Andrew Schenker

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Slant Magazine, Village Voice
For 198 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 21% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 75% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 15.1 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Andrew Schenker's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 50
Highest review score: 100 Stray Dogs
Lowest review score: 0 Act of Valor
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 73 out of 198
  2. Mixed: 62 out of 198
  3. Negative: 63 out of 198
198 movie reviews
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    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Andrew Schenker
    American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein
    As Ridgen and Rossier take pains to point out, a man so rigorously committed to putting an end to oppression ought not be so easily dismissed, even if coming to grips with such a challenging figure may be finally as difficult as getting to the bottom of the Arab-Israeli conflict itself.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 63 Andrew Schenker
    Incendies
    An enormously effective piece of filmmaking, Incdendies unfolds as a series of eye-opening disclosures which Villeneuve plays as much for (admittedly enthralling) sensation as for any kind of wider-ranging inquiry, a questionable approach given the thorny nature of the material.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Andrew Schenker
    Revenge of the Mekons
    What emerges is a portrait of a fully committed band that could never quite make it and of the rock n' roll project as something between a (very serious) hobby and a full-time career.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Andrew Schenker
    Stray Dogs
    Tsai isn't making a social-problem film here, and his critique of patriarchal control is secondary to his portrait of unbearable psychic conditions.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 12 Andrew Schenker
    Towheads
    There's but one sequence in the entire movie that offers even the slightest bit of filmmaking verve, and even this speaks to the project's essential myopia.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 75 Andrew Schenker
    G.B.F.
    The film, lensed in appealing candy-striped colors, has so much fun exploding stereotypes and radiates with such infectious comic gusto and genuine good nature, that it would be almost churlish to resist its charms.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 63 Andrew Schenker
    S#x Acts
    In its refusal to bring an easy understanding to its main character's behavior, it comes dangerously close to presenting her as a willing perpetrator in her own victimhood.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 38 Andrew Schenker
    Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom
    A cursory history lesson with no interest in probing the deeper or more complex implications of Mandela's positions and their relationship to his country's shifting landscape.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Andrew Schenker
    It's Me, It's Me
    Alternating between self-consciously offbeat comedy and existential J-horror, It's Me, It's Me never quite satisfies in either mode.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 25 Andrew Schenker
    A Case of You
    Kat Coiro's film takes the comedy of discomfort to new levels of cringe-worthiness by presenting.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Andrew Schenker
    Running from Crazy
    The modern-day sections with Mariel Hemingway, while detailing the redemptive promise of the title, too often come across as either indulgent time-filler or overflow with PSA-level superficiality.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 50 Andrew Schenker
    Paradise
    The film smartly avoids the sort of cynical hijinks that characterize the majority of Vegas-set flicks, though it can't come up with anything more compelling to place in its stead.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Andrew Schenker
    The Invisible Woman
    Ralph Fiennes's film feels not so much rooted in the past as it is mired in conventions about how to portray that past.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 88 Andrew Schenker
    At Berkeley
    Frederick Wiseman's At Berkeley isn't only a study of the contemporary American university, but, like all of the filmmaker's best documentaries, a wide-ranging inquiry into the larger institutions and contradictions that define life in the United States.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew Schenker
    The Trials of Muhammad Ali
    The film never lingers too long on any one thing, instead functioning as a survey in which several fascinating cultural moments are vividly evoked, but then left insufficiently probed.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 63 Andrew Schenker
    On the Job
    A nose-to-the-ground crime thriller that also doubles as a wide-ranging portrait of official corruption in the Philippines, On the Job has little trouble delivering the genre goods.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Andrew Schenker
    Like Father, Like Son
    The film scores all of its thematic points early, commenting intriguingly, if ultimately rather obviously, on the demands of Japanese patriarchy.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Andrew Schenker
    Thanks for Sharing
    Is an exploration of sex addiction, in all its different manifestations, the new flavor of the week in contemporary American cinema?
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Andrew Schenker
    After Tiller
    It gives a true sense of how the forces of a hypocritically religious country has burdened countless young women with a lifetime of misplaced guilt.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 38 Andrew Schenker
    Don Jon
    Joseph Gordon-Levitt's directorial debut does for porn-dependence what Shame did for sex addiction by offering a surface-level look at the effects of its specific pathology on its lead male character.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Andrew Schenker
    A Teacher
    When Diana's fixations begin to take over, Fidell seems ill-prepared to steer the film into strictly psychological territory, resulting in a project that loses its fraught sense of control at the same moment as its embattled protagonist.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 75 Andrew Schenker
    Touchy Feely
    Lynn Shelton crafts a film of astonishingly sustained mood, tying its beguiling atmosphere to the mental states of her characters.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Andrew Schenker
    I Declare War
    The film rarely takes us past its rather obvious conclusions about the potential bestial nature of kids and how that may translate to the larger battlefields.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Andrew Schenker
    Old Cats
    Walks a fine line between empathetic treatment of its characters and voyeuristic freakshow gazing.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Andrew Schenker
    You Will Be My Son
    For all of the director's willingness to explore his characters' unexpected depths, he's still hamstrung by his perpetually tasteful cinema-of-quality aesthetic.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Andrew Schenker
    I Give It a Year
    Much of the film's attempted laughs come from the comedy-of-discomfort school, with an endless array of situations that milk awkwardness to a degree that makes these scenes far more unpleasant than humorous to watch.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 63 Andrew Schenker
    Our Children
    It's occasionally too icily removed, but it compensates through its perpetual concern with understanding its characters and their untenable situations.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 63 Andrew Schenker
    The Spectacular Now
    Given the film's early promise, it's unfortunate how it turns into a largely reductive Freudian character piece in which the main character has to come to terms with his old man.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Andrew Schenker
    The To Do List
    Essentially the film aims to trade in the awkwardness of teen sexuality, but too often settles for the gross-out gag instead.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 38 Andrew Schenker
    Breaking the Girls
    At the center of the film, festering like an open sore, is the stereotype of the psycho lesbian bitch.
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