Marshall Shaffer

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Slant Magazine, Slashfilm, The Playlist
For 197 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 45% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 52% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 1.9 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Marshall Shaffer's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 68
Highest review score: 100 Marty Supreme
Lowest review score: 16 Anaconda
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 133 out of 197
  2. Mixed: 56 out of 197
  3. Negative: 8 out of 197
197 movie reviews
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    • 75 Metascore
    • 91 Marshall Shaffer
    The Naked Gun
    With an eye for staging and composition as well as an ear for absurd dialogue, Schaffer brings boundless energy to bear that proves electric and infectious to watch unfold. The film never lets off the gas for a second, jolting a dormant franchise back to life—and, hopefully, the entire practice of theatrically-released studio comedies along with it.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 88 Marshall Shaffer
    Diciannove
    In line with his protagonist’s ever-shifting whims, a spirit of restless reinvention characterizes director Giovanni Tortorici’s aesthetic approach.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Marshall Shaffer
    Wild Diamond
    The film is at its best when it’s keyed to its main character’s breakneck energy.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 58 Marshall Shaffer
    Ballerina
    Ballerina is passable as a continuation of “John Wick” mythology. However, it’s not strong enough to organically generate comparable enthusiasm for continued storytelling with this character.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 38 Marshall Shaffer
    The Life of Chuck
    Mike Flanagan’s film doesn’t escape the mires of unpersuasive pop psychology.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 38 Marshall Shaffer
    Ghost Trail
    Jonathan Millet’s film is unconvincing and unnaturally contorted into its shape.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Marshall Shaffer
    The Phoenician Scheme
    The raw emotion underlying The Phoenician Scheme peeks out at unexpected times.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Marshall Shaffer
    Bring Her Back
    When they can translate something into a tangible sensation, like the camera effects of focus that take viewers into Piper’s distorted field of vision, the film operates within a comfortable range for the directors. Where they struggle to locate resonance is in the emotional realm.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 63 Marshall Shaffer
    Final Destination: Bloodlines
    Bloodlines finds frights and fun alike in a string of gory kills.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Marshall Shaffer
    Friendship
    The film plays right into Tim Robinson’s sweet spot of surrealistic and satirical comedy.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 88 Marshall Shaffer
    The Virgin of the Quarry Lake
    Laura Casabé abstracts the typical emotions of tortured teens, only to then amplify them.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 63 Marshall Shaffer
    Drowning Dry
    Drowning Dry offers something akin to a cinematic concussion as it begins warping the experience of time.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Marshall Shaffer
    The Friend
    Hardly a false note is sounded throughout The Friend, but it operates within such a limited emotional range that it drifts into monotonic plainsong.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Marshall Shaffer
    Holy Cow
    The rhythms and structure of Holy Cow embody the swirling confusion and contradictions of adolescence itself.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Marshall Shaffer
    The Blue Trail
    An empowering narrative of one woman who refuses to see age as a ceiling, the film serves as a potent warning for viewers about the marginalization of the elderly.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 63 Marshall Shaffer
    BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions
    This hybridized essay film embodies the complications and contradictions inherent within Black history—complete with all its erasures and variances.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 67 Marshall Shaffer
    Kontinental '25
    This lacks the zest and dynamism of Jude’s more subversive output, though even a minor work from a major filmmaker still manages to thrill and tantalize.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Marshall Shaffer
    The Ugly Stepsister
    Emilie Blichfeldt knows the exact point of queasiness to which she can push an audience and gradually tests how much further she can move that mark with each successive scene.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Marshall Shaffer
    Lurker
    The artist and audience member are coequal—and codependent—in this perceptive drama about a parasocial relationship that enters the realm of reality.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Marshall Shaffer
    Reflection in a Dead Diamond
    Right out of the gate, the filmmakers’ filtering of a James Bond-esque espionage tale through a grindhouse sensibility exists in such a state of emphatic stimulation that each shot feels punctuated with an exclamation point.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Marshall Shaffer
    Blue Moon
    Blue Moon, like Lorenz Hart in his day, trusts that audiences want to engage with subjects that matter through deliberate dialogue.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 83 Marshall Shaffer
    Atropia
    Trying to clarify the fog of war is a patently paradoxical task, Gates successfully argues – and she can prove the assertion within the grand satirical framework of the script or in a wry comic detail derived from the immediacy of a scene.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 91 Marshall Shaffer
    Train Dreams
    A good film captures merely a life. A great film like Train Dreams encompasses an entire way of life. Bentley’s modest, moving epic of the common man is a thing of rare beauty.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 83 Marshall Shaffer
    Together
    It’s the rare film that can hit a nerve as well as an artery.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 75 Marshall Shaffer
    Kiss of the Spider Woman
    Condon’s conducting of the whole affair is technically competent … dazzling, even, in sections. But all that flashiness is not blinding enough to conceal the gap between the tune it sings and the routine it dances. That is to say: Kiss of the Spider Woman may be about movie magic, but the film itself isn’t always magic.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 83 Marshall Shaffer
    The Ballad of Wallis Island
    Everyone involved might not get the exact arrangement they imagined, but the outcome is still magical in its own way.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 75 Marshall Shaffer
    Oh, Hi!
    While this send-up might not pass the scrutiny for a rewatch or cult classic, it’s at least good for one fun and unexpected go-round.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 75 Marshall Shaffer
    Magic Farm
    It’s still a hilarious adventure, but Ulman loses some of her magic within a more diffuse narrative framework.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Marshall Shaffer
    Last Days
    The film has no answers because Lin plays it more like a heist film—where the bounty is the purity of the unexposed North Sentinelese—than a sincere human drama about faith and identity. Lin entertains as a result but struggles to enlighten.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Marshall Shaffer
    The Wedding Banquet
    The humor lands as if it’s coming not from the writers but through the characters by its grounding in the details of their lives.
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