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. In a film like this, timing is everything, and everyone from the stunt coordinators to the crew-at-large seems to have gotten it right the first time.
  2. At heart, White is a black comedy with intriguing characters and a plot that plays its cards close to the deck.
  3. Only Palance is worthwhile, as Curly's long-lost brother Duke (there's an inspired cowboy name for ya), and even that role seems dazed and clichéd. Tack on an absolutely deranged, hackneyed final reel, and you've got a movie that'll fade from your memory so quick it'll make your eyes water and your teeth hurt.
  4. From the ad campaign, we pretty much know how things are going to turn out, and her pedestrian attempts at subplots are even more transparent than those in "Awakenings."
    • 38 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    They're admirable attempts to update the old cartoon's broad social satire and add some depth to these characters, but they're played too gravely (gravelly?) to work in this wild world, and they don't prompt the same silly satisfaction that the show did.
  5. Beverly Hills Cop III is made with so little spark, humor, and internal logic that it makes me better appreciate these other recent Murphy movies where the actor/comedian at least stretched his persona and attempted something apart from the action comedy mold.
  6. Some of the movie's mysteries are more unsuccessfully secular than rapturously eternal, but the doorway opens far enough to offer a few glimpses of nirvana.
  7. Unfortunately, for a number of reasons, the movie does not work, though it's difficult to sort out the “what is” from the “what was” and “what might have been.”
  8. As an updated version of the old western TV show, it does a pleasant enough job.
  9. Crooklyn is a winning work whose charms far outweigh any pitfalls.
  10. Brandon Lee's swan song is a kinetic, pounding, adrenalized feast for the senses, if not the psyche. Bursting with startling images, eclectic staging, and gorgeous neo-gothic set design.
  11. A nifty idea that goes everywhere (and nowhere).
  12. A riot of colors, Kika is sometimes sick, sometimes playful, but consistently hilarious and entertaining in ways that few films have been lately.
  13. The movie brings no new material to the screen and banks on the fact that its underage audience has an unschooled memory. Don't insult your kids with this choppy, unimaginative film product.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Writers Sara Pariott & Josann McGibbon and director Donald Petrie know how life is lived - tending to details - and have packed the film with them, such that it almost works as a slice of suburban life.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    It's just a good ol' bad ol' low-road road movie, a throwback to thirty years ago, a picture with hairy arms and a brew in one fist. Maybe that's why, as it ended, I could swear I heard Sam Peckinpah's ghost chuckling away.
  14. As out-of-whack and sophomoric as all this is, the movie sustains a rudimentary action interest.
  15. The gags are quick and barbed, but the wire seems blunted by the essentially one-note gag storyline.
  16. The real star of Red Rock West is the convoluted plot, as twisty as any backroad out south of Bakersfield and with a hell of a lot fewer p(l)otholes.
  17. Cronos is a thoughtful, intelligent film, and as a horror movie (which is, I think, its main mission in life) it's genuinely disquieting.
  18. Let's just say if you liked the last one, you'll like this one, too. Otherwise, you'll discover that it's time for Drebin, Nordberg, Capt. Hocken, and the rest to finally retire their badges.
  19. The chaos, the confusion, the ongoing struggle between personality and purpose, The Paper really gets the beat, gets how a paper comes together and the beat at which that happens.
  20. A disturbing, spare story and a return to Polanski's earlier thematic grounds; it's not Knife in the Water, but it does feature fragmenting marriages and a big boat.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    There are lots of laughs in this picture, and though at one point he teeters perilously on the brink of mush and gush, Wilson manages to regain his gently caustic comic footing.
  21. Hudsucker Proxy works more like a fairy tale in which all implausibilities are acceptable and none of it has to play by real-world rules. But it's a fairy tale without any lessons, a satire without any targets.
  22. Sirens, is unable to rise above its intrinsic prurience.
  23. Leary rehashes his Bill Hicks persona for the umpteenth time, but if you can get past the blatant rip-off of his shtick, you'll find an inspired, virulent, often hilarious film that apparently was just too much for old Saint Nick.
  24. A romantic screwball comedy, one is as intoxicated by words, dialogue and characters as by love.
  25. Depp is perfectly cast as Gilbert, by turns sullen, quiet, and caring. Depp's expressive face has long been the focal point of his talent, and he uses it to excellent effect here. It's DiCaprio as Gilbert's retarded brother Arnie who may well get the Oscar statuette. He's utterly, tragically convincing as the boy who wasn't expected to make it to ten, much less eighteen years old.
  26. Sugar Hill is arguably the most beautiful-looking crime drama since Coppola's Godfather, Part II. Forsaking the glitz and over-the-top grittiness of New Jack City and other recent NYC gangster films, director Ichaso instead opts for the lush, burnished earth-tones of the Corleone clan. It's a dark, rich film, and its lengthy running time of over two hours glides by with only a few annoying snags.

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