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 5 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. View from the Top
    The tone seesaws between comic wackiness and romantic sincerity, with Paltrow better suited to the latter.
  2. Simply Irresistible
    This culinary fantasy is mildly inspired.
  3. Little Fockers
    The Focker franchise has become such a swell payday (Meet the Parents grossed $166 million; Meet the Fockers, $279 million) that now everyone wants in on the act.
  4. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
    Indescribably awful—a serving up of Beatles tunes by Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees with the ugliest visuals imaginable, directed with more glitz than good sense by Michael Schultz.
  5. Twisted
    Director Philip Kaufman's usual flair for erotic detail largely deserts him here, and this thriller seems most interested in lingering over battered and bloodied male faces.
  6. 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.
  7. Because I Said So
    Throughout most of her career Diane Keaton has shown sound instincts, so it's a mystery why she failed to sniff this false, brittle comedy out as a waste of her gifts.
  8. Trixie
    The movie does have a certain amount of star power and occasional bursts of inventive mise en scene, which do a good job of diverting us so we don't realize that not much else is going on.
  9. Dracula 2000
    The gratuitous use of the city (New Orleans) during Mardi Gras is the least of this movie's unoriginal sins.
  10. Van Wilder
    Painfully unfunny.
  11. Basic Instinct 2
    Like many sequels this is actually a remake, and it suffers from the law of diminishing returns.
  12. Patch Adams
    The perfectly acceptable shtick executed by Williams--whose I-know-you-better-than-you-know-yourself seduction techniques ought to make him a hotter leading man--occasionally justifies the relentlessly light tone of this preachy 1998 comedy-drama.
  13. Tideland
    Enter this diseased Lewis Carroll universe at your own risk.
  14. A Night at the Roxbury
    Two obnoxious, swaggering brothers -- whose sexual naivete is supposed to make them endearing as well as pathetic -- find happiness in this more schmaltzy than funny Saturday Night Live spin-off.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Supercross
    Like the drive-in classics of Roger Corman and Samuel Z. Arkoff, this develops the principal characters and conflicts with just enough depth and keeps the narrative moving at a brisk pace.
  16. Phantoms
    All the movie's free-form horror phenomena might have been more interesting if the plot didn't keep insisting on a systematic explanation for them.
  17. Gloria
    Cassavetes's “Gloria” may have been action-packed nonsense, but it was enjoyable precisely because it was all of a piece. This Gloria is simply pieces--a few of them enjoyable, most of them not.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Filth and Wisdom
    Madonna, making her directorial debut, aims for the romping irreverence of Richard Lester's 60s comedies, and though she lacks the formal control to pull it off, this is a charming mess.
  19. Shadow Hours
    An intriguing noir whose conceptual sophistication is partly undermined by naive execution.
  20. The Salon
    A romance between Fox and the attorney trying to force her out (Darrin Henson) taxes belief and leads to a sappy ending that doesn't come soon enough.
  21. Skyline
    Visual-effects wizards Greg and Colin Strause directed, showing more affinity for the city's steel and glass than for any of the characters.
  22. September Dawn
    The villainous turns by Jon Voight (as a hard-hearted Mormon bishop) and Terence Stamp (as a bloodthirsty Brigham Young) would have been more fun if they weren't part of such a clumsy campaign to lay this tragedy at the church's doorstep.
  23. Here on Earth
    Neither the love nor the loss in this tear-jerking romance contains much drama.
  24. The Benchwarmers
    No laughs here, just the dull ache of seeing Heder slotted into a standard piece of Hollywood twaddle.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Georgia Rule
    Another flabby big-screen sitcom from "Happy Days" creator Garry Marshall.
  26. Hell Ride
    The narrative is murky and ludicrous, the action violent and nihilistic, the contemporary western ethos painfully pretentious.
  27. License to Wed
    Director Ken Kwapis (The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants) gives this script by many hands a certain gloss it doesn't deserve.
  28. Drowning Mona
    I didn't laugh once.
  29. American Outlaws
    Jas lots of action, drama, comedy, and corn -- and few pauses, which is striking.
  30. Cobra
    It's fast-paced and full of gaudy action, yet it's thoroughly unsatisfying, largely because it's so lazy: once Stallone (also the screenwriter) and director George Pan Cosmatos have sketched out the standard genre archetypes, they leave it at that, not bothering to fill in the niceties of characterization, plausibility, motivation, and suspense.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »