Chicago Reader's Scores

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For 6,312 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 42% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 56% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 4.9 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 60
Highest review score: 100 I Stand Alone
Lowest review score: 0 Old Dogs
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2,983 out of 6312
  2. Mixed: 2,456 out of 6312
  3. Negative: 873 out of 6312
6312 movie reviews
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  1. From Beyond
    Gordon still hasn't mastered the simplest filmmaking techniques. The gross-out sliminess and sexual acting out are supposed to provide a purgative release, but all Gordon does is gawk at the excess for what seems like forever: his voyeurism is too unpleasant for casual entertainment, too mild to constitute a pornographic vision.
  2. Barfly
    The first four letters say it all.
  3. Outland
    The failure of director-writer Peter Hyams to put any weight whatever behind the moral issues (crude as they are) makes this merely violent nonsense. 
  4. Rambo: First Blood Part II
    The picture seems deliberately trite, blunt, and manipulative, as if the producers didn't trust their audience to respond to anything else.
  5. Heaven's Gate
    Well, it really is a stinker, a compendium of The Deer Hunter's weaknesses (of plotting, narration, dialogue, and character) with few of its lyrical strengths.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 37 Critic Score
    It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
    Even Cinerama (its original format) can't expand on the poverty of comic invention.
  7. Outrageous Fortune
    Director Arthur Hiller (Love Story, Silver Streak) just puts his apolitical head down and digs into the mess without worrying about style or sense.
  8. Frances
    Jessica Lange brings so much energy and personal involvement to her portrayal of Frances Farmer that you can't help but feel sorry for her; nothing else in the film remotely matches her talent and dedication, and she seems alone—and even slightly absurd—in her feverish creativity.
  9. The Great Santini
    Overcalculated, thoroughly false humanist mush—one of those “real movies about real people” without a single authentic moment.
  10. Leave It to Beaver
    Dead-on imitations of some of the characters from the television series created by Bob Mosher and Joe Connelly will seem pointlessly stylized to viewers unfamiliar with the old sitcom.
  11. The Heavenly Kid
    Cary Medoway uses backlighting and spatially distorting lenses to give the film the hyped-up look of a rock video, but his handling of actors is so inept that he must rely on the rock score to make the most basic emotional points.
  12. The Choirboys
    To my mind, this is one of Robert Aldrich’s worst films, but clearly not everyone agrees.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 37 Critic Score
    Rollerball
    Lifeless, uninspired, and crammed with enough hints of intellectual consistency to give the socially conscious critical establishment shivers of excitement.
  14. Agnes of God
    Despite all the anguished huffing and puffing, there isn't a single authentic moment in it, and all you're left with in the end is the fading memory of two overscaled, Oscar-bait performances.
  15. Loser
    Intriguing but poorly executed ideas are the basis of this not entirely unappealing romantic comedy.
  16. Knockaround Guys
    Malkovich is severely miscast as a heartless and conniving thug admired by the hero (apparently Charles Grodin was busy), and Hopper, in a paper-thin role, barely registers.
  17. Osmosis Jones
    Cathartically disgusting adventure movie.
  18. A Tale of Two Sisters
    Awkward storytelling and spotty exposition reduce it to a string of rude shocks--not even the eventual denouement provides a lucid enough account of where this is all coming from.
  19. Catch That Kid
    The plot of this PG action thriller, a remake of the 2002 Danish film Klatretosen, is so full of holes that even middle schoolers might give it the raspberry, but a bigger problem is the three leads' lack of on-screen chemistry.
  20. Murder by Death
    Even Neil Simon fans (and they do exist, believe it or not) will probably be bummed out by this stunningly unfunny 1976 parody of detective films.
  21. The Island of Dr. Moreau
    John Frankenheimer is credited as director, but given the scrambled, multiple agendas at play here, he seems to function more like a bemused traffic cop.
  22. The Tempest
    For a filmmaker like Julie Taymor, Shakespeare's language isn't nearly as enticing as Prospero's violent manipulation of the elements, and this screen adaptation of the play-like her egregious Beatles movie "Across the Universe" (2007)-is primarily an exercise in eccentric (and, I would argue, empty) spectacle.
  23. The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day
    After nine years, Duffy has coughed up a sequel, and like the first movie it's energetic, proudly juvenile, and reverently derivative.
  24. Monster-in-Law
    To boost this movie's rating to "worth seeing" would make me feel like a publicist or simply a dope.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Return
    A soporific ghost story.
  26. The Ten Commandments
    The panoramic backgrounds have a silky beauty, but the characters are cheaply rendered with doll faces, enlarged musculature, tiny joints, and clunky movement. It's like watching Max Headroom lead his people out of Egypt.
  27. They
    The grad student and her boyfriend (Marc Blucas) are blandly written and the story never develops any psychological depth; the paranormal explanation for what's going on is equally slight.
  28. City of Ember
    A murky, directionless plot sinks this big-budget fantasy despite Martin Laing's elaborate production design; the dark, industrial-looking sets often recall "Brazil" but without that film's thrilling sense of an imagination run amok.
  29. The Thing
    Carpenter's direction is slow, dark, and stately; he seems to be aiming for an enveloping, novelistic kind of effect, but all he gets is heaviness.
  30. Behind Enemy Lines
    The end justifies the means as long as everything turns out OK for the not-too-obedient American soldier and everyone else who enjoys Coca-Cola.
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