Austin Chronicle's Scores

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 6.8 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:
8783 movie reviews
  1. One brother grows up to be a dashing smuggler, the other is a dork and it's a tribute to Van Damme's acting ability that it's frequently impossible to tell which one is which. I could go on, I'm having a pretty good time at this, but I think I'll save my usual rants about homophobia, racism, and generally insensitive stupidity for a movie that attracts an audience that reads film reviews.
  2. Egregiously mediocre and flagrantly ill-conceived in every department, this is, truly, the cinematic equivalent of finding a single solitary Saltine in your stocking and a pair of old tube socks beneath the tree. Humbug!
  3. Uninterested in persuasion or education, this third documentary by Dinesh D’Souza is designed to aggressively reinforce prejudices and hostilities among true believing conservatives as it offers a “history” of the deliberately evil, completely corrupt, America-hating Democrats.
  4. The Virginity Hit is repugnant.
  5. Trying to encapsulate the movie's storyline is not possible; it doesn't appear to have one.
  6. Drivel of the purest ray serene.
  7. It works not at all.
  8. “This is just like a video game,” observes rapper-cum-actor Ja Rule, taking aim during one of the myriad firefights that comprise this lunkheaded, vaguely dystopic actioner. Man, is it ever.
  9. How do movies this bad still get made?
  10. So lazy it's downright boring, something not even a naked Leslie Nielson (!) can salvage.
  11. This is a movie that should have bypassed the theatres and gone straight to DVD. It is offensive on so many levels.
  12. White is cast in this film as a “guardian angel” and adds another level of painful homosexual confusion and stereotyping to the film. Ultimately, all the chafing caused by Gentlemen Broncos is likely to leave you saddlesore.
  13. Utterly devoid of merit, fantastic or otherwise, a more exasperating descent into the feline world is difficult to imagine.
  14. The script is simultaneously boring and breathlessly busy, and it really gives Arquette a beating, as scene after scene subjects him to electrocution, dog attack, encasement in bubble wrap, public pantlessness, assault by the hearing-impaired, a fishbowl on the head, and gluteal paralysis caused by poisonous sea urchins.
  15. Eurotrash for the new millennium.
  16. The movie is nothing more than a perpetual chain of elaborately choreographed (by returning star Robin Shou) fight sequences that mix live-action foregrounds with complexly layered digital effects and are linked together by the most flimsy and laughable of plot elements.
  17. Functions mainly as a big-screen showcase for America's No. 1 teen tease, with the story and other characters serving mainly as accessories.
  18. Beverly Hills Cop III is made with so little spark, humor, and internal logic that it makes me better appreciate these other recent Murphy movies where the actor/comedian at least stretched his persona and attempted something apart from the action comedy mold.
  19. The only evolution in question here is that of Emmerich's skills as a director of motion pictures.
  20. The Punisher is such a bad film that it becomes inadvertently entertaining; it’s enough to make you pine for the original version of the black-clad Marvel Comics’ badass, played to awful imperfection in 1989 by Dolph Lundgren.
  21. It’s a lot like hearing the play-by-play account of a heated game of bridge. Only not half as gripping.
  22. Her mortal story seems one of sadness rather than inspiration.
  23. If you really want the kids to see a colorfully cryptic meta fairy tale, be subversive and go rent 'em some Alejandro Jodorowsky. No child deserves Happily N'Ever After.
  24. None of this made a lick of sense to me, nor did it appear to be all that obvious to either the cast or screenwriter Hodge, whose work here feels as though he'd given up in frustration halfway through before deciding to see how far he could push the vaguely Harry Potter-esque shenanigans before getting sacked.
  25. It's the kind of bad movie that gives bad movies a bad name.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    The John Hughes script must have taken him all of thirty minutes to write – simply a matter of a few name and location changes. It wasn't a good script the first time, either.
  26. It's full of special effects that are big on smoke and noise, but short on logic and payoff.
  27. The marketing weasels over at Disney deserve to have their beady little eyes gouged out with flaming icicles for the fast one they've pulled on audiences with Snow Dogs.
