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 6.8 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:
8784 movie reviews
  1. Not even the rich and nuanced performances of stage veterans Smith, Gambon, and Birkin can save this British period drama from languishing amid the story's unfocused longings and unrealistic musings.
  2. The gang's all here for Spin Me Round, and hopefully the ensemble enjoyed the filmmaking process, as the end result is an odd, laughless, meandering comedy that's not entertaining enough to be engaging, or gifted with enough character insight to justify its aimless length.
  3. It's manic and wearyingly predictable, and as soon as it begins, you know exactly how it's going to end: with a hard, fast crash (and the requisite yakkety epilogue).
  4. All this would be fine if the script by Forrest Smith had more wit and fewer clichés, or the direction by former makeup artist Abascal had more inventiveness.
  5. The Monkey's Mask is filmed with an eye toward an arthouse sheen, although Lang's dramatic pacing is sluggish and dull.
  6. It's no "Dellamorte Dellamore," but neither is it "Uwe Boll," a smallish favor we should all be thankful for.
  7. St. John's script is the underlying bug in the code. Science fiction is at its best when it's a morality tale – especially when dealing with tech, such as brain mapping, that is seemingly within our grasp. Yet there's no moral or emotional weight to anything William does.
  8. What’s missing from The Woman in Black 2, and what it needs most and has least of all, is suspense.
  9. The chemistry between the leads is nonexistent. Cavill unsuccessfully tries to channel Cary Grant, while Hammer’s Kuryakin has so much inner conflict, it becomes a joke that isn’t funny.
  10. From the swooping aerial shots of downtown Miami, to the long, long-legged beauties that seem to crop up every time the action threatens to slow down, to the nonsensical lack of logic that permeates the film like the acrid odor of wasted cordite, Bad Boys oozes Eighties Hollywood clichés like no film since "Top Gun."
  11. The leads project a sunny patina of wholesomeness and share marvelous tans, but beyond that, it’s a shrugging love match.
  12. Seyfried acquits herself admirably in the panicky, hysterical mode, if that's what you're looking for, but by the time the final, goofy revelations roll around, you're slapping yourself for not having just taken a nap instead.
  13. The entire movie has a creepy aura of self-consciousness. In addition to the aforementioned definitions of aloha, the word also doubles as a coming-and-going greeting in the Hawaiian vernacular. Here, it regrettably signifies the possible goodbye to a once-promising career of a filmmaker who had us at hello.
  14. Lovitz is occasionally amusing, especially in his creative attempts to get through to his pupils, although his style of slow-take humor is a grave mismatch for this kind of frenzied comedy.
  15. The most interesting part of Lucy in the Sky is that second act, in which the main character is basically besieged by struggles with her own psyche and the male-dominated world of NASA, and her pining for not just Goodwin but for a return to the view of the universe that only a chosen few have seen.
  16. Sandler is a post-Catskills goldmine of potential, he always has been, and when he's willing to break with tradition (a là Punch Drunk Love), he's downright revelatory. Not this time, though. This time he's just dying.
  17. The few gags that hit their mark only serve to point up how flaccid the rest of his material is, and that spells doom for a comic, no matter how much his hometown crowd cheers him on.
  18. Somehow All My Life seems oddly lacking in stakes, which is so weird considering the story (the main symptoms of onscreen Chau’s deadly but photogenic disease seem to be a little tiredness and sweatiness).
  19. In the end, it's much ado about nothing. Oh, the ennui, the ennui.
  20. Without better material, Bullock’s talents will remain undercover.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Everybody’s tantalized by the store’s exclusivity because next to nobody makes the cut. Thus the title’s morbid connotation rears its ugly head: Having somebody sprinkle your mortal remains on the marble floor is the only way you’d ever fit in.
  21. This is not a remake of Sam Peckinpah's "The Getaway," but a new effort. The film is loaded with action and violence, although not in any logical or accessible way.
  22. As the robotic duo, Lundgren and Van Damme have found roles tailored to their acting abilities.
  23. In the end, you feel like you’re the victim of a cruel bait-and-switch, lured into thinking Nobody’s Fool would be a crappy but nevertheless entertaining Tiffany Haddish movie, only to have it turn out to be a crappy but nevertheless crappy Tyler Perry movie. Talk about mixed feelings.
  24. The Indonesian-born brother/sister filmmaking duo of Ken and Livi Zheng scores high points for creating a new take on the undocumented-immigrant badass story (hola, Machete), and for their obvious martial arts skills, but this first feature from the pair is ultimately hobbled by a paucity of credible acting.
  25. Sea of Monsters most bizarre and apropos-of-nothing moment comes when the half-blood kids find themselves stuck on – I kid you not – what appears to be the Civil War ironclad ship Monitor, captained and crewed by a host of Confederate zombies.
  26. Like the infamous Japanese water tortures of WWII, Dahl’s film is a steadily mounting series of pesky nonevents paced with all the frenetic, action-packed verve of a wounded lawn sprinkler.
  27. Not only have we seen this all before, but we were probably hoping to not see it again.
  28. It's chop-socky vindaloo, pleasing on a platter but awfully difficult to swallow whole.
  29. Roughly as entertaining as watching your neighbor's kid's soccer game, not because you want to, but because you have to.

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