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. Sweet Bird of Youth
    [Brooks's] second Williams adaptation (1962) is literally a form of emasculation that offers little indication of what made the original play interesting (especially in Elia Kazan’s stage production), despite the fact that Paul Newman and Geraldine Page are called on to reprise their original roles—as a hustler returning to his southern hometown and a Hollywood has-been—and do a fair job with Brooks’s hopeless script.
  2. Pokémon: The Movie 2000
    The feature has some lovely effects.
  3. TRON
    The best visual design in the world doesn't mean a thing unless there's someone around with a rudimentary sense of story. Jeff Bridges, playing the human hero sucked into the machine, has to carry the film's entire burden of charm and appeal; he seems to have freaked out under the strain, turning in some surpassingly weird, alienating work.
  4. Behind the Sun
    The appearance of circus performers in any film not by Fellini usually bodes ill, and it does so here.
  5. The Beach
    A narrative that tries to juggle thriller elements, tons of pop culture imagery, and way too much philosophical baggage.
  6. Vanity Fair
    The first half is better than average for an opulent Classics Illustrated film, thanks to realistic period detail, brisk storytelling, and Reese Witherspoon as the saucy rags-to-riches Becky Sharp. Then the whole lumbering weight of the production catches up with the filmmakers, slowing the proceedings to an interminable crawl.
  7. Videodrome
    Never coherent and frequently pretentious, the film remains an audacious attempt to place obsessive personal images before a popular audience--a kind of Kenneth Anger version of "Star Wars." (Review of Original Release)
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Red Tails
    George Lucas served as executive producer for this effects-heavy action film about the Tuskegee Airmen, and it feels as synthetic and dull as "The Phantom Menace."
  9. Dune
    The problem is that the imagery—as Sadean as Pasolini's Salo—isn't rooted in any story impulse, and so its power dissipates quickly. The real venue for this film is either a grind house or the Whitney Museum.
  10. Bittersweet Motel
    None of these guys has much interesting to say.
  11. Scary Movie 4
    The fourth installment in the horror-parody franchise combines plot elements from "The Grudge," "The Village," and "War of the Worlds," with abbreviated spoofs of "Saw," "Brokeback Mountain," and "Million Dollar Baby." The amount of screen time allotted to each movie is roughly proportional to its box office take, suggesting that the first draft of the screenplay was written on a calculator.
  12. Terror Train
    This 1979 teenage horror film has no redeeming style: it's a straight, pedestrian cop of Halloween, from the opening shock to the climactic battle against the psycho.
  13. Picture Perfect
    Olympia Dukakis and Illeana Douglas come off poorly in silly supporting roles that make Aniston seem to have screen presence by default. Her character's habit of compulsively adjusting her bodice ensures our attention has the proper focus.
  14. BUtterfield 8
    It's just about as awful as you'd expect, despite the presence of two first-class screenwriters.
  15. What Planet Are You From?
    The buildup to social criticism in what at first appears to be pointless and partly misogynist exploitation is subtly impressive.
  16. Heartbreak Ridge
    The whole film seems ideologically forced and out of place, an attempt to resurrect the retentive virtues of Ford and Hawks without the cultural context that gave them expressive strength.
  17. Are We There Yet?
    Ice Cube tries his hand at family comedy in this phony story.
  18. Superhero Movie
    The gags are consistently weak, though actor Miles Fisher turns in a hair-raising impression of Tom Cruise.
  19. The Debut
    A hackneyed coming-of-age drama.
  20. The Mission
    Bolt's moralizing ironies (as leaden here as in A Man for All Seasons and assorted David Lean scenarios) are enough to sink a thousand war canoes, and Joffe doesn't help things along with his patronizing vision of native innocence: the Indians only exist to be sentimentalized—as angels, victims, and amiable rehab projects for enterprising Christians.
  21. Guinevere
    Partly because the seducer's technique is methodical--as a former conquest explains to the naive heroine--the movie's answers are too easy.
  22. Provoked: A True Story
    No one breaks into song, but this fact-based legal drama about a battered Anglo-Indian wife on trial for murdering her husband is infected with a fatal strain of heaving Bollywood melodrama.
  23. Raging Bull
    As LaMotta, Robert De Niro gives a blank, soulless performance; there's so little of depth or urgency coming from him that he's impossible to despise, or forgive, in any but the most superficial way.
  24. Barb Wire
    Its main source is a comic book, but it might as well be a computer.