  28. Dirty Grandpa is like that drunk guy at a party who corners you, shooting an endless litany of raunchy and offensive jokes until you finally laugh. It is comedy as pummel, wearing you down until finally you gasp, “Uncle!”
  29. It's the same old story, seven times around, you just can't keep a good corpse down. ’Spite a massacre the film before, To Crystal Lake, they keep coming more. And one by one, they end up dead – a sliitted throat; an axe in the head.
  30. One of the most deadly dull "SNL" spinoffs.
  31. Intelligence is insulted at every turn in this new date movie.
  32. It is so bad and illogical that even devoted loyalists should find their faith tested. The subtitle Dark Territory doesn't even begin to describe how inchoate and blemished this storytelling is.
  33. Even with its scant running time, this nightmarish travesty barrels along with all the whipcord speed and nimble comedic grace of a loved one’s funeral.
  34. The story is so shabbily built that it can make no valid claim to motives other than the filmmakers' mercenary desires to cash in on the public's prurient interests. And even on this bottom-feeder level, Showgirls fails to deliver the goods.
  35. Granted, the state of the indie hipster and/or Big-Man-on-the-Quad aesthetic has probably skewed a bit since I was a frosh, but good lord, man, it can't be this pale an imitation of campus life. I implore you: Go rent "National Lampoon's Animal House" and leave this flaccid wanker alone.
  36. Hideously directed with all the comic subtlety of Oliver Stone on speed, A Very Brady Sequel misses almost every single mark it sets for itself, from the disastrously ill-conceived animation that marks Roy's hallucinogenic mushroom trip at the family dinner table to the persistent background hiss on the film's soundtrack. Even Sherwood Schwartz would've hated this dog.
  37. RV
    Isn't it time to put Robin Williams out to pasture? There's precious little mirth to be had via RV after the comically nasty opening set-up.
  38. Cody Banks would probably be appropriate for the 13-and-older crowd, but it’s far too dopey for teenage sophisticates.
  39. Long distance information? Get me Hollywood, USA: I’ve got a rusty ice pick to bury in the gullet of whoever greenlighted this pointless exercise in masturbatory tedium.
  40. File this one under What Were They Thinking?
  41. Forget this dreck: Where's that Michael vs. Jason grudge match we've been hearing about for the last decade?
    • 24 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    Lame, mindless dialogue makes Wing Commander seem Cukoresque by comparison.
  42. It’s cheese of the purest stripe, bafflingly bad to the point of being oddly charming in its brain dead naïveté.
  43. Weaver and Willis look bored silly while essaying their paint-by-numbers roles, and this film does nothing to make me think Cavill is going to be Zack Snyder's Superman incarnate.
  44. It had a little originality, unlike the other sequels, but not much.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    Instead of offering any insight or (dare I dream?) entertainment, Film Geek presents a socially retarded main character stumbling through a dimwitted plot with a series of painfully unfunny nonjokes.
  45. In all fairness, the sheer, overwhelming mediocrity of everything about Pandorum – Travis Milloy's hackneyed, ultra-derivative script, Alvart's plodding pacing and dull direction, even the eventual crimson tide of gore that duly arrives just in time to keep audience members over the age of 13 from dozing off – may well constitute a new breed of horror: In space, no one can hear you snore.
  46. Reeks as badly as it sounds.
  47. Nobody of Chan's legendary stature should ever have to play second banana to George Lopez, and certainly not in a film that was already made five years ago with Vin Diesel (see: The Pacifier).
  48. 90 minutes of ridiculous, silly fun. Of course, it's still a very bad movie.
  49. This is stilted stuff. The acting is disjointed, the movie should be subtitled Three Actors in Search of Their Characters. River Phoenix gives a somnambulant impersonation of Christian Slater impersonating Jack Nicholson, and Samantha Mathis spends much of the movie trying to figure out exactly who her character is.
  50. It's pornography of the most depressing sort.
  51. What does startle is how tiresome it all is.
  52. Crafted within the broadest, not-quite-funny brushstrokes possible, director Lee’s movie about a class of troublemakers, hustlers, adult J.D.s, and Rob Riggle’s patented goofy man-child schtick struggling to earn their GEDs at the eponymous classroom fails, epically.
