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. The Edge
    Neither Hopkins nor Baldwin can be faulted. Both explore and illuminate their half-realized characters as best they can, but creating any real power or suspense is just too big a bear to kill.
  2. L.A. Confidential
    Full of period locations, costumes, and one very clever Lana Turner gag, it's easy to see why Ellroy is so pleased with the film.
  3. In & Out
    My advice: Go; see; laugh yourself silly.
  4. Nenette and Boni
    Honestly, if it weren't for Denis' striking visual sense, the producers could make a small fortune marketing Nénette and Boni as a sleep aid. Granted, Colin and Houri are both delightful actors. The bond they create between these onscreen siblings is terrifically realized and fully developed, but it's far too little to sustain a film in which virtually nothing happens, despite the fact that it all looks so very good.
  5. Going All the Way
    Davies and Affleck are affecting and engaging as the callow young men on the verge of independent adulthood. One wishes that we had seen more of their personal drama instead of Going All the Way's myopic male gauntlet of shrews and Jews.
  6. The Myth of Fingerprints
    Less can sometimes be perceived as more, but in the case of The Myth of Fingerprints less is simply less.
  7. The Game
    It also has wild plot holes and requires an almost inhuman suspension of disbelief, but it's still a fun ride up to a point.
  8. A Self-Made Hero
    [A] distinctive, thought-provoking film.
  9. Fire Down Below
    These thugs, needless to say, are pulverized as effortlessly as so many Easter chicks. This is a problem I've always had with Seagal's martial arts sequences; there's seldom a nanosecond of suspense, and the fight choreography has all the sophistication of Seventies drive-in fare such as Billy Jack and Walking Tall.
  10. Excess Baggage
    As with so many recent films, this innocuous little romantic comedy suffers far more from the effects of art-by-committee than the ruinous domination of any one person.
  11. She's So Lovely
    In essence, the artistic failure of She's So Lovely is traceable to a single, supremely ironic fact: For a story by a writer with so much professed faith in the power of truth to bubble up out of apparent chaos, there's hardly anything here that feels recognizably true.
  12. Hoodlum
    At the very least, Hoodlum might have been better off had it been filmed in monochromatic black-and-white instead of the garish color palette (and plenty of gore) that Duke opted for because they, unfortunately, only reinforce the hamminess of the picture.
  13. G.I. Jane
    As a vehicle for Moore's acting abilities (and Mortensen's, for that matter), G.I. Jane is terrific. But as the end-of-summer blockbuster it's doubtless intended to be, it's pretty much a washout.
  14. Mimic
    For all its Del Toro touches (Goodwin as a young autistic boy kidnapped by the bugs), Mimic is a surprisingly hollow thriller.
  15. Fire
    For a film with such volatile subject matter, the performances are subdued and naturalistic. Fire burns with a rare flame.
  16. Cop Land
    Casting is everything, and the casting of Stallone -- playing way against type -- as the powerless hayseed sheriff in Cop Land is nothing short of inspired.
  17. Event Horizon
    From its marketing-impaired title on down, Event Horizon is a steadily churning debacle that promises much more than it can deliver and ends up drowning in a crimson sea of gore and maddeningly out-of-place steals from other, better genre shockers.
  18. The Delta
    On a more basic level, I simply found it so hard to penetrate the two main characters' cauterized psyches that, in the end, I hardly gave a damn what happened to them.
  19. Steel
    Steel's target audience of 12-year-old boys would be better off staying home and busying themselves at traditional, character-enriching activities: sniping at family pets with BB guns, playing Nintendo, and masturbating.
  20. The Full Monty
    Feel-good comedy with none of the pejorative hints of innocuous blandness that term so often implies.
  21. Conspiracy Theory
    Taking its cue from the notion that American society is obsessed with covert political intrigues and machinations, Conspiracy Theory is an interesting but flawed thriller in which the wildly paranoiac is something really real.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    Career Girls
    An abundance of feeling plays across the faces of his two leads; Cartlidge and Steadman bring to light every flicker of awkwardness, indecision, anger, regret, joy, admiration, and affection felt by Hannah and Annie.
  23. In the Company of Men
    As disturbing as it is well-made, this low-budget indie is a thoroughly original piece of work.
  24. Picture Perfect
    The result is a vacuous feel-good movie that leaves you feeling nothing at all.
  25. Spawn
    It's all one big blur: sound, fury, and Martin Sheen devouring scenery as if it were going out of style (and in Spawn, it's definitely not).
  26. One Eight Seven
    187 (the title refers to copspeak for a homicide) circles round and round, never making a salient point that isn't countered by another, utterly opposite notion three scenes later.
