Adam Nayman
Adam Nayman's reviews (from any publication) always count toward the Tomatometer
because this critic is a 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 |
| Location: | Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
Movie Reviews Only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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| 67% | Annabelle: Creation (2017) |
The film exists simply to get us somewhere we've already been, and so the level of invention in the storytelling declines right when it should be ramping up.‐ The Ringer
Read More | Posted Aug 17, 2017
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| 84% | Nocturama (2017) |
Nocturama is a gut punch wrapped in a velvet glove; it's so intensely visceral and visually impressive that it short-circuits interpretation.‐ The Ringer
Read More | Posted Aug 14, 2017
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| 75% | Atomic Blonde (2017) |
Just because Atomic Blonde acknowledges its own derivativeness doesn't excuse it or redeem it, in the end.‐ The Ringer
Read More | Posted Aug 4, 2017
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| 44% | The Bad Batch (2017) |
The Bad Batch has enough flashy, fashionably grim accessories and accoutrements to fill a Hot Topic.‐ Reverse Shot
Read More | Posted Jun 30, 2017
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| 88% | It Comes At Night (2017) |
Edgerton and Abbott are so locked into their diametrically opposed roles that they cancel each other out, while Ejogo and Keough only exist in mutual counterpoint.‐ Reverse Shot
Read More | Posted Jun 8, 2017
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| 83% | Afterimage (Powidoki) (2017) |
Wajda is so determined to depict his hero as a man of iron that his every pronouncement comes freighted with metaphorical significance. ‐ Film Comment Magazine
Read More | Posted May 8, 2017
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| 67% | Life (2017) |
The pitched battle aboard the ISS becomes a struggle for the fate of humankind, even as the humans in question aren't quite engaging enough to make us care. We don't like their chances. But they also don't necessarily have our sympathies, either.‐ The Ringer
Read More | Posted Apr 7, 2017
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| 74% | The Void (2017) |
The resulting splatter is a bloody mess, which, if not a mass-audience spectacle, is exactly what these filmmakers were going for in the first place.‐ The Ringer
Read More | Posted Apr 7, 2017
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| 95% | Prevenge (2017) |
Lowe is a more striking and resourceful actor than director, and that's fine. She's clearly a huge talent, and it's encouraging to see her finding her voice so soon, even if it's creepy baby-doll drone.‐ The Ringer
Read More | Posted Apr 7, 2017
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| 98% | Moonlight (2016) |
Moonlight is at its most eloquent when its subtext is soft-spoken.‐ Sight and Sound
Read More | Posted Feb 16, 2017
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| 3/5 | 46% | Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (2016) |
A unique, hyper-real whatsit that should be seen the way it was shot.‐ Little White Lies
Read More | Posted Feb 9, 2017
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| 84% | The Lure (Córki dancingu) (2017) |
As cinematic Frankensteins go, The Lure is far from seamless, but if the movies are where mad scientists get points for trying, this ambitious experiment in genre hybridity at least deserves some sympathetic dissection.‐ Reverse Shot
Read More | Posted Feb 3, 2017
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| 84% | Silence (2017) |
Silence considers the brutal, self-lacerating wages of absolute purity, and the myriad ways that even the hardest ideological armor can be pierced as deeply and viciously as flesh.‐ Reverse Shot
Read More | Posted Dec 19, 2016
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| 94% | Arrival (2016) |
Arrival has the look and feel of a big-ticket production, albeit torqued towards millennial melancholy, complete with a muted, blue-grey colour palette by cinematographer Bradford Young.‐ Sight and Sound
Read More | Posted Nov 11, 2016
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| 57% | The Neon Demon (2016) |
That everything is intended in bad taste is one thing; that it's all finally more bland than bitter is another.‐ Cineaste Magazine
Read More | Posted Nov 8, 2016
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| 74% | Nocturnal Animals (2016) |
For all its problems with tone (monotonous) and theme (obvious), Nocturnal Animals is 'well made', in that Ford has assembled a very talented group of technical collaborators.‐ Sight and Sound
Read More | Posted Nov 3, 2016
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| 99% | Under The Shadow (2016) |
