Nick Schager
Select another critic »For 863 reviews, this critic has graded:
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30% higher than the average critic
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4% same as the average critic
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66% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 15.7 points lower than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Nick Schager's Scores
- Movies
- TV
Average review score: | 49 | |
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Highest review score: | Days of Heaven | |
Lowest review score: | I Send You This Place |
Score distribution:
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Positive: 278 out of 863
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Mixed: 286 out of 863
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Negative: 299 out of 863
863
movie
reviews
- By Date
- By Critic Score
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- Nick Schager
Everything and everyone lurches about in a desperate bid to be hilariously weird, and the effect is to make the proceedings feel hopelessly strained, as if they know that there’s nothing funny going on and thus must compensate via out-there quirkiness and constant mugging.- Variety
- Posted Feb 25, 2022
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- Nick Schager
The Sky Is Everywhere finds director Josephine Decker indulging in affectation overload in an effort to imbue her adaptation of Jandy Nelson’s young-adult novel with uplifting magic. Whereas individual moments might work on their own, however, the “Madeline’s Madeline” auteur’s latest never provides its romantic tale with room to breathe, so intent is it about operating with maximum whimsicality.- Variety
- Posted Feb 10, 2022
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- Nick Schager
Designed for maximum corniness, The Tiger Rising peppers its action with enough references to God, upturned-to-the-heavens gazes and warm enveloping light to make clear its function as a homily.- Variety
- Posted Jan 21, 2022
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- Nick Schager
Handsomely mounted and deftly dramatized, it’s an agonized study of suffering and treachery, and no less valuable — or powerful — for being regrettably familiar.- Variety
- Posted Dec 3, 2021
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- Nick Schager
In any decade, the film’s bevy of unexplained details, dropped subplots, paper-thin characterizations and fright-free mayhem would disappoint.- Variety
- Posted Nov 23, 2021
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- Nick Schager
While following a typical rom-com pattern isn’t inherently unpleasant, the movie’s wink-wink insinuations that it’s going to take things in a novel direction, followed by its embrace of the very clichés it’s poked fun at, makes it feel disingenuous and stale.- Variety
- Posted Sep 11, 2021
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- Nick Schager
Writer-director Michael Mohan’s film plays like rehashed leftovers cooked up for young viewers who’ve never seen any of its superior inspirations.- Variety
- Posted Sep 8, 2021
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- Nick Schager
Rosenfield and Law are such a likable duo — he clownish and earnest in equally uninhibited fashion, she brazen and fierce with an underlying sweetness — that the film remains amusing and spry even as it coasts along a path that will feel familiar to most rom-com fans.- Variety
- Posted Aug 31, 2021
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- Nick Schager
Obvious and derivative in borderline-shameless fashion, it’s a B-movie knock-off with little originality and even less flair.- Variety
- Posted Aug 31, 2021
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- Nick Schager
Aided by Steven Price’s enthusiastic score, Mendoza’s vigorous direction keeps things speeding along, and Momoa is such a charismatic presence — whether sensitively interacting with Rachel (skillfully embodied by Merced) or inventively snapping an adversary’s neck — that the proceedings’ lack of realism works to its advantage.- Variety
- Posted Aug 20, 2021
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- Nick Schager
The film is formally beautiful almost to a fault, giving it a schematic quality that’s at odds with its roiling emotions.- Variety
- Posted Aug 9, 2021
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- Nick Schager
Fully Realized Humans solidifies its central dynamic through alternately jokey and heartfelt dialogue that rings true, and via its leads’ sure-footed performances as committed partners grappling with a crazed stew of issues involving control, doubt and masculinity.- Variety
- Posted Jul 26, 2021
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- Nick Schager
It strikes not a single authentic chord, and that also goes for the lead performance of Ben Platt, whose overdone theater-kid turn further dooms the material’s stabs at humor and pathos.- Variety
- Posted Jul 26, 2021
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- Nick Schager
