Nick Allen

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RogerEbert.com, The Playlist
For 347 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 45% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 51% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 6 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Nick Allen's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 60
Highest review score: 100 Makala
Lowest review score: 0 DriverX
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 197 out of 347
  2. Mixed: 74 out of 347
  3. Negative: 76 out of 347
347 movie reviews
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    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Nick Allen
    The Mole Agent
    For however quaint and sporadically quirky it is, The Mole Agent is an earnest look at old age, and a community full of people just like Sergio.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Nick Allen
    Togo
    The movie is affectionate because it has that sense of animal love that lets entire sequences rest on Togo’s charms, but is by no means letting the dog do all the work. Director Ericson Core (previously of the “Point Break” remake) clearly cares about animals, but filmmaking, too.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 88 Nick Allen
    See You Then
    With fascinating confidence, “See You Then” honors the gradual evolution of a long talk, so much that their literal pacing reads as its only unnatural flourish—they take several minutes to walk about two blocks. But that rhythm, of one step at a time, nearly takes on a hypnotic effect.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 88 Nick Allen
    Dayveon
    Dayveon stands out with its vision, regional flavor and overall personality.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 63 Nick Allen
    Stephen Curry: Underrated
    Stephen Curry: Underrated is the lightest feel-good sports entertainment possible in that it does have plenty of wins and losses from Curry's college and pro days, with the momentum of an underdog’s drive.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 88 Nick Allen
    Class Action Park
    A sharp, funny, and bizarrely responsible documentary about an amusement park in Vernon, New Jersey.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Nick Allen
    Fighting with My Family
    Even though Fighting with My Family is undoubtedly about branding the WWE as a fantasy factory, its biggest strength is in its wit and surprisingly big heart, celebrating underdogs who rumble for what they love.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Nick Allen
    Three Months
    There’s so much going on in Three Months, so many emotional pieces in motion, but very little of it is particularly moving.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 83 Nick Allen
    Smile
    It doesn’t happen too often, especially from modern studio fare, but Parker Finn’s Smile is the kind of horror movie that earns the unique qualification of “genuinely scary.”
    • 68 Metascore
    • 63 Nick Allen
    Bikram: Yogi, Guru, Predator
    Director Eva Orner makes her story both about the predator and the victims, and delivers an appropriately cut-and-dry case that Bikram more than deserves that third title. But she connects these sensibilities with an approach that too often feels like an info dump, instead of a gripping mediation on the larger themes and harrowing stories that inspired it.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 63 Nick Allen
    Love, Charlie: The Rise and Fall of Chef Charlie Trotter
    The editorial assembly and talking-head presentation of “Love, Charlie” is a bit too dry for my taste, struggling to build an intriguing pacing with and-then-this-happened storytelling. But the emotional power of the film benefits from its extensive archive, and how it displays it.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 88 Nick Allen
    My King
    Though it too readily compares to other intimate observations on life-changing connections, you could place this take by director Maïwenn somewhere between Ingmar Bergman’s masterful “Scenes from a Marriage” and Derek Cianfrance’s searing “Blue Valentine,” while never being able to forget My King's two brilliant performances from Emmanuelle Bercot and Vincent Cassel.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Nick Allen
    Fear Street Part Three: 1666
    Executed with the confidence of a victory lap, the last hour of "1666" is a series highlight, especially as it captures the brand of out-and-out fun that has made Janiak a newly minted crowd-pleaser in horror.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Nick Allen
    Monsters and Men
    Excels when it dives into the complications of race and authority, articulated vividly by three excellent lead performances.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 88 Nick Allen
    A Midsummer Night's Dream
    If you’re hoping to see a production just like the one that would have been done in 1596, this ain’t it. But Mott’s version is a hell of a good time in its own right.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Nick Allen
    Fear Street Part One: 1994
    It’s a full cast of rising young stars, like Stranger Things before it, and Fear Street gives that palpable sense of having fun while hanging out with them, but worrying that one of them might abruptly die.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 63 Nick Allen
    Victim/Suspect
    However chronologically jumbled, Victim/Suspect prevails with its many episodes of de Leon’s incisive reporting and dedication, and the insight we get from legal and policing experts about how this cycle continues.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 63 Nick Allen
    Slash/Back
    Slash/Back gains its greater power with its entertaining narrative of these Inuit heroes warding off invaders, trying to save their home while earning a deeper pride in that very place and its people. It’s sincerely sweet and entertaining, and its impact is felt even more as the black alien blood starts to fly.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Nick Allen
    Wild Life
    While it has a personal touch of a love letter, this documentary is nonetheless the work of compassionate filmmakers who know any adventure when they see one.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 63 Nick Allen
    Calm with Horses (The Shadow of Violence)
    The film's poetry is like the close-up of the clenched fist that Rowland uses to introduce us to his character study — there’s a thoughtfulness behind the tight fingers, maybe even a broken soul, but its expression is that of a blunt object.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Nick Allen
    The Workers Cup
    A documentary with a defeated spirit, but with fleeting glimmers about why the oppressed keep playing.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 50 Nick Allen
    Sherlock Gnomes
    With little wit to its name, Sherlock Gnomes becomes far more tedious than playful.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 38 Nick Allen
    The Tenth Man
    Burman's film languishes on the chaos of the events, and it can never be accused of not having some ideas about fatherhood and legacy. But the humor of this rambling film runs dry to the point of unpalatable.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Nick Allen
    The Phenom
    A welcome surprise for sports cinema, The Phenom handles itself like Robert Redford's "Ordinary People" when exploring the psychology of a Lebron James or Johnny Manziel-like sports sensation.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Nick Allen
    Werewolves Within
    Here, [Ruben] lets loose with many of the goofy, creepy impulses that make him such a welcome voice in crowd-pleasing horror, creating a giddy spirit with his long roster of future household names.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 63 Nick Allen
    You Cannot Kill David Arquette
    Even for a movie about a theatrical sport, focused around an actor who wants to learn what it's like to wrestle for real, You Cannot Kill David Arquette rings far too much like a vanity project.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 63 Nick Allen
    Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise
    At least with its wide scope, Maya Angelou and Still I Rise shows that her time on Earth was about more than being an author, poet, civil rights activist, a mother, a dancer, a singer, a film director, producer, journalist and much more. Her life was poetry itself.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 63 Nick Allen
    Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers
    Take away the cameos—in the recording booth, and animated on-screen—and you get something that's a little too close to the same old junk.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Nick Allen
    Breaking
    Breaking is a tragedy that only opens like a thriller. From the beginning, Breaking is about justice.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 63 Nick Allen
    Shadow in the Cloud
    Roseanne Liang's Shadow in the Cloud is the type of genre movie that makes many of its bizarre choices just for the sake of seeing if it can all work. But whether you find the film to be ambitious, or just some stunt screenwriting, it's intriguing to watch an audacious filmmaker try to keep midnight-ready movies unpredictable, even if that means a sincere but silly mash-up of WWII dogfights, gremlin chaos, and feminism in action such as this.
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