Austin Chronicle's Scores

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For 8,778 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 6.7 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: 4,774 out of 8778
  2. Mixed: 2,557 out of 8778
  3. Negative: 1,447 out of 8778
8778 movie reviews
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  1. Dark Days
    Compelling, relentless cinema.
  2. The Art of War
    The Art of War must ultimately be chalked up as a strategic defeat.
  3. God's Army
    At it's best, it's a wishy-washy treatise that fails to elicit much of any reaction.
  4. Orfeu
    All in all, though, this Brazilian import is a small curiosity, intriguing more for its failures than its accomplishments.
  5. Fastpitch
    It's such high sports drama you'd swear this documentary is fiction.
    • Austin Chronicle
  6. Smiling Fish & Goat on Fire
    Just sputters along, albeit pleasantly, while revisiting the realm of the abundantly familiar.
  7. The Crew
    Most folks are just plain bored -- and I mean cross-eyed, wall-climbing, deep-down-to-the-molecular-level bored -- with this ubiquitous Endearing Wiseguys school of movie comedy.
  8. Bittersweet Motel
    Manages to capture the essence of one of the world's most surprising success stories.
  9. Solomon & Gaenor
    The landscape and the lovers are pretty to look at, but two households divided should really pack more of a punch.
  10. Love & Sex
    The script negates anything heartfelt with its flippant, almost vulgar tone.
  11. Bring It On
    A moderately entertaining, mostly inoffensive piece of filmmaking.
  12. Chalk
    Emerges as an artful, courageous, experimental work that is as compelling as it is impaired.
  13. The Ballad of Ramblin' Jack
    Ms. Elliott's film is, in part, an effort to reverse his slow slide into obscurity. On this level it's an unqualified success.
  14. Place Vendôme
    When Deneuve is not onscreen, the film is never denuff.
  15. The Cell
    It's a pleasure to watch, but I found myself wondering if having a story here even mattered to the director at all.
  16. Godzilla 2000
    It's all pretty goofy, which I assume is the point, but it's also pretty dull.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Steal This Movie
    Too bad the movie about him is just as flawed.
  18. The Original Kings of Comedy
    The most articulate and entertaining commentary on racial differences to have come down the pike in quite a while.
  19. The Opportunists
    Not only are these characters beautifully underplayed, but they're underplayed by two of the most enthusiastic scene-stealers around: Walken & Lauper.
  20. Aimee & Jaguar
    That Aimée & Jaguar manages so well in triple duty as a wartime melodrama with a lesbian twist is remarkable.
  21. Autumn in New York
    Near-unwatchable romantic melodrama.
  22. Bless the Child
    It works not at all.
  23. Cecil B. DeMented
    If this movie does anything to rally crowds against cinema's mass distribution of mediocrity then it has served a noble purse.
  24. The Replacements
    As obvious as they get, and it wears its message on its bloodied jersey.
  25. The Tao of Steve
    It's the kind of film you feel like watching twice -- not because you found it that engaging to begin with, but because you didn't, and everyone else did.
  26. Saving Grace
    A real audience pleaser.
  27. Psycho Beach Party
    Its cheeky, good fun is what makes Psycho Beach Party an enjoyable, if weightless, romp.
  28. Coyote Ugly
    Failed feminist statement or not, Coyote Ugly is a likable, if confused film.
  29. Hollow Man
    A boisterous, gooey miscue.
  30. Space Cowboys
    A lighthearted action adventure starring four of the most likable guys on the planet.
  31. Catfish in Black Bean Sauce
    There's a nice little story here about the intermingling of cultures, but it rarely gets beyond the obvious clichés.
  32. Nutty Professor II: The Klumps
    Sporadically funny, the film seems weighted down, literally, with bulging, bulbous Murphys flatulating endlessly.
  33. Paradise Lost 2: Revelations
    A fine example of advocacy filmmaking.
  34. Girl on the Bridge
    New and amazing -- it takes you back to the days when French filmmaking and French filmmakers were the darlings and saviors of the cinematic cutting edge. It's a great film, simply told, and a pleasure to watch.
  35. Wonderland
    So bereft of hope... that it's a chore to withstand.
  36. The Wind Will Carry Us
    No doubt some viewers could find fault with the slack pacing, though it's hardly inappropriate for a film that's fundamentally about emerging from frustration and stasis into a state of grace.
