J.R. Jones

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Chicago Reader
For 1,513 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 43% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 54% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 6.5 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

J.R. Jones' Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 59
Highest review score: 100 The Baader Meinhof Complex
Lowest review score: 0 Bad Boys II
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 697 out of 1513
  2. Mixed: 598 out of 1513
  3. Negative: 218 out of 1513
1513 movie reviews
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    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 J.R. Jones
    Willard
    The chills are functional at best and the attempts at pathos negligible.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 70 J.R. Jones
    How Do You Know
    The result is highly entertaining but hardly ranks with the director's best work; a dramatic subplot involving the money guy and his corrupt father (a disengaged Jack Nicholson) never gains traction.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 J.R. Jones
    13 Assassins
    This slam-bang remake of a 1963 feature by Eichi Kudo builds slowly, accumulating characters and themes, then explodes into a prolonged and masterful battle sequence inside a deserted town.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 J.R. Jones
    Crazy Heart
    Robert Duvall, who played a similar character in Bruce Beresford's "Tender Mercies" (1983), turns up in a supporting role.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 J.R. Jones
    Phone Booth
    Proves that a movie can be true to life and still seem utterly preposterous.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 J.R. Jones
    The Secret of the Grain
    Given the movie's slow, careful development, I was hardly prepared for the cold-sweat suspense of the last half hour.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 J.R. Jones
    Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
    Two prequels' worth of scene setting pays off in the politically resonant Revenge of the Sith.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 J.R. Jones
    Fantastic Mr. Fox
    The result is an instant classic. The material allows Anderson to neutralize the most irritating aspects of his work (the precociousness, the sense of white-bread privilege) and maximize the most endearing (the comic timing, the dollhouse ordering of invented worlds).
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 J.R. Jones
    Chop Shop
    In this littered environment there's no such thing as trash, only salvage, and the biggest threat to the siblings' humanity is a creeping tendency to think of themselves as commodities as well.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 J.R. Jones
    Last Chance Harvey
    Lately, most of Dustin Hoffman's roles have been grinning crackpots or talking animals, so accepting the 71-year-old actor as a romantic lead who could fetch the likes of Emma Thompson requires some suspension of disbelief.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 J.R. Jones
    Avatar
    A quantum leap in movie magic; watching it, I began to understand how people in 1933 must have felt when they saw "King Kong."
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 J.R. Jones
    Animal Kingdom
    A densely textured moral universe that makes good on his metaphoric title-and in this case, the animals are perfectly willing to eat their young.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 J.R. Jones
    Hugo
    Scorsese transforms this innocent tale into an ardent love letter to the cinema and a moving plea for film preservation.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 J.R. Jones
    Drag Me to Hell
    After directing three Spider-Man movies, Sam Raimi makes a masterful return to the horror genre.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 J.R. Jones
    Up in the Air
    Reitman deserves credit for going through with a bitterly ironic ending, but the movie is marred by its warm condescension toward flyover country.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 J.R. Jones
    Milk
    Milk is steeped in the street-level details of acquiring and applying power, and a few early episodes show how clearly Milk understood the economic component.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 J.R. Jones
    U2 3D
    The 3-D element is unobtrusively handled, except when it perfectly re-creates the woman who's always perched on her boyfriend's shoulders in front of you at a concert.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 J.R. Jones
    Kill Bill: Vol. 2
    This installment delivers more of the pleasures that made Tarantino the wunderkind of 90s cinema: offbeat scumbag characters, narrative sleight of hand, an extraordinary visual sense, and affectionate genre pillaging.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 J.R. Jones
    Lake of Fire
    You may not leave the theater having switched sides, but you'll probably respect the other side more, and that in itself would be a victory for human life.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 J.R. Jones
    Tyson
    The resulting portrait shows a seriously troubled man whose brutality was bred into him on the punishing streets of Brooklyn and whose modest wisdom seems as hard-won as any title. Tyson's fight career may be over, but his battle with himself has many rounds to go.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 J.R. Jones
    The White Diamond
    This 2004 video documentary by Werner Herzog arrives in town while his hair-raising "Grizzly Man" is still playing, and it's a fascinating companion piece even though his manipulations are more obvious.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 J.R. Jones
    Trouble the Water
    It's a damning indictment of a national disgrace, but it also reveals the incredible faith and resilience of people who have nothing to rely on but themselves.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 0 J.R. Jones
    The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
    This might have had some potential as a German exercise in self-examination, but as a tony BBC Films production, with the actors all speaking British-accented English (including Jersey girl Farmiga), it reeks of self-righteousness.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 J.R. Jones
    Pride & Prejudice
    The movie flames to life whenever Donald Sutherland moves into frame as the young ladies' relaxed, humorous, and magnificently rueful father.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 J.R. Jones
    Monsieur Lazhar
    Into this cauldron walks the title character, a gentle Algerian refugee with his own history of terrible loss, and as he tries to take over the dead woman's class, his rocky relationship with the kids pushes both him and them to new levels of empathy, understanding, and forgiveness.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 J.R. Jones
    Thumbsucker
    Vince Vaughn in a wonderfully low-key performance.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 90 J.R. Jones
    Fear(s) of the Dark
    Sinister and beautiful, this mostly black-and-white animation from France culls the talents of six artists and designers.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 J.R. Jones
    Tell No One
    Cluzet's brooding performance propels the movie, and writer-director Guillaume Canet, best known here for his own acting work in "Joyeux Noel" and "Love Me If You Dare," skillfully orchestrates the cascading revelations.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 J.R. Jones
    The Illusionist
    The dialogue is multilingual but largely incidental to the action; the physical comedy is gracefully rendered and often magical.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 J.R. Jones
    The Deep Blue Sea
    Davies adapted a classic 1952 play by Terence Rattigan, whose centenary is being celebrated in Britain this year, and though you might have trouble sorting out the film's competing levels of authorship, one element attributable solely to Davies is the strategic use of music and quiet on the soundtrack.
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