Michael Nordine

Select another critic »
IndieWire, TheWrap, Variety, Village Voice
For 278 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 47% higher than the average critic
  • 5% same as the average critic
  • 48% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 6.2 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Michael Nordine's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 59
Highest review score: 100 Metalhead
Lowest review score: 10 108 Stitches
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 131 out of 278
  2. Mixed: 116 out of 278
  3. Negative: 31 out of 278
278 movie reviews
view
per page
    • 44 Metascore
    • 40 Michael Nordine
    Northern Borders
    It's easy to get lost in the natural beauty of Vermont, and Mosher (who worked on the film with several students as part of a Marlboro College program) clearly takes joy in doing so. The liveliest counterpart to that striking landscape isn't Dern, but rather Jessica Hecht as his wayward daughter, who hits all the grace notes the rest of the film tends to miss.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 40 Michael Nordine
    Second Opinion: Laetrile at Sloan-Kettering
    Like many docs with activist undertones, Second Opinion tells a potentially interesting story in a bland way.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 63 Michael Nordine
    The Lady
    The goings-on can rarely be called truly compelling, even if they're almost always generally pleasant.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 60 Michael Nordine
    The Strangers: Chapter 1
    "Chapter 1” can’t help feeling like an ersatz imitation at times, but it seems the franchise’s well hasn’t run dry just yet.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 55 Michael Nordine
    The New Mutants
    While it’s never actively bad, The New Mutants rarely imbues any of its happenings with any real heft. Like the remote hospital that serves as its setting, the film as a whole feels too closed off from the rest of its fictional universe to matter much.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 60 Michael Nordine
    Edge of the World
    Where Edge of the World distinguishes itself is in its evocative visuals of Borneo’s unspoiled beauty (courtesy of cinematographer Jaime Feliu-Torres) and the lived-in intensity of Meyers. If the film can’t help but feel like a relic from a bygone era, that’s ultimately part of its appeal.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 66 Michael Nordine
    The 9th Life of Louis Drax
    "Louis Drax” is a curious melding of sensibilities, as eager to show off its mysteries as it is to neatly resolve them. It’s a pleasant enough reverie, but one from which you won’t mind waking.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 30 Michael Nordine
    Free Ride
    The film is content to merely document certain happenings and hope you find them as interesting as it does.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 30 Michael Nordine
    13 Cameras
    Mild schadenfreude aside, however, the film inspires almost no feeling at all — even the Friday the 13th movies bother giving the bad guy a backstory.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 40 Michael Nordine
    The Frontier
    Co-writer/director Matt Rabinowitz doesn’t artfully withhold information so much as lay it all on the table a bit earlier than he might have.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 40 Michael Nordine
    First Time Female Director
    Though its loose, improvisatory feel is suited to the material, most of its humor feels like the first draft of a better film — as though the entire movie consists of what should have been deleted scenes.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 30 Michael Nordine
    Lift
    Practically every scene is a cliché, every line of dialogue an echo of a better one you’ve already heard in a better film.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 42 Michael Nordine
    Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows
    Out of the Shadows stumbles from one set piece to the next, rarely offering viewers much reason to care in between, and its halfhearted attempts at moving toward the “dark and gritty” end of the comic-book spectrum never land.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 42 Michael Nordine
    Jigsaw
    The question with a movie like Jigsaw, which was preceded by seven “Saw” movies and did not screen for press, isn’t “Is it good?” but rather “How bad is it?” The answer, dear reader, is “quite.” Jigsaw is quite bad.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 67 Michael Nordine
    Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
    Kon-Tiki directors Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg are at the helm this time around, proving capable captains even if the script they’re working from isn’t always seaworthy.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 50 Michael Nordine
    Pelé: Birth of a Legend
    Co-directors Jeff and Michael Zimbalist stick to the playbook throughout, from typical moments of uplift to a Pelé cameo only slightly less fan-serving than Stan Lee's Marvel spots.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 30 Michael Nordine
    The Green Inferno
    Roth amplifies that exploitation flick's least interesting components (gore, cruelty) at the expense of all others.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 50 Michael Nordine
    Pali Road
    Chen's full-bodied commitment to her role adds something new to this familiar scenario, which also benefits from its idyllic island setting; psychodrama and Hawaii pair surprisingly well.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 30 Michael Nordine
    Think Like a Man Too
    Returning director Tim Story lays out the narrative wares with all the subtlety of a neon sign on the Strip, not that the screenplay from Keith Merryman and David A. Newman (who also co-wrote the first one) gives him much to work with.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 50 Michael Nordine
    Vacation Friends 2
    If anything, delving into action/comedy territory distracts from what made the original kinda-sorta touching at a few key moments: the heart beneath the hijinks. It’s still beating here, but not as strongly as it did the first time.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 37 Michael Nordine
    The Golden Glove