With low stakes and even lower energy, writer-director Maria Bissell’s feature debut isn’t sure if it’s a thriller with amusing elements or a comedy of criminal absurdity. What it winds up being, therefore, is neither, stuck in a dull middle ground that will please no one.- Variety
- Posted Jul 14, 2021
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- Nick Schager
While The God Committee routinely resides on the precipice of preachiness, Stark’s script (via St. Germain’s source material) avoids one-note sermonizing and characterizations at most turns, instead maturely investigating the messy intersection of medicine, morality and commerce.- Variety
- Posted Jul 1, 2021
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- Nick Schager
A lively saga about a young coding wizard who’s charged with saving his family’s gaming business, this celebration of old- and new-school creativity doesn’t break novel ground in any respect. Fortunately, though, its good humor, spry pacing and likable performances should appeal to its pre-high-school target audience.- Variety
- Posted Jun 4, 2021
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- Nick Schager
Despite having characters incessantly explain key plot points, Separation lacks basic logic.- Variety
- Posted Apr 30, 2021
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- Nick Schager
Aiming for a darkly humorous portrait of marital bliss — and the difficulties of maintaining it — the film comes off as a half-formed “Twilight Zone” joke minus the punchline.- Variety
- Posted Mar 18, 2021
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- Nick Schager
With sterling command of its malevolently dreamy tone, it casts a disquieting spell.- Variety
- Posted Mar 17, 2021
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- Nick Schager
Boogie is most assured when focusing on specific Chinese American routines, rituals and mindsets, yet it falters when crafting its larger portrait of Boogie’s predicament. Huang’s script routinely indulges in leaden exposition to get its message, as well as character details and dynamics, across.- Variety
- Posted Mar 3, 2021
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- Nick Schager
A portrait of life’s impermanence, it’s a bittersweet small-scale saga whose occasional sluggishness is offset by its sensitivity.- Variety
- Posted Feb 4, 2021
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- Nick Schager
Feels Good Man offers an inside peek at the internet’s growing ability to affect and shape modern society, which often makes the film a nightmare about extremism and technology.- Variety
- Posted Sep 3, 2020
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- Nick Schager
Even though Chatwin is only seen in a handful of snapshots and one brief video snippet, Herzog brings him to vivid life.- Variety
- Posted Aug 25, 2020
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- Nick Schager
Spike Lee’s documentary on this formative period in Michael Jackson’s career derives its electric, enlivening energy from these fantastic clips. Alas, they’re not enough to alter the fact that this non-fiction effort . . . is merely a nostalgic promotional puff piece meant to look back fondly, and uncritically, at an artist transitioning from a youth-oriented pop fad to the biggest star in the world.- The Playlist
- Posted Jun 22, 2020
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- Nick Schager
More than the film’s activist message, however, it’s writer-director Tommy Avallone’s portrait of whatever-it-takes parental risk and sacrifice that will help it resonate with audiences no matter their views on marijuana.- Variety
- Posted Apr 4, 2020
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- Nick Schager
With vibrantly expressive aesthetics that match the energy of its defiant and distressed heroine, this impressive coming-of-age indie . . . heralds the arrival of both a distinctive new filmmaking voice and a leading lady with charisma to burn.- Variety
- Posted Feb 25, 2020
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- Nick Schager
No amount of marquee talent, however, can fully compensate for the inert melodrama peddled by this inspired-by-true-events film- Variety
- Posted Jan 22, 2020
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- Nick Schager
“You think you’re in the movies or something?” crows Davi’s Genovese to an underling, but Mob Town’s wink-wink address of its own artificiality doesn’t excuse its inept execution, which extends to a stereotypical Italian score by Lionel Cohen.- Variety
- Posted Dec 13, 2019
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- Nick Schager
The film’s finely crafted serenity is in keeping with its main character’s secluded state of affairs, and mind.- Variety
- Posted Dec 5, 2019
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- Nick Schager
In “Feast of the Epiphany,” a narrative-documentary hybrid, the line between fiction and reality is demarcated quite clearly, even as those two modes remain in constant dialogue — and the conceit is entrancing precisely because of its elusiveness.- Variety
- Posted Nov 24, 2019
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