  27. Air Force One
    Peterson's film is a huge, loud beast of a film, filled with gunfire, explosions, and not a few tears. It's all grounded, however, in Ford's gritted-teeth performance as President Marshall.
  28. Good Burger
    Good Burger is not fully cooked but it provides a taste of things to come.
  29. Star Maps
    Occasionally, the unevenness of the performances in Star Maps becomes distracting and the dastardliness of the characters' dysfunction impinges the bounds of dramatic believability, yet you will be hard-pressed to find another directorial debut this year that equals the narrative and structural audacity of Star Maps.
  30. Her Majesty, Mrs. Brown
    Assuming that rich human insight, great production values, and topnotch acting still count for something, Mrs. Brown should have no trouble finding an appreciative audience.
  31. Kiss Me, Guido
    The film's biggest shortcoming is that its caricatured strokes aren't broad enough; it lacks the slam-bang energy of the comically grotesque.
  32. George of the Jungle
    So silly, so garishly over-the-top, and so bracingly eager to please, that it's hard not to fall under its gleefully gooney spell.
  33. Contact
    Little effort is made to churn up romantic chemistry between Foster and McConaughey. For better or worse, director Robert Zemeckis sticks to Sagan's original vision for these characters, in which they're basically totems embodying both sides of a philosophical dialectic.
  34. Men in Black
    Like the inky void of space, there's really not much here, but what there is, is certainly entertaining.
  35. Out to Sea
    This one misses the boat by several nautical miles.
  36. Face/Off
    Face/Off works like a charm right on down the line thanks to brilliant, exhilarating performances from Cage and Travolta, and the many tremendously enjoyable action set-pieces that are Woo's hallmark.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Hercules
    The cast is nothing short of sensational (especially Woods, who gives us the most memorable and oddly likeable villain since Cruella DeVil) and the animators wisely imbue their drawings with the actors' attributes -- right down to Hermes' (Shaffer's) shades. All the cast members seem to relish their roles and their zest is infectious.
  38. My Best Friend's Wedding
    It does effectively recall those bygone days when impossibly attractive, charming, and endearingly flawed characters dressed to kill, smoked like creosote plants, and behaved atrociously on the way to rapturous romantic consummation.
  39. Batman & Robin
    Batman & Robin fails to engage the spirit of Batman, Robin, or decent marketing in general, and instead ends up as a limp, excruciatingly shallow knockoff that leaves viewers cringing at the unavoidable one-liners that make up the better part of the script.
  40. Underground
    At almost three hours, it's a masterwork of brilliant editing and design; not a frame is unwarranted, not a scene excessive, and it holds together over its lengthy running time in a way few films half its length can manage.
  41. Speed 2: Cruise Control
    Not nearly as clever at taxing the audience's knuckles as its forerunner, Speed 2 still manages to stay above board long enough to merit a look-see, if only to relish the once-in-a-lifetime pleasure of Mr. Dafoe and his pet leeches.
  42. Ulee's Gold
    Fonda brings all of his childhood frustration and angst to the screen in one of the year's most unexpectedly brilliant acting performances.
  43. Con Air
    There's nary a hint of suspense in West's film, though, mainly because he loudly trumpets the upcoming disasters so early in the film.
  44. The Pillow Book
    Greenaway and his picture-perfect cast weave so many interlacing threads into the story, and so many curious subtexts - stylistic and otherwise - that it sometimes leaves us scratching our heads in wonderment.
  45. Addicted to Love
    One of the most inventive romantic comedies to come around in some while.
  46. The Lost World: Jurassic Park
    The Lost World (unlike Spielberg's original film) leaps head first into the action, rushing, it seems, to get the film's real stars -- the dinosaurs -- to the screen as quickly as possible, and it does so with considerable verve.
  47. Brassed Off
    In the end, though, the undeniable power and emotional richness of this film swing the balance toward the good.
  48. Love! Valour! Compassion!
    Yet, the problem goes beyond the film's staginess (although there's plenty of that to go around). It could even have something to do with the delicate difficulties involved in the successful transfer of stage camp to the more intimate level of film.
  49. Night Falls on Manhattan
    Perhaps the most vexing flaws in this movie are its irresolute plot structure and tone.
  50. La Promesse (The Promise)
    La Promesse is a penetrating coming-of-age story, one that argues that adulthood begins with the emergence of moral convictions.
  51. The Fifth Element
    Although the film tends to suffer from a severe case of overt preachiness in the third reel (shades of James Cameron's "The Abyss"), it's still a wonderfully visual, exciting ride.
  52. Fathers' Day
    Fathers' Day offers little in the way of comic relief.