Under the Shadow is skillful and scary enough to be a legitimate niche hit.‐ Reverse Shot
Read More | Posted Oct 20, 2016
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| 90% | Sieranevada (2016) |
What's exciting in Sieranevada -- or, again, depending on your aesthetic preference, "taxing" -- is how the raucous, multi-directional dramaturgy keeps us from apprehending the true shape of the film for most of its duration.‐ Reverse Shot
Read More | Posted Oct 11, 2016
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| 92% | Certain Women (2016) |
If one measure of a great filmmaker is that you wouldn't mistake a frame of her work for somebody else's, Reichardt's increasingly personalized variations on long-standing American indie tropes qualifies her for consideration.‐ Reverse Shot
Read More | Posted Oct 3, 2016
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| 92% | Toni Erdmann (2016) |
Enough cannot be said about the sharpness and intelligence of Ade's script, and how credibly it sketches the connections between its superficially disparate co-protagonists.‐ Reverse Shot
Read More | Posted Oct 3, 2016
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| 68% | Swiss Army Man (2016) |
The richest wellspring of surprise is Daniel Radcliffe's performance as Hank's corpse-companion Manny, combining as it does inspired flesh-and-blood physical comedy with special-effects-enhanced superpowers.‐ Sight and Sound
Read More | Posted Sep 30, 2016
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| C | 36% | Skiptrace (2016) |
Skiptrace is a movie made to serve a number of competing interests and markets, and in trying to offer the proverbial something for everybody, it ends up possessing a very limited appeal.‐ AV Club
Read More | Posted Aug 30, 2016
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| 74% | The BFG (2016) |
Spielberg's charms are not yet overthrown, but his movie is not such stuff as dreams are made on.‐ Reverse Shot
Read More | Posted Jul 8, 2016
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| 3/5 | 78% | The Shallows (2016) |
It's just good enough that you only wish it was better.‐ Little White Lies
Read More | Posted Jun 23, 2016
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| 99% | The Wailing (Goksung) (2016) |
Na certainly has fun with an onscreen world whose rules keep getting rewritten with each new iteration of evil.‐ Reverse Shot
Read More | Posted Jun 15, 2016
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| 95% | De Palma (2016) |
For all the interestingly schizophrenic attitudes it captures, its gaze is finally too straightforward to honor a director who has always kept us guessing about the best place to look.‐ Reverse Shot
Read More | Posted Jun 8, 2016
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| B | 30% | Manhattan Night (Manhattan Nocturne) (2016) |
Manhattan Night is modest in a way that automatically consigns it to the margins of the summer movie season. But like its hero's carefully secluded home, it's worth seeking out along the sidelines.‐ AV Club
Read More | Posted May 17, 2016
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| C | 10% | Papa: Hemingway in Cuba (2016) |
It's the sort of film that's destined to be the answer to a trivia question, and not much more.‐ AV Club
Read More | Posted Apr 28, 2016
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| B | 91% | The Confirmation (2016) |
In the best moments, Nelson juxtaposes ... ephemeral, eternal doubt against the concrete realities of small-town American poverty and marginality.‐ AV Club
Read More | Posted Mar 17, 2016
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| B- | 95% | Eye In The Sky (2016) |
This is a film that doesn't want to be easily pegged, either in terms of its politics or generic allegiances. Such ambiguity is a virtue, but for all his technical facility, Hood doesn't really have the finesse of a great, fearless satirist.‐ AV Club
Read More | Posted Mar 10, 2016
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| 90% | Capote (2005) |
Miller and Futterman underscore the idea that what Capote's achievement does to the story of Hickock and Smith and the Clutter killings is to remove it from the actual world and place it in a literary one.‐ The Walrus
Read More | Posted Feb 29, 2016
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| 100% | Western (2015) |
Western is languidly paced, at times to the point of inertia, but its shots of flat-lined Southern landscapes stretching on past the horizon are painterly enough to warrant your patience.‐ The Walrus
Read More | Posted Feb 29, 2016
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| 85% | The Wolfpack (2015) |
A documentary that goes beyond the old stranger-than-fiction cliché into the realm of the genuinely perplexing.‐ The Walrus
Read More | Posted Feb 29, 2016
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| 71% | The Nightmare (2015) |
