Nathan Rabin

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The A.V. Club, The Dissolve
For 1,229 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 Spider-Man 2
Lowest review score: 0 Nothing But Trouble
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 464 out of 1229
  2. Mixed: 454 out of 1229
  3. Negative: 311 out of 1229
1229 movie reviews
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    • 49 Metascore
    • 91 Nathan Rabin
    Gang Related
    As is probably inevitable for a film with two corrupt, murderous, drug-dealing cops for protagonists, Gang Related is a nasty, vicious little movie. It's also an excellent genre film. Like a good pulp novel, it tells a lurid story cleanly and effectively, without calling undue attention to itself. The cast is uniformly excellent, with James Earl Jones, David Paymer and Gary Cole making good turns in supporting roles. Belushi turns in a surprisingly restrained performance as the nastier of the two corrupt cops, but the real surprise here is Shakur's work as an essentially moral officer who is gradually sickened by the murky moral swamp in which he finds himself. Shakur's growth as an actor since his unheralded debut performance in Nothing But Trouble is nothing short of remarkable
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Nathan Rabin
    Frost/Nixon
    In a masterful performance, Langella highlights Nixon's oily charm and guile.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 91 Nathan Rabin
    Under the Volcano
    It falls upon Finney to dramatize the inner workings of a man gradually, unmistakably succumbing to oblivion. Finney is up to the task: The pungent poetry of Lowry's prose comes through in his pitch-perfect performance, with its exquisite turns of phrase, boozy bravado, and theatrical panache.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 91 Nathan Rabin
    Adventureland
    Jesse Eisenberg stars as a kinder, gentler version of the insufferable faux intellectual he played in "The Squid And The Whale."
    • 66 Metascore
    • 91 Nathan Rabin
    Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
    Though Hall's stunning vistas and gorgeous exploration of wide-open spaces hearken back to John Ford, Butch Cassidy otherwise radiates the youthful energy, manic pop playfulness, and antic clowning of the French New Wave.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 91 Nathan Rabin
    Beautiful Boy
    Like its fellow crowd-depressor "Blue Valentine," Beautiful Boy offers the antithesis of escapism: a claustrophobic, punishingly intense, beautifully measured exploration of the depths of human despair.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 91 Nathan Rabin
    Submarine
    Submarine is the film "Youth In Revolt" should have been, an achingly sad yet ribald account of a hyper-verbal oddball's ascent/descent into manhood.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 91 Nathan Rabin
    Twice in a Lifetime
    An unusually perceptive look at subjects seldom explored in American film—the emotional lives of working-class extended families and middle-aged sexuality—Twice In A Lifetime is especially poignant when documenting the collateral damage the central affair causes to Hackman's wife (a touching Ellen Burstyn) and bitter adult daughter (Amy Madigan).
    • 61 Metascore
    • 91 Nathan Rabin
    Stop-Loss
    Stop-Loss is a human story first and foremost, and Peirce and her stellar young cast ensure that the message never gets in the way of the storytelling.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 91 Nathan Rabin
    And Everything Is Going Fine
    It does justice to a subject who made his life and death works of art.
    • 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.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 91 Nathan Rabin
    Searching for Sugar Man
    Though unabashedly manipulative in its storytelling and structure, Searching For Sugar Man ultimately earns its happy ending and buzzy, crowd-pleasing populist appeal by alchemizing trembling inner-city pain into transcendent international beauty.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 91 Nathan Rabin
    An Unreasonable Man
    The film begins like a Frank Capra movie--pure-hearted idealist takes on corporate fat cats against impossible odds and triumphs--but ends like a Shakespearean tragedy.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 91 Nathan Rabin
    Fair Game
    It's ultimately a tale of heroism in the face of fearsome, powerful opposition, but as stubborn pride masquerading as ideological purity proves Wilson's Achilles heel, the film's heroes reveal themselves as flawed to an almost fatal extent, and messily, fascinatingly human.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Nathan Rabin
    Young Frankenstein
    Young Frankenstein (1974) and High Anxiety are as much loving homage as irreverent spoof.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 91 Nathan Rabin
    Greenberg
    Bittersweet and beautifully realized, harsh but humane, Greenberg is a self-consciously small film that nevertheless leaves an indelible mark.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Nathan Rabin
    To Catch a Thief
    Thief is giddy with eye candy, but the scenery is always secondary to the screenplay, which well serves the blinding star-power on display.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 91 Nathan Rabin
    Friends with Money
    Holofcener possesses a genius for creating exquisitely realized characters who seem to have led full, rich, complicated lives before the film's first scene takes place, and will go on living complex, idiosyncratic existences long after they disappear from the screen. Of course, it doesn't hurt that she has four of the best actresses in Hollywood as the leads, especially Keener.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Nathan Rabin
    Original Cast Album: Company
    Original Cast Album: Company would be worth viewing solely for Sondheim's witty lyrics and infectious music, but the human drama makes the session especially riveting.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 91 Nathan Rabin
    Trouble in Mind
    Rudolph remains one of American’s film’s most unabashed romantics: Trouble In Mind is so sweetly, smartly, transcendently romantic that Kristofferson’s desperate need to get laid following years of nothing but male company comes off as a soulful man’s spiritual hunger for meaningful human connection, rather than mere horniness.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 91 Nathan Rabin
    Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work
    A Piece of Work is the antithesis of Jerry Seinfeld's engaging but superficial 2002 documentary "Comedian": where the innately private Seinfeld holds nearly everything back, Rivers loudly broadcasts the kind of fears, anxieties, and ambitions most people would do anything to hide.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 91 Nathan Rabin
    Trumbo
    Trumbo sexes up Trumbo's already dramatic story with a massive infusion of star power.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Nathan Rabin
    Django Unchained
    Tarantino simply isn't a good enough performer for his presence to be anything but a distraction in a rip-roaring crowd-pleaser this consistently great.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 91 Nathan Rabin
    The History Boys
    History Boys boasts a dazzling verbal cleverness--the gleeful rat-a-tat of snappy banter expertly executed--that doesn't keep it from also being deeply, exquisitely sad.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 91 Nathan Rabin
    The Sessions
    It might just be the most poignant, moving film ever made about one man's surprisingly noble efforts to get laid.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Nathan Rabin
    The Agronomist
    Driven by Dominique's personal magnetism, The Agronomist is a haunting, inspirational valentine to free speech and human resilience.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 90 Nathan Rabin
    The Pawnbroker
    Sidney Lumet’s uncomfortably intense adaptation of Edward Lewis Wallant’s novel gets inside Nazerman’s skin and lets the audience see the world as he does: as unspeakably vulgar, corrupt, and oppressive, a nightmare from which he cannot wake up.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 90 Nathan Rabin
    Metallica: Some Kind of Monster
    It's a measure of the film's brilliance that it strips away the trappings of superstardom and allows audiences to see these men as flawed human beings first, musicians second, and rock gods a distant third.
    • 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.
    • 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.
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