Austin Chronicle's Scores

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:
8778 movie reviews
  1. Few characters are well-drawn, rivalries substitute for real group dynamics, and the dancing is chaotic, showy, and confusing.
  2. It’s a bold and certainly credible move, but the execution is something of a belly flop. Thanks for Sharing isn’t really about a disease, only the cure, and that bias makes it a plausible picture of the Friend of Bill community-based recovery, but kind of a sham as a portrait of actual human beings.
  3. Salerno spends more time talking to photographers with telephoto lenses who, over the decades, laid in wait for Salinger in the hope of capturing a grainy picture, than he does talking to literary analysts and historians.
  4. Brie Larson is a revelation as the linchpin of Short Term 12. An industrious young actress, her performance here is remarkably natural and understated.
  5. It dispassionately plays like a video game with a high body count.
  6. Insidious: Chapter 2 is perhaps an even more scattershot mess than its predecessor. Whannell's script is so rife with portentous backstory, third-act goofiness, and a denouement that practically screams "Insidious 3: Same Old Shit," that the film as a whole is jarring, and not in a good way.
  7. Spark, however, is the best of the lot when it comes to attempting to grok the burn and the burners.
  8. The handful of redeeming moments in Jayne Mansfield’s Car belong to Duvall in the role of a septuagenarian who finds himself more and more at odds with a changing world.
  9. Afternoon Delight has many small pleasures but falls far short of reaching the G spot.
  10. Much has been made of the fact that Swanberg has cast for the first time bona fide movie stars and not just his mumblecore pals: In fact, it's the making of the movie. If you're going to build an entire film on microexpressions, then a certain innate magnetism is required. Swanberg gets it in spades from his top-shelf cast.
  11. While "The Chronicles of Riddick" was an overstuffed melange of CGI and unnecessary subplots, Riddick is a far more streamlined affair, and all the better for it.
  12. Again. Via Red’s experiences as a young man and wildcatter, Jason learns that money cannot buy happiness. What the viewers learn is that money can’t buy a good movie either.
  13. For such a deft wit, Jane Austen sure has inspired some nitwitted entertainments. Actually, the Austen influence here is negligible.
  14. In the end, I Declare War is both enthralling and a little frustrating in its refusal to fit neatly in any box. Its unpredictable tone clicks back and forth between the comical and the serious like the safety catch on a firearm.
  15. Heinzerling allows us to read whatever we want into this picture. The endless struggle for money and professional recognition is either a curse or a raison d’être.
  16. The U.S. cut, which Wong endorses, runs a slim 108 minutes, and has by all accounts been reshaped for American audiences, who, by and large, don’t have the same foreknowledge of Ip Man, or martial arts, as Asian audiences do.
  17. The World’s End affectionately takes a page from our Fifties sci-fi films.
  18. Wingard’s film is its own subset of fractious family crazy.
  19. Not only have we seen this all before, but we were probably hoping to not see it again.
  20. Amounts to little more than a big, wet kiss to the group’s worldwide legions of young, female fans.
  21. Still, the revelations of evildoers clogging the corridors of power pack very little punch; we're all too aware that such malfeasance and malignity have become the status quo in the real world.
  22. This is not a remake of Sam Peckinpah's "The Getaway," but a new effort. The film is loaded with action and violence, although not in any logical or accessible way.
  23. An ambitious comedy with not-negligible dramatic depth, but Bell, a first-time feature writer and director, is frankly too generous with her large cast.
  24. It’s a query with no answers, a period piece about the present. It’s idiosyncratic, actively noncommercial, and doesn’t follow the rules – like playing a game of chess on a board with no squares.
  25. The balance between the slight, near-mythic narrative and the eye-wateringly beautiful cinematography (courtesy of Bradford Young), as well as the aching, spare score by Daniel Hart, create a movie that’s a more lovingly crafted tone poem than anything you’re likely to see on Texas screens this summer.
  26. You could drive an 18-wheeler through the substantial number of plot holes in Paranoia.
  27. It fails to rise above the inherent limitations of the traditional Hollywood biopic and it's about as insanely great as a Mac "low cost" LC model – which was, to be fair, pretty cool.
  28. The film entertains, puzzles, and strays outside the lines.
  29. An outstanding cast have crafted a delicate, eloquent picture of believable humans in so many gradations of hurt, but it stops just shy of catharsis.
  30. A host of A-list stars have been enlisted to play small roles in a bid for viewer engagement. See Mariah Carey in a blink-or-you’ll-miss-her role as Cecil Gaines’ maltreated mother.

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