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. All the film’s accoutrements are note-perfect from the costuming to the music, performances, and set design. Messy family life and moral ideals perfuse the film’s landscape but the film shows how these things can become the foundational elements of an individual’s life.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    Throughout, Horan tactfully pulls from archival interviews and footage of the singer to mark her meteoric rise as a teenager in the 1970s; her tumultuous, tabloid-fodder, 1980s career; and her effective blackballing from the industry when she became too rock & roll and irreverent for country sensibilities.
  2. Something in the Dirt doesn't hide its answers, because there may not be any answers. It's the danger of obsessing over the mutability of facts that is its true and fascinating subject. In an era of post-reality politics, Something in the Dirt may be a quiet wake-up call.
  3. Emotional investment is what makes any film work, and Good Night Oppy’s main issue is that it’s too focused on accurately portraying the history of the project over bringing together the people who poured their lives into making it a success.
  4. Causeway is at its most successful when the film is patient, giving the space to have its characters ruminate over how their past experiences don’t have to define their futures. It’s the kind of film that only succeeds with incredible performances to back it up, and Neugebauer achieves that with Lawrence and Henry guiding her film in such a touching, beautiful way.
  5. Aftersun is lyrical without ever being obtuse, and it's a film that flourishes when attention is paid to details.
  6. While it can get rightfully goose-bumpy at times, what distinguishes Till from most other well-intentioned films telling similarly themed stories set during this tumultuous era of American history is the absence of white saviors. It’s about time.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Of those who will seek this out, they’re either going to really dig it or just absolutely loathe it. There is no middle ground here, but Riseborough’s performance deserves to be seen by everyone.
  7. Guilt, shame, and regret are all frequent topics of discussion, as the family comes to terms with this impending event in wildly different ways. But however acutely intimate and emotionally formidable Last Flight Home can be (it is relentlessly both), it is thankfully tempered by the human being at the center of it.
  8. Gorgeously animated in 3D in Daxiong's signature, hyperdetailed/hyperstylized artwork, Eternal Spring is a chronicle of dissidence, and Daxiong's attempts to come to terms with how the movement got to this point of non-violent resistance - an act with which he disagreed because of the backlash.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    For a heavy-duty subject, Call Jane is anything but, moving along almost like a lighthearted Lifetime movie.
  9. Every laugh-out-loud line is punctuated by an ever-present sense of both despair and unpredictability.
  10. Maybe they thought that for the amount of time this movie had been gestating it just had to be something special. But for as long as this thing has been cooking, the end result is seriously underbaked.
  11. As masterful as the character it portrays, TÁR is a textured, finely calibrated, stunningly composed, and thoroughly contemporary study. Its chords reverberate long after the music fades.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    I guess if a generic, run-of-the-mill rom-com floats your boat, you’d probably enjoy this one. Ticket to Paradise did not, in fact, float my boat.
  12. From a soundtrack of First Nations artists – including a score by the award-winning electronic group the Halluci Nation (fka A Tribe Called Red) – and stunning landscape cinematography by Guy Godfree, there are so many dynamic elements in Slash/Back that cause the film to punch way above its weight class.
  13. Forbidden love! Terrible betrayals! Decades-old repressed truths! The plot elements are all there for something emotional wrecking, but Grandage and his cast approach it with such enormous restraint, the oxygen is cut off completely. This is bloodless filmmaking.
  14. The twists and convolutions can seem overwhelming, but Park sustains this high-wire act effortlessly. It’s about trust, you see, about letting go, and doing so will reveal as sublimely satisfying a romantic mystery as you're likely to see.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Excellently executed and expertly written, Traveling Light comes to us as a grave, razor-sharp reminder of not what used to be, but still is.
  15. The rainswept city streets overflowing with graffiti and half-torn leaflets are poignant tableaux of melancholy, the jazz-infused soundtrack by Denis’ house band, Tindersticks, unifying each moment. But as evocative and intoxicating as these elements are, they never quite fit into a cohesive whole, as Trish and Daniel tryst their way to the Costa Rican border.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    Riotsville, USA is a definitely worth your time and attention.
  16. An uninspired, mechanical tale, derivative of a first draft Twilight Zone episode or the chorus of that one Neil Young song whose name escapes me.
  17. While the documentary offers a few delicate glimpses of a self the writer did not openly share during her 74-year lifetime – she lived as a lesbian, albeit privately – it falls short of conveying the vital essence of this modern and enigmatic woman of her time.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    If you want a movie filled with kills, blood, fights galore, and more than a little Scott Adkins, Accident Man: Hitman’s Holiday is for you.
  18. Instead of skipping lightly over rough seas, Triangle of Sadness bobs to shore like a floating sarcophagus.
  19. What we’re left with is a plodding, pompous horror, only memorable for the ways that it completely drops the ball in sidelining its headliner to take a poor shot at turning this into a series about something oh-so-ever important. It’s just as silly as any of the original sequels and is maybe even more egregious given the inherent benefit of hindsight and the fact that this outing seems to think it’s outsmarting the formula.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    What unfolds is a deeply honest and perturbing look at petty viciousness, teenage desire, and two very different causes of psychological scarring: receiving suffering, and inflicting it.
  20. For years it feels like the upcoming tequila shortage has been whispered about. But with so many celebrities announcing their own tequila brands, sometimes it’s hard to grasp the dire situation many tequila plants are facing. Juan Pablo González’s film Dos Estaciones centers around this very real crisis, a subtle reflection on the political and environmental pressures Mexican-owned tequila factories are facing.
  21. Tilt your head and you can catch the ghost of combustive screen trios past: Design for Living, Band of Outsiders, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. But Amsterdam’s three leads – individually charismatic performers all – collectively can’t sell the film’s sentimental, facile idea that love beats all, even those pesky fascists. And that breaks my heart a little.
  22. For a film that is sold on the image and idea of a big, singing, dancing crocodile – who is otherwise mute when not belting out his tunes – there seems to be a real disinterest in any notable sight gags or physicality to Lyle as a character.

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