Austin Chronicle's Scores

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For 8,783 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 41% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 57% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 6.9 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 58
Highest review score: 100 The Searchers
Lowest review score: 0 Gummo
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 4,778 out of 8783
  2. Mixed: 2,558 out of 8783
  3. Negative: 1,447 out of 8783
8783 movie reviews
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  1. Naked
    The astounding performance of David Thewlis as Johnny is in no small measure responsible for the success of Naked. Talking his way through every scene, his portrait of this drifter is mesmerizingly appealing, hateful, humorous, self-destructive, honest and compelling. Still, I am unable to separate my loathing for this character from my feelings about the formal achievements of this movie. The effect may be one of naked observation but the view is ugly and corrosive.
  2. Fire Music
    The story Surgal tells is ultimately fascinating but dry, deep but limited, and a lesson more than an experience.
  3. The Host
    The Host is a freewheeling mix of high style and goofy, good-natured fear-mongering.
  4. Das Boot
    One of the most suspenseful films of all time, its wartime action setting makes it easy to forget it's also one of the most spiritually righteous. [Director's Cut]
  5. Restrepo
    Restrepo is an example of photojournalism at its finest.
  6. The Iron Giant
    Clearly the single best, the single coolest (to borrow from Harry Knowles) animated film in a great while.
  7. Beanpole
    Neither Iya or Masha (in astounding first-time film performances by both women) know exactly what they want, and it is in their path to fumbling towards that understanding that they show compassion, cruelty, longing, forgiveness, and flashes of joy that fracture into melancholy.
  8. Won't You Be My Neighbor?
    Neville’s film isn’t making a case for canonization. But it is a call to action.
  9. Meek's Cutoff
    This revisionist Western – intellectually, aesthetically, and narratively absorbing – rattles to the bone, but never quite rends the heart.
  10. Fruitvale Station
    Michael B. Jordan (The Wire, Friday Night Lights) delivers a brilliant, sensitive performance as Oscar and is one of the primary reasons Fruitvale has such resonance.
  11. I'm Still Here
    Through the meat of the movie, I’m Still Here is unassailable: a gripping story, sensitively performed, with outstanding production and costume design effectively reproducing the era.
  12. Rachel Getting Married
    The upshot to a ticking bomb is that it only explodes the once, but Rachel's sister, Kym (Hathaway), goes off again and again.
  13. The Last Days
    Moll's film is a far cry from the elegiac poetry of, say, Night and Fog; it's a document more than an examination, and its power of record is inarguable and incorruptible. And then, at the end, somehow you find yourself with that least likely of expressions on your face, a smile, courtesy of Representative Lantos.
  14. Sound and Fury
    An absorbing human drama.
  15. The Circle
    There's no denying it's a tragic film from start to finish, but equally undeniable is the endless stoicism displayed by the women, and Panahi's crisp, meandering direction.
  16. The Eternal Memory
    Truly, it is elucidating for folks who’ve never seen dementia up close, and guttingly familiar to those who have. But even more profound is the film’s record of a remarkable love.
  17. The Handmaiden
    An engaging and evocative thriller/love story, The Handmaiden is ultimately a tale of freedom and transformation, as satisfying as an exquisitely choreographed four-course meal.
  18. Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time
    Operatic, overblown, and yet still touching, Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time may be a mouthful, but it's also full of heart.
  19. EO
    Pure, tender cinema is rare nowadays, but EO delivers
  20. Slumdog Millionaire
    Like Mumbai, Slumdog pulses and throbs with raw, unadulterated life and the hope for a better Bombay, today. It's brilliant.
  21. The Work
    Stylistically, co-directors McLeary and Aldous were given complete access to the retreat and wield their cameras like voyeuristic lanterns in a tremendously dark place.
  22. A Christmas Tale
    The Vuillards, however fractured, know one another's rhythms and rituals, and Desplechin knows just how to convey them in the subtlest of ways.
  23. Paranoid Park
    Paranoid Park shows the Portland-based director to be working at the pinnacle of his art in every frame, in every composition. It's breathtaking, heartbreaking, tragic, gorgeous, and true all at the same time.
  24. Giant
    There is no better way to while away a Sunday afternoon than with this sprawling saga about the growth of Texas and the families that matured along with the state. If Texas had a state movie, then Giant would be it.
  25. Out of Sight
    Hardly a serious caper film, Out of Sight instead takes a lighter approach, effortlessly offering up as many unexpected chuckles as it does bullets.
  26. Brazil
    This modern cult classic is a triumphantly dark comedy directed by one of the film world's truly original visionaries, Terry Gilliam. "Imagination" is this futuristic film’s middle name.
