Marshall Shaffer

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Slashfilm, The Playlist
For 53 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 56% higher than the average critic
  • 1% same as the average critic
  • 43% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 2.7 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Marshall Shaffer's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 68
Highest review score: 95 The Banshees of Inisherin
Lowest review score: 30 Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 33 out of 53
  2. Mixed: 19 out of 53
  3. Negative: 1 out of 53
53 movie reviews
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    • 58 Metascore
    • 75 Marshall Shaffer
    Boston Strangler
    Boston Strangler steps right up to the line of the hokiest girlboss tropes and narrowly avoids crossing into a cringeworthy injection of contemporary feminism into a historical narrative. Rather than blaring its priorities throughout, Ruskin’s film gradually reveals the biases suppressing the idea that women’s stories matter. It’s just enough of a twist on an otherwise imitative, iterative story to hold interest.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Marshall Shaffer
    Cocaine Bear
    As it goes on, Cocaine Bear becomes far too sober an affair for its subject matter, where no amount of carnage can fully compensate for its lack of comedy.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Marshall Shaffer
    Full Time
    Molehills to the rich feel like mountains to the working class, and Gravel finds the stylistic tools that can translate such scale into riveting cinema — and confer the kind of importance that the Julies all over the world deserve.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 75 Marshall Shaffer
    Magic Mike's Last Dance
    The two creative engines of the series might seem like strange bedfellows — the brainy Soderbergh and the brawny Tatum — but the duo brings out the best in each other. The director appreciates the earnestness of his leading man and finds ways to deepen that charm through quick-witted humor.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Marshall Shaffer
    M3GAN
    M3GAN locates the horror and hilarity lurking barely beneath the surface of our screen-addled society.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 75 Marshall Shaffer
    The Pale Blue Eye
    The Pale Blue Eye works best when Cooper lets it be a two-hander between Landor and Poe. Iron sharpens iron as the two men push themselves down fruitful paths of deductive reasoning. The game of twisted allegiances, false partnerships, and premature resolutions makes for a wicked mystery that continues unfolding in riveting ways.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 83 Marshall Shaffer
    Avatar: The Way of Water
    This is not just content you ingest. Avatar: The Way of Water is a movie you bodily inhabit for three stunning hours. We come to this place for magic, indeed.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 58 Marshall Shaffer
    Strange World
    The Disney animators clearly had a blast creating a world beyond their wildest dreams and finding the connections between all the curios they created. Too bad that they could not let the wider creative team in on the fun – and the audience as well, for that matter. A visual feast leaves the other four senses wanting.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 42 Marshall Shaffer
    Hocus Pocus 2
    Hocus Pocus fans wanted a new movie, but Disney just gave them a mascot appearance masquerading as a sequel instead.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Marshall Shaffer
    Master Gardener
    Even if Master Gardener can feel like a bit of a potboiler moral drama, the heat generated is proof that Schrader can still bring the fire. The filmmaker grapples thornily and thoughtfully with difficult issues and destructive people, finding new ways to approach the questions that still haunt him.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Marshall Shaffer
    Monica
    At its best, Pallaoro’s quiet film wields the paradoxical power of cinema to create pure illusion.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 58 Marshall Shaffer
    Dead for A Dollar
    Dead for a Dollar provides a decently intriguing yarn within the framework of the Western that burrows a few inches below the surface. No one can say Hill didn’t hold up his end of the deal, which may be all that matters to him in the end.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 67 Marshall Shaffer
    The Son
    There’s enough humanity from the story and performers alike that cuts to the soul and mostly offsets the uninspired direction. But “The Son” should shine at least a little brighter through the dark material given these participants and their previous triumphs.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 95 Marshall Shaffer
    The Banshees of Inisherin
    Within The Banshees of Inisherin, McDonagh manages to capture both the elemental resonance of folklore with the sophisticated weightiness of classic stage drama. This tragicomic tale nimbly balances both the personal and political dimensions of his richly developed characters and scenarios.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Marshall Shaffer
    The Whale
