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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    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Nathan Rabin
    A Bug's Life
    Smashing family entertainment: The whole thing is quick-witted, fast-paced, and loaded with clever sight gags and colorful, engaging supporting characters.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Nathan Rabin
    The Manchurian Candidate
    Shockingly, he's (Jonathan Demme) pulled it off, replicating the original's tricky feat of investing a paranoid plot with timeliness, psychological complexity, sociopolitical acumen, and almost frightening conviction.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 90 Nathan Rabin
    Separate Lies
    This material could easily have devolved into soap opera or romantic melodrama, but Wilkinson and Watson's superb, subtle performances lend it tremendous depth and gravity.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 90 Nathan Rabin
    The Mother
    Harsh, unsparing, unsentimental, and uniformly well-acted, The Mother bravely and intelligently tackles subject matter widely ignored in cinema--the sexuality of a plain-looking woman edging toward the twilight of a life of quiet desperation.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Nathan Rabin
    Nine Lives
    As a film composed entirely of nine continuous long takes, Nine Lives certainly qualifies as unique. But what makes it rarer and more auspicious is that it offers such a rich bounty of great roles for middle-aged women.
    • 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.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Nathan Rabin
    8 Mile
    The film's absolute conviction keeps it from feeling formulaic.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Nathan Rabin
    March of the Penguins
    The glacially beautiful new documentary March Of The Penguins confirms that no computer-animated or hand-drawn penguin could ever match the curious majesty of the genuine article.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 90 Nathan Rabin
    Northfork
    With their third film, the Polish brothers find their authorial voice, resulting in a lyrical work whose free-floating Lynchian weirdness coalesces into an unexpectedly touching movie.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 90 Nathan Rabin
    Narc
    Carnahan alternates gritty neo-realism with bursts of extreme stylization -- most notably in a breathless opening chase filmed with handheld cameras -- but thankfully, his stylistic flourishes are in the service of the film's story, not the other way around.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Nathan Rabin
    Amandla! A Revolution in Four Part Harmony
    In Amandla!, history doesn't just come alive--it sings, dances, and issues a passionate plea for justice and equality. The film joyously celebrates music as both a means to an end and an end unto itself.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Nathan Rabin
    Dogtown and Z-Boys
    So much fun that its considerable worth as history and sociology seems almost incidental.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Nathan Rabin
    Broken Flowers
    Murray and Jarmusch, two modern masters of minimalism, triumphantly join forces in Broken Flowers, a bittersweet tour de force about a wealthy, deeply depressed lothario.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 83 Nathan Rabin
    Four Lions
    Chris Morris' corrosive black comedy Four Lions explores the lighter side of jihad. It's a ballsy romp through one of the least lighthearted subjects imaginable.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 83 Nathan Rabin
    The Simpsons Movie
    Though it never regains the inspiration or comic density of its brilliant first 20 minutes, The Simpsons Movie keeps the laughs coming from start to finish, a feat as rare and wonderful in film as it has been through 18 years of television.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 83 Nathan Rabin
    Vidal Sassoon: The Movie
    The film tells such a compelling, expansive story that its unwillingness to plumb its subject's psychological depths feels forgivable, though regrettable.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 83 Nathan Rabin
    Workingman's Death
    Workingman's Death's primary pleasures are aesthetic. Glawogger is an extraordinarily elegant filmmaker with a photographer's eye for striking compositions.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 83 Nathan Rabin
    Soul Power
    James Brown, B.B. King, and a dazzling array of top African, Afro-Cuban, and African-American talent finally gets its own solo spotlight in Soul Power.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 83 Nathan Rabin
    Starter for 10
    A beautifully observed coming-of-age story.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 83 Nathan Rabin
    Arthur Christmas
    Arthur Christmas gets a little sappy toward the end - it is a Christmas movie, after all - but it otherwise strikes just the right combination of naughty and nice, reverent and irrelevant, holiday-sweet and Aardman dry.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 83 Nathan Rabin
    Lottery Ticket
    Lottery Ticket gets far on the strength of its star's charisma and a likeable tone.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 83 Nathan Rabin
    The Five-Year Engagement
    A lovely, sweet, funny, romantic, and supremely worthwhile endeavor that unfortunately takes longer to wrap up than it should.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 83 Nathan Rabin
    The Naked City
    Perhaps the best thing about Naked City is that it does justice to that source material. At times, it rivals Weegee's best work in its harsh, unsentimental portrayal of New York as a city with a dark side the size of the Hudson River.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 83 Nathan Rabin
    The Music Never Stopped
    The film emerges as a powerful, even shattering look as music's power to unite where it once divided.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 83 Nathan Rabin
    The Visitor
    Like few of his filmmaking peers, McCarthy understands and respects the power of quiet, and how a whisper can be as explosive as a shout.
    • 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.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 83 Nathan Rabin
    Compliance
    The subject matter is unrelentingly sordid yet the storytelling is so deadpan and understated that it's difficult, if not impossible, to dismiss it as exploitation or sexist provocation.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 83 Nathan Rabin
    Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie
    In a timid comic world, Tim & Eric's Billion Dollar Movie feels genuinely dangerous and transgressive: it makes a virtue of going way too far because other comedies don't go far enough.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 83 Nathan Rabin
    A Prairie Home Companion
    Altman and Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion is fittingly both a celebration and a winning example of the joys of collaboration.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 83 Nathan Rabin
    The Hidden
    The Hidden is a textbook example of how a B-movie can transcend its origins and budgetary constraints through craft, imagination, and all-around resourcefulness. Shifting genres almost as often as its villain changes bodies, it's at once an enormously effective thriller, a smart exercise in science fiction, an exciting action movie, and a kinetic dark comedy.
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