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. Must Love Dogs
    The script by sitcom veteran Gary David Goldberg has weaknesses--it soft-pedals bitterness, and the ending is annoyingly pat. On balance, though, this is a funny and smartly paced love story.
  2. Woman on Top
    This gently satirical farce is atmospheric when dabbling in religion--the chef turns to spiritual magic to defuse her passion for her husband--and moving during her heart-to-hearts with her friend.
  3. Road to Rio
    Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, and Dorothy Lamour on an average journey, enlivened by the strange antics of a forgotten vaudeville team called the Wiere Brothers, who do acrobatic stunts and shout “You’re in the groove, Jackson!” on cue.
  4. The Emperor's New Clothes
    Desperately wants to be whimsical and charming. But whimsy isn't easy to carry off, and director Alan Taylor, who has directed mostly television dramas, has a heavy hand -- scenes meant to be comical are destroyed by leaden pacing and a puzzling mix of tones.
  5. Happiness
    Everyone who likes this movie calls it "disturbing," but what disturbs me most is the self-loathing laughter it provokes, similar to what one often hears at Woody Allen and Michael Moore comedies.
  6. This Boy's Life
    The leads work overtime to make their characters and their relationships pungent, believable, and moving (though with regard to the rest of the cast, the movie seems less focused and confident).
  7. A Chorus Line
    Richard Attenborough's direction achieves that balance of impersonality and brisk pacing we've come to recognize as "professionalism," and he doesn't clog up the dancing with too many stylistic gimmicks.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Way We Were
    A film about marriage that works reasonably well as a star vehicle for Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand, but fails resoundingly as the caustic social comment director Sydney Pollack and writer Arthur Laurents obviously intended.
  9. Chopper
    The connection between his boasting about killing and killing so he can boast about it -- is made beautifully insidious.
  10. America's Heart and Soul
    This is supposed to be a testament to the nation's diversity, but it's so complacent that you'd never imagine said diversity is one of the greatest social challenges of the new century.
  11. Bound for Glory
    Ashby is excellent on atmosphere but fair to middling on character. When the film makes a sudden transition from epic to melodrama, things fall apart.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Kandahar
    The acting is mainly horrendous, the English dialogue frequently awkward, but they're overcome by the beautiful colors and settings and a grim sense of the uncanny spilling over into twisted humor.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Whole New Thing
    The film features subtle, honest performances by Daniel MacIvor (who also cowrote the screenplay) as the perplexed prof and engaging newcomer Aaron Webber as the sensitive student.
  14. The Magnificent Seven
    What was wonderful in the Kurosawa film—the recruiting and training of the mercenaries—is just dead time here, though the icon-heavy cast helps out: Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Charles Bronson, and Robert Vaughn.
  15. A Woman in Berlin
    Director Max Farberbock (Aimee & Jaguar) mainly avoids graphic depictions of sexual assault, but that only increases the tension in this austere, claustrophobic drama.
  16. Black Dynamite
    The movie gets old fast--mostly because it’s bringing up the rear after "Undercover Brother" (2002) And "I’m Gonna Git You Sucka" (1988). But the kung-fu climax at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (“the Honky House”) is nearly worth the wait, and Adrian Younge’s score, with its moody horns, is a perfect snapshot of early 70s soul.
  17. Bang Rajan
    The battle scenes are bloody, visceral, and expertly edited, though arterial spray consumes so much screen time that the numerous subplots, involving 11 legendary Siamese defenders well-known to Thais, may feel perfunctory to Westerners despite some strong performances.
  18. Callas Forever
    Ardant embodies the diva's dazzling blend of glamour, hauteur, and vulnerability, and despite a faintly campy script by Martin Sherman, Zeffirelli captures the artistic imperative that drives both characters-and deepens their loneliness.
  19. Oliver!
    Carol Reed's careful if passionless adaptation of the musical was mounted handsomely enough to win the best-picture Oscar back in 1969. In retrospect, it seems emblematic of the triviality Reed descended to in the last years of his career.
  20. Off the Black
    The leads are good, and Timothy Hutton is memorably off-putting as the pitcher's disengaged dad. But having created the aching umpire, Ponsoldt occupies him with some fairly shopworn situations.
  21. The Last Mistress
    Breillat may be serious about creating period ambience, but she also can't resist patterning her heroine after Marlene Dietrich's Concha in "The Devil Is a Woman" (even though Argento sometimes suggests Maria Montez in the pleasure she takes in her own company).
  22. Enduring Love
    Director Roger Michell seems genuinely taken with the contrast between brotherly love and homosexual obsession, but these themes are overwhelmed by the suspense machinery.
  23. Stripes
    Bill Murray is the star of this pleasant 1981 comedy, but the late-60s values he incarnates (skepticism, spontaneity, antiauthoritarianism) are seriously out of step with the values of director Ivan Reitman, who prefers conformity, loyalty, and even something a little like patriotism. As a result the second banana of this service comedy, the affable Harold Ramis, becomes its genuine dramatic center: his struggles to keep his buddy Bill in line have a strange urgency and poignance.
  24. Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man
    Better than you might imagine, though it still has its silly aspects.
  25. WXIII: Patlabor the Movie 3
    The romantic denouement is so predictable it must have driven the animators mad as they worked, but their modest art is eerily effective.
  26. The Deal
    If you don't mind the telegraphed punches of Ruth Epstein's script and Harvey Kahn's direction, this should carry you along.
  27. A River Runs Through It
    An admirable if frequently soporific 1992 adaptation of Norman Maclean's account of life in Missoula, Montana.
  28. The Statement
    Not quite a thriller and not quite a character study, though with elements of both, the film is limited by its ambiguous relation to history.
  29. Bulgarian Lovers
    All in all it's pretty lurid, but it delivers what it promises.
  30. Real Genius
    The humor is relentlessly cruel, smug, and disconnected from any sense of how human beings might behave in similar situations. But though she's hardly able to dominate the project, director Martha Coolidge does manage to insert some of the sweetly eccentric characterization that distinguished her Valley Girl: one of the heroes, played by Gabe Jarret, is actually believable and sympathetic as a socially insecure adolescent, and a few of the minor figures are brought to life with deft, simple strokes. Though ultimately obnoxious, the film lingers in the mind for a few moments of genuine charm.
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