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Lessons of Darkness

Lessons of Darkness is not a Tomatometer-approved publication. Reviews from this publication only count toward the Tomatometer® when written by the following Tomatometer-approved critic(s): Nick Schager.

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Rating Title | Year Author Quote
B+
(undefined) Nick Schager Its visceral and gruesome images of female-directed violence ... linger long after the credits have rolled.
Posted Apr 10, 2021  Edit critic review
A-
Looper (2012) Nick Schager A scintillating neo-noir gem of existential quandaries and inescapable fatalism.
Posted Sep 30, 2012  Edit critic review
A-
The Master (2012) Nick Schager At once explosive and ramshackle, unpredictable and expertly modulated, it's a magnetic performance [by Phoenix].
Posted Sep 13, 2012  Edit critic review
B+
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011) Nick Schager Subpar material gets a tonal and aesthetic - and, by extension, thematic - boost from directorial virtuosity in David Fincher's American remake.
Posted Dec 13, 2011  Edit critic review
B+
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) Nick Schager Bolstered by a superb cast and ... a very subtle, sly black-humor drollness, Tinker Tailor generates tension from both its aesthetic and narrative stillness.
Posted Dec 12, 2011  Edit critic review
B+
The Adventures of Tintin (2011) Nick Schager Spielberg takes full advantage of not only CG's anything-goes potential but also of 3D.
Posted Dec 12, 2011  Edit critic review
C+
The Descendants (2011) Nick Schager Wants to be mature but can't help shortchanging its drama through constant reliance on its protagonist's unimpeachable nobility.
Posted Dec 12, 2011  Edit critic review
B+
Carnage (2011) Nick Schager Offsets its familiar thematic arguments with deliciously nasty wit and fractured, tension-wracked visual framing.
Posted Oct 01, 2011  Edit critic review
B+
Take Shelter (2011) Nick Schager Nichols' formally assured direction exhibits dawning-dread restraint through slow zooms and tense framing.
Posted Sep 30, 2011  Edit critic review
B
Moneyball (2011) Nick Schager Recognizes that sometimes, happily-ever-afters are more complicated than uplifting Hollywood films can manage.
Posted Sep 30, 2011  Edit critic review
B-
Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) Nick Schager A reasonably muscular popcorn film with a surprisingly tender soul.
Posted Sep 12, 2011  Edit critic review
C-
Take Me Home Tonight (2011) Nick Schager Pap in service of wistfulness about a time period now thoroughly mocked to death.
Posted Sep 12, 2011  Edit critic review
A-
Drive (2011) Nick Schager [Refn's] stewardship is as precise and magnetic as Gosling's performance.
Posted Sep 12, 2011  Edit critic review
C+
3 (2010) Nick Schager Rarely gets deep enough under [its characters'] skin to make them seem like more than devices in a socio-political thesis.
Posted Sep 12, 2011  Edit critic review
B+
Contagion (2011) Nick Schager A portrait of the terrifying fragility of the tangled biological, social and emotional networks that govern our lives.
Posted Sep 12, 2011  Edit critic review
C+
Our Idiot Brother (2011) Nick Schager A pleasant-enough trifle that ensnares itself in the uneasy middle ground between indie drama and dumb-guy comedy.
Posted Sep 12, 2011  Edit critic review
B-
Attack the Block (2011) Nick Schager Evokes far more childlike Spielbergian wonder than this summer's similar Super 8.
Posted Jul 26, 2011  Edit critic review
B+
Tabloid (2010) Nick Schager Morris' lightest, most amusing film since 1997's Fast, Cheap & Out of Control.
Posted Jul 12, 2011  Edit critic review
B-
Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011) Nick Schager So totally surpassing its aggro-testosterone dictates that it plays out like an assault or, more precisely still, like a final conquering salvo.
Posted Jun 30, 2011  Edit critic review
C
The Ward (2010) Nick Schager A musty shadow of the filmmaker's smart and stylish classics.
Posted Jun 28, 2011  Edit critic review
B-
Cedar Rapids (2011) Nick Schager Hopelessly benign but still boisterous enough to deliver a mild buzz.
Posted Jun 28, 2011  Edit critic review
C
Green Lantern (2011) Nick Schager A tedious hodgepodge of rote conflicts and character hang-ups.
Posted Jun 24, 2011  Edit critic review
C
Submarine (2010) Nick Schager Oliver's oddball earnestness and desperation [come] across as wan affectations.
Posted Jun 24, 2011  Edit critic review
D
Red Riding Hood (2011) Nick Schager What truly needs abolishing is the notion that the wretched Twilight saga is worth emulating.
Posted Jun 24, 2011  Edit critic review
A-
Donnie Darko (2001) Nick Schager Defines itself through sustained mood, otherworldly intrigue and deep, abiding humanism.
