Bill Stamets

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Chicago Reader, Chicago Sun-Times
For 108 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 59% higher than the average critic
  • 5% same as the average critic
  • 36% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 2.5 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Bill Stamets' Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 68
Highest review score: 100 Ida
Lowest review score: 12 The Room
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 83 out of 108
  2. Mixed: 20 out of 108
  3. Negative: 5 out of 108
108 movie reviews
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    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Bill Stamets
    Ida
    Ida reaches spiritual depth through affecting performances rendered in sublime black-and-white compositions.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 100 Bill Stamets
    The Act of Killing
    [A] stunning “documentary of the imagination."
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Bill Stamets
    Riding Giants
    This is vicarious cinema at its best.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 88 Bill Stamets
    The Salt of the Earth
    This moving, Oscar-nominated documentary is an odyssey of a tragic observer.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 88 Bill Stamets
    Manakamana
    Despite our narrow angle on Nepal, Manakamana peers into lives at close range.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 88 Bill Stamets
    Hogtown
    Hogtown is the most original film made in Chicago about Chicago to date.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 88 Bill Stamets
    The Wall
    A sublime meditation on solitude.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 88 Bill Stamets
    Reality
    The first-rate Italian comedy Reality — which fakes Pope Benedict appearing in St. Peter’s Square — likens consecration to elevating an “everyman” to pop celebrity.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 88 Bill Stamets
    Like Father, Like Son
    Like Father, Like Son is always wise about the quandary faced by the two fathers and the two mothers.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 88 Bill Stamets
    Leviathan
    The masterful script deals with telling words.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 88 Bill Stamets
    A Touch of Sin
    A Touch of Sin is humanist critique of the country’s turn to capitalism.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 88 Bill Stamets
    Citizenfour
    This thoughtful film is designed with taste. Music is minimal. Cuing a little Nine Inch Nails at the end, Poitras enables “citizenfour” to commit an act of reverse surveillance on the NSA.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 88 Bill Stamets
    The Small Town (Kasaba)
    Poetic Turkish tale. Nuri Bilge Ceylan shot this entrancing black-and-white story in his hometown, from a story written by his sister and with a cast of friends and relatives. [20 Oct 1998, p.37]
    • Chicago Sun-Times
    • 45 Metascore
    • 80 Bill Stamets
    Full Frontal
    Catherine Keener is wonderfully weird as a vicious vice president of human relations, and Nicky Katt is brilliant as an actor playing Hitler in a stage play.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 80 Bill Stamets
    Le Cercle Rouge (1970)
    Key action points are edited with finesse, but the denouement, with its dutiful hail of gunfire, is heartless and mechanical.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Bill Stamets
    The Wild Thornberrys Movie
    Screenwriter Kate Boutilier provides plenty of sharp patter, and Paul Simon contributed the catchy song "Father and Daughter."
    • tbd Metascore
    • 75 Bill Stamets
    Algren
    Michael Caplan’s Algren is a beguiling appreciation of the novelist, reporter and essayist.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 75 Bill Stamets
    Nelson Algren: The End Is Nothing, the Road Is All...
    Algren admirer Kurt Vonnegut, a novelist and a Long Island neighbor, called the Chicago exile ”the loneliest man I ever knew.” Caplan and Mueller invite viewers to befriend this contrary figure.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 75 Bill Stamets
    For No Good Reason
    Lovingly detailed with animated and archival imagery, For No Good Reason shares the fine-grain layered style of its subject.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 75 Bill Stamets
    Money for Nothing: Inside the Federal Reserve
    [An] informing if not inflaming documentary.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 75 Bill Stamets
    How I Live Now
    Set in England, the dystopic “Brazil” and “28 Days Later” both ended with pastoral idylls for adult couples. How I Live Now offers adolescents a lovely vision of holistic healing in the same countryside.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 75 Bill Stamets
    One Direction: This Is Us
    The true strength of Spurlock’s documentary is how he showcases the behind-the-scenes, off-stage personalities of the One Direction boys.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 75 Bill Stamets
    Blue Is the Warmest Color
    This saga of romance works with an unromantic style.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Bill Stamets
    Le Week-End
    This late adulthood lark is a treat.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 75 Bill Stamets
    Antiviral
    Panic about pop culture is not new. Yet Antiviral finds a novel angle of attack.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Bill Stamets
    About Baghdad
    Antoon injects an occasional note of rancor, but the more radical point here is showing how freely Baghdad residents now speak in public on politics and how widely their views range. [12 Nov 2005, p.35]
    • Chicago Sun-Times
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Bill Stamets
    Following the Ninth: In the Footsteps of Beethoven's Final Symphony
    Following the Ninth: In the Footsteps of Beethoven’s Final Symphony is one more bravo for the iconic masterpiece.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Bill Stamets
    Only Lovers Left Alive
    Jim Jarmusch stocks his latest low-key indie with more than his usual characters in low-velocity drift. The Akron-born auteur infuses the title couple of Only Lovers Left Alive with his taste for culture, if not cuisine.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Bill Stamets
    The Unknown Known
    Focusing on Rumsfeld’s 2001-06 stint at the Pentagon, Morris scrutinizes his rhetoric and rationale for attacking Iraq and Afghanistan. Tactics and costs take a back seat to semantics.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Bill Stamets
    As It Is in Heaven
    A disquieting film about testing faith.
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