  25. Wes Craven's New Nightmare
    Unfortunately, without even the most cursory effort to establish some notion of normality, the movie progressively gets duller and duller as its mechanical horror fancies spin themselves out.
  26. Hoodwinked!
    Too archly scripted to appeal to kids and too crudely executed to win over older aficionados. The cheap-looking CGI makes the animals creepy rather than engaging, and a plot thread about a series of thefts does little more than spin the tale to feature length.
  27. The Private Archives of Pablo Escovar
    The sanitized content clashes with the narrative style, which mimics true-crime TV like “American Justice.”
  28. Stolen Summer
    There are many plot complications, most designed to get us to applaud our tolerance of religious differences.
  29. RV
    This miserable comedy is enlivened occasionally by Jeff Daniels and Kristin Chenoweth as a cheerfully tacky couple who keep crossing paths with the dysfunctional clan.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Hate Crime
    This melodrama by writer-director Tommy Stovall has a good premise, but he undercuts it with contrived plot twists, pedestrian pacing, and mostly two-dimensional characters.
  31. The Abyss
    The attempt to extract the essences of several genres (cold-war submarine thriller, love story, Disney fantasy, pseudomystical SF in the Spielberg mode) and mix them together ultimately leads to giddy incoherence.
  32. Crooklyn
    Despite very good performances, this is anemic and uninspired filmmaking: shapeless as narrative, awkward and drifting as drama.
  33. Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
    Blends extremes of violence and humor to create an irreverent tone that nullifies everything; the plot is so clever it crushes the characterization, making all the action seem perfunctory.
  34. Due Date
    This odd-couple comedy reunites Galifianakis with Todd Phillips, who directed "The Hangover," but don't expect anything like the other movie's novel plotting or wild slapstick.
  35. The Karate Kid Part III
    Unfortunately, the pattern has so calcified that Gene Autry westerns seem like models of moral complexity by comparison.
  36. Dot the I
    Its trickery might seem cute or clever to viewers who don't take either movies or people very seriously, but to me it recalled cynical "puzzle" films like "Memento" and "Irreversible," with no reason to exist apart from its gimmick.
  37. Grazia's Island
    I found it warm, humane, pretty, and dull enough to anesthetize patients awaiting massively invasive surgery.
  38. Life as We Know It
    The movie relies on the notion that postponing sex heightens arousal, but its lovers aren't any better matched post-coitus than they were before.
  39. Taking Lives
    On the plus side, it isn't boring, and Jolie and Ethan Hawke, who plays an art dealer and key witness, generate a certain amount of edgy chemistry. But eventually the filmmakers' desire to shock and tease overtakes any feeling for character or common sense.
  40. The Shining
    Kubrick is after a cool, sunlit vision of hell, born in the bosom of the nuclear family, but his imagery--with its compulsive symmetry and brightness--is too banal to sustain interest, while the incredibly slack narrative line forestalls suspense.
  41. The Skin Game
    A rather stagy and creaky early talkie (1931) by Alfred Hitchcock, adapted from a John Galsworthy play.
  42. Miller's Crossing
    The double crosses are so intricate and the cynicism so enveloping that it becomes increasingly difficult to care about the characters
    • 24 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Apollo 18
    This isn't at all scary, but the rough images can be weirdly compelling, the movie's conspiratorial jive enhanced by the fact that the lunar surface looks like someone's backyard.
  44. Queen of the Damned
    The result is an exploitation movie that seems like it's about something -- though what exactly I couldn't say.
  45. Mallrats
    As an "Animal House" romp about consumer slackers in a New Jersey mall, it's harmless enough--just don't expect any sort of edge. Smith has left the working class to become just as boring as everybody else.
  46. Sweet November
    It's all corny and contrived and usually sensitive. The filmmakers even dare to show the effects of illness--a subject frequently glamorized to the point of being insulting--in a love scene of rare honesty.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Crime of Padre Amaro
    Amaro is so lacking in gravitas that there's no opportunity to explore the intense emotionality of the church in Latin America --which is the source of its temporal power.
  48. Z
    Z doesn't communicate anything—except for the doubtful propositions that pacifists are more threatening to right-wingers than communists and that fascist terrorism and homosexuality go hand in hand.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Hedgehog
    First-time director Mona Achache mixes feel-good platitudes with quirky conceits (including animated interludes and narration by an 11-year old girl) to put across some hoary old notions about bourgeois neuroticism and hypocrisy.
