Chicago Reader's Scores

  • Movies
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:
6312 movie reviews
  1. It wasn't so bad, aside from the god-awful ending; at the very least Freundlich manages to come up with funnier jokes than the ossified one-liners decorating Allen's recent movies.
  2. Hits the ground running and never looks back. But after an hour of propulsive pacing the shock value wears off, and all that's left is pop-up carnage.
  3. Not even 3D can save this third entry in the Fox animation franchise about a motley crew of prehistoric creatures.
  4. This is dumb, raunchy, and obvious, but it's also pretty funny, and delivered with the gusto of a Redd Foxx monologue.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The movie's sympathy is often disarming. Unfortunately the director can be generous to a fault, repeating certain moments and letting others run on after he's made his point.
  5. A relatively mindless thrill ride that would have made the old NBC execs grin from ear to ear.
  6. The film does offer a good deal of engaging dark humor.
  7. The director, Henry Hathaway, is another old veteran, and the cinematographer is the great Lucien Ballard, but somehow it comes off like a TV celebrity roast.
  8. The surprise ending is neatly done, but the characters are so thin that waiting around for it is no fun whatsoever.
  9. Almost every scene is excruciating (and a few are appalling), yet the film stirs an obscene fascination with its rapid, speed-freak cutting and passionate psychological striptease. This is the feverish, painful expression of a man who lives in mortal fear of his own mediocrity.
  10. Has an affable charm, but the script is paint by numbers.
  11. Tries way too hard to be clever and shrewd.
  12. The cluttered narrative leaves little room for character development, though director Niels Arden Oplev does manage to accommodate plenty of gratuitous torture and rape.
  13. Reasonably entertaining but predictable.
  14. Doesn't quite support the weight of its allegory.
  15. Despite all the grand gestures of climax and resolution, there's a pronounced sense of autopilot; the only person who seems to be having a good time is Ian McKellen as the scheming Magneto.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Scherfig aims at bittersweet irony, but Wilbur's suicide attempts yield neither pathos nor humor.
  16. For all the high-tech allusions and middle-tech illusions, the movie--the 23rd in an immortal series--draws its power from its grittiness and unresolved allegory.
  17. Philippe Rousselot's elegant cinematography lends some gravitas to music-video veteran Francis Lawrence's directorial debut.
  18. It's a letdown from the man who brought us "Men in Black" and "Addams Family Values."
  19. A New York movie with a California soul—superficially gritty but soft in the center, in a silly est sort of way.
  20. A brave effort to stare down the specter of American failure, it gets off on the wrong foot by pretentiously turning the doomed hero into a Christ figure--a traffic cop with arms extended in crucifixion mode--before the story even gets started.
  21. McGee has taken Hitchcock's idea of the MacGuffin to such an extreme that the plot becomes a set of nesting dolls with nothing at the center, but the players conjure up a smoky mood of existential sadness.
  22. While the level of imagination here is scaled to the bite-size dimensions of TV, the sense of an alternate universe felt in Herman's TV show is woefully lacking. But fans and undemanding kids may still be amused.
  23. A sunny, gentle action yarn with numbingly repetitive chase scenes and bouncy interludes of playtime.
  24. At their best, the Jackasses combine low-brow humor with delectable absurdity (one of my favorite gags from Jackass: The Movie had a guy creeping up on a cougar while dressed as a giant mouse), but here it's almost pure punishment.
  25. Mild gross-out comedy integrates a non sequitur -- a running joke made by a sidekick -- into the plot, providing some payoff.
  26. I enjoyed this while it lasted, especially for the cast.
  27. It doesn't have the polish or the momentum of an Indiana Jones adventure, and isn't too engaging on the plot level, but at least the filmmakers keep it moving with lots of screwball stunts.
  28. The results are too pretty and well acted to be a total washout, but the fascination with evil and power that gives the novel intensity is virtually absent; what remains is mainly petty malice and mild cynicism.

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