Few non-fiction films pack the affective punch of The Nightmare, which seeks to turn viewers into mirror images of its terror-stricken subjects. ‐ The Walrus
Read More | Posted Feb 29, 2016
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| 97% | Listen To Me Marlon (2015) |
There are plenty of posthumous profile pieces, of course, but Listen to Me Marlon is unique in that the dearly departed is the only one permitted to speak. It's more of a séance than a documentary.‐ The Walrus
Read More | Posted Feb 29, 2016
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| 98% | Kurt Cobain: Montage Of Heck (2015) |
Montage of Heck isn't an investigation into its subject's death so much as an homage to his creativity and life force -- it's tender and sad.‐ The Walrus
Read More | Posted Feb 29, 2016
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| 85% | Hail, Caesar! (2016) |
An enjoyable, well-made movie filled with amusingly stylized performances by famous actors.‐ Reverse Shot
Read More | Posted Feb 10, 2016
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| 33% | Being Canadian (2015) |
Being Canadian reifies stereotypes under the guise of deconstructing them, and panders to the pernicious idea of celebrity authority (with a few experts and plucked-from-the-crowd civilians sprinkled in for good measure).‐ The Walrus
Read More | Posted Jan 2, 2016
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| 72% | American Sniper (2015) |
American Sniper cannot be reduced to simple pro- or anti-war labels.‐ The Walrus
Read More | Posted Jan 2, 2016
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| 99% | Timbuktu (2015) |
Sissako, who always has balanced his social conscience with a stridently comic sensibility, frames the Islamists as figures of fear, but also of mockery.‐ The Walrus
Read More | Posted Dec 30, 2015
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| 81% | The Revenant (2015) |
Simply put, it's boring to watch something so pompously pretentious that stays so resolutely on beat.‐ Reverse Shot
Read More | Posted Dec 16, 2015
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| 89% | A Most Violent Year (2015) |
A Most Violent Year's final scenes are its worst: they reveal that the plot's sure-footed plodding hasn't led anywhere unexpected, narratively or thematically.‐ Reverse Shot
Read More | Posted Dec 14, 2015
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| 93% | Right Now, Wrong Then (2016) |
We might say that this version of the character is more honest than the one who came before, and in turn, what was bitterly comic in the first section of the film gets reconfigured as ineffably tender.‐ Reverse Shot
Read More | Posted Dec 9, 2015
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| 89% | A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (2015) |
I'm sympathetic enough to Andersson's project and his sensibility to concede after several months of disappointed reflection that Pigeon's redundancy is merely a case of diminished artistic returns than a lazy repackaging job.‐ Reverse Shot
Read More | Posted Dec 7, 2015
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| 67% | The Princess Of France (2015) |
The happy paradox of Piñeiro's work is that for all its meticulous control, it's also modest, starting with those truncated running times and including also the pared-down size of the narratives.‐ Reverse Shot
Read More | Posted Dec 7, 2015
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| 83% | Eden (2015) |
Where the early scenes of Eden feel on the nose, the back half is filled with precisely the sorts of glancing-yet-wounding blows that are Hansen-Love's specialty.‐ Reverse Shot
Read More | Posted Dec 7, 2015
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| 97% | Tangerine (2015) |
As a formal exercise... Tangerine is nothing short of remarkable; as a portrait of people doing their best to be their best selves, it's as warm and vivid as the sunsets splashed across its narrow but expansive digital canvas.‐ Reverse Shot
Read More | Posted Dec 7, 2015
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| 94% | Sicario (2015) |
Sicario is as brilliantly made as Prisoners, perhaps even more so.‐ Reverse Shot
Read More | Posted Dec 7, 2015
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| 95% | Creed (2015) |
The surest sign that Coogler has honored his source material is that Creed is populist through and through. His achievement... is that he gives his audience exactly what they want and makes it feel like a gift rather than a bribe.‐ Reverse Shot
Read More | Posted Dec 7, 2015
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| 96% | Son of Saul (2015) |
Nemes's style is undeniable, but it might also just be a brilliant disguise: the handed-down vestments of an ascendant yet fundamentally unclothed emperor.‐ Reverse Shot
Read More | Posted Dec 7, 2015
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