    The Whale" stays too intellectual in its exploration of the physical and spiritual dimensions of redemption to and from bodily captivity. This comes at the expense of the director's strengths in the visceral realm. It restricts what could have been a truly great comeback performance from Brendan Fraser into being merely a good one.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 58 Marshall Shaffer
    A Couple
    While it’s great to see an example of a filmmaker refusing to rest on his laurels or stay inside the nearly defined box of his cultural reputation, a film must be a film – not just a concept. Un Couple never quite manages to transcend its origins as a precious pandemic project.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Marshall Shaffer
    Bones and All
    The romance is a soaring spectacle to witness unfold, but it becomes a Trojan horse to explore notions of how and where people find validation. The film's embrace of two lovers does not close ranks around them, instead opening its arms to welcome anyone who has ever felt like a disowned outcast.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 91 Marshall Shaffer
    Athena
    Especially after the film’s stunning conclusion, Athena is destined to leave jaws on the floor and heart rates significantly elevated long after the credits roll. This is the painful, perilous present tense written in the flash of a smartphone camera and the blaze of a Molotov cocktail.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 30 Marshall Shaffer
    Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths
    Whether talking to himself or talking at his audience as if delivering wisdom deserving of an inscription on stone tablets, Iñárritu has nothing new or interesting to say. He's established he can move a camera with astonishing fluidity as well as blur fantasy and reality seamlessly. Now what? "Bardo" is a film high on its own supply yet low on any sense of actual intrigue or intuition.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 75 Marshall Shaffer
    TÁR
    While occasionally frustrating to watch the film spin its wheels into repetitive or monotonous territory, the magnetic pull of simply watching Blanchett hold court on-screen is undeniable.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 42 Marshall Shaffer
    Orphan: First Kill
    Orphan: First Kill only merits viewing if it is a viewer’s first exposure to the series. For anyone else, a rewatch of the original ought to do – it holds up remarkably well on repeat viewing.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 67 Marshall Shaffer
    Beast
    It’s Kormákur’s directorial verve and vision that elevates Beast to something slightly more than just disposable entertainment. Perhaps one day, he’ll choose a studio blockbuster with a story more worthy of his talents.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 50 Marshall Shaffer
    They/Them
    They/Them lacks an overarching perspective on the very nature of conversion therapy practitioners, perhaps because it is so straight-jacketed by the Blumhouse house style. In search of topicality for its audience, it sacrifices authenticity to itself.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 42 Marshall Shaffer
    Not Okay
    Shephard’s film is a half-baked thinkpiece on cancel culture in search of a plausible narrative. While hitching her ideas to a scammer story, it loses the thread in a sea of topicality. No matter the potency contained in portions of her message, “Not Okay” is muddled by her delivery through the wrong medium
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Marshall Shaffer
    Murina
    Kusijanović storms out of the gate with a confident coming-of-age tale full of relationships as rocky as the craggy Croatian coast in which the story unfolds.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 83 Marshall Shaffer
    Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
    Marcel the Shell with Shoes On locates a world of wonder inside our drawers, under our noses, within our grasp – and enables viewers with the tools to both access and appreciate it.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 50 Marshall Shaffer
    Jurassic World Dominion
    Like a Spider-Man pointing meme doomed to continue eternally, ‘Dominion’ points to the terrifying possibility that nostalgia might serve as a renewable resource for Hollywood. (Ironic, given the fossil-fueled power of ‘Jurassic.’) Trevorrow gives audiences what they want – or, at the very least, what the studio bosses at Universal think they want. But at what cost?
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Marshall Shaffer
    Sonic the Hedgehog 2
    A need for speed works for Sonic the character, not “Sonic The Hedgehog” the franchise itself. The film never feels like it’s thinking beyond the next laugh line. It’s so caught up in the adrenaline rush of the present moment that Sonic The Hedgehog 2 completely loses sight of the endgame.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Marshall Shaffer
    Uncharted
    Fleischer channels the tenor of the influences his film wears on its sleeve: the manipulative music demanding awe, the lighthearted spirit of the action, the smirking star-power needed to sell quippy banter. But his tonal fidelity cannot entirely cover the seams of this sloppily assembled script.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 83 Marshall Shaffer
    Another World
    This meditation on the emotions that bind and the economy that separates is a worthy representation of the risky business of holding onto humanity in contemporary society.
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