Nathan Rabin

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The A.V. Club, The Dissolve
For 1,228 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 46% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 52% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 12.7 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Nathan Rabin's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 53
Highest review score: 100 Once
Lowest review score: 0 Nothing But Trouble
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 464 out of 1228
  2. Mixed: 454 out of 1228
  3. Negative: 310 out of 1228
1228 movie reviews
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    • 99 Metascore
    • 100 Nathan Rabin
    Singin' in the Rain
    Escapism raised to the level of art, Singin' In The Rain inventively satirizes the illusions of the filmmaking process while celebrating their life-affirming joy. Half parody, half homage, the movie became the apex of the splashy MGM musical, while showcasing the collaborative possibilities of the studio system.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 67 Nathan Rabin
    The Lucky Ones
    Like its lead characters, Lucky is wounded, lost, and impractical, but it has a messy, winning humanity and an agreeably leisurely pace that almost redeems it.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 100 Nathan Rabin
    There Will Be Blood
    Anderson's uncompromising masterpiece will continue to resonate as a harrowing cautionary warning to a country with oil pumping through its veins, clouding its judgment and coarsening its soul.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 90 Nathan Rabin
    Brother's Keeper
    A celebration of brotherly love in the form of a documentary about a possible mercy killing. It explores, with mercy and compassion, the paradoxes inherent to the concept of mercy killing, a crime of love rather than hate.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 75 Nathan Rabin
    Swing Time
    It's not quite as charming as Top Hat or Shall We Dance, and the plotting drags heavily in spots, but whenever it gets free from the demands of farce, it's a dizzy delight.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 90 Nathan Rabin
    Lost in Translation
    Gorgeously shot by Lance Acord, who makes Toyko a gaudy dreamscape that's both seductive and frightening, Lost In Translation washes away memories of "Godfather III," establishing Coppola as a major filmmaker in her own right, and reconfirming Johansson and Murray as actors of startling depth and power.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Nathan Rabin
    Once
    In its own subdued, mellow way, Once is just about perfect.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 70 Nathan Rabin
    Big Men
    Thankfully, Big Men doesn’t have heroes or villains. It’s a deep dive into an endless pool of moral and political ambiguity in which very little is clear-cut, except that the desire for wealth and power.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Nathan Rabin
    Lost Embrace
    At its best, Lost Embrace conveys, with real warmth, the hopelessly intertwined pasts and shared futures of a community of outsiders and immigrants. At worst, it's a sitcom without a laugh track.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Nathan Rabin
    Whiplash
    The film’s aversion toward clichés and hitting expected beats lends it a rare, welcome edge of danger.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Nathan Rabin
    Assault on Precinct 13
    In combining the dread and survival politics of George Romero and The Night Of The Living Dead with the macho heroics and succinct wit of Howard Hawks, Carpenter found his own voice and changed the course of genre filmmaking.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 83 Nathan Rabin
    Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
    In choosing cheap gags over incisive cultural commentary, Borat scores more as scatology than satire, but it's easy to overlook its ramshackle nature in light of the explosive laughter.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 100 Nathan Rabin
    The Mother and the Whore
    As in the best films of John Cassavetes, The Mother And The Whore transcends the medium of film altogether and appears to capture life as it is lived, in all its messy, painful, infinite sadness.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Nathan Rabin
    Capote
    Capote begins as a sprawling, vivacious comedy-drama in which Hoffman's Capote is only one of a number of fascinating characters, including Chris Cooper's upstanding, ramrod-straight lawman and Keener's tough, blunt assistant/sidekick/foil/author.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 83 Nathan Rabin
    Inside Job
    From an emotional standpoint, it's enormously satisfying, even cathartic to watch Ferguson "nail" some of the rogues behind the economic crisis with the unseemly zeal of Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 67 Nathan Rabin
    Withnail and I
    Withnail And I works as a comedy, but it's a comedy of desperation, and the ever-present specter of failure, overdose, and addiction haunting its leads lends it an aura of lyrical sadness.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Nathan Rabin
    F for Fake
    A loving tribute to chicanery, deception, misdirection, scoundrels, sleight of hand, con artistry, dishonesty, and flimflammery in all its myriad guises. It is, in other words, a valentine to filmmaking in general, and its larger-than-life creator in particular.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 70 Nathan Rabin
    Maria Full of Grace
    Grim but never gratuitous.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Nathan Rabin
    Patton
    A giant Rorschach blot of a film, Patton can be read any number of ways, from a sly satire of gung-ho militarism to an epic glorification of Patton's old-school mentality.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 91 Nathan Rabin
    An Education
    An Education shares with Hornby’s best work trenchant insight into the way smart, hyper-verbal young people let the music, films, books, and art they love define themselves as they figure out who they are and what they want to be.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Nathan Rabin
    Battle for Haditha
    Unsubtle but gripping.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Nathan Rabin
    Let's Get Lost
    It’s a cinematic love song, pure and simple, and Weber isn’t about to let ugly facts get in the way of a parade of gorgeous images and intoxicating ideas.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Nathan Rabin
    Tales of the Grim Sleeper
    The film is an appropriately dour and intense indictment of a law-enforcement community that did not value the lives of some victims enough to devote anything but the slimmest of resources to tracking their killer down.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 91 Nathan Rabin
    The Fabulous Baker Boys
    With humor that cuts through a deep undercurrent of sadness, Baker Boys captures the rinky-dink milieu of second-rate lounges, where patron kibitzing threatens to drown out the piano-tinkling of the paid entertainment.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 83 Nathan Rabin
    O'Horten
    O’Horten feels like a waking dream. It's a film of subtle, insinuating charm, a character study about an eminently sane, reasonable man unsteadily navigating an increasingly insane, unreasonable world.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 83 Nathan Rabin
    The Three Caballeros
    Where the prequel is weighed down with noble intentions, Caballeros boasts a breezy, exhilarating lightness and a refreshing undercurrent of perversity.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Nathan Rabin
    Bob Dylan: Dont Look Back
    Don't Look Back is a spellbinding portrayal of a gifted artist at the peak of his creative brilliance.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Nathan Rabin
    Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters
    Calling Schrader's masterpiece a mere biopic doesn't do it justice. It's more a dreamy, hypnotic meditation on the tragic intersection of Mishima's oeuvre and existence that takes place as much in its subject's fevered imagination as the outside world.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Nathan Rabin
    Diggers
    As befits a heartfelt ode to working-class values, Diggers puts in lots of hard, honest work that finally pays off in a wholly predictable yet unexpectedly moving conclusion.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 83 Nathan Rabin
    Dave Chappelle's Block Party
    Block Party is largely a giant love-fest, which is fitting given the staggering amount of simpatico musical and comic talent on display, though some conflict surfaces nevertheless.
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