    The whole affair feels, quite simply, icky in a way that superior projects like “Zodiac” and “Memories of Murder” never do; to his movie’s detriment, Akin seems more interested in merely depicting what happened than taking a stab at why.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 70 Michael Nordine
    America: The Motion Picture
    No aspect of history is off-limits here, the result being a grab bag of references, battles, and jokes that are constantly trying to one-up each other in terms of absurdity.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 60 Michael Nordine
    Ben-Hur
    In paring down and streamlining its source material, this new version also saps its heft.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 30 Michael Nordine
    The Abandoned
    Two second-act revelations alter its tired dynamic for the better, but those changes are undone by cheap scares and a climactic revelation that's more ho-hum than horrifying.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 50 Michael Nordine
    Mr. Jones
    Mr. Jones is the stuff of both conspiracy theories and collegiate discourse, and Mueller's elliptical exploration and creation of that mythology sets the bar a bit too high for his much-less-interesting protagonists to fully clear.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 40 Michael Nordine
    Black Out
    A self-aware, borderline self-reflexive action-comedy from the Netherlands, Arne Toonen's Black Out is derivative in a way that undermines its wry sense of self.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 30 Michael Nordine
    Cold Comes the Night
    Most of the film's major happenings are either illogical or, much more damningly, not especially thrilling.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 30 Michael Nordine
    Assassin's Creed
    The plot is that most dreadful of mixes: both laughably silly and needlessly complicated.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 38 Michael Nordine
    Red Lights
    That all the good things--and there are several--Red Lights has going for it are ultimately in service of an ending that might even make M. Night Shyamalan cringe represents one of the year's biggest missed opportunities.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 40 Michael Nordine
    Revenge of the Green Dragons
    Green Dragons wants to be spaghetti with marinara, but it's closer to egg noodles and ketchup.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 50 Michael Nordine
    Camera Obscura
    Though born of an inventive idea, Camera Obscura comes out underdeveloped.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 75 Michael Nordine
    Venom
    This leaves the viewer with two choices: reject the parasite or let it take you over. Fight it off and you’ll have a bad time; become one with it and you may achieve a kind of symbiosis.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 40 Michael Nordine
    31
    Rob Zombie can do better than 31. For proof, just watch any other Rob Zombie movie.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 40 Michael Nordine
    The Forest
    Before devolving into the same series of demonic faces and jump-scares we've seen time and again, The Forest is a genuinely unnerving mood piece.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 50 Michael Nordine
    Sleepless
    Monaghan and Foxx, for all their gifts, can't transcend the material, though they do get more out of it than most others would be able to.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 40 Michael Nordine
    Boys of Abu Ghraib
    Too by-the-numbers for the emotional impact to resonate as long as it could and should have.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 50 Michael Nordine
    War of the Worlds: Goliath
    Like a feature-length Saturday morning cartoon with dashes of violence so graphic you'd swear you'd just stepped into Ralph Bakshi's Wizards. Which isn't to say that Goliath is good so much as compellingly weird on occasion.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 40 Michael Nordine
    The Human Race
    One test for movies like this is whether they bemoan the inevitable gore or revel in it; The Human Race too often falls into the latter, amplifying and focusing on the bloodshed.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 40 Michael Nordine
    Pet Sematary: Bloodlines
    “Who asked for this?” is the question such projects invoke, and Lindsey Anderson Beer’s film never comes up with a satisfying answer.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 25 Michael Nordine
    A Dark Truth
    A Dark Truth is one of those unfortunate projects whose component parts are immediately at odds with one another.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 10 Michael Nordine
    Measure of Revenge
    A mess from start to finish, this would-be thriller about a mother seeking vengeance (Melissa Leo) never comes close to raising the pulse but does raise more than a few eyebrows along the way.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 25 Michael Nordine
    The House
    It would almost be impressive how many funny people it took to make something so unfunny — the full ensemble includes Nick Kroll, Allison Tolman, Michaela Watkins and Rob Huebel — only it’s difficult to be impressed when you’re focused on how little you’re laughing.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 33 Michael Nordine
    Hell Fest
    A generous reading suggests that its vaguely feminist subtext is intentional rather than a happy accident, and to some extent it may well be, but for the most part Hell Fest simply adheres to long-established genre tropes.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 30 Michael Nordine
    Arsenal
    The main enticement is getting to see Cage go full bore. And he does, gesticulating wildly and assuming an unplaceable accent, but as the only combustible element in this otherwise lackadaisical film, his energy ends up bouncing around with nowhere to go.
    • 22 Metascore
    • 30 Michael Nordine
    Barefoot
    The gradual revelation that there's more to Daisy than meets the eye is no great surprise, but it does at least negate — too late! — some of the more troubling subtext.
    • 22 Metascore
    • 30 Michael Nordine
    Ironclad: Battle for Blood
    Co-writer/director Jonathan English ups the viscera and nudity at the expense of a compelling narrative, which was hardly the original’s strong suit (if indeed it had one) anyway.
