible entertainment. ‐ Cinema Scope
Read More | Posted Sep 10, 2018
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| 100% | Firecrackers (2018) |
Mozzafari and her superb cinematographer Catherine Lutes keep flooding their mobile, off-centre frames with colour and movement, at once inscribing and defamiliarizing both their semi-impoverished environments and the people fixed within them.‐ Cinema Scope
Read More | Posted Sep 8, 2018
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| 26% | The Nun (2018) |
The Nun is too repetitive and incoherent (and not in a good, fever-dreamy way) to be suspenseful. It's more boring than horrifying to play spot-the-CGI ghoul in the background of all those greyscale frames...‐ The Ringer
Read More | Posted Sep 7, 2018
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| 84% | Destroyer (2018) |
Intricately written, superbly shot, and at least 20 minutes too long... Destroyer doesn't quite ennoble the prestige-genre model it aspires to, but it doesn't disgrace it, either, and the same can be said for Kidman's acting.‐ Cinema Scope
Read More | Posted Sep 6, 2018
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| 70% | Assassination Nation (2018) |
Everything you need to know about this film is contained in its most self-consciously bravura sequence, an extended, single-take home invasion that's at once accomplished, self-impressed, sadistic, and redundant.‐ Cinema Scope
Read More | Posted Sep 5, 2018
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| 93% | Searching (2018) |
What holds Searching together is its star. Always an enjoyable comedian, Cho has grown into a reliably good actor and aged nicely, providing a sad-eyed soulfulness.‐ The Ringer
Read More | Posted Aug 30, 2018
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| 7% | Slender Man (2018) |
A disappointingly disposable movie.‐ The Ringer
Read More | Posted Aug 14, 2018
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| 45% | The Meg (2018) |
Everything in The Meg looks fake, from the New Zealand-as-coastal-China backdrop to the massive underwater research center to the actors themselves, none of whom have been costumed or photographed with any sharpness.‐ The Ringer
Read More | Posted Aug 10, 2018
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| 81% | Chi-Raq (2015) |
Everything about Chi-Raq exudes exuberance: the movement of the camera; the West Side Story-style choreography of the two rival factions; the delight the actors display in tearing into their dialogue.‐ The Ringer
Read More | Posted Aug 9, 2018
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| 88% | Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018) |
Paul Rudd's ability to keep ex-con/single-dad/reluctant superhero Scott Lang simultaneously sceptical, confused and committed to the sci-fi chaos around him without ever going boringly square-jawed is nothing less than the purest movie-star charisma.‐ Sight and Sound
Read More | Posted Aug 3, 2018
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| 92% | In a World... (2013) |
The simplicity of the film's plot leaves plenty of breathing room for the cast to just bounce lines and looks off one another, which they do with the relaxed aplomb of an alt-comedy all-star team.‐ Sight and Sound
Read More | Posted Jul 31, 2018
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| 60% | Verónica (2017) |
If Plaza's pileup of post-Exorcist tropes works, it's because Escacena creates a fully inhabited (in both senses of the word) character who we want to see escape her deadly circumstances.‐ The Ringer
Read More | Posted Jul 31, 2018
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| 65% | They Remain (2018) |
What They Remain lacks in novelty it more than makes up for in poisonously paranoid atmosphere.‐ The Ringer
Read More | Posted Jul 31, 2018
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| 93% | Calibre (2018) |
Excellently shot and acted, and gutsy enough to not cop out when it counts, Calibre is one of the year's best genre efforts.‐ The Ringer
Read More | Posted Jul 31, 2018
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| 72% | The Ritual (2017) |
This steely British import examines the cost of male-bonding rituals...it's nice to see a horror movie really go for it in the home stretch.‐ The Ringer
Read More | Posted Jul 31, 2018
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| 97% | Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018) |
Look, I'm not made of stone: Pretty much everything in Mission: Impossible-Fallout is fun.‐ The Ringer
Posted Jul 25, 2018
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| 57% | Unfriended: Dark Web (2018) |
The terror here is largely conceptual, more in line with the paranoid, every-breath-you-take thrillers of the early 1970s than the grim, creeping catharsis of J-horror. ‐ The Ringer
Read More | Posted Jul 20, 2018
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| 93% | Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World (2016) |
Lo and Behold seems to be stoking fears that our tools are evolving beyond our capacity to control them, which offers an intriguing twist on his usual theme of the indifference of nature. ‐ Vice
Read More | Posted Jul 9, 2018
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| 57% | We Own the Night (2007) |
This is complex stuff, and Gray gives it a sense of gravity that comes through not only in the acting-with Phoenix's increasingly heavy-souled performance anchoring things in nearly every shot-but also the filmmaking.‐ The Ringer
