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. This is no more (but no less?) than what we have rather oddly come to expect from Neeson in his late period (Taken, The A-Team).
  2. It's definitely not hard to understand what the little girls see in Bieber, and this film delivers the goods. This one's for the fans, not the movie buffs.
  3. Kidman is the only refreshing thing in the movie. Otherwise, Just Go With It is an exercise in stagnation.
  4. Check the credits: That move is ripped straight from producer Michael Bay's playbook.
  5. This is smart, quirky, frequently laugh-out-loud comedy, in all seriousness.
  6. Novelty alone does not a good idea make, and in the case of Gnomeo and Juliet, it's rather a disturbing, even fetishy one.
  7. Absolutely mandatory viewing for aspiring animators and filmmakers. (In terms of pacing, scoring, editing, and narrative, it's a film school unto itself.) For the rest of us, however, it's simply magic.
  8. A mildly engaging and roughly historical action picture.
  9. It's only February but I can already name the year's winner of Most Thoughtless Gay Stereotype in Film award. The dubious honor goes to The Roommate.
  10. While this is no "Clueless," to be sure, it's also, thankfully, no "Born in East L.A."
  11. There's nothing that feels like real rage, nothing that even remotely approximates the spiritual decimation of a termination.
  12. Those audiences who have complained about the clunky exposition and mawkish emotional dialogue in Cameron's films will discover the "King of the World"'s own dramatic talents to be on par with the Bard in comparison to the shouty, over-emoted hokum on display here.
  13. Delivers sinister atmosphere but few shocks.
  14. If you're searching for pure, unadulterated fisticuffs joy, you could do far worse than Ip Man 2.
  15. As much as Bardem is an expressive instrument for parlaying Iñárritu's somber worldview, so too is cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, whose stunning compositions find the poetry amid the sorrow.
  16. West (Con Air) saturates his imagery in a sickly, sulphurous stew of rotten-egg yellows and oranges, making a mediocre picture downright repellent at times.
  17. Ultimately, however, The Way Back fails to connect on the all-important visceral, emotional level.
  18. Bell steals every scene she's in, and her abrupt dismissal feels all the crueler for so much charisma wasted: She shoulda been a contender.
  19. Oh, the ennui. In Somewhere, it's so thick you could cut it with Stephen Dorff's chiseled cheekbones.
  20. Howard surprises with this decidedly honest comedy-melodrama.
  21. Gondry's update of vigilante crime fighter The Green Hornet's escapades is above all an exercise in frustration.
  22. Although it is achingly sad, Rabbit Hole is not maudlin or depressing.
  23. Those moments, as affecting as they are, can't surmount the overworkshopped feel of the whole film.
  24. Hedlund's got a hell of a voice, rotgut-ragged, and whether he's crooning or wooing, whatever he's selling, and no matter how cornpone, I'm buying.
  25. Things do not end well, least of all for the audience.
  26. Summer Wars is a magnificently manufactured piece of film entertainment that goes beyond the obvious and manages to comment, often obliquely, on everything from Facebook to virtual war and/or terrorism without ever seeming heavy-handed or strident.
  27. Made in Dagenham does a good job of capturing the period. But too often it's simply put in service to the obvious, as heard in those uplifting choruses of "You Can Get It If You Really Want."
  28. Despite his character's fondness for mugging and mouthing like Michael Corleone, Spacey (and by extension, his director and writer Norman Snider) can't quite catch the operatic wallop of Corleone's arc, possibly because the film is played top-to-bottom like a caprice.
  29. Listless, dull, and totally lacking in spectacle.
  30. All this is not to say that the Coens' True Grit is an awful film; it's just that these filmmakers have set their own standards for excellence, and True Grit falls short.

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