  27. In the Shadow of the Moon
    The story (even more so if you weren't around in July of 1969) is gripping, eloquent, and powerful stuff, the right stuff right down to its pioneering heart, taking manifest destiny to the stars themselves.
  28. Get on the Bus
    With its complexity of viewpoints, Get on the Bus has to be seen as one of Spike Lee's most mature visions to date.
  29. 76 Days
    In its quiet, apolitical observation, 76 Days points to a complete failure – not only of the Trump administration to get a handle on this public health disaster, but of the American press.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Shin Ultraman
    Come for the epic ass kickings, stay for the silliness of giant monsters battling a huge metal man.
  31. Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret
    If the drama feels occasionally slight, read it as a way in which the film is asking you to understand the perspective of its central character — for Margaret, it’s momentous. And for me, the twentysomething guy in a Bride of the Monster T-shirt and Dr. Martens seeing this movie solo, well, I left choked up seeing something so assiduously warm and sincere.
  32. The Truffle Hunters
    Focusing on a quartet of charming, venerable men and the dogs they love, the film offers an engaging portrait of life in the truffle hunting trade, a bucolic life spent roaming picturesque forests, maintaining the winter wood heaters, and drinking wine.
  33. Children of Men
    As all his films have shown, Cuarón is clearly one of the most original filmmakers working today, and Children of Men should solidify his place at the top of those ranks. With a great script, there should be no stopping him.
  34. Judas and the Black Messiah
    As Hampton, Kaluuya gives the best performance of his career. He embodies what it meant to be a Panther, the simultaneous sacrifice and gratitude of carrying such militant devotion to liberation everywhere from the podium to the bedroom.
  35. Revanche
    Spielmann’s deft storytelling is coupled with immaculate compositions that constrain the characters as confidently as any prison bars. Revanche reveals Spielmann as a true master of his craft.
  36. The Man Without a Past
    I suspect that, like the Coen brothers, David Lynch, and Wes Anderson -– our American masters of idiosyncrasy -– Kaurismäki has a limited appeal. Those who get him, really get him.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    American Movie
    A revealing, heart- and mind-engaging insight into a uniquely American character type many of us may have known.
  38. Husbands and Wives
    There's no doubt that the slow disintegration of Allen and Farrow's relationship inspired this work, but that is where the comparisons end. This is not an instance in which art imitates life, as so many have claimed. Here, real life is the stuff of tabloids, while Husbands and Wives comes close to the exquisite stuff of art.
  39. Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood
    Once Upon a Time is an elegiac mash note to Hollywood 1969, at times sublimely, almost surrealistically moving while simultaneously managing to be the director’s funniest and least violent film to date.
  40. Moonrise Kingdom
    Anderson and his co-writer Roman Coppola have crafted an elegant and emphatic metaphor for adolescence, that tumultuous province of firsts and lasts.
  41. Calle 54
    The result is total immersion in the moment of the music, sure to send jazz fans over the moon.
  42. Up the Yangtze
    When the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River began construction in the early Nineties, an estimated 2 million people's lives were impacted. That's a staggering number to contemplate, but Up the Yangtze effectively personalizes that near-meaningless number by putting a face on at least a few of those 2 million.
  43. Farewell My Concubine
    Director Chen and screenwriters Lilian Lee and Lu Wei (based on Lee's original novel) create a tapestry of detail woven with visual spectacle, historical saga and human drama. At over 2 1/2 hours running time, Farewell My Concubine is both too brief and too luxurious.
  44. McQueen
    The film opens with a camera slowly swirling around a skull. Red droplets splash on the cranium. In Michael Nyman’s score, a brass section booms rhythmically like blood in your ears. The effect is brooding and provocative. It’s pure drama. It’s perfectly Alexander McQueen.
  45. Booksmart
    So yeah, Booksmart is a different kind of teen comedy – clever and buoyant, proudly feminist and wonderfully reassuring that, yeah, the kids are alright.
  46. Wise Blood
    Disturbing and grim in its portraits, Wise Blood is nevertheless marvelous storytelling and its performances are virtually divine.
  47. Writing with Fire
    Writing With Fire is at its best when emphasizing the barriers these women have to overcome daily to fulfill their desires to be journalists, and showcasing the importance of Khabar Lahariya’s work where corruption runs amok.
  48. Ascension
    Focusing her camera on the rising cogs in the machine of China’s insatiable consumer culture, Jessica Kingdon expands on her 2017 short “Commodity City” with the visually stunning feature Ascension.