    • 21 Metascore
    • 70 Michael Nordine
    Dirty Grandpa
    Call it a dissenting opinion if you must, but Dirty Grandpa has sporadic moments of hilarity.
    • 18 Metascore
    • 30 Michael Nordine
    Mother's Day
    By far the highest concentration of actual humor comes during the blooper reel over the end credits; free of the script’s saccharine constraints, the performers immediately demonstrate their chops.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 63 Michael Nordine
    Retreat
    Retreat's wheels are constantly spinning, but they're not always taking us anywhere.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 63 Michael Nordine
    UFO in Her Eyes
    The serio-comic technique and ping-ponging aesthetics ultimately make for a winning approach.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Michael Nordine
    Out Loud
    Out Loud is too clumsily put together to give its subject the weight it needs to feel both grounded and moving.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 20 Michael Nordine
    Fighting for Freedom
    None of these TV-movie trappings does Freedom's topical subject any favors, but they do confirm that those most passionate about something often require some sort of creative filter when making art about it.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Michael Nordine
    Tough as Iron
    Far better as a family drama than as a gangster picture, the film's muddled attempt at marrying the two distracts from its emotional center.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Michael Nordine
    Junk
    The film is frequently amusing but indulges too often in flights of fancy.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Michael Nordine
    The Anonymous People
    There's little new information here, and the structural monotony of The Anonymous People's voiceover and talking-head presentation often makes it feel less like dynamic, insightful filmmaking and more like a well-intentioned PSA.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Michael Nordine
    On the Other Side of the Tracks
    There are few clichés of the genre that Charhon doesn't indulge in, but he does a few of them well enough for the film to occasionally be funny, even if it's never close to inspired.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Michael Nordine
    Fray
    The main strength of writer-director Geoff Ryan's film is its quietude; too many movies exploring the neither-nor status occupied by vets whose experiences "over there" have altered their ability to function back home turn shrill in order to get their point across.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Michael Nordine
    Clutter
    We get a glimpse of who these people are and what makes them tick, but never know them in a way that helps us truly understand them or become especially invested in finding out what became of them.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Michael Nordine
    Broken
    Jung Jae-young gives a physical, full-bodied performance in the main role.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Michael Nordine
    No Tears for the Dead
    There are more tears than the title lets on, and even more blood, but it's a reason to truly be invested that's missing from No Tears for the Dead, which is rarely any better or worse than serviceable.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 10 Michael Nordine
    108 Stitches
    Its utterly predictable narrative and lazy sexism make for a toxic combination.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 30 Michael Nordine
    Scream at the Devil
    Stachura turns everything up to 11 almost from the outset, and all escalation from there feels overwrought.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Michael Nordine
    The Key
    Initially engrossing as it is, the maximalism loses power sometime in the second act.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Michael Nordine
    Allure
    At times there's no way to be sure whether what's on screen is scripted or candid, a formal tension that keeps the film on its toes while also underscoring that it's more effective as an experiential mood piece than it is as a drama.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Michael Nordine
    WA-SHOKU ~Beyond Sushi~
    Wa-shoku isn't as contemplative as Kanai and his acolytes, though it might still make you feel like a dilettante if your Japanese palate begins and ends with California rolls.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 30 Michael Nordine
    Saugatuck Cures
    No one in the movie rises above the level of a stock character, so over-the-top in their familiar jokes as to barely even register as satire.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Michael Nordine
    Only You
    Only You is mostly engaging for the ways in which it shows that prophecies reveal more about the receiver's interpretive biases than they do about the secrets of the universe.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Michael Nordine
    OzLand
    The final result of all this, if a mixed bag, is still a more accurate rendering of the books' spirit than Oz the Great and Powerful.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Michael Nordine
    I Remember You
    [Sparrow] zigs where you expect her to zag (not always in the best of ways), and though I Remember You ends up exactly where you expect it to, the windy, circuitous path it takes doesn't feel like time misspent.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Michael Nordine
    The Himalayas
    For all the big-budget spectacle on display, it's the scenes that look to have been shot on a GoPro that most excite -- only in these few sequences does The Himalayas begin to distinguish itself from its blockbuster ilk.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 30 Michael Nordine
    Traded
    The film likens prostitution to a continuation of the slavery that was eradicated two decades earlier by a certain Proclamation, but never bothers letting any of the working girls emancipate themselves.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 30 Michael Nordine
    Don't Kill It
    Those who favor gore above all else will be at home amid the blood and guts, but others should heed the obvious warning invited by the title: don't watch it.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 67 Michael Nordine
    Blame!
    The film’s world-building is more engaging than its plotting, which skews toward the generic as the embattled good guys set out on their last-ditch effort to save what remains of humanity; there’s a sense, while watching Blame!, that there are more interesting stories on the fringes of this tribal future.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Michael Nordine
    Bob Spit: We Do Not Like People
    “Bob Spit” is most notable for its formal approach, which intermingles animated interviews of Angeli with a bizarre, at times surreal narrative featuring characters from his comic strips.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »