Austin Chronicle's Scores

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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:
  1. Positive: 4,786 out of 8793
  2. Mixed: 2,560 out of 8793
  3. Negative: 1,447 out of 8793
8793 movie reviews
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  1. Retribution
    In the hands of director Nimród Antal, a filmmaker who’s made good movies (2003’s Kontroll) and bad movies (2010’s Predators), who has worked on engaging TV shows (Apple TV+’s Servant) and brain-dead TV shows (Netflix’s Stranger Things), Retribution falls pretty much right down the middle.
  2. Born in China
    As breathtaking as the imagery is, however, the script, which is narrated by John Krasinski, is a mess of anthropomorphic goop.
  3. Hard Luck Love Song
    Based on the folky country song “Just Like Old Times” by Todd Snider, the film feels like a throwback to the heyday of Austin: eclectic acoustic guitars, dingy pool halls, dive bars with fountains of whiskey, neon signs, and lots and lot of late-night tacos.
  4. Monsters University
    It’s not like Monsters University is a bad movie. It’s just not a terribly interesting one.
  5. Sleepy Hollow
    Flawed at its core but stunning nonetheless.
  6. Annie
    Little girls will love it. I used to be a little girl once, too. I didn’t care much for the Top 40 glossy coat slathered over every song, but this heart will never harden to a spunky kid who’s certain the sun’ll come out tomorrow.
  7. La mission
    Benjamin Bratt ably depicts both sides of this character and creates a memorable portrait in the process.
  8. Mr. & Mrs. Smith
    Uneven, ineffective mash-up of sex comedy and artillery-heavy action.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    How to Eat Fried Worms
    The sweetness of spirit and rapidly moving story will keep parents entertained while blessing the kids with a mildly raunchy good time.
  10. Sharkwater
    Truth is, once again, stranger and far more interesting than fiction, but Stewart, whose youthful idealism makes for passionate but uneven filmmaking, should scuttle further oceanic pedantry and focus his lens on Watson's "good pirate" efforts to sabotage the "bad pirates" and save the sea.
  11. Foxcatcher
    Whatever the case, Foxcatcher provides little insight. Art can shape the truth in ways that resonate beyond the obvious. Regrettably, the truth-shaping here grapples for significance, without any apparent aim. Catch as catch can.
  12. The Human Centipede (First Sequence)
    Coprophiliacs looking for a movie that really rings their chimes will be positively tintinnabulating from this arthouse horror number.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Girls Trip
    The message here is clear: You can’t front to your true friends. This clique is ready to take on the world, and they aren’t afraid to fight dirty for each other. What can I say? Squad goals.
  14. Needle in a Timestack
    It’s the lack of tension, overlong running time, and ultimately mawkish message that makes Needle a nonstarter.
  15. Infinity Pool
    Even if this is a film that does not always make perfect sense, Infinity Pool is a film that does not shrink from its transgressions.
  16. Scent of a Woman
    There's no denying that Pacino's performance is superb. The rest of the movie plays like a bunch of inconsequentially strung together sequences.
  17. Night Patrol
    Prows lets all those subplots divert him from saying something meaningful about how even the best-intentioned of cops end up part of a nightmare machine. Luckily, the plentiful and creative gore splatters enough blood and ichor to provide camouflage disguising those shortcomings. Or rather, enough to make Night Patrol entertaining – just not enough to completely obfuscate what it could have been.
  18. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
    The result is a visually fantastic but sometimes exasperating entertainment that (once again) gets lost in its own chaos. It’s one funned-up spectacle of a movie.
  19. Freejack
    The film is fun to watch, but you never emotionally buy into the story or its world, and when you leave the theatre, they're gone. There's a lot to this speedy little complex science fiction adventure but what's missing is imagination.
  20. Breaking In
    With more than a passing nod to the far classier "Panic Room," this derivative seat-squirmer has a few good moments in spite of Johnny Klimick’s annoying score, its energy powered by the raw determination of its Mother Courage.
  21. Mary Shelley
    As a filmed drama, Mary Shelley is sorely in need of a jolt of electricity similar to the one that reanimated Frankenstein’s monster in the author’s novel.
  22. The Eagle
    A mildly engaging and roughly historical action picture.
  23. Never Been Thawed
    The hit-or-miss nature of the gags makes NBT too uneven to recommend, but it's a great calling-card movie for guys who want to become professional comedy writers.
  24. Sweet Home Alabama
    What it needs is a little more dirtying down. What it needs, in short, is less New York, and more Alabama.
  25. Miracle
    A suitably rigorous sports movie. On the other hand, at no time does it break out of the "sports movie" mold.
  26. Carmen
    Maltese writer/director Buhagiar emphasizes the character’s transformative path rather than her pitiable starting point, and with the help of some suspension of disbelief and a symbolic pigeon (no, not a Maltese falcon) Carmen comes into her own.
  27. G.I. Jane
    As a vehicle for Moore's acting abilities (and Mortensen's, for that matter), G.I. Jane is terrific. But as the end-of-summer blockbuster it's doubtless intended to be, it's pretty much a washout.
  28. Lost Highway
    Lynch, who penned the screenplay with novelist Barry Gifford (Wild at Heart), seems to be attempting to capture not just a sense of place and time (it never works -- Lost Highway is wholly, irrevocably, out of place and without any linear time or time line to speak of), but also a sense of madness.
  29. Stay
    Forster should be commended for attempting something as daunting as the overreaching Stay, which despite all of its muddled logic and porous reality – or perhaps because of it – forces you to think, a genuine rarity these days.
  30. Nowhere to Run
    Previously responsible for The Hitcher, a disturbingly cold-blooded exercise but still a powerful cinematic vehicle, Harmon still doesn't show enough humanity to be considered anything more than a stylish director. But he is a damned stylish one, who keeps the film interesting and the action sequences effective. If you don't expect much (and the developer vs. land owner plot is ridiculous) you may be surprised at what's here.
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