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. Arthur overextends its welcome and relies too much on prop comedy.
  2. It's a strange and electrifying brew of Hollywood genre tropes recalibrated for a globalized sensibility.
  3. The true wonder of this low-budget movie, however, is its acquisition of the rights to so much of the previously mentioned music. It's almost exclusively Dylan and the Dead, but damned if you won't be stopping for some Cherry Garcia ice cream on the way home.
  4. It is, in effect, a movie-house meta mirror, warped and weird, strange but true (except when it isn't). It's whatever you want it to be, which doesn't necessarily make it a great movie (although it contains moments of greatness), but it IS – by virtue of its premise alone – boldly unique.
  5. It's not nearly as complex and eerily existential as the director's debut, "Moon," but in its own way it's an even more satisfying time slice of identity-scrambled sci-fi.
  6. The only remotely entertaining aspects of Insidious come from Whannell and Sampson as a comic pair of hypercompetitive hipster ghost hunters, and even that schtick is repeated ad nauseam.
  7. Hop
    Some films are saccharine, but Hop is pure sugar.
  8. It's something of a Tiananmen Square face-off, minus the overt politics, which makes it all the more spellbinding.
  9. Wimpy Kid's filmmakers have gone off-book, so to speak, to inflect Greg with a surprising cruel streak.
  10. Appallingly bad stuff.
  11. Although the sequences grow somewhat repetitive in spite of their vicious escalation, and some of the details challenge believability, I Saw the Devil is a spectacle of substantial merit.
  12. It is an utterly unique and highly ambitious project that isn't afraid to veer wildly from witty, risqué comedy to heavy emotional melodrama, often in the same sequence.
  13. Perhaps every decade gets the Jane Eyre it deserves: Is the emphasis of conscience over passion emblematic of our times?
  14. Has very little soul to speak of, but it's got swagger to burn.
  15. Paul is offensive solely for being so underachieving.
  16. This nature documentary about the vanishing lions of Africa is not your children's "Lion King."
  17. Limitless is a writer's movie by a writer, and it explores the dark side of the muse.
  18. This Red Riding Hood loses sight of the forest for the trees on its way to Grandma's house.
  19. The how-it-was-made demonstration may have been the most captivating part of Mars Needs Moms.
  20. The kindest thing that might be said of this Eighties nostalgia trip is that its formulaic plot and overall mirthlessness are meant as mimetic tributes to that blasted decade.
  21. Viewed as a war film, it's strictly standard run 'n' gun fare.
  22. Hudgens' dimples threaten at times to overtake the narrative, but in the end, they're no match for Olsen's creepy-ass smirk, which, frankly, appears ready-made for Tim Burton's next outing.
  23. Hall Pass has half the right idea: Scratch out "Hall," and just … pass.
  24. "When you race with the devil, you'd better be fast as hell." (And you, angry driver, are not that fast.)
  25. The performances are superlative, as is much of the film's Jewish flavor. The ham is barely noticeable.
  26. The Adjustment Bureau is, above all, a romance of chance and chaos theory of the heart. (In this respect, some viewers will recognize it as kin to the early Gwyneth Paltrow fantasy "Sliding Doors.")
  27. It is Depp, however, who really nails this thing by simply blending in with all the other voice talent and characters and not reverting to the oversized Captain Jack Sparrow swagger. Rango becomes the hero of his own story, and for this he needs no stinkin' badge.
  28. Ultimately, Lemmy is a lesson in artistic stoicism and the possibility of growing old gracefully within the confines of an art form that almost always rewards youth and punishes (or, worse, forgets) anyone over 30.
  29. It makes you wonder, ultimately, how the carbon footprint created by the film will stand up to the test of time.
  30. The comic, his career now apparently in total free fall, tackles the (dual) role(s) so broadly (no pun intended) that it's just plain annoying.

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