Posted Jun 20, 2011  Edit critic review
B-
Hall Pass (2011) Nick Schager Wilson and Sudeikis make an amusingly goofy pair.
Posted Jun 19, 2011  Edit critic review
B-
Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) Nick Schager Captures an aura of existential despondence that's married to a far less evocative (and durable) strain of counterculture romantic doom.
Posted Jun 19, 2011  Edit critic review
C-
Kaboom (2010) Nick Schager Isn't anarchic and invigorated but sloppy and limp.
Posted Jun 16, 2011  Edit critic review
B-
Fear X (2003) Nick Schager The director captures a sense of hazy, harrowing obsession that's amplified by his immaculate camera set-ups and pans.
Posted Jun 15, 2011  Edit critic review
C
Drive Angry (2011) Nick Schager A rather straightforward supernatural-heroism tale straining oh-so-very-hard to be indecent.
Posted Jun 15, 2011  Edit critic review
A-
Pusher 3 (2005) Nick Schager Expands [the trilogy's] overarching vision of underworld nastiness, the universal yearning for escape, and the cruel hand of fate.
Posted Jun 09, 2011  Edit critic review
B+
With Blood on My Hands: Pusher II (2004) Nick Schager Doesn't so much carve out new ground as merely provide jolt after electric jolt.
Posted Jun 09, 2011  Edit critic review
B+
Pusher (1996) Nick Schager Refn's electrifying debut soon morphs into something far more opaque and unsettling than a mere genre retread.
Posted Jun 09, 2011  Edit critic review
C-
Home Movie (2008) Nick Schager Its characters' behavior eventually becomes so implausible as to be insulting.
Posted Jun 09, 2011  Edit critic review
A-
The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) Nick Schager Laced with a fatalism as romantic as its Beantown milieu is damp and grungy.
Posted Jun 08, 2011  Edit critic review
A
Bigger Than Life (1956) Nick Schager A masterful melodrama whose aesthetic beauty works in service of a stinging social critique.
Posted Jun 08, 2011  Edit critic review
C
Takers (2010) Nick Schager A mini-Michael Mann effort populated by one-dimensional clichs.
Posted Jun 08, 2011  Edit critic review
B+
The Holy Mountain (1973) Nick Schager A rambling stream-of-consciousness quest that - in its final, self-conscious act - celebrates the primacy of the filmed image.
Posted Jun 08, 2011  Edit critic review
C
X-Men: First Class (2011) Nick Schager Serviceable but seems more dutiful than dynamic, and is muddled by all sorts of random false notes.
Posted Jun 06, 2011  Edit critic review
B
El topo (1971) Nick Schager Has lost little of the maddening, bewildering weirdness that made it a seminal midnight-movie phenomenon.
Posted Jun 05, 2011  Edit critic review
C-
The Rite (2011) Nick Schager Parades about with a self-seriousness at odds with a second-half dominated by veiny-faced, limb-contorting special effects and screaming, screaming, screaming.
Posted Jun 05, 2011  Edit critic review
C-
John Carpenter's Vampires (1998) Nick Schager A suspense-free snark-fest desperate to turn its protagonist - vampire slayer Jack Crow (James Woods) - into a Snake Plisskin-style icon of supernatural-badass cool.
Posted Jun 05, 2011  Edit critic review
C
The Rocketeer (1991) Nick Schager Almost never takes thrilling flight.
Posted Jun 01, 2011  Edit critic review
C
Carriers (2009) Nick Schager Brings absolutely nothing new to the table.
Posted Jun 01, 2011  Edit critic review
C-
The Green Hornet (2011) Nick Schager Aside from a brief split-screen sequence and a few deft special-effects, there's almost no sizzle to this goofy take on superheroics.
Posted Jun 01, 2011  Edit critic review
C+
Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) Nick Schager A feast for the senses that fails to satisfy the heart, libido or mind.
Posted Jun 01, 2011  Edit critic review
B
Valhalla Rising (2009) Nick Schager Mikkelsen verifies that, even without saying a word, he's an unnervingly unhinged presence.
Posted May 31, 2011  Edit critic review
C+
Hanna (2011) Nick Schager Folklore undercurrents that prove initially spry and intriguing are soon rendered ... leadenly obvious.
Posted May 31, 2011  Edit critic review
C
The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006) Nick Schager A perfunctory and unintentionally goofy attempt to keep the series running without its stars Vin Diesel and Paul Walker.
Posted May 31, 2011  Edit critic review
D
Hoodwinked! (2005) Nick Schager Somnambulistic from start to finish, it's a film whose title clearly refers to its paying-customer audience.
Posted May 31, 2011  Edit critic review
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