  50. Alien: Resurrection
    Whedon and director Jean-Pierre Jeunet ("Delicatessen") bend over so far backward to make Weaver's and Ryder's roles beefy that they end up mocking the characters' bravura.
  51. Miss Congeniality 2: Armed & Fabulous
    With all her (Bullock) grotesque disguises, this often suggests a sequel to "Mrs. Doubtfire."
  52. The Bishop's Wife
    There must be some excuse for this but I can't imagine what it is.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    A Guy Thing
    I didn't buy half of the movie's scattershot gags, but the leads are sharp and the supporting cast sturdy.
  54. The Idolmaker
    Taylor Hackford directed, with occasional sharp, manic bursts, but the film is sluggish and sloppy overall, burdened with a dismally redundant plot line.
  55. Timeline
    This big-budget adventure is based on a recent Michael Crichton thriller, though its premise is too stale to instill the sense of wonder critical to great sci-fi.
  56. Philadelphia
    Even a good performance by Tom Hanks and noble intentions can't save this mainstream look at AIDS from the worst effects of nervous committeethink.
  57. Paris 36
    The movie is essentially a pastiche, as musty as a flea market.
  58. Beefcake
    Ultimately this is a sharp-focus issue movie, decrying intolerance as it explores the effects of labeling, the complexity of fetishizing, and the differences between business and crime.
  59. Human Nature
    Characters remain stuck in their cliche profiles, and the direction -- by music video specialist Michel Gondry -- doesn't improve matters.
  60. While You Were Sleeping
    The plot of this 1995 romantic comedy, directed by Jon Turteltaub ("Cool Runnings") from a script by Daniel G. Sullivan and Fredric Lebow, is pretty stupid throughout, and the filmmakers show no compunction in shaking its silliness in your face, but the film's casual warmth may make you tolerate some of the shortcomings.
  61. Tomorrow Never Dies
    Apart from the welcome grace and pluck of Asian action star Michelle Yeoh--who all but steals the movie away from Pierce Brosnan's Bond and single-handedly makes this a better wedding of Hong Kong and Hollywood than either Rumble in the Bronx or Face/Off--this film has no personality whatsoever.
  62. House
    This incredibly odd Japanese horror feature (1977) is like a Hello Kitty backpack stuffed with bloody human viscera.
  63. Meet Dave
    The insipid gags fail to exploit Murphy's gift for physical humor, Elizabeth Banks and Gabrielle Union are merely decorative, and Ed Helms (The Office), playing a character called #2, looks appropriately constipated.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Grandma's Boy
    The sex, fart, and pot jokes come so fast and furious that a white flag seems the most appropriate response.
  65. The Hungry Bachelors Club
    Halfhearted food movie that's also a romantic comedy crammed with issues.
  66. Little Man
    The slapstick is funnier for the nifty CGI, and the script gets in some sly digs at racist cops and multitasking soccer moms.
  67. King of the Gypsies
    Half the film passes while Pierson fumbles with the exposition—setting up an intricate internecine war for control of a Gypsy clan—and then he fumbles the action. Pointless, messy, rambling; no atmosphere and no energy.
  68. The Substance of Fire
    But despite a compelling opening, as a movie it loses focus and purpose as it proceeds.
  69. Milwaukee, Minnesota
    Not bad to look at, but consistently unedifying.
  70. Reform School Girls
    They must've been working overtime on the Xerox machines at New World Pictures, since this 1986 women-behind-bars exploitation spoof sounds like a literal remake of 1983's Chained Heat (which was itself a remake of a remake of a remake).
  71. Halloween II
    The visual style--the orange-and-blue color scheme, the elegant 'Scope compositions, the graceful tracking shots, and the shrewd use of shallow focus--has been reproduced almost perfectly from John Carpenter's original, yet the wit and intelligence are gone.
  72. A Place in the Sun
    George Stevens, a tireless moralizer and part-time embalmer of American myths (Shane), directed this melodramatic adaptation of Dreiser's An American Tragedy, and what does not seem facile in it seems overwrought.
  73. Santa vs. the Snowman
    Jonathan Winters voices Santa with no edge whatsover, while Ben Stein deadpans a droll tour guide.
  74. Pacific Heights
    Part of what keeps this from working is that Modine's character is almost as obnoxious as Keaton's—Griffith proves to be the pluckiest member of the trio—and matters are not improved by a lot of gratuitous camera movement and an especially lousy dream sequence.