Read More | Posted Jul 5, 2018
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| 63% | Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018) |
Ultimately, though, Soldado is Del Toro's show and, to give credit where it's due, he refuses to sleepwalk through a movie that is otherwise on autopilot.‐ The Ringer
Read More | Posted Jun 29, 2018
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| 96% | The Iron Giant (1999) |
The Iron Giant captures and crystallizes its source material's anxious, humane spirit. It might be the most empathetic and exhilarating mainstream American animated feature ever made.‐ The Ringer
Read More | Posted Jun 18, 2018
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| 89% | Hereditary (2018) |
Hereditary reaps a cheap sort of reward. It's good, but really only just good enough.‐ The Ringer
Read More | Posted Jun 7, 2018
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| 93% | First Reformed (2018) |
This scenario is serious almost to the point of silliness: It could be parody of a morality play. But the heaviness is also essential to the architecture and impact of what I'm thinking is the year's first maybe-great American movie.‐ The Ringer
Read More | Posted May 21, 2018
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| 34% | Fahrenheit 451 (2018) |
As an attempt to really bother an audience, Fahrenheit 451 is a failure; at best, it's a mildly irritating waste of some major talent.‐ The Ringer
Read More | Posted May 17, 2018
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| 86% | Tully (2018) |
Even the most resourceful, imaginative filmmaker would be hard-pressed to redeem Diablo Cody's screenplay.‐ Reverse Shot
Read More | Posted May 3, 2018
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| 5/5 | 86% | Let the Sunshine In (Un beau soleil intérieur) (2018) |
Scintillating and complex, boasting a career-best performance from Juliette Binoche.‐ Little White Lies
Read More | Posted Apr 18, 2018
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| 72% | Ready Player One (2018) |
Turns out that treating the movies entirely as a jungle gym brings out Peter Pan's inner brat. He's made a movie for lost boys. ‐ The Ringer
Read More | Posted Apr 4, 2018
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| 45% | The Strangers (2008) |
Bertino's directorial smarts are on display from the first slow-cut montage of rural homes glimpsed from the window of a moving car. It's a passage suggesting free-floating, arbitrary menace.‐ The Ringer
Read More | Posted Mar 9, 2018
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| 96% | The Death of Stalin (2018) |
As long as The Death of Stalin is sticking it to the hypocrites in the Kremlin-mocking their vanity, pride, and other deadly sins-it's got the righteous riotousness of its creator's best work.‐ The Ringer
Read More | Posted Mar 8, 2018
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| 87% | Annihilation (2018) |
Garland's Annihilation is disturbing. Not the whole way through, maybe, but there's at least one scene that qualifies as high-octane nightmare fuel...Annihilation is well-made and absorbing, and yet still not quite its own thing in the end. ‐ The Ringer
Read More | Posted Feb 23, 2018
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| 94% | Loveless (Nelyubov) (2018) |
The characters have no life beyond what they symbolise, including Alexey himself, whose absence is the biggest metaphor of them all: he's the lost innocence of a society deep in the throes of self-absorption.‐ Sight and Sound
Read More | Posted Feb 8, 2018
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| 91% | Phantom Thread (2018) |
Phantom Thread's apparent severity is a brilliant disguise that only really unravels in retrospect: what's underneath is a battle-of-the-sexes comedy that ruthlessly strips away layers of archetype and artifice.‐ Sight and Sound
Read More | Posted Feb 1, 2018
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| 57% | The Commuter (2018) |
The Commuter's own problems in the home stretch don't damage it too badly, but because Collet-Serra is generally so good at what he does, it's important to hold him to a high standard.‐ The Ringer
Read More | Posted Jan 11, 2018
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| 87% | The Post (2018) |
This might be the worst thing he's ever filmed. These were my thoughts during the final scene of The Post, a movie I found flawed and unconvincing but never truly bad until the last 45 seconds, at which point I sort of wanted to hide under my seat.‐ The Ringer
Read More | Posted Dec 26, 2017
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| 50% | Downsizing (2017) |
Downsizing's coda has been designed to tell us precisely how and what to feel about what we've seen, and it makes an otherwise admirably sprawling, discombobulating movie feel that much smaller as a result.‐ The Ringer
Read More | Posted Dec 21, 2017
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| 30% | Wonder Wheel (2017) |
This is sophisticated filmmaking, but so what? Wonder Wheel is magical in a superficial way; it has a surface beauty that can't disguise the material's basic banality and ugliness-or the feeling that we've seen it all before.‐ The Ringer
Read More | Posted Dec 1, 2017
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