Austin Chronicle's Scores

For 8,784 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:
8784 movie reviews
    • 77 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    A powerfully unique film.
  1. It's all so goddamn realistic and reminiscent of real-life love (and how often does that happen onscreen?) that The Puffy Chair would be hell to watch if it weren't so funny.
  2. Above all, there's Nolte, who hovers over the whole production like some sapient force of nature.
  3. There's much to enjoy here – Ratner's pacing is fluid and fast and the film rushes along its busy, cluttered way with something approaching melodramatic snarkiness – but it's also terribly busy and cluttered.
  4. Cavite isn't a horror film, per se – its nightmarish sense of unreality is thoroughly grounded in the geopolitical here and now – but the emotions it conjures from the audience can be traced straight back to Shockers 101.
  5. As a film An Inconvenient Truth is a treasury of information. Attention may occasionally drift, but the film’s message of urgency is abundantly clear.
  6. If you take this stuff seriously, one way or another, you're sure to be duped. You've got to hand it to Mr. Brown: So dark the con of man, indeed.
  7. Like a lot of animated fare, it's overly busy, lacking the comic's gentle, contemplative air.
  8. Unlike former porn auteur Gregory Dark's semenal 1985 cumshot opus "New Wave Hookers", this rote exercise in slasher-film tedium holds zero surprises and is about as arousing as Tracy Lords' singing career.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The most frustrating films are the ones that reach desperately for something great, but fall just short of capturing it. In his dark and twisted narrative debut, The King, British director James Marsh's reach extends so far we can hear his muscles strain, yet what he's reaching for is never quite clear.
  9. This is one of those rare movies about children but not necessarily for them, and it treats its adolescent subjects with bravery and compassion.
  10. It's all so much blood and brine signifying nothing, not even a good time. Now somebody do us all a favor and cut that albatross from around Petersen's neck already.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 11 Critic Score
    No doubt this film will please the pre-teen set, but they'd be so much better off staying home and renting "Mean Girls."
  11. Despite employing every cliché in the sports-movie handbook, Goal! The Dream Begins tells a reasonably engaging story.
  12. It just devolves into the limp sort of schmaltzy conclusion you keep hoping it will avoid.
  13. Never less than good but it's also never quite great.
  14. The film has lovely moments – Gehry buildings can be extremely photogenic, after all – but it doesn't sink its teeth in the way it probably should.
  15. It's all poppycock, of course, but it's done with such vim and vigor and both narrative and visual flair that you care not a jot. Summer has arrived.
  16. When it's on, it's really, really on. But when it's not, it feels like it's struggling to find its style, just as Jerome is.
  17. It really IS fun to watch yet another oddball turn by Sutherland, and a marginally restrained one from Spacek. It's just not THAT fun.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Earnest, playful and eco-friendly, Hoot is a worthwhile visit for the tween set, but parents may role their eyes more than once at this flightless film.
  18. It feels mechanical, more conceptual than realized, like a senior project by a particularly ambitious student who's recently read "West of Everything" – and who's lucked into working with a world-class actor.
  19. Despite perpetual rumors of its demise as a genre, the Western is alive and well in the Australian outback.
  20. Two Eighties genre staples – Disease-of-the-Week and Poppin' the Cherry – meet, shake hands, and mostly play nice in this sweet, if overly earnest feature.
  21. Instead of using actors, Greengrass employed many of the actual air traffic controllers and military commanders who were on the ground that day. Also aiding his film's universality is Greengrass' use of little known actors in the central roles, preventing stardom from affecting our ideas about heroism and patriotism.
  22. Like "Bring It On," Stick It is so much better than most of its insipid teen-movie peers yet like her earlier movie, Bendinger's new one is also not all it might be.
  23. It is a rewarding tale for public educators, parents, and kids with big dreams.
  24. RV
    Isn't it time to put Robin Williams out to pasture? There's precious little mirth to be had via RV after the comically nasty opening set-up.
  25. Even though the movie is made with an abundance of heart, it's sad to report that the final result has only a weak pulse.
  26. Mehta and her cameraman Giles Nuttgens capture the area's rich interplay of light and color, land and water, and riches and poverty.

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