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. Mikey and Nicky
    Mikey & Nicky is commonly, and unfairly, categorized as a John Cassavetes knock-off, which diminishes the originality of Elaine May's screenplay and this character study she crafted especially for co-stars Cassavetes and Peter Falk. She unleashes the darkest, most mercurial side of Cassavetes, and in Falk finds the actor's moral ambiguity that had been obscured as a result of his then-popular run as TV's Columbo.
  2. Paprika
    Schizophrenia never looked so good or so mesmerizing as it does here, and Paprika, while certainly not suitable for kids, manages to capture the childlike, helter-skelter chaos and curiosity of the human mind better than any other animated film.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Il Postino: The Postman
    With lyrical beauty and memorable performances, The Postman articulates many feelings that seem to defy explanation.
  4. The Hate U Give
    Screenwriter Audrey Wells adapts Thomas’ YA novel with a sure hand and the supporting cast – especially Hornsby’s deeply protective and loving father, and Sabrina Carter as one of Starr’s white besties who just doesn’t get it – are pitch perfect.
  5. Hairspray
    If ever there were a happy summer movie, it’s Hairspray. But for all its bubbly musical numbers and effervescent good humor, this film adaptation of the hit Broadway musical feels oddly lacquered -- it’s John Waters by way of Disney.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    I'm the One That I Want
    The real joy of watching this movie is seeing a stand-up comedian who is incredibly comfortable with herself, her material, and her audience.
  7. King Kong
    A sweet-natured romantic fable, albeit one that packs in carnivorous cockroaches, rampaging brontosaurs, and the ever-Freudian Empire State Building among its requisite emotional baggage. And, too, it's a corker of an action/monster movie.
  8. Chicago
    Delicious.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    That's Entertainment! III
    Perhaps sensing that audiences will believe they have already savored the finest MGM musical moments in That's Entertainment! and That's Entertainment! II, the studio has sweetened the pot by including outtakes from its features, songs and scenes deleted prior to the films' original runs.
  10. Daughters of the Dust
    Neither slave nor mammy, junkie nor maid, these dawn-of-the-twentieth century African-American women are an unstereotypical breed unto themselves.
  11. Goodnight Mommy
    An unnerving descent into the extreme, anxious corners of a mother’s relationship to and comprehension of her 9-year-old twin sons – and vice versa – gone weirdly haywire, Goodnight Mommy is required viewing for both lovers of neo-gothic paranoia and mommy-haters everywhere.
  12. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
    It’s blunt but not grating, a result of Johnson’s deft touch as a filmmaker. He toes a line of getting too gratuitous, with maybe one too many celebrity cameos, but there’s an infectious quality to the worlds he builds onscreen.
  13. A White, White Day
    There’s a restrained minimalism that becomes captivating, as Ingimundur tries to work out what to do with his grief.
  14. Summer 1993
    Summer 1993 reveals itself to us as if it were a scrapbook of memories tumbling forth. Some are clearer than others, yet the movie retains a subjective, childlike point of view.
  15. The Macaluso Sisters
    Is there such a thing as too much pathos? Trick question, because there is not. So, should you find yourself a bit emotionally imbalanced these days, and the aggressively optimistic charms of Ted Lasso have proven to be a placebo, come see how the other half lives and seek out The Macaluso Sisters, a beautiful bummer that is the perfect elixir of Aristotelian purgation, and a restorative for your soul.
  16. Midnight in Paris
    Quite simply, Midnight in Paris is charming – très charmant, to ape the argot of the locals. I say that somewhat tongue-in-cheek, as this is very much an outsider's valentine to the City of Lights.
  17. Mirai
    An anime version of "Mr. Mom" this is not. Director Hosoda’s clear-eyed story allows for comic moments of fatherly ineptitude but focuses just as often on the marital and familial stress this sudden role reversal causes.
  18. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning
    Even at 163 minutes, there’s so much crammed in that threatens to make Dead Reckoning Part One feel at once overstuffed and overfamiliar. So it’s a credit to the film that, even as the third- or fourth-best of the series, it’s such an exceptional piece of entertainment, one to serve as a reminder that we can and should expect more from our ultra expensive tentpole franchises.
  19. Love and Death on Long Island
    The height of drollery, a cheeky ode to the liberating power of popular culture, and a fascinating look at an old dog learning some new tricks.
  20. Benediction
    Less adventurous in structure than many in Davies’ oeuvre, Benediction is both expressionistic and vivid in recounting selected particulars of an outwardly fascinating life, though something feels missing in the totality of things.
  21. A War
    A quietly searing drama about morality, priorities, and absolute truth. It’s told in a matter-of-fact manner that eschews melodrama, yet is loaded with haunting human moments and circumstances.
  22. She Dies Tomorrow
    She Dies Tomorrow often feels more like an experiment than a film – which would be fine, but Siemetz doesn't do much to define her metrics for success or failure.
  23. Living
    While though the influence of 19th-century Russian literature has always been evident and admitted in Ishiguro's work, Living is even further removed from the The Death of Ivan Ilyich than Kurosawa's film. It is even smaller and more intimate, and much of its suppressed wonder comes from a career-best performance from Nighy.
  24. The Story of the Weeping Camel
    The movie is slight but transfixing.
  25. The World's End
    The World’s End affectionately takes a page from our Fifties sci-fi films.
  26. 17 Blocks
    Even when the direction is heavy-handed, the Sanfords are just too compelling to ignore.
  27. Lost Illusions
    Don’t let the early 19th-century France setting of this adaptation of Honoré de Balzac’s serialized novel Illusions Perdues fool you into assuming Lost Illusions is just another stuffy period piece lacking in modern sensibility.
  28. Menashe
    The end result? Compassion for the (literally) poor schmuck conjoined with a genuine sympathy toward his right-minded bunglings, noodle kugel and all.
  29. District 9
    Blomkamp and his entire cast and crew have created an instant genre classic that transcends the self-limiting ghetto implied by the term "science fiction" and instead, like precursors such as Robert Wise's "The Day the Earth Stood Still," engages not only the mind but the heart as well. It's magnificent.
  30. The World
    It's a magnificent film – thoughtful but not distant, aesthetically and technically sophisticated but staged with restraint and delicacy.
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