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. Manages to get by on wry smarts, barbed asides, and plenty of Barrymore's comic grace.
  2. Close is a true joy. Without question, she's the heart and soul of Cookie's Fortune.
  3. A slight, oddly lifeless movie with dubious appeal for even the most incorrigible Simon devotees.
  4. Unnerving and occasionally witty, were it not for its weak third act, Nolan's film might fall just short of genius. As it is, though, it's unique nonetheless.
  5. Junger has a deft touch with light comedy such as this; he manages to keep the film's convoluted plot spinning without resorting to too much gimmickry or descending to the level of so many teen comedies.
  6. Doesn't just raise the bar on sci-fi and action films, it rips that sucker off and sends it spiraling into the sun.
  7. Neither a revelation nor a total wash, EDtv is instead solid comic filmmaking. I just can't help but think it could have been so much more.
  8. A sketchy, half-baked, stylistically inconsistent movie that scarcely even pretends to care whether it makes sense or not.
  9. Pamela Gray's script and the way these actors bring the characters to life are the film's real treasures.
  10. In the end, Forces of Nature is a creampuff of a film, it being a scrappy romantic comedy of the purest stripe, what's so wrong with that? Not a thing.
  11. Bird's grim, picture-perfect direction -- the Sierras are more character than backdrop, and everything else looks like it's already been digested and expelled -- augments what is frankly a small, albeit lusterless, gem of a horror show, for once with as many smarts as body parts.
  12. Shabby, nondescript hack job.
  13. When Eastwood is at the top of his form -- as he is for much of this film -- there's no more spellbinding storyteller in American cinema.
  14. While much of the film is taken over by enormously entertaining dogfight sequences … much of it also rests on the narrative drive, which seems clipped part and parcel from one of those old “Why We Fight” documentaries that Frank Capra doled out to keep our G.I.s in fighting mode.
  15. Never fully taps your empathy or your fears; it plays like a movie that's always about someone else.
  16. Trekkies is a hilarious work, mining the psychology of the average and not-so-average Trek fan, and coming up with the answers to all your burning questions about the show and its devoted following.
  17. Toils in high school hell and doesn't even manage to come up with one good shock.
  18. Trying to encapsulate the movie's storyline is not possible; it doesn't appear to have one.
  19. Though Foley is adept at handling the action, the film is a grim washout peppered with too many earnest, good-cop/bad-cop conundrums and not enough solid police work.
  20. As enjoyable as it is, it's hard to escape a sense of Analyze This being the work of competent talents who knew exactly where the good-enough line was and didn't feel particularly inspired to push far beyond it.
  21. It works only sporadically, and more as a comic outing than as a vicious battle of sexual predation.
  22. With such a frenetic, brain-melting load of images to ponder, it's easy to forget that there are also some terrific actors at work here, not the least of whom is the amazing Vinnie Jones.
  23. Predicated as it is on Huppert's pensive, provocative blankness, the action moves a bit slowly, although, as is often the case with Jacquot, events make more sense after the movie is over. Dares to provoke rather than titillate in its delineation of love's strange ways. As the French might say, “L'amour, l'amour, toujours l'amour.”
  24. Bizarre, trenchant, and unexpectedly hilarious, this is one regular guy's foray into the lonely world of love. Were that all budding relationships came out this well.
  25. As forgettable as a puff off a generic-brand butt: filtered, flavored, and ultimately unsatisfying.
  26. There's little to recommend this movie, which is part and parcel with Marshall's schlock-dominated body of work.
  27. The storyline is something of a hodge-podge but what the narrative lacks in honing and straight-ahead storytelling it more than makes up for with well-aimed barbs and acutely focused observations...this funny, funny satire gets us where we live.
  28. October Sky falls flat (despite its rich tone and some startling cinematography by Fred Murphy) due to its all-too-obvious third act and the vague fact that, really, not that much happens.
  29. Jawbreaker has all the heart and soul of last week's mystery loaf (a dish that made the weekly rounds at my alma mater, sadly). And like that unidentifiable bovine by-product, the film is a chilly, messy anti-treat, sweet on the outside, sickly on the in.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    It was sweet, but it should have been better.

Top Trailers