  53. Nowhere
    The third and final chapter in Araki's teen-angst-run-riot-in-L.A. triptych is as gorgeously messy as the first two opening salvos (Totally F***ed Up and The Doom Generation), but this time Araki employs a far broader and more complex character canvas than previously.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery
    Austin Powers is the kind of movie Mel Brooks used to make -- extravagantly funny, with plenty of juvenile humor, but as much or more of it smart, delivered with a dead aim at a cultural milestone, affection for its victim, and style.
  55. Breakdown
    Breakdown further illustrates the axiom that every truly original movie must be remade again and again until it achieves a state of sublime, all-encompassing idiocy.
  56. Children of the Revolution
    This debut feature from Australian director Duncan is still a wonderful sociopolitical experiment, dripping with sarcasm and bizarre, oddball humor, which make it all the more potent.
  57. Irma Vep
    Bizarre and beautiful, this French take on the madness inherent in independent filmmaking rivals Tom DiCillo's Living in Oblivion as the most realistic depiction of the myriad trials and tribulations that accompany the creation of a new film.
  58. Romy and Michele's High School Reunion
    Sorvino and Kudrow, for whatever inscrutable reasons, seem to be having a blast with their ridiculous characters, and both shine in the loopy set-pieces and dream sequences that pepper the story.
  59. Volcano
    Crucial to the nature of the disaster film -- and something that Irwin Allen knew so very well -- is that films of this sort depend on an emotional hook, a peg of normalcy to hang the chaos from. Volcano offers no such hook, and as a result it plays like some La Brea dinosaur risen from the tar, all effects and no heart.
  60. 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag
    Packs all the spine-tingling punch of a soggy bag of mulch.
  61. Murder at 1600
    The story, serviceable though it is, still shatters like eggshells under even the lightest scrutiny, and the dialogue is often stale beyond belief.
  62. Traveller
    Green wisely gives his actors lots of room to work, all the while putting the emphasis on the characters and their relationships instead of the blurry hokum of the narrative threads.
  63. McHale's Navy
    No originality, no memorable characters, no comic timing, and no good jokes equal no fun for the audience.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Grosse Pointe Blank
    A wacky joyride.
  65. Anaconda
    Charmless, unfrightening, and even devoid of the requisite gratuitous nudity, Anaconda just plain bites.
  66. Paradise Road
    Ultimately, Paradise Road is one of those well-intended films that doesn't completely succeed because it shortsightedly believes that its eloquent subject matter is enough, in and of itself, to create a memorable moviegoing experience.
  67. Schizopolis
    It's just that audiences are going to have a hard time tidily summarizing what it is they just experienced (and I suspect the same holds true for Soderbergh himself).
  68. Inventing the Abbotts
    Told from younger brother Doug's point of view, Phoenix's voiceover spans the length of the film and winds up making the images that unfold practically redundant.
  69. Chasing Amy
    More emotionally complex than even I had thought possible, Chasing Amy is the sound of burgeoning genius on the fast track to maturity.
  70. The Saint
    Director Noyce has a sure hand with the action sequences and keeps The Saint from bogging down too often in the mires of action film exposition (once again, think Mission: Impossible).
  71. Double Team
    Sure, Double Team is a mind-numbingly silly outing, full of gratuitous violence, testosterone-fueled goonishness, and acting turns that make TV's Van Patten family look positively Emmy-bound, but lest we forget, it's also pulse-pounding, often hilarious fun.
  72. Love and Other Catastrophes
    Love's real heartbeat is the sheer likability of its attractive young cast and the earnest naïveté with which they reach (through obsessive movie fandom, endless conversation, and polymorphic romantic pairings) for insights just beyond their grasp.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie
    For me, that low-tech, Fifties, camp charm wore a mite thin by the second half-hour, but then, I'm not the target audience, am I?
  74. The Devil's Own
    The script, partly written by an uncredited Terry George ("Some Mother's Son," "In the Name of the Father") strains mightily for insight but never quite breaks through.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Cats Don't Dance
    Cats Don't Dance is an inspired movie movie, one that celebrates and spoofs cinema with wit, verve, and a breathless enthusiasm for the form.
  76. Selena
    Unfortunately, for all his large soul and exquisite mastery of image, Nava is also one of the worst writers to ever accrue more than two major-movie screenwriting credits.
  77. Liar Liar
    This film is both too formulaic and too much a one-man vehicle to rate as a true masterpiece. But God strike me dead if I'm lying, this is one gut-busting funny movie.
  78. Maborosi
    The concept of loss, and the sorrow that shadows it, is not what you'd call an uncommon theme in films, but rarely is it handled with such uncommon eloquence as it is in Maborosi.