  37. Thomas and the Magic Railroad
    Even Amtrak hasn't seen a derailment this godawful in some time.
  38. The Eyes of Tammy Faye
    By letting her babble on and become a somewhat risible figure, the filmmakers display a somewhat mean-spirited attitude, despite all their fuss about finally appreciating this put-upon survivor.
  39. Alice et Martin
    Something that falls just shy of greatness.
  40. Loser
    It's a nice, friendly kind of love, but hardly an inspiring one.
  41. Pokémon: The Movie 2000
    The storylines are as confusing (or as simple?) to the uninitiated as they were before, but that doesn't stop them from making sense to the kids.
  42. What Lies Beneath
    It's a kinder, gentler "Tales From the Crypt" that, in the end, is neither kind nor gentle.
    • 14 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    The In Crowd
    The In Crowd is nothing but a deadly dull business.
  44. The Five Senses
    The Five Senses, despite its good performances, is like looking through a filmmaker's sketchbook: strong outlines but little substance.
  45. Chuck & Buck
    The kind of movie that gets under your skin and takes root.
  46. X-Men
    The film's greatest strength lies in its ability to view itself as a modern moral fable of sorts.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    I'm the One That I Want
    The real joy of watching this movie is seeing a stand-up comedian who is incredibly comfortable with herself, her material, and her audience.
  48. But I'm a Cheerleader
    Rises above its problems to deliver the essential goods.
  49. The Kid
    A lightweight, intermittently engaging comedy.
  50. Scary Movie
    I'd rather have a testicular nail-gun mishap than sit through this migraine-inducing train wreck of a film one more time.
  51. Shower
    Above all, it's a satisfying, almost restful work, as welcome in this less-than-thrilling cinematic summer as a cool soak on a hot summer's day.
  52. The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle
    Hit-or-miss comedy at its best and worst: When it connects, the belly laughs are long and loud, but when it misses, the groans you'll be hearing are your own.
  53. The Perfect Storm
    Nearly a perfect film, from its bold and epic man-vs.-nature conflict to the breathless scripting, editing, acting, and direction.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Trixie
    With his new film (which he also wrote), Rudolph seems content to slap a flimsy film-noir plot on an unending stream of malapropisms and word games and call it a "screwball noir."
  55. The Patriot
    "We, the people" have never been big fans of movies about the American Revolutionary War. The Patriot, however, appears to be the movie that will break that historical jinx.
  56. Me, Myself & Irene
    Has those proverbial big laffs in spades.
  57. Chicken Run
    Absolutely delightful filmmaking, chock-full of gorgeously goofy animation and a storyline that cleverly echoes everything from "Stalag 17" to "Cool Hand Luke."
  58. Marcel Proust's Time Regained
    This film's intelligence and uncompromising originality commend it to even moviegoers with zero tolerance for top hats, parasols, and crap English accents.
  59. Titan A.E.
    Feels like a been-here-done-that dud.
  60. Shaft
    The storyline goes from bad to worse as one-dimensional characters gradually flatten out into pure stick figures, and the crime plot goes from hokey to implausible.
  61. Boys and Girls
    A paint-by-numbers romantic comedy, but without the heart or laughs to make it work.
  62. Butterfly Tongues
    It's a rare film that can make us look so deeply into the dark soul of the seemingly benign.
  63. Jesus' Son
    The movie will not be for all tastes. Its seedy lifestyles, nonjudgmental attitudes, nonlinear narrative, and central character whose problem is his lack of emotions is definitely nonstandard fare.
  64. The Woman Chaser
    It's a real gone flick, daddy-o.
  65. Pop & Me
    Everybody likes to watch the messy guts-stuff of other peoples' lives, if only because we know then we're not alone in our weird ways.
  66. Love's Labour's Lost
    The effect is weird but it, actually, kind of works, illuminating both Shakespeare and the artifice of musicals.
  67. Groove
    A fun, well-assembled and -performed slice of life that requires no special affinity with the subject matter in order to -- ahem -- get one's groove on.
  68. Sunshine
    Ultimately one of those sprawling epics best suited for a rainy day.
  69. Gone in Sixty Seconds
    A 119-minute trailer.
  70. American Pimp
    Fascinating, partly because of its originality.
