Austin Chronicle's Scores

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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:
  1. Positive: 4,774 out of 8778
  2. Mixed: 2,557 out of 8778
  3. Negative: 1,447 out of 8778
8778 movie reviews
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    • 36 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    3 Ninjas
    3 Ninjas is basically harmless, but it's not entertaining enough to fully engage adults or the under-12 set -- especially once the popcorn and sodas have been polished-off.
  2. Raising Cain
    When teamed with her former husband, the director James Cameron, Hurd produced some of the most memorable action films of the Eighties, including The Terminator and Aliens. Her first collaborative effort with new husband De Palma, however, has produced one of the worst efforts from a major talent in a long while.
  3. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
    Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a fun movie; so much better than it has to be and so much better than you expect it to be. Buffy is to vampire movies what Valley Girl is to Romeo and Juliet stories: a fresh reworking of an old formula staged by up-to-the-second California teens.
  4. Death Becomes Her
    In the movies, black comedy is a difficult proposition: it's a genre more suited to a ten-minute sketch than a two-hour film. For every brilliant black comedy like Dr. Strangelove, there are a hundred duds. Unfortunately, the $50-million-plus Death Becomes Her doesn't quite make the grade either, although its wicked take on modern vanity is often hysterically on-target.
  5. Enchanted April
    The movie's main weakness is the premise that sun, flowers, Mediterranean air and, certainly, castle living, are magical restoratives strong enough to salve all social ills. But these actresses and their mates are all pleasurable to watch as they go through their paces and interact.
  6. Mistress
    The performances are all strong (particularly Landau's) but, as a whole, the movie suffers from competing impulses that push and pull Mistress from comedy to drama and back again. It can't quite seem to make up its mind and as a consequence loses a lot of its steam and momentum.
  7. Honey, I Blew Up the Kid
    Take this one for what it is, an entertaining Disney comedy of really large proportions, and you'll have a ball.
  8. Cool World
    The interfacing of the two-dimensional and three-dimensional characters is so shabbily accomplished that it makes you start noticing all the other technical glitches in the work.
  9. Universal Soldier
    As the robotic duo, Lundgren and Van Damme have found roles tailored to their acting abilities.
  10. Gas Food Lodging
    It's too bad that Gas Food Lodging is as disconnected as it is because there's a real current of feeling here, especially in Balk's sympathetic performance and the film's unflinching depiction of a single woman trying to raise a family on her own. Rather than make a lasting impression, it makes only a passing one, as impermanent as the momentary view of a dying town on the highway.
  11. The Best Intentions
    For those looking to be stylishly entertained while learning more than anyone might ever want to know about the formation of the Bergman psyche, well, here it is.
  12. Prelude to a Kiss
    Prelude to a Kiss holds its own as a comedy, especially considering the lightweight competition this summer. It's just too bad it never really rises to its promise as a romance.
  13. Boomerang
    It's not even funny. Nor does it contain half the wit or charm as the old Doris Day sex comedies it so resembles.
  14. A League of Their Own
    The story of the short-lived women's baseball league gives Marshall the opportunity to examine the roots of modern feminism and have a darn fine time doing it.
  15. Unlawful Entry
    Oddly enough, Unlawful Entry can keep you from sleeping but when you wake up the next moring, it's hard to remember much about the movie.
  16. Batman Returns
    Visually, Batman Returns is marvelous to behold. There are images on that screen that make you laugh with delight and admiration for the sheer imaginativeness of it. But Burton also brings up some really interesting themes only to lose interest somewhere along the way.
  17. HouseSitter
    The problem is more the overall tone: unpleasant, divisive, snarling and deceptive.
  18. Society
    It comes across as yet another in a long line of poorly produced horror/paranoia bloodbaths, short on everything except cheesy effects.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Class Act
    Despite the lame narrative, Kid 'N Play also manage to prove that they are a smooth team who can roll with the flow of intermutual comedic energy.
  20. Sister Act
    Despite its predictability and sappiness, this conventional comedy about a worldly lounge singer who masquerades as a nun as part of a witness protection program busts loose as one of the funniest -- and happiest -- films in a long time.
  21. Far and Away
    There is a richness to Far and Away that seems wasted on its simple love story straight out of "It Happened One Night."
  22. Alien 3
    Fincher's camerawork gives the movie a jittery feel, and his video-trained eye lends the prison sets the look of a dilapidated cathedral, but again, there's really nothing here that we haven't seen before, and better, at that. Nice title, though.
  23. Encino Man
    Like some sort of evil Hollywood hybrid, Encino Man begs, borrows and steals the worst bits from both Iceman and Fast Times at Ridgemont High and ends up being just as vacuous as you think it is.
  24. Europa
    In the end, Zentropa is above all unique in its radical take on the inherent confusion of postwar Europe, offering the viewer a glimpse like none he has had before.
  25. Lethal Weapon 3
    It's bigger, but it ain't necessarily better.
  26. One False Move
    The way the destinies of four people converge in a small Arkansas town in One False Move is nothing short of wondrous.
  27. Poison Ivy
    Problem is, the movie shifts gears abruptly in mid-story and what had previously been merely melodramatic extremism turns into hyperbolic horror.
  28. Split Second
    Split Second turns out to be one of those dreaded “so-bad-it's-good” debacles, and a marginal one at that. Ed Wood, where are you when we need you?
  29. White Sands
    Even the usually unbearable Rourke, who plays yet another psychopath here, is surprisingly subdued and effective -- his performance gives the film its menacing undercurrent. Although Daniel Pyne's otherwise sharp screenplay falls short in explaining why who's doing what to whom, perhaps a little ambiguity is necessary in a movie in which appearances are deceiving. After all, sometimes, you've just got to take these things on faith.
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