Email Author Nick Schager

2012 Stories by Nick Schager

• Not Fade Away Lays Bare David Chases's Rock and Roll Heart

  published December 19, 2012

  Rock and roll proves the coming-of-age crucible in Not Fade Away, Sopranos creator David Chase's semiautobiographical feature... More >>

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  COVER STORY

  John Hyams Is the Best Action Director Working Today

  published November 28, 2012

  If David Cronenberg and Luc Besson had a mutant baby, it still wouldn't be able to make a movie quite as hypnotically badass as Universal... More >>

• California Solo

  published November 28, 2012

  Woe is the rocker whose career is cut short by a more talented sibling/bandmate's death, a plight played for earnest drunken-irresponsibility... More >>

• Life of Pi Is the Story of How Important Life of Pi Is

  published November 21, 2012

  A stacked-deck theological inquiry filtered through a Titanic-by-way-of–Slumdog Millionaire narrative, Life of Pi... More >>

• A Royal Affair

  published November 7, 2012

  The way to a queen's heart is through Rousseau in A Royal Affair, in which church and state oppression can't, at least for a time, quell... More >>

• Wreck-It Ralph: Do You Choose to Continue? No.

  published October 31, 2012

  It's hard out there for a video game villain: always being attacked, never given the benefit of the doubt, and forever pigeonholed into a role... More >>

• Bones Brigade: An Autobiography

  published October 31, 2012

  Stacy Peralta documents what he knows best: the '70s–'80s California skateboarding culture of which he was a seminal figure. Having... More >>

• Beasts Do It: Jack and Diane Suggests the Kids Are Alright—Animals

  published October 31, 2012

  Equating teens with animals has long been a handy horror-cinema way to tackle pubescent sexual development. So with its most attention-grabbing... More >>

• Festival of Lights

  published October 31, 2012

  Little girls never stop loving their daddies in Festival of Lights, a drama that never stops loving soap-opera-style melodramatics.... More >>

• Sleep Tight

  published October 24, 2012

  Chloroform is a psychopath's best friend in Sleep Tight, though having unfettered access to the home of one's target doesn't hurt,... More >>

• The Black Tulip

  published October 24, 2012

  Conservatism clashes with modernity in The Black Tulip, Sonia Nassery Cole's earnestly melodramatic Afghan drama about a family's... More >>

• Pusher

  published October 24, 2012

  Less a bastardization than simply a watered-down and superfluous redo, Pusher faithfully mimics Nicolas Winding Refn's 1996 Danish crime... More >>

• Silent Hill: Revelation

  published October 24, 2012

  Darkness is always chasing Heather (Adelaide Clemens), but, unfortunately, it takes 94 tedious minutes before Silent Hill: Revelation... More >>

• 3, 2, 1 . . . Frankie Go Boom

  published October 10, 2012

  Less inept than its worst-of-the-year title suggests, 3, 2, 1 . . . Frankie Go Boom nonetheless proves too ramshackle and aimless to... More >>

• Photographic Memory

  published October 10, 2012

  Ross McElwee attempts to understand his son in the present day by revisiting his own past in Photographic Memory, an autobiographical... More >>

• Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare

  published October 3, 2012

  Skyrocketing domestic health care costs are tackled with sobriety in Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare, but the film... More >>

• Sister

  published October 3, 2012

  Hustling is a profession for the pint-size in Sister, a Dardenne-lite drama about a 12-year-old boy's efforts to support himself and his... More >>

• Butter

  published October 3, 2012

  Broad-stereotype comedy is slathered in shameless bathos in Butter, Jim Field Smith’s tale of a heated Iowa butter-carving... More >>

• Six Million and One

  published September 26, 2012

  The past is at once ever-present and ignored according to Six Million and One, Israeli documentarian David Fisher's film about his trip to... More >>

• Electoral Dysfunction

  published September 19, 2012

  Just in time for November’s Obama-Romney showdown comes Electoral Dysfunction, a documentary by comedian Mo Rocca about voting... More >>

• Brooklyn Brothers Beat the Best

  published September 19, 2012

  Likable leads can’t energize lackluster formula in Brooklyn Brothers Beat the Best, an indie about—tell me if this sounds... More >>

• My Uncle Rafael

  published September 19, 2012

  Armenian comedy star Vahik Pirhamzei brings his signature character to American shores with My Uncle Rafael, an insufferable import... More >>

• Flogging Nemo: Pixar's Grand Fish Tale Needs No Enhancement

  published September 12, 2012

  A re-release whose cash-grab intentions are as transparent as the crystal-clear Sydney ocean, Finding Nemo 3-D exists only to relieve... More >>

• The Stand Up

  published September 12, 2012

  For a film about a stand-up comedian to be mirthless is dispiriting; more problematic, however, is that The Stand Up doesn’t make up... More >>

• The Eye of the Storm

  published September 5, 2012

  Emotionally and psychologically textured melodrama suffers under the weight of its source material in The Eye of the Storm, Fred... More >>