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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    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Nathan Rabin
    All the Light in the Sky
    All The Light In The Sky is a refreshingly grown-up exploration of a woman at a personal and professional crossroads that’s stronger for never pushing its narrative or its finely wrought lead character in the direction of big moments or bullshit epiphanies. It’s casual, but also quietly moving.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Nathan Rabin
    Bad Milo!
    Bad Milo! gets nasty laughs out of putting its overmatched hero through a gauntlet of comic humiliations, but it works just as well as a dark allegory about the way we handle our demons.
    • 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.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 33 Nathan Rabin
    Pandorum
    Throw out the presence of Dennis Quaid, and the new science-fiction/horror snoozer Pandorum could easily pass for a Roger Corman cheapie.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Nathan Rabin
    Big Miracle
    Kwapis fills small roles with great character actors like Stephen Root, Andrew Daly, Kathy Baker, Tim Blake Nelson, John Michael Higgins, Rob Riggle, and James LeGros, all skilled at making a lot out of a little.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Nathan Rabin
    Grand Piano
    To its credit and sometimes detriment, Grand Piano keeps a frothing-at-the-mouth level of insane melodrama going for 75 minutes, aided by Wood’s sweaty, terrified performance, a screenplay rich in ridiculous contrivances, and a swooping camera that never stands still.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Nathan Rabin
    The Inevitable Defeat of Mister and Pete
    The Inevitable Defeat Of Mister & Pete is a raw, often moving coming-of-age story.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 58 Nathan Rabin
    Sunshine Cleaning
    There is a time and a place for scruffy independent also-rans like this, and that time and place is the 2 a.m. slot on IFC.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Nathan Rabin
    The Faculty
    Fine lowbrow entertainment, a fast, funny pastiche of science-fiction, horror, and teen-movie archetypes that is, aside from the original Scream, perhaps the most entertaining, fully realized film of the current postmodern horror/sci-fi cycle.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 67 Nathan Rabin
    To Be or Not to Be
    An extraordinarily faithful—though schmaltzy and ultimately pointless— 1983 remake of Ernst Lubitsch's 1942 farce.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Nathan Rabin
    Cat People
    While Cat People feels like an early Bruckheimer production, it’s also permeated with the themes that personify Schrader’s work as a screenwriter and filmmaker: obsession, sex, the strange permutations of destiny, and man’s bottomless capacity for cruelty and violence.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Nathan Rabin
    Ladrón que roba a ladrón
    Entertaining, casually satirical crowd-pleaser.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 83 Nathan Rabin
    A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas
    The filmmakers throw everything at the audience, literally and metaphorically, and the results are exhilarating rather than exhausting.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Nathan Rabin
    She's So Lovely
    At once grittily realistic and hopelessly romantic, She's So Lovely walks a fine line between artiness and pretension, and to its credit, it seldom falters.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Nathan Rabin
    Wah-Wah
    Wah-Wah can't sustain the mastery of its superior first hour, but it maintains a core of truth that sets it apart from less-convincing depictions of boys becoming men.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Nathan Rabin
    Role Models
    In its loose, ramshackle, gleefully profane first half, Role Models suggests "School Of Rock" with Tourette's, or the original "Bad News Bears" without the baseball.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 80 Nathan Rabin
    Enduring Love
    Enduring Love's plot inevitably drifts into “Fatal Attraction” territory, but its wholesale immersion in Craig's deteriorating condition render it a wrenching, uncompromising study of the human mind in freefall.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 67 Nathan Rabin
    Carnage
    By the time everyone in Carnage has revealed themselves, we're left not with flawed human beings, but with monsters of banality whose company represents a brutal form of punishment in itself.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 58 Nathan Rabin
    Boynton Beach Club
    It's refreshing to see a film that so directly addresses the issues and concerns of a vast, overlooked demographic, but it'd be much more satisfying if Boynton did more than just affably skate along the surface.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 30 Nathan Rabin
    The Machinist
    Unrelentingly dreary, and seemingly destined to be remembered, if at all, as that movie Christian Bale lost a full third of his body weight for. It doesn't deserve any better.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Nathan Rabin
    The Monster Squad
    Squad joins The Lost Boys, Fright Night, Gremlins, and Poltergeist in a winning '80s subgenre dedicated to ghoulies invading the suburbs.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Nathan Rabin
    Emmanuel's Gift
    The heroic struggle of its subject is clearly meant to inspire, but it also seems destined to shame weak-willed viewers who'd crumble under much less formidable obstacles.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 83 Nathan Rabin
    Watermelon Man
    The pounding prelude to a cultural and cinematic revolution, Watermelon Man nearly bubbles over with the rage that exploded outright with Van Peebles' follow-up, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Nathan Rabin
    The Horn Blows at Midnight
    The Horn Blows At Midnight rarely pauses to catch its breath or give audiences time to catch up as it runs its hapless protagonist through a gauntlet of frenzied business and smart comic conceits over the course of its briskly paced 78 minutes.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Nathan Rabin
    City of Ghosts
    Has enough atmosphere for three films, enough colorful grotesques for several more, and not enough of a script for one.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 75 Nathan Rabin
    Stay Hungry
    A smiley-face ending feels like a lazy copout, but the end credits, which put faces to all the names in the uniformly fine cast, underline this shaggy sleeper's greatest strength: creating a slew of characters worth getting to know.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Nathan Rabin
    Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War
    Uncovered could easily come off as dull or strident, but the administration's arrogance and disregard for the safeguards and transparency necessary for democracy give the documentary an outraged charge that overshadows its staid execution.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Nathan Rabin
    WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception
    This indignant attack on the way the Iraqi war was marketed and covered feels about as timely and relevant as yesterday's newspaper.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 58 Nathan Rabin
    Our Idiot Brother
    Rudd ably carries the film while retaining a light touch, though even with Rudd in the lead, it's still a featherweight trifle, an afternoon nap of a feel-good comedy.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Nathan Rabin
    Overnight
    As Overnight progresses and its title grows increasingly ironic, it paints a mesmerizing portrait of a profane, overbearing monster engaged in a drawn-out act of professional suicide.
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