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 12.6 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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    • 60 Metascore
    • 75 Nathan Rabin
    Jeff Who Lives at Home
    Jeff begins with its protagonist discussing a Hollywood movie and ends by embracing the worst excesses of commercial American filmmaking, but there are enough moments of magic and wonder in the interim to make it worthwhile.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 75 Nathan Rabin
    Casa de mi Padre
    As with "Black Dynamite," many of Casa De Mi Padre's sharpest, most inspired gags riff on the source material's ingratiatingly amateurish production values and exuberantly incompetent stylistic choices.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 67 Nathan Rabin
    21 Jump Street
    It's more consistently amusing and inspired than an adaptation of an '80s TV show has any right to be.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 83 Nathan Rabin
    Boy
    In its third act, this funny, bittersweet, tonally assured coming-of-age story grows unexpectedly poignant as Rolleston comes to realize he doesn't need a super-cool buddy or co-conspirator in his misadventures. He needs a father, and Waititi's stunted man-child is fatally unsuited and unqualified for that role.
    • 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.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 58 Nathan Rabin
    Wanderlust
    The effortlessly charming Rudd - who is never funnier here than when trying to psych himself up for a tryst with commune-dweller Malin Akerman with a series of increasingly preposterous voices - and an attractive, game supporting cast nearly sell the warmed-over material.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 33 Nathan Rabin
    Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance
    The charismatic Idris Elba debuts in a key role as an alcoholic priest who recruits Cage's unique services. Yet instead of elevating the franchise, Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengeance ends up squandering even more potential.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 58 Nathan Rabin
    Safe House
    Safe House does altogether too good a job establishing Washington as a seemingly unbeatable adversary: He brings so much gravity to his role that Reynolds seems hopelessly overmatched.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 33 Nathan Rabin
    Journey 2: The Mysterious Island
    This adventure strands Johnson's famously animated features in eyebrow jail, and squanders his outsized charisma and gift for winking self-deprecation in a thankless worried-stepfather role. It doesn't call for much, beyond a lot of muscles and an ever-present look of concern for his whiny stepson.
    • 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.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 25 Nathan Rabin
    W.E.
    For the scandal-prone icon behind the camera - who glibly writes off all that talk about her subjects' Nazi sympathies as slanderous nonsense from a jealous, hateful press and gossipy busybodies - the film might as well be called ME.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 67 Nathan Rabin
    Contraband
    Kormákur and his collaborators want to tell a simple story cleanly, efficiently, and with a refreshing dearth of frills. They more or less realize their aspirations because they aim so low.
    • 18 Metascore
    • 0 Nathan Rabin
    The Devil Inside
    The hilariously convoluted thriller contains all the elements for a wacky parody of exorcism movies, except a sense of humor about itself: The Devil Inside never acknowledges its innate ridiculousness, so the laughs are unintentional.
    • 18 Metascore
    • 0 Nathan Rabin
    The Darkest Hour
    Not since Mark Wahlberg trembled in fear beside a menacing houseplant in "The Happening" has a film tried to provoke terror with such an unlikely object of menace.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 33 Nathan Rabin
    In the Land of Blood and Honey
    It's a film of shuddering earnestness and fevered good intentions gone awry, a dreary slog of a message movie with little but noble if unfulfilled aspirations to commend it.
    • 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.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 33 Nathan Rabin
    Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked
    With its wall-to-wall pop covers, Chipwrecked isn't a kids' movie so much as a brightly animated, instantly forgettable animated feature-length advertisement for the NOW That's What I Call Music! compilation series of contemporary pop hits.
    • 22 Metascore
    • 33 Nathan Rabin
    New Year's Eve
    It's safe to say to no idea was nixed on the set of New Year's Eve for being too cheesy or sentimental; if anything, ideas were nixed for not being sentimental or cheesy enough.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 33 Nathan Rabin
    Answers to Nothing
    Films like these have taught us that suffering is the incontrovertible existential fate of attractive Los Angeles residents. Must these dour exercises in alienation make audiences suffer as well?
    • 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.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 58 Nathan Rabin
    Tower Heist
    In the end, Tower Heist isn't a black Ocean's Eleven or a bold leap forward for feature-film distribution, just a passable piece of commercial entertainment that falls closer to product than art.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Nathan Rabin
    The Other F Word
    The film's juxtaposition of punk-rock fashion and cozy domesticity proves neither comic nor revelatory. It is, however, adorable, though not adorable enough to compensate for the film's damnable lack of focus.
    • 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.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 33 Nathan Rabin
    13
    For a film about a "sport" where every competition is literally a matter of life and death, the oddly inert, suspense-free 13 is strangely lacking in urgency.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 58 Nathan Rabin
    Johnny English Reborn
    Johnny English Reborn's sharpest gags riff on its protagonist's unshakeable Britishness.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 58 Nathan Rabin
    Trespass
    Trespass begins loopy and mounts in craziness until it's frothing-at-the-mouth insane. It's hard to sustain that level of inspired lunacy over the course of 90 minutes, but Trespass is up to the challenge. As always, it's foolish to underestimate the appeal of Cage at his most agreeably unhinged.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 67 Nathan Rabin
    Footloose
    Brewer's Footloose has sex, swagger, and even an edge of danger, but in the end, he's hamstrung by the project's innate ridiculousness.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 33 Nathan Rabin
    Courageous
    Courageous literally preaches to the converted, delivering ham-fisted messages of responsibility to the most receptive audience possible.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Nathan Rabin
    Thunder Soul
    Everything here is pitched relentlessly toward uplift, but at least that uplift is genuine, the product of one visionary's indomitable will and a musical universe he brought into existence through vision, dedication, and plenty of stubborn hard work.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 58 Nathan Rabin
    What's Your Number?
    There's a smart, funny, observant comedy-drama to be made about the role our romantic pasts play in determining our futures, but director Mark Mylod and screenwriters Jennifer Crittenden and Gabrielle Allan are less interested in making that movie than in cycling Faris through a series of non-starting encounters with one-note-joke ex-flings.
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