  53. Director David Zucker once upon a time made a very funny movie called Airplane!. Twenty years later, he’s made a movie only a 13-year-old horndog could appreciate, and for all the wrong reasons.
  54. There's an oddball quality to the ensemble that might even be lovable if the movie weren't so glib and perfunctory.
  55. Any just God would likely recoil from the ham-fisted and spurious defense put forth in this film.
  56. The Book of Henry is the most misguided film since the 2003 Gary Oldman abomination "Tiptoes." Trevorrow is slated to helm an upcoming Star Wars film, so y’all have fun with that.
  57. Never aims higher than the urinal.
  58. 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.
  59. All the broad humor of the original film is gone, replaced by clunky and often tasteless gags, and the attempts to extract pathos from genuine tragedies vary from tacky to insulting.
  60. Maybe everyone involved was hoping that no one would see this movie, but Madsen is the only one who should fear anyone seeing his work.
  61. Which brings me to another odd point: for a movie so obviously trapped in the teen-comedy formulaics of the early-to-mid-Eighties, Weekend at Bernie's II has surprisingly few nude blonde women. It is, after all, set in St. Thomas, but even this sure-fire, lowbrow interest-booster is ignored in favor of McCarthy's smarmy mug. Good lord, man, where are Golan and Globus when we need them? I could go on, but why bother? Let's just hope that this projected series of films (and I use the term loosely) dies a quiet, unremarked-upon death unlike that of its title character.
  62. A nearly bloodless slasher film with fewer surprises than a broken jack-in-the-box.
  63. Here's hoping someone breaks down and buys Brocka some more toys, if only to distract him from embarking on another flesh-and-blood production.
  64. There's punishment and then there's prolonged, squirm-inducing psychological torture, which is a more accurate description of All's Faire in Love, a romantic comedy that will only be "romantic" to audience members under the age of 14 and utterly devoid of genuine yuks and the necessary rom-com spark.
  65. The game is great fun -- the movie ought to be taken out back and shot.
  66. A Tail of Two Kitties couldn't care less about its human principals, and all it wants its animals to do is air-guitar to "Cat Scratch Fever" and wear silly sunglasses.
  67. It's not even funny. Nor does it contain half the wit or charm as the old Doris Day sex comedies it so resembles.
  68. There's precious little to like about the witless and decidedly tedious Black Knight other than the fact that it's unlikely to generate a sequel.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    The most poignant point in the whole painful endeavor is when the credits roll. It's here that we see the outtakes and watch Cedric riffing as he improvs variations on his dialogue. These outtakes are genuinely funny, standing as reminders that the last 90 minutes were a sad waste of talent.
    • 18 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    Kennedy’s humor comes from the broad, brainless, lowest-common-denominator school (in other words, he was born to play a grown man with the intelligence of an boy).
  69. The damn thing is boring. Dull as dirt. Despite the many fine actors involved, View From the Top is a third-class production through and through and, frankly, I'd rather be pelted in the head with stale, salty peanuts than sit through it again.
  70. Camp has also been compared to Alan Parker’s "Fame," which operates with a similar love of behind-the-scenes melodrama and youthful idealism, but different in that it doesn’t induce brain-swelling revulsion in the viewer.
    • 4 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    Director Dick Lowry and scenarists Stuart Birnbaum and David Dasheu's idea of a good time is so crude, they probably think Caveman was a comedy of manners.
  71. Be it the use of faux snow that looks like the dog ends of previously owned Q-Tips or the successively worse series of blue-screened visuals, the film is shoddy from frame one.
  72. Nothing about this movie works.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    Baja is just plain bad.
  73. Don't believe the hype: Paranormal Activity may be a lot of things, but the words "scary" and "movie" are not among them. It is instead nothing more or less than an excruciatingly tedious YouTube gag cleverly marketed to go viral in the broadest and most box office-friendly way.
  74. You want REAL terror? If this second outing proves profitable, we'll be looking at Yet Again I Recall the Summer Before the Summer Before Last. Now that's scary.

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