Chicago Reader's Scores

  • Movies
Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. I Can Do Bad All by Myself
    Contrived, sentimental, tonally bipolar, and as predictable as clockwork.
  2. 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.
  3. The Truth About Charlie
    If Wahlberg in a beret is your idea of fun, don't let me get in your way.
  4. The Scoundrel's Wife
    Scripted by Pitre and his wife, Michelle Benoit, this is more interesting for its historical setting than for its rather wooden drama, but Tim Curry gives a pretty good performance as the town's whiskey priest.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    P.S.
    Even the always radiant Linney can't save this misbegotten film.
  6. Veronica Guerin
    Well-meaning but simpleminded biopic.
  7. 8: The Mormon Proposition
    A chaotic sequence midway through shows Mormon and gay-rights protesters shouting abuse at each other in San Francisco, and that's pretty much what the whole movie feels like.
  8. Don't Come Knocking
    The theatrical monologues come close to defeating him (Wenders), and only Jessica Lange, as one of Shepard's abandoned girlfriends, manages to avoid cliche.
  9. Mr. & Mrs. Smith
    A deeply stupid and offensive action comedy-romance.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Mr. Majestyk
    The twist of making Bronson a genuine working man adds interest to the action-revenge formula, but not enough to lift this out of the programmer category.
  11. Darshan: The Embrace
    Scenes of pageantry and mass prayer show that thousands respond to her charisma, but Kounen gives little insight why; aside from Amma's belief that creator and creation are one, her religious tenets remain a mystery.
  12. Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny
    Most of the movie, about the search for a magical guitar pick, farts along at the level of a "Wayne's World" sketch.
  13. Irina Palm
    The dopey premise only takes to a gross extreme the "Full Monty" formula that the Brits have been milking for more than a decade.
  14. Love Actually
    This is cloying, deceitful, and more or less irresistible.
  15. 3
    Tykwer manages to negotiate this incredible coincidence without much trouble, though the movie slows to a crawl in its second half.
  16. Brooklyn Lobster
    Kevin Jordan (Smiling Fish and Goat on Fire), a protege of Martin Scorsese, wrote and directed this dull 2005 autobiographical feature; it feels real, but solid performances fail to enliven the characters.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Acid House
    It's MTV meets Merchant-Ivory, at once manneristic, hallucinatory, and exhilarating.
  18. Casa de los babys
    As usual, Sayles's dialogue scenes are as shapely as blown glass, but none of the characters' predicaments has been adequately explored, much less resolved, when the final freeze-frame arrives.
  19. Starsky & Hutch
    Stiller and Wilson are still hilarious as the supercool detectives -- there hasn't been a comedy duo this good since John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd.
  20. Great Expectations
    A horrendous effort all around.
  21. Bulgarian Lovers
    All in all it's pretty lurid, but it delivers what it promises.
  22. Agora
    The drama is torpid, the astronomy lessons pedantic, and the spear-and-sandal production values flat-out cheesy. The whole thing is also historically ludicrous.
  23. Rio Lobo
    While no Hawks movie can be considered a total loss, this reductive replay of Rio Bravo and El Dorado is too peevish to qualify as tragic, and only occasionally funny.
  24. Kitty Foyle
    Sam Wood, the El Supremo of Hollywood hackdom, squired this one to glory.
  25. I Heart Huckabees
    A philosophical comedy about man's place in a universe colonized by Targets and Wal-Marts.
  26. Rendition
    Occasionally a movie's subject outweighs any aesthetic flaws, as it does in this unsettling thriller about the extraordinary rendition of terror suspects.
  27. Ice Princess
    It's Joan Cusack as her doting single mom who holds the film together--her sensitive turn as a flawed feminist hints at what she could do with a meatier role.
  28. Torn Curtain
    Hitchcock was incapable of making an uninteresting film, even when burdened with unsympathetic stars like Julie Andrews and Paul Newman, and Torn Curtain has its moments.
  29. Love and Other Drugs
    A watered-down satire of the pharmaceutical industry.
  30. Grandview, U.S.A.
    It is a shock and a pleasure to see an American film that doesn't wallow in complacency, but instead suggests—however fleetingly—that disappointment is also a part of life. Curtis is particularly impressive in the strength and maturity she brings to a role written as pure fantasy.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »