Austin Chronicle's Scores

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For 8,783 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 6.8 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: 4,778 out of 8783
  2. Mixed: 2,558 out of 8783
  3. Negative: 1,447 out of 8783
8783 movie reviews
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  1. House of Hummingbird
    First-time feature director Kim pulls every moment back its most quiet and intimate, instead letting the ambiguity of personal moments play out. Most importantly, she keeps newcomer Park's performance as Eun-hee in constant focus at a time when she barely knows herself, and definitely doesn't understand other people.
  2. A History of Violence
    A History of Violence poses the right question: Are those who don't study history doomed to repeat it?
  3. Joyland
    Watery-eyed and drowning in contrition, Junejo finds a touching, tragic inner life to Haider's passivity: But in Urdu and Punjabi observational tragedy Joyland first-time director Saim Sadiq isn't interested in simply telling a story of sexual and social liberation.
  4. Sugar
    Sugar is a curiosity – too somber for a picaresque, too arm's-length for much emotional effect – and while it's interesting, it's never truly absorbing.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    The Wind That Shakes the Barley
    Paul Laverty's script is a masterpiece of ambivalent populism.
  6. The Lobster
    Overall, The Lobster packs a wicked punch, eviscerating modern romance in surprising and evocative ways.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    Forrest Gump
    A remarkable balance of sentimentality and harshness, darkness and light.
  8. The Nightmare Before Christmas
    Nightmare’s macabre humor is very adult, yet the storytelling is woefully simplistic.
  9. Paris Is Burning
    As much a movie about class, race, and sexual orientation as anything you've ever seen.
  10. Breaking the Waves
    With this artlessly profound and affecting story of love, von Trier emerges as one of those blessed filmmakers who've managed to blend their early stylistic flamboyance with enough human empathy to make their work both visually and emotionally compelling.
  11. The Squid and the Whale
    It packs a hefty emotional wallop.
  12. Winged Migration
    As moving wallpaper, Winged Migration is the cat’s meow: One almost wishes the wondrous images had been filmed in the even bigger IMAX format. But as an informative documentary, Winged Migration’s birdbrain comes to the fore.
  13. School of Rock
    As far from "Slacker" as you could possibly get and still be using a motion-picture camera, The School of Rock is nonetheless pure Linklater, pure rock & roll, and pure fun. Gabba, gabba, hey!
  14. The Girl with the Needle
    Its answers are uneasy and disquieting, and the true root of its horror.
  15. Star Trek
    It's not necessary to be a longtime fan of the Star Trek universe to appreciate the sheer emotional punch and swagger of this rough and randy Enterprise crew.
  16. The Unknown Country
    The Unknown Country is a naturalistic exploration of America that’s hopeful of human connection in the midst of a country that sometimes feels hostile. It’s simplistic, but honest and true to Maltz and Gladstone’s optimism in the face of a place that sometimes bleeds hopelessness.
  17. A Quiet Place
    Not that he lacks artistry. When he delivers on tension, it's not a jump scare, but a jarring sense of inevitability (another kinship to Shults' work). Every time there is a sound above a whisper, there is a payoff, and how Krasinski navigates between those two events is never less than enthralling – and, yes, tragic.
  18. Carmine Street Guitars
    Carmine Street Guitars is an affectionate, somewhat elegiac glimpse into a master and a craft that, like so much of the surrounding neighborhood, is steadily being corporately gentrified.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    The Namesake
    Reminiscent of Jim Sheridan’s masterly "In America," The Namesake delivers such a tactile presence that it's difficult not to leave feeling as if you've just struggled through a New York winter, attended an Indian wedding, and returned from a Calcutta holiday.
  20. Frances Ha
    Funny and touching, Frances Ha may very well be the most eloquent take yet on a generation in flux – a cinematic talk-back to so many Atlantic articles, minus the scolding and the statistics, and uncharacteristically (for Baumbach) uncynical.
  21. C'mon C'mon
    This is far from the first movie about the perpetual struggle of relating to other people; it’s not even Mills’ first stab at it. But C’mon C’mon is so lovingly assembled and insightful in its thematic concerns that it feels like he could keep returning to that well and find something just as essential there every time.
  22. Howl's Moving Castle
    The voice acting, from new Batman Bale to the almost unrecognizable Bacall is fine – even Crystal reigns in his usual Borscht Belt bravado – if a little plain.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Cold Comfort Farm
    Together the cast, the director, and the screenwriter work to make the characters off-centered but realistic, with plenty of room for warmth.
  24. A Hijacking
    When the gut-wrenching conclusion of A Hijacking comes in the form of a single, random act, it’s only then you realize how far you’ve been pulled into its emotional core. It’s a staggering moment, one for which you may not be fully prepared. It’s a moment that differentiates the merely good from the very good.
  25. The Trip
    Screamingly funny. Like I said, terrific stuff.
  26. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
    It helps that J.K. Rowling’s third book in the series is full of spooky stuff that translates beautifully to screen.
  27. La Promesse (The Promise)
    La Promesse is a penetrating coming-of-age story, one that argues that adulthood begins with the emergence of moral convictions.
  28. Michael Clayton
    Like Spencer Tracy, Gene Hackman, and others who have made acting on the big screen seem so easy while taking us on a journey that is far from simple, Clooney is the real thing.
  29. Downfall
    Much has been made about the film's "humanizing" of Hitler, but he's only human here in the most prosaic of terms.
  30. Knives Out
    The movie’s wit and energy hold your interest, but they don’t spark the pleasure of the unexpected, the thrill you felt in "Laura," "The Last of Sheila," "Chinatown," "The Sixth Sense," or the 1974 adaptation of Christie’s "Murder on the Orient Express" (not Kenneth Branagh’s inept remake), movies whose big reveals surprise you in their elegant simplicity.
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