  71. Grass
    Until something better comes along, we're just gonna have to keep the fires burning on this Ron Mann Joint.
  72. Better Living Through Circuitry
    Suffers from a surplus of interviews and information that imbue it with a vague sense of overkill.
  73. Passion of Mind
    Moore succeeds, even though the film as a whole does not fare as well.
  74. 8 ½ Women
    (Greenaway) is often described as a director whose movies "are not for everyone." The obvious retort is that neither are the Three Stooges, but at least everyone understands them.
  75. Shanghai Noon
    It's Wilson's film all the way. He's brings an unexpected frisson of surfer-esque chutzpah to the role of Roy, a bad guy with good intentions, a cowboy who, dammit, just wants to be loved.
  76. Kikujirô no natsu
    Not only is Kikujiro sweet and funny, it is, no doubt, Kitano's experimental "art film."
  77. Mission: Impossible II
    As pure a summer popcorn overdose as you're likely to find, M:i-2 is breezy, breathless, brainless fun, falling just short of Woo's own "Face/Off" but head and shoulders above anything else out there just now.
  78. Luminous Motion
    The one thing about Luminous Motion that can be said with certainty is that Bette Gordon should be making more movies.
  79. Small Time Crooks
    A pleasant frolic, but fairly inconsequential in terms of the overall Allen output.
  80. Road Trip
    All I know is that guys are strongly advised to avoid this on a first date.
  81. Dinosaur
    It's a visually stunning film. For every kid everywhere, and for every adult still a kid at heart, the dinosaurs are the thing, and here, finally, Disney does justice to our dreams.
    • 21 Metascore
    • 11 Critic Score
    Held Up
    The talented people in front of the camera fail to bring anything original, interesting, or even funny to this tedious would-be comedy.
  83. Kadosh
    Raises fascinating question within a compelling narrative framework, and is also intriguing for the glimpse it provides into the inner workings of Orthodox Judaism.
  84. Center Stage
    Unlikely to receive many curtain calls.
  85. Hamlet
    Bill Murray's Polonius is so delightfully coy and self-satisfied that this performance is reason alone to see the picture.
  86. Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000
    Simply put, Battlefield Earth is the worst film I've seen in over 10 years, and believe me, that's saying a lot.
  87. Gladiator
    It's a loud, obnoxious, and pleasant-enough entertainment, but hardly the soaring tale of one man's struggle that it was so clearly envisioned to be.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Luminarias
    With wonderful music, interesting characters, and lots of laughter, this picture feels much bigger than it really is.
  89. I Dreamed of Africa
    I Dreamed Of Africa...and all I got was this lousy movie.
  90. Up at the Villa
    A charmingly mounted, period romantic drama that benefits from the performances of a fine ensemble cast and the lovely location settings of Florence and Tuscany.
  91. Adorenarin doraibu
    Feels for all the world like a Meg Ryan/Billy Crystal heist comedy transposed to the Far East.
  92. Human Traffic
    It's a 24-hour-party-people travelogue, entertaining enough to grab your eyes... but less memorable than it may at first appear.
  93. Frequency
    Due largely to the tremendous innate warmth and conviction of leads Quaid and Caviezel ("The Thin Red Line"), you may find yourself cutting a surprising amount of slack for this patently ridiculous tale.
  94. The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas
    Even the youngest members of the audience appeared to be more interested in their dwindling soda supply than anything up on the screen. Yabba dabba doom.
  95. Bossa Nova
    It's a feast of inconsequentiality, though, a love affair-lite that looks great but is ultimately less filling than a sunny summer Sunday's creampuff dream.
  96. Where the Heart Is
    Home may be where the heart is, but I kept wishing this poor silly girl would up and move.
  97. Timecode
    Both a headache and a marvel, often eliciting simultaneous groans of despair and sheer wonder at the director's nervy chutzpah.
  98. Committed
    Graham maintains a casual charm throughout it all, but she lacks the kind of emotional depth that might have pulled this hodge-podge together.
  99. The Big Kahuna
    Feels more like Barry Levinson's "Tin Men" on Prozac.
  100. The Last September
    Not even the rich and nuanced performances of stage veterans Smith, Gambon, and Birkin can save this British period drama from languishing amid the story's unfocused longings and unrealistic musings.
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