  49. Lantana
    While viewers who expect a conventional suspense film may be disappointed in Lantana overall, it does succeed on a smaller, more intimate scale.
  50. Séraphine
    A genuinely moving portrait of the artist as a young(ish) scullery maid.
  51. 49 Up
    What the series means in the long run is anybody's guess; I just know I sleep better at night knowing it's out there.
  52. BPM (Beats Per Minute)
    The film is historical yet its characters are fictional. Well-captured is the controlled chaos of some of the political actions.
  53. The Joy Luck Club
    Pierces through your tear ducts in its ultimate path toward your heart.
  54. Sirât
    The influence of the original Mad Max is undeniable – not the crazy biker bits, but the sense of a collapsing world, of the personal impacts and damage inflicted by the end of everything.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    The Postman Always Rings Twice
    With a plot hinging on twists and turns that might not have worked as well with less electricity than Turner and Garfield generate, Postman sizzles and flares with crackling tension.
  56. American Beauty
    A brilliant, exhilarating piece of filmmaking. It may even be the best mainstream film of the year thus far.
  57. Far From Heaven
    Haynes brings the emotional underbelly to the surface, he also tricks up the visual surface with elaborate color schemes that provide unspoken clues regarding the characters’ frames of mind.
    • Austin Chronicle
  58. Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India
    A movie that amply delivers on the epic promise of its title, entertaining, enlightening, and emboldening viewers with its deceptively simple premise and execution.
  59. All the President's Men
    Drawn from the true adventures of the Washington Post reporters and their illustrious editor Ben Bradlee, the movie heroically recounts the dogged journalistic sleuthing that cracked the story of the Watergate break-in and cover-up.
  60. Is God Is
    It’s in how Harris depicts the seemingly psychic bond between the sisters for silent conversation. In those sequences, she plays the same kind of cunning games with layout and design that she did in the published text of the script, showing a raw ingenuity that adapts the stylistic possibilities of the stage for the more realistic setting of the screen.
  61. 2001: A Space Odyssey
    This is the way this ground-breaking monument was meant to be seen: in mind-boggling 70mm.
  62. Toy Story 4
    Twenty-four years ago, the original Toy Story broke ground as the first-ever entirely computer animated feature film. What’s more astonishing now is how all those ones and zeroes are harnessed to produce something so utterly lifelike.
  63. Darwin's Nightmare
    Sauper's delicately horrific documentary is a short, sharp slap in the face of the developed world, and a long overdue one at that.
  64. The White Ribbon
    Haneke (Caché) has created a morality tale that concludes with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand: one more example of a solitary act of violence that unleashes a cataclysm.
  65. In the Heights
    In The Heights is unashamedly romantic, fearlessly thrilling, endlessly optimistic and given life and voice through sheer love of people, of place – of community.
  66. Fire of Love
    It is a considerable amount of material to shape a narrative from, and Dosa and her editors artfully interlace their dangerous and often life-threatening adventures with letters and diary entries that reveal the couple’s more intimate bonds, enriched by a Francocentric soundtrack and subdued narration by Miranda July. What emerges is a portrait of two people who were equally and obsessively single-minded in their life’s pursuit.
  67. Blood Simple
    As good as it ever was, and improved slightly by hindsight, experience, and extra cash.
  68. Hamnet
    Hamnet is at its best when exploring primal emotions, following the example of Agnes, with her elemental connection to the earth.
  69. The Witch
    Steeped in bleak, ominous atmosphere and period-perfect costumes and design, this is one of those rare genre films that gets under your skin and stays there.
  70. Looper
    Looper makes a full-meal entertainment out of piecemealing genres: It boasts the kicky mental gymnastics that come with time-travel terrain, the relentless rapid heart rate of a crackerjack thriller, and the bursts of extreme violence, buttressed with black humor, of a modern actioner.
  71. Graduation
    Graduation may not occupy a place at the top of the class of contemporary Eastern European cinema like some of Mungiu’s other films, but it definitely sits above the curve.
  72. Kubo and the Two Strings
    Visually inventive and offering up a complex view of family interaction, Kubo and the Two Strings is another feather in the cap for Laika, and a marvel to behold.
  73. The Other Side of Hope
    Dry, ironic humor is also one of the primary ingredients of The Other Side of Hope, and one of Kaurismäki’s signature elements.
  74. The Vast of Night
    Part "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," part "American Graffiti," and wholly its own stunning self, The Vast of Night is a debut of captivating weight and ingenuity.