  79. Gray's Anatomy
    Not only is it interesting to follow the course of Gray's storyline, the movie is also equally interesting to view, even if the storyteller is just sitting in front of a desk most of the time.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Substance of Fire
    The screen version feels like a rewrite made to make the tale more palatable to the "mindless moviegoing masses," which prompts the question: Is the film a truer vision of Baitz's tale of an uncompromising man or a version in which the truer vision was compromised?
  81. Private Parts
    Thomas’ comic flair is undeniable, as is Stern’s comic acting ability; all other arguments aside, Private Parts is a consistently uproarious affair, riddled with brilliant comic set-pieces, including Stern’s many, many run-ins with various program directors and NBC brass.
  82. The Watermelon Woman
    Dunye's film is smart, sexy (the interracial lesbian lovemaking scene prompted an infamous little ruckus over at the NEA a while back), funny, historically aware, and stunningly contemporary.
  83. The Daytrippers
    Writer-director Greg Mottola's first feature is a deceptively quiet and funny film that sticks in your memory long after you think you've left the theatre.
  84. Donnie Brasco
    It’s [Depp's] first genuine “adult” role (not counting the tedious Nick of Time), and it allows him the freedom and emotional range to move, speak, and deal with issues more as an actor and less as a brat-packer.
  85. Hard Eight
    Hall, one of our least appreciated great actors, is mesmerizing as Sydney.
  86. Smilla's Sense of Snow
    Jorgen Persson's camerawork is spectacular, illuminating the cobalt blue of the frozen wastes with an almost regal air. As a travelogue, August's film works wonders; as a narrative, it's just not all there.
  87. Booty Call
    Within the context of films that include the word booty in their titles, it serves up an unusually fresh, inventive and good-natured brew of pure lascivious fun.
  88. Lost Highway
    Lynch, who penned the screenplay with novelist Barry Gifford (Wild at Heart), seems to be attempting to capture not just a sense of place and time (it never works -- Lost Highway is wholly, irrevocably, out of place and without any linear time or time line to speak of), but also a sense of madness.
  89. Rosewood
    The director is unflinching in his portrayal of the horrors that occurred, and nearly all the characters, from Voight's Wright to Rhames' Mann, are wonderfully nuanced, desperately believable creations.
  90. Vegas Vacation
    If you enjoy an occasional taste of mental junk food, you might find Las Vegas Vacation worthy of a springtime dollar-cinema visit. Otherwise, hold out another decade for sexagenarian Chevy in Palm Springs Vacation.
  91. Dante's Peak
    It seems almost beside the point to bring up the notion of plotting and characterization in such an effects-driven film ; nobody's going to rush out to catch Dante's Peak on account of the Shakespearean-caliber thespians involved.
  92. SubUrbia
    Perhaps the most interesting thing about Linklater's (and Bogosian's) running commentary on disaffected suburban youth is that it doesn't bore you half as much as it should.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Hotel de Love
    Some of the gags seem a bit too labored, and by the time the rather charming ending unfolds, these weaker moments in Hotel de Love may force some viewers to check out early.
  94. Waiting for Guffman
    Feels like an overlong "SCTV" skit. Many prime gags are recycled throughout the film, and, honestly, there's only so much Eugene Levy schtick one can take (though he does get the best Yiddish lines in the film).
  95. Fierce Creatures
    Inspired lunacy.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Prefontaine
    This successful characterization is definitely a team effort among actor Jared Leto (the brooding Jordan Catalano of television's "My So-Called Life"), writers James and Eugene Corr, cinematographer Peter Gilbert, and musical director Mason Daring.
  97. Mother
    Mother finds Brooks in top form as he dons the tri-fold hat of director, star, and writer (with co-writer Monica Johnson). His humor has more of an observational zing than a jokey, one-two patter. Within this structure, Brooks uncovers many of the fidgety truths about the relationships between parents and their grown children. The film comeback of Debbie Reynolds is also a most welcome offshoot of this movie.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Albino Alligator
    Spacey makes interesting work out of an otherwise overdone situation.
  99. Beverly Hills Ninja
    Nearly as much fun as a case of scabies, Beverly Hills Ninja transports the viewer into a mystical realm where pratfall is king and mediocrity is its own reward.
  100. Metro
    This is one of those rare cop/action movies driven by character, not spectacle. Murphy helps the cause with the most focused, persuasive acting of his career. As a young phenom, he got by on charisma, which he promptly commodified and cheapened with Hollywood’s enthusiastic collusion. Now there’s a calm, unfakeable assurance behind his eyes that only comes with life experience. It’s something he can and should build on.
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