Email Author Nick Schager

2013 Stories by Nick Schager

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  Disney TV Is Poisoning Your Daughters

  published June 19, 2013

  I recognize that, even coming from a father of two preteen daughters, that might sound alarmist, so let me elaborate—the Disney Channel... More >>

• The Guillotines Wades Cornily Through a Veiled Treatise on Socialist Equality, and Big Explosions

  published June 12, 2013

  Wielding decapitation-causing spinning blades that are hurled off the edges of swords and resemble a cross between Transformers... More >>

• Pandora's Promise Offers One Side of the Nuclear Debate

  published June 12, 2013

  Like its gaggle of former anti-nuke environmentalists who've now switched sides, Pandora's Promise takes the form of a traditional... More >>

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  After 44 Years, Hollywood is Finally Smart Enough to Make a Judy Blume Movie

  published June 12, 2013

  Judy Blume's first novel, The One in the Middle is the Green Kangaroo, was published in 1969, yet it's only now, 44 years later, that... More >>

• Judy Blume Finally Hits the Big Screen with Tiger Eyes

  published June 5, 2013

  Treating teenage growing pains with a sensitivity that frequently trips into singer-songwriter-ish mushiness, Tiger Eyes nonetheless... More >>

• I Send You This Place, The Very Definition of Insufferable

  published June 5, 2013

  Narcissism and pretentiousness vie for supremacy in I Send You This Place, a pseudo-documentary in which co-director (and constant... More >>

• Shadow Dancer Brims with Edgy Life

  published May 29, 2013

  Any job that requires meetings involving a scary silent gunman laying plastic tarp on the ground in order to catch post-execution bloodletting... More >>

• After Auteur: How M. Night Shyamalan Became Just Another Director

  published May 29, 2013

  Wait, you didn't know that After Earth, the Will Smith–Jaden Smith sci-fi adventure hitting theaters this weekend, is the latest... More >>

• The English Teacher Proves that a Good Cast Doesn't Equate to Big Laughs

  published May 22, 2013

  A film seemingly produced only because it boasts enough sizable roles to entice multiple stars, Craig Zisk's The English Teacher... More >>

• A Respectable Cast Can't Bring The English Teacher Any Laughs

  published May 15, 2013

  A film seemingly produced only because it boasts enough sizable roles to entice multiple stars, Craig Zisk's The English Teacher... More >>

• Pieta Tells of Redemption and Rebirth and Mother-son Handjobs

  published May 15, 2013

  A Jesus-and-Mary dynamic becomes psychosexually twisted—replete with a horrific mother-son handjob—in Pietà, an... More >>

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  Ethan Hawke, Before and After: Watching an Actor Grow Up

  published May 15, 2013

  Before Midnight may be the greatest film ever made about impermanence -- a fitting theme for a work that also reestablishes the... More >>

• Hollywood Farce He's Way More Famous Than You Is Unhinged and Hilarious

  published May 8, 2013

  A self-referential, insider farce about the hunger for Hollywood stardom, He's Way More Famous Than You is—like its leading... More >>

• Released Says Don't Do Drugs

  published May 8, 2013

  Ultimately amounting to an advertisement for the Castle, the NYC residence for recently paroled convicts, Released presents an... More >>

• Indonesian Buddy-copy Flick Java Heat Muddles Through

  published May 8, 2013

  Java Heat's title refers not to hot coffee but to the Indonesian island, though caffeine is certainly recommended to make it through... More >>

• Pilgrim Song Takes to Appalachia

  published May 8, 2013

  Disaffected and searching for clarity and answers, James (Timothy Morton) takes to the Kentucky Appalachians' Sheltowee Trace Trail in... More >>

• Uwe Boll, Worst Director Alive, Can't Get His Movie About Killing Wall Streeters to Open in New York

  published May 8, 2013

  Uwe Boll will no longer fight you -- at least, not with his fists. Often lambasted by critics as the worst of the worst, Boll once... More >>

• One Night Stand is a Flimsy Home-Movie Portrait

  published April 24, 2013

  The 24 Hour Company is an organization that, for charity, enlists Broadway and television actors, writers, directors, composers, and... More >>

• Ridiculously Long Fists of Legend Blasts "Eye of the Tiger" On Five Different Occasions

  published April 10, 2013

  No clichéd fight film can ever have quite enough "Eye of the Tiger," as evidenced by the fact that Survivor's Rocky III theme... More >>

• On Eddie: The Sleepwalking Cannibal, Or How the Art World Is Fuled by Kill-or-be-killed Bloodlust

  published April 3, 2013

  Carnage breeds creativity for Lars (Keep the Lights On's Thure Lindhardt), a former up-and-coming painter who finds himself back at the... More >>

• Sexy Thale Foregoes Mystery for Didactic Disclosure and Slow-mo Murder

  published April 3, 2013

  If you had to stumble upon an angry, vicious mythic creature, you could do worse than the sexy monster found in Thale by Elvis (Erlend... More >>

• The Brass Teapot Cutesy Conceit is a Struggle

  published April 3, 2013

  Even The Twilight Zone would have struggled with the cutesy conceit of The Brass Teapot, a greed-corrupts cautionary tale about... More >>

• Family Weekend Attempts to Turn Its Clichés Into Parents

  published March 27, 2013

  Quirky indie hell, thy name is Family Weekend. Benjamin Epps's film is the very definition of affected cutie-pie whimsy and weirdness,... More >>

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  Dog Pound: Those in Cages Will Rage

  published March 27, 2013

  A fictional Scared Straight! for the modern juvenile delinquent crowd, Dog Pound follows a trio of teens serving time at... More >>

• Old School Crime Bosses Spar in New World

  published March 20, 2013

  Cops and criminals—they're all the same! So says South Korean writer-turned-director Park Hoon-jung, again, with New World, which... More >>