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. Hostel certainly delivers in the gore department, and Roth, who knows and loves his favorite genre at least as well as the gang over at the Alamo Drafthouse, peppers the proceedings with various witty in-jokes.
  2. Stupid, yes, but fun nonetheless.
  3. Maybe everyone involved was hoping that no one would see this movie, but Madsen is the only one who should fear anyone seeing his work.
  4. Like its images, The Promise billows through the imagination as it unfolds but it leaves little lasting impression once its last feather has fluttered.
  5. Rather than providing a foil for Bill Murray in "Lost in Translation" or embodying the mostly silent model for the painter Vermeer in "The Girl With One Pearl Earring," Johansson actually has to emote prodigiously here, and she is just not up to the task.
  6. Wolf Creek (much like the new Saw horror franchise) exists for no reason other than to inflict an acute sense of inescapable and inscrutable torture upon the story's victims – and, by extension, the audience. If that's what you're into, Wolf Creek should be a satisfying assault.
  7. Hallström's latest is fine but unambitious, content with what it is – an arthouse trifle for the masses.
  8. Fans of "The Graduate" should skip this strange comedy.
  9. As the camera moves through the tall grass of this new world, there comes the realization that we could be within any one of Terrence Malick's movies, any one of the previous three stunners he has made in his 35-year-long career.
  10. The Matador is anything but predictable, and therein lies its sublime and fascinating charm.
  11. For those who only recall Bana from his bland showing as Ang Lee's super-thyroidial meltdown monster, his performance here is a revelation.
  12. What's compelling about Caché is not the answer to the whodunit but Haneke's exacting invocation of palpable tension.
  13. Whether Ringer, with its mild comedy and milder messages about inclusiveness and tolerance, will be embraced by Knoxville's hardcore "Jackass" fans remains to be seen. But we can at least trust that the Farrellys will stay the course.
  14. It's the snobs versus the slobs! And this holiday's no picnic!
  15. It's all well and good to run a scroll of corporate evil-doers at the end of the film as in Dick and Jane, but if these robber barons were skewered properly along the way, such heavy-handed, last-minute tactics wouldn't be necessary.
  16. Moves with the stately speed of most Merchant/Ivory productions, which is to say too damn slow, but the film is snatched from the jaws of tedium by Doyle's resplendently lush camerawork and Fiennes and Richardson's spot-on performances.
  17. There are just too many damn characters, with the best ones taking a backseat to the dullish love quadrangle.
  18. Don't let the near-impossible-to-remember title keep you away from this singular and slightly surreal Tommy Lee Jones scorcher.
  19. In the world of Mel Brooks, everything is fair game and anything is good for a laugh. God bless Mel Brooks.
  20. The film's voice talent is good, as are the characterizations. However, the film's computer animation leaves much to be desired.
  21. 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.
  22. It's possible to point to some weak spots in Brokeback – its seeming multiple endings, the lack of clarity about certain images, some digressions – but there is no movie this year that has moved my heart more than Brokeback Mountain.
  23. Well, we're not in "Chicago" anymore, or even its soundstage approximation, but that hasn't stopped Oscar-nominated director Rob Marshall from fashioning another epic spectacle out of two squabbling women in (a sort-of) show business.
  24. Dench deserves better, and unfortunately it will probably be a long time before she gets another starring role in a movie custom-made for an actress her age.
  25. Narnia is nearly saved by those immensely likable and altogether stiff-upper-lippy Pevensie kids.
  26. Shot in just over a week with a minuscule budget, this artsy thriller feels like a one-off from Shimizu's Ju-on films but is probably worth a look for fans.
  27. All one needs to know about Burt Munro, the real-life New Zealand codger and Indian motorcycle enthusiast who in 1967 set a land speed record that still stands today, comes midway through this unabashedly sentimental wall of schmaltz.
  28. While its heart is in the right place, Aeon Flux's head is just a little too high to make much sense.
  29. Writer-director Duncan Tucker does little to develop his narrative setup beyond the basic and obvious, and his film begins to feel more like an exercise than a fully realized story.
  30. Awesome.

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