Austin Chronicle's Scores

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:
8783 movie reviews
  1. Fans of "The Graduate" should skip this strange comedy.
  2. Stupefyingly inane buddy-cop comedy.
  3. We're treated to such a broad panoply of godawful dialogue, righteously shoddy acting, and, worst of all for an action blockbuster of this sort, subpar effects work, that's it's all you can do not to giggle helplessly.
  4. Nearly as much fun as a case of scabies, Beverly Hills Ninja transports the viewer into a mystical realm where pratfall is king and mediocrity is its own reward.
  5. Bad and baffling from the get-go, probably the only good thing to come out of this Rollerball is the boon it gives the porn industry in terms of another ready-made title to spoof.
  6. The film feels like a truly awful "Saturday Night Live" sketch padded out to such unholy lengths as to make "It's Pat" seems like a comic masterstroke.
  7. College, a film so persistently loud and annoying that it single-handedly makes the case for drugging yourself with a roofie.
  8. You'd have to be a real a..hole to hate this movie, loaded as it is with adorable animals. Sadly the task falls to me.
  9. But is it funny? Not really.
  10. The only remotely entertaining aspects of Insidious come from Whannell and Sampson as a comic pair of hypercompetitive hipster ghost hunters, and even that schtick is repeated ad nauseam.
  11. So much is going on, and so many bizarre and seemingly random subplots collide in Dreamcatcher, that the film feels like some crazy patchwork quilt sewn by a schizophrenic seamstress. It’s not only confusing, but dull, as well.
  12. And the rest of the movie? Same screaming, same endless chases, same breasts, same blood, same axe, same lack of explanation, same ending primed for another sequel. Is there a pattern emerging here? In short: same as it ever was, same as it ever was.
    • 14 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    The In Crowd is nothing but a deadly dull business.
  13. This biting parody of flyover-state beauty contests feels like a bad made-for-TV movie of the week.
  14. Bland to the point of pointlessness.
  15. Make Ben Stein some more money (and get a good, mordant chuckle while you're at it) by checking out this loopy, factually befuddled documentary that should manage the not-inconsiderable feat of insulting Christians, Jews, Muslims, and those nutty sci-guys who go in for Darwin by way of bad teeth and Einsteinian hair styles.
  16. It's only February but I can already name the year's winner of Most Thoughtless Gay Stereotype in Film award. The dubious honor goes to The Roommate.
  17. Captivity is the kind of film that gives torture porn a bad name.
  18. Reaches toward new heights of comic laziness and succeeds beyond anyone's wildest expectations.
    • 17 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    I've rarely seen a movie as hostile as this one, both to its audience and to its protagonists, and I don't think I realized before just how mean-spirited comedy can get (and I was raised on the Three Stooges).
  19. I'll maim, chop, slash, and I'll kill, Just as I please.
  20. It boggles the mind that Saddam Hussein and assorted cohorts have finally won their rightful place in the global noose while various and sundry villains associated with this third entry in the Santa Claus franchise of flaccidly feel-good, winter nostrums will no doubt be allowed to walk the Earth with nary a qualm nor backward glance.
  21. The only question audiences are likely to be asking their higher power in the wake of viewing the film is, "What the fuck?"
  22. By film's end I was fantasizing that Peter Stormare would drop by with his "Fargo" wood-chipper in tow, but it was not to be. Appalling.
  23. The kind of winking, disingenuous youth comedy that tries to play it both ways, dangling the twins as fetish objects and then yanking them back on the leash because, you know, this is a family film.
  24. Wiper doesn't exploit the possibilities of his setting, so the only conflict is the fighting, the only suspense comes from waiting for the next character to pop out from behind a tree and do something possibly interesting.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace is a bad movie, wrongheaded in its concept and empty in its execution.
  25. Avoid it like the plagues.
  26. Jawdroppingly bad, this adaptation of Michael Crichton's 1980 novel about a talking ape named Amy and a fabled lost city deep in the jungles of central Africa is as sophisticated in execution as a Jungle Jim movie.
    • 11 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    SM5 tanked opening weekend, which may toll the knell for this property.

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