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. Wait Until Dark
    This thriller draws its effectiveness less from the intelligence of the direction (by Terence Young) than from the unbridled sadism of the concept: Audrey Hepburn is a blind woman in unknowing possession of a doll stuffed with pure heroin. Alone in her New York apartment, she's terrorized by a gang of thugs that includes slobbering psycho Alan Arkin and smooth-talking Richard Crenna.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Tropical Malady
    A spellbinding, beautiful, enigmatic film with a mysterious, allusive two-part structure.
  3. Weekend
    What begins as a one-night stand deepens, over the next two days, into a genuine romance as the young lovers embark on an epic dialogue that touches on the most profound questions of love, commitment, honesty, and identity.
  4. 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.
  5. Fish Tank
    The only person who seems to understand the angry teen is mom's new boyfriend (Michael Fassbender of Hunger), though their friendship oscillates between intimate and vaguely creepy.
  6. Little Shop of Horrors
    Rick Moranis is properly nerdish as the flower-shop attendant who keeps his carnivorous charge supplied with a steady stream of human plasma, and Ellen Greene makes a good scatterbrained innocent in the ersatz Broadway mold, but the best moments in this 1987 release belong to Dr. Steve Martin as a dentist with a professional yen for pain.
  7. The China Syndrome
    For director James Bridges, the film looks like a hack job, particularly after the personal anguish of 9/30/55, but it's a very good hack job: strong, simple, and perfectly paced, until the last reel flounders in a bit of overkill.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    My Architect
    Absorbing, beautiful documentary.
  9. Hot Fuzz
    The good humor bubbles up from a deep reservoir of affection for Hollywood schlock.
  10. Four Weddings and a Funeral
    Maybe you'll enjoy it, but don't expect to remember it ten minutes later, or even to believe in the characters while you're watching them.
  11. Police, Adjective
    The climax, in which the detective's commanding officer gives him a dictionary and subjects him to a sort of linguistic browbeating, is a marvel of dead air and unspoken oppression.
  12. The Wedding Banquet
    A very adroit and entertaining social comedy.
  13. Black Orpheus
    This sort of thing was considered high art not so long ago; now it seems forced and ponderously symbolic.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Devil's Miner
    A powerful indictment of the horrendous treatment of children who toil in hellish Bolivian silver mines. The filmmakers are better at fashioning haunting images than offering hard-nosed analysis, yet they never sentimentalize their young protagonists' plight.
  15. Chris & Don. A Love Story
    Becomes more engrossing as its focus shifts from Isherwood to Bachardy, who began as the bashful boy toy of a famous author but gradually emerged in his own right as a portrait artist of striking (and merciless) insight.
  16. Still Life
    This 2006 drama may seem to be worlds apart from the surreal theme-park setting of Jia's previous film, "The World," but there are similarities of theme, style, scale, and tone: social and romantic alienation in a monumental setting, a daring poetic mix of realism and lyrical fantasy, and an uncanny sense of where our planet is drifting.
  17. Reservoir Dogs
    It's unclear whether this macho thriller does anything to improve the state of the world or our understanding of it, but it certainly sets off enough rockets to hold us and shake us for every one of its 99 minutes.
  18. The Eel
    The film brims over with various eccentrics (the barber's ufologist neighbor and a former prison mate who harasses the hero and delivers drunken tirades), and Imamura views them all with mixed amusement and curiosity; he also does striking things with dream sequences and visual and aural flashbacks.
  19. Thunder Soul
    A precious scrap of American history.
  20. Of Time and the City
    The film is made up chiefly of found footage and therefore lacks the mise en scene of its predecessors, but it has the added benefit of Davies's voice-over narration, which, thanks to his training and experience as an actor, is enormously powerful.
  21. The Scent of Green Papaya
    The main focus is on everyday household chores and sensual discoveries, all made mesmerizing by elaborately choreographed camera movements that link interiors and exteriors in the same fluid itineraries.
  22. Melancholia
    Apocalyptic visions are nothing new in cinema, but they're almost always epic in scale; Von Trier's innovation is to peer down the large end of the telescope, observing the end of the world in painfully intimate terms.
  23. Ballets Russes
    The troupe veterans interviewed, most in their 80s and 90s, are wonderfully passionate; the affecting ending shows them still working as dance teachers and archivists all over the world.
  24. The General
    It's extremely competent, shot in 'Scope (Boorman's best screen format), and though it kept me absorbed it failed to win me over.
  25. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
    A 157-minute holding pattern in which neither of the ongoing stories--Harry's conflict with the evil sorcerer Voldemort, the young schoolmates' coming of age at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft--progresses much.
  26. Mikey and Nicky
    One of the most innovative, engaging, and insightful films of that turbulent era of American moviemaking.
  27. Paprika
    The intersections between sleep and waking, memory, cinema, and the Internet lead to a spectacular battle of titans who spring from the mind's darkest recesses.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hell and Back Again
    This structure persuasively depicts combat and recovery as two sides of the same struggle, and Dennis strengthens his argument by maintaining a constant perspective throughout: the camera is always within a few feet of the subject.
  29. Il Postino: The Postman
    The film's warmth and sympathy are underlined by some intelligence.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Hairspray
    With its wisecracking screenplay, period-perfect pop score, and Shankman's splashy choreography, this may be the funniest, dancingest screen musical since "Singin' in the Rain."
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