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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    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    La tropical
    Shot in beautifully textured black-and-white video and then transferred to film, the movie has an intoxicating, sexually charged rhythm and seems sharply attuned to the lives of the impoverished black musicians, singers, and dancers who perform at the club. Unfortunately, it's poorly structured, and the absence of a unifying shape significantly blunts its impact.
  2. P.S. I Love You
    "B.S. I Love You" would be a more accurate title.
  3. I Love You to Death
    Lawrence Kasdan directed this fair-to-middling black comedy from a script by John Kostmayer, and although the pacing is sluggish in spots, people with a taste for acting as impersonation will enjoy some of the scenery chewing.
  4. Untamed Heart
    It's a sure sign of how good Tomei is that she can even occasionally do something with Tom Sierchio's lachrymose script; the usually wonderful Rosie Perez, stuck with an uninteresting part, is less lucky.
  5. Surfwise
    The fallout decades later provides the drama in this documentary by Doug Pray (Hype!), who lets his eccentric octogenarian subject off a little too easy.
  6. The Eyes of Tammy Faye
    This made-for-cable opus, halfway between documentary and docudrama, is willing to try anything and everything except for a consistent relationship to its material.
  7. Gigli
    For the most part I was able to accept this thesis and enjoy Lopez in her usual superwoman role, but the script does get awfully preachy in spots.
  8. The Girl on the Train
    Techine glosses over the story’s most potent issue: France’s complicated relationship with its Jewish community.
  9. Chaplin
    This packaged tour through the great man's career is unenlightening and obfuscating, despite an adept lead performance by Robert Downey Jr.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Bel Ami
    The supposedly cunning protagonist registers as a cipher, and the directors' tendency to shoot dialogue scenes in close-up blunts any understanding of the social milieu he's trying to conquer.
  11. The Muse
    The execution of the script is perfect, as always, but it's the laziest script Brooks has ever directed.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Marvin's Room
    Perfect acting by Keaton and Streep outshines the screenplay by Scott McPherson (who wrote the original play), even as the performances are overwhelmed by cinematography so gorgeous and distracting it makes the drama seem like just so much wheel spinning.
  13. Getting Straight
    Elliott Gould as a conscience-stricken graduate student in a radical chic exercise that seemed hilariously dated even at the moment it came out (1970).
  14. Factory Girl
    The bar for historical accuracy in Hollywood biopics hasn't always been this high -- paradoxically, it's been rising even as the public has become more ignorant of history.
  15. 27 Dresses
    For most of this romantic comedy, fatuous contrivances run neck and neck with what seem to be authentic observations about repressed sibling rivalry; some of the latter are too painful to be funny, and eventually the contrivances win out, but the cast keeps it all watchable.
  16. Coriolanus
    Visually and dramatically it works well - it's Shakespeare by way of "Black Hawk Down" - but as an allegory of modern-day geopolitics it doesn't really go anywhere.
  17. Rize
    Emotionally charged but not entirely honest documentary.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Romántico
    Carmelo, the central figure, returns home when his mother's health begins to decline, and his love of family, something of an abstraction in the first part, leaves him deeply divided: he wants to care for them personally, but he can better provide for them by returning to the U.S.
  19. The Cranes Are Flying
    It’s exactly what you’d expect: tepid, artsy, and grayish, though it has surprising bursts of sincere sentiment.
  20. Nightwatch
    The filmmakers show habitual thriller viewers some respect by condensing the background story into iconic sound and image bites during the opening-credits sequence, suggesting they know we get the drill; this and the other stylish elements make it all the more disappointing that the movie's mediocre.
  21. The Brave One
    What might have been a serious drama about coming to terms with violence and loss turns into a crowd-pleasing and increasingly far-fetched remake of "Death Wish."
  22. I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With
    The story ultimately lands in incoherence; but the cameos and local details, and even some of the gags, keep it perky.
  23. The First Saturday in May
    Brothers Brad and John Hennegan track six thoroughbreds in the qualifying races running up to the 2006 Kentucky Derby, yet the horseflesh isn't as interesting to them as the owners and trainers, an odd assortment of moneymen and equine gurus with a culture all their own.
  24. Fallen
    Denzel Washington is admirable in the role of a dauntless detective investigating murders and metaphysics, but his sincerity can’t carry the outlandish plot—you just wonder what a guy like him is doing in a movie like this.
  25. Blood Done Sign My Name
    Jeb Stuart directed, his well-rounded portrait of the community partly undermined by the slack editing; with Rick Schroder as the minister and Michael Rooker as the defense attorney.
  26. Major Dundee (re-release)
    Keeps building to apocalyptic climaxes that never materialize. (Review of Original Release)
  27. Illuminata
    Insights about romance are enhanced by the novel production design, which includes puppetry, but the story's reflexivity is smug and cloying.
  28. Song of the South
    The stories are pretty good folk, though a little too coyly calculated. But the plantation stuff is beneath contempt. Better save this for nostalgia only—kids won't be missing anything if they never encounter this relic.
  29. Murder by Numbers
    Neither the crime nor its detection is especially interesting, and screenwriter Tony Gayton doesn't appear to be aiming for psychological insights.
  30. The Naked Prey
    Moderately pretentious, though very well filmed, this was the sort of thing teenage boys throve on in the dark ages Before Spielberg.
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