Austin Chronicle's Scores

For 8,793 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:
8793 movie reviews
  1. More often than not The Heat is just stupid-funny, which circles us back to McCarthy, motor-mouthing four-letter fury like an operatic aria. She sells Mullins as delightfully unhinged and fairly radiating with rage, and it’s irresistible.
  2. If you’re looking for a thrilling whodunit, there’s nothing in this film that hasn’t been done – and done better – a dozen times before.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    Calling To Wong Foo campy doesn't do the film justice: The film camps it up but still allows us to believe in the characters. Snipes and Swayze are so successful in exploring their feminine sides that all of their future roles should be played in drag.
  3. In the end, Machete may not be all that original, but it is fresh – fresh as a steel blade to the gut.
  4. Bennett’s true genius is not merely in his words – although few have ever achieved his flair for simplicity and wit. It’s in his compassion.
  5. Maintains a breezy charm throughout and contains many extremely funny sequences.
  6. The performances are likable and there's nothing really wrong with the story -- other than the fact that Nutley hardly has any story to tell.
  7. Often elegant, at times frustratingly uneven, comedy that is hopelessly in love with theatre, poetry, and -- for once -- marriage.
  8. The film is an atmospheric work, a period piece set in the 1840s during the dawn of the Age of Photography with a dense and moody visual style that befits its Brönte-esque subject matter.
  9. There’s much to applaud and much to knock in this Disney action adventure. Tomorrowland breaks the mold and becomes something quite original, while at the same time it ballyhoos its inspirational message to an extent that deadens the narrative.
  10. Bigelow stages the film's action sequences with a brutal efficiency (they almost redeem the movie), but she can't keep the increasingly silly script in check.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    True believers make for sloppy documentarians and that What Would Jesus Buy? is stuck in neutral because of its director’s almost total lack of intellectual and psychological curiosity.
  11. As romantic comedies go, Danish helmer Susanne Bier’s follow-up to her Oscar-winning "In a Better World," percolates more than it froths – but that’s a good thing.
  12. Unfortunately, Deneuve’s performance is not enough to elevate On My Way from the dredges of narrative tedium. Bettie may have gotten her groove back, but, in the end, the price the audience pays isn’t worth it.
  13. Where Mad Max: Fury Road was lean, Three Thousand Years of Longing feels like a rough draft that should have stayed in a dusty bin somewhere in the middle of a tourist shop.
  14. The film offers elliptical hints as to what evil may or may not be lurking in the house, a four-story set designer’s dream.
  15. In the end, however, Protocols of Zion illuminates manifestations of anti-Semitism without ever really elucidating or posing solutions to the problem.
  16. First time writer-director Zoé Wittock takes an absurd idea and imbues it with such heart, soul, and beauty that you'll automatically look past the inherent ridiculousness. Instead, you'll simply absorb its glowing sense of wonder.
  17. Sometimes charmingly fantastical, Over the Moon definitely doesn't have the fairytale elegance of Keane's earlier work.
  18. McNeil’s first-time film direction is capable but his screenplay suffers from a few too many cliches.
  19. It’s too bad, then, that Justin Chadwick’s film does not offer a more substantial portrait of the man, whose passing is a fresh wound to mourners and curious onlookers worldwide.
  20. After the gimmicky Saw 3D: The Final Chapter, the clunky semi-reboot of Jigsaw, and the misguided Spiral: From the Book of Saw, Saw X feels like a welcome return to form.
  21. RED
    There's no denying the kick you get from seeing Borgnine (forever lovelorn Marty to me, when he's not tooling around my head as Cabbie, from John Carpenter's Escape From New York) and company kick ass, take names, and go batshit crazy one last time.
  22. At best, Goosebumps is a who’s who in the Stine literary oeuvre, featuring characters who were terrifying on paper but rendered toothless here.
  23. Magic Farm feels more like a work-in-progress than a final draft.
  24. Either way, Beatty has taken an object of enduring fascination and made him … not so much.
  25. A political thriller with topical currency, Spartan delivers the goods.
  26. Gleefully silly fun, with a few core concepts on the nature of time, space, and la-la-la-love thrown in for good measure. And who can resist a puffin, anyway?
  27. It's mad, bad nonsense of the summer, popcorn variety, disposable but oh-so-much fun to endure, a roller coaster on a wobbly cinematic track.
  28. Manages to get by on wry smarts, barbed asides, and plenty of Barrymore's comic grace.

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