  75. Old Joy
    Old Joy is an accurately observed slice of that moment between postadolescence and parenthood, when friends cling or scatter, and circumstances force buried feelings to the fore.
  76. You Were Never Really Here
    If Ramsay's 2011 melancholy masterpiece "We Need to Talk About Kevin" was about the consequences of caring too little, You Were Never Really Here is its polar opposite – a story of a man who cares so much that his soul is bleeding out of every pore.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    In the Name of the Father
    For in relating the true story of Conlon's wrongful conviction and 15-year imprisonment, Sheridan has used the tools of the filmmaker to evoke a visceral echo of Conlon's waking nightmare.
  78. A Ghost Story
    Maddeningly, A Ghost Story can seem more like a creative exercise than a fully formed narrative construct.
  79. Volver
    Raimunda believes that dirty linen should be washed at home: Thank goodness Almodóvar hangs some of it up on the screen to dry.
  80. Widows
    At every turn, corruption oozes from the pores of this thriller, and although the film’s tone keeps us on edge, Widows also hits a few perfunctory pits in the road.
  81. Synonyms
    It is a brilliant high-wire act. Yoaz is utterly unpredictable at any given moment, and so too, is Synonyms.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    Boys State
    These are just boys, and it is all pretend, but Boys State, like the event itself, delivers some legitimate life lessons.
  83. Homicide
    Homicide may not be Mamet's most accessible film, but it combines those elements of the playwright/director's work -- theatricality, stylization, rough poeticism -- that might be most off-putting to the typical movie audience with enough tension and mystery to keep them in their seats.
  84. On Her Shoulders
    On Her Shoulders offers some limited insights into the politics of international refugees, but the film keeps its focus on a woman of humble origins who willingly takes on the pain of millions.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    The Bad News Bears
    This seminal kids movie broke new ground in terms of its realistic portrait of young people and their use of foul language.
  86. Sense and Sensibility
    An absorbing, delightful, and nuanced movie with laugh-out-loud humor, and though it often plays events broadly where you might have preferred subtlety, it's not a movie that could have settled for muffled silence.
  87. The Descendants
    The Descendants is beautifully shot (by Phedon Papamichael) and compellingly performed, especially by its young stars, and it has moments of startling tenderness. If only it didn't feel phony to its bones.
  88. First Man
    It's up to cinematographer Linus Sandgren to give First Man its almost operatic sense of drama. He replaces the Technicolor glories of "La La Land" with something closer to the period graininess of his work on "American Hustle" or "Battle of the Sexes." But he adds rawness and intimacy.
  89. The Terminator
    Director James Cameron and producer Gale Anne Hurd (both of whom co-wrote the script) demonstrate their storytelling virtuosity.
  90. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
    Tennessee Williams’ study of a crumbling Southern patriarchy is riveting stuff. Although the word homosexuality is never uttered, this Hollywood reworking brings a certain understanding of the son’s latent “immaturity” and his wife’s childlessness. Bolstered by extraordinary performances, this tale’s a summer sizzler.
  91. Snowpiercer
    Snowpiercer holds its own; it’s an unruly but rattling – and ravishing – work of art. On first watch, I wondered if there was anything to scratch beneath the surface – it seemed so straightforward, I worried there wasn’t enough there there – so I rewatched it almost right away and was surprised to find it still left me panting.
  92. Eephus
    Sharing some of the same talent behind last year’s microindie critic’s darling Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point, Eephus is suffused with a sincere love for baseball but not overburdened with holiness about the game.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Happy-Go-Lucky
    That's the film's problem: Leigh's creation is fixed and unchangeable, admirably optimistic as a person but completely unengaging as a movie character.
  94. Shrek
    Charmingly subversive animation like this is a rare thing indeed, and the fact that you don't have to be under 10 years of age to thoroughly enjoy Mr. Shrek's wild ride is an added bonus.
  95. Dave Chappelle's Block Party
    No background material is going to help the viewer who isn't already aware of why a Fugees reunion is such a cool thing to witness, but it's impossible not to get caught up in this party's good vibe.
  96. Our Time Machine
    Maleonn somehow finds an anchor of optimism amidst the situation, despite his father’s steady memory decline. That, too, is part of this film’s gift.
  97. The Day I Became a Woman
    The film is dignified rather than dour, full of rich imagery.
  98. The Quiet American
    In so many ways, The Quiet American speaks volumes.
  99. Weiner
    It’s a movie from which you can’t look away, no matter how hard you may try.
  100. Iraq in Fragments
    Offers more questions than answers. Even the Kurds, who seem the closest thing to a success story, long for a unified Iraq.
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