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. Spellbound
    The gaudy Freudianism of this 1945 Hitchcock film, backed by a dream sequence designed by Salvador Dalí and an overexcited score by Miklós Rósza, can make it hard to take, but beneath the facile trappings there is an intriguing Hitchcockian study of role reversal, with doctors and patients, men and women, mothers and sons inverting their assigned relationships with compelling, subversive results.
  2. The Counterfeiters
    This poses some tricky moral questions, and its troubling ambiguities rank a cut above the dubious uplift of "Schindler's List."
  3. Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired
    The mesmerizing narrative recounts a media circus of unrivaled malignance.
  4. After the Wedding
    Jensen's dramatic structure is so visible this sometimes seems like a late Rod Serling teleplay, but Bier has proved highly adept at merging conventional drama with the immediacy of the Dogma 95 movement.
  5. The Dark Knight Rises
    The script, by Nolan and his brother Jonathan, takes a few vague pokes at Wall Street and the financial elite but mainly revives the ponderous psychodrama of the first movie.
  6. Devil in a Blue Dress
    What's most memorable about it is the period flavor, including a detailed and precise account of the jim crow complications blacks had to contend with.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Time for Drunken Horses
    More grim and less sentimental than other Iranian films featuring plucky children, this strikingly photographed work stresses the harshness of daily life in Iranian Kurdistan.
  8. Blind Shaft
    Set in the blue gray gloom of industrial China, this cunning noir focuses on two ruthless coal miners.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Guard
    Gleeson makes the movie worthwhile and fun, in spite of its occasional overuse of Leone-Morricone spaghetti-western riffs.
  10. The War of the Worlds
    As the perfect crystallization of 50s ideology the film would be fascinating enough, but the special effects in this 1953 George Pal production also achieve a kind of dark, burnished apocalyptic beauty.
  11. