Elise Nakhnikian

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Slant Magazine
For 99 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 33% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 64% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 6.6 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Elise Nakhnikian's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 59
Highest review score: 88 Nuts!
Lowest review score: 12 Taken 3
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 58 out of 99
  2. Mixed: 16 out of 99
  3. Negative: 25 out of 99
99 movie reviews
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    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Elise Nakhnikian
    Dukhtar
    The film functions as a love letter to Pakistan, despite the misogynistic culture it exposes.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Elise Nakhnikian
    Call Her Applebroog
    It implies that not even the concentrated self-scrutiny required to make art like Ida Applebroog's is enough to make sense of ourselves to ourselves.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Elise Nakhnikian
    Monkey Kingdom
    The cumulative effect is cheerily life-affirming, a bracing infusion of macaque-style joie de vivre.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 12 Elise Nakhnikian
    Red Dawn
    It feeds the warrior fantasies of adolescent boys with a testosterone-heavy tale of a war free of moral complications.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 88 Elise Nakhnikian
    Beauty Is Embarrassing
    Neil Berkeley's documentary is as puckish as its subject, so steeped in artist Wayne White's creative juices that it makes you want to go straight home and start making things.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 63 Elise Nakhnikian
    Gimme Danger
    The film reveals the erudition and shrewd self-awareness that Jim Osterberg drew on to become Iggy Pop.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 38 Elise Nakhnikian
    Wild Horses
    Robert Duvall's evident admiration for his wife are typical of this film, in which so much seems touchingly sincere but clumsily expressed.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Elise Nakhnikian
    Manifesto
    The film’s visceral pleasures often work at cross purposes with the cerebral message of the manifestos.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Elise Nakhnikian
    Donald Cried
    Finding the drama and humor in everyday situations like these isn't easy, but Avedisian makes it look as natural as swinging on a vine.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Elise Nakhnikian
    The Falling
    The film all leads to a melodramatic climax that wraps up the main character's explosive acting out in a too-neat package.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Elise Nakhnikian
    Florence Foster Jenkins
    The film champions coddling people like Florence Foster Jenkins and treats critical thinking as the enemy.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Elise Nakhnikian
    The Farewell Party
    A neatly balanced tragicomedy about the easily blurred line between assisted living and assisted death.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Elise Nakhnikian
    Meet the Patels
    In this picaresque documentary, the lightly comic musings of a likeable, somewhat nerdy Indian-American actor go surprisingly deep.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 63 Elise Nakhnikian
    Teddy Bear
    From its title to its closing caress, Mads Matthiesen's film skates perilously close to the cliff's edge of mawkish sentiment.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 88 Elise Nakhnikian
    Merchants of Doubt
    An issues documentary that scores its points through a seductive combination of clearly stated arguments and pithy humor.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 38 Elise Nakhnikian
    The Lady in the Van
    The film's annoying glibness is neatly summarized by the line: "In life, going downhill is an uphill job."
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Elise Nakhnikian
    Chicken with Plums
    A fable about the damage done when a young couple is forced to part, Chicken with Plums is deeply melancholic, yet so full of humor and humanity that it pulses with life even while tracing the trajectory of a slow suicide.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 38 Elise Nakhnikian
    The Meddler
    Writer-director Lorene Scafaria's film is an unconvincing character study that plays like a painfully unfunny sitcom.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 88 Elise Nakhnikian
    Girl Model
    The documentary makes you wonder about every beautiful woman who's ever stared out from a publication, poster, or billboard, looking sophisticated and self-assured.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Elise Nakhnikian
    Batkid Begins
    Any hope of meaningful reflection or insight is doused by a steady drip of often redundant and banal observations.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Elise Nakhnikian
    The Family Fang
    There's real texture and emotional heft to the central relationship between the siblings, but that's thanks more to the actors than the script.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Elise Nakhnikian
    More Than the Rainbow
    The film's segments move seamlessly from one topic to the next with the unselfconscious ease of a good dinner party.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 63 Elise Nakhnikian
    Patti Cake$
    The obstacles and opportunities that Patti encounters are often rote, but her struggles and triumphs are detailed with a gravity that honors and elucidates her feelings.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Elise Nakhnikian
    Misunderstood
    The film is only slightly dependent on the self-pity that informed Asia Argento's last effort, The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, but it feels similarly airless.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 38 Elise Nakhnikian
    The Founder
    Michael Keaton's powerful performance in The Founder is marooned in a wishy-washy story.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 63 Elise Nakhnikian
    The One I Love
    The film gets too caught up in the semi-farcical comings and goings of the two Sophies and Ethans to explore any of the issues it raises about relationships very deeply.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 25 Elise Nakhnikian
    The Infiltrator
    Its clunky incidents of exposition leave us with no real understanding of what anyone is thinking or feeling.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Elise Nakhnikian
    The Confirmation
    The premise is undermined by the film's occasionally dubious ethics and its tendency to soft-pedal the dangerous situations it sets up.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 38 Elise Nakhnikian
    A Brilliant Young Mind
    The film focuses on Nathan's emotions and backstage dramas in ways that generally feel forced or inauthentic.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Elise Nakhnikian
    Suffragette
    The film's episodes and attitudes register with searing immediacy while feeling true to their time period.
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