  75. White Nights
    Director Taylor Hackford shapes some engaging performances (the surly, withdrawn Baryshnikov of the early scenes is an intriguing figure) but never extricates himself from the plot machinery; this 1985 feature takes off only in the brief but well-filmed dance sequences.
  76. Class Action
    The liberal pieties underlying the script become so simplistic and predominant that they ultimately deprive the characters and the story of the density and edge they might have had.
  77. Greendale
    It's more like a feature-length music video, with grainy images illustrating songs from (Youngs) recent album of the same title and actors lip-synching to his reedy vocals.
  78. Caterina va in città
    This dyspeptic 2003 coming-of-age story from Italy often seems on the verge of nervous collapse, veering from giddy adolescent romps to adult shenanigans and shrill political discord.
  79. Dead Reckoning
    John Cromwell, an excellent filmmaker in other circumstances (The Fountain, Since You Went Away), doesn’t have the taste for extremes that film noir requires; he softens the emotions and dims the motivations.
  80. Young Sherlock Holmes
    This is Middle-aged Sherlock Holmes in schoolboy drag, and the audience is expected to chuckle appreciatively as the old material is trotted out.
  81. When Worlds Collide
    Rudolph Mate directed, and Richard Derr, Barbara Rush, and John Hoyt all make a game try at sounding like real people—which is not always easy, given Sidney Boehm’s script.
  82. Celebrity
    Woody Allen at his most inconsequential and insubstantial; don't expect to remember this black-and-white throwaway of comic sketches five minutes after it's over.
  83. My Big Fat Independent Movie
    It might have looked good on paper, but the results are mixed at best; despite a few early chuckles, the whole thing gets tired after 20 minutes.
  84. Adam & Steve
    Despite the high spirits, most of the comedy is feeble and forced; Steve's career as a therapist seems especially far-fetched.
  85. The Champ
    The tear-jerking is so determined and persistent that your ducts feel as if they'd been worked over with a catheter. But despite its great length, the film never makes sense of its central relationship, between Jon Voight's washed-up prizefighter and Faye Dunaway's chichi fashion designer.
  86. Room
    Packs a punch in its first act with a passionate lead performance by Cyndi Williams and a painfully concrete sense of modern life closing in. But gradually it slips into the indie paradigm of an alienated soul rushing into darkness, climaxing with a semiabstract montage sequence that's more rhetorical than dramatic.
  87. Hard Rain
    A better disaster movie than it is a thriller.
  88. Grown Ups
    Beneath all the forced hilarity lies an awful fear of aging--and Sandler is only 43! This is gonna be rough.
  89. Over Her Dead Body
    Playing a competitive schemer not unlike her "Desperate Housewives" character, Parker doesn't generate much heat, while Rudd is squandered in a bland role.
  90. Series 7: The Contenders
    An exceptionally glib satire about reality TV, by writer-director Daniel Minahan, that puts most of its effort into looking as much as is possible like a real TV show.
  91. Blue Streak
    The usual valorizing of guns and vigilante justice and tedious action sequences to begin and end the picture.
  92. The Parent Trap
    This 1998 romantic comedy mostly bores with its cumbersome exposition and close-ups of trivial objects scattered throughout lackluster montage sequences.
  93. Serendipity
    Romantic comedy is set mainly in NYC, where the plight of its ambivalent lovers seems particularly trivial.
  94. Freaky Friday
    The situation—a mother and daughter switch personalities for a day—is rife with possibilities, but since this 1977 comedy is a Disney film, said possibilities are scrupulously squandered...Not so bad as Disney goes, but it's better left to the kiddies and other forgiving types.
  95. Kingpin
    At least it has Bill Murray.
  96. Stoned
    This UK drama by Stephen Woolley, a longtime producer for Neil Jordan making his directing debut, presents a fairly convincing version of what might have happened.
  97. Eat Pray Love
    How can a romantic drama tailor-made for Julia Roberts from Elizabeth Gilbert's best-selling memoir about self-actualization--shot against alluring locales in Italy, India, and Bali, and directed by the acclaimed Ryan Murphy (TV's Nip/Tuck and Glee)--go so ass-numbingly wrong?
  98. The Family That Preys
    The usual mawkishness is made slightly more palatable by the two leads and by Perry himself.
  99. Heathers
    Succeeds at least in being offbeat, but its inanities and glib pretensions are so thick that it mainly comes across as tacky and contrived.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Bruce Almighty
    Without a decent script, Carrey can't create much of a character, and the farce loses its edge the moment it starts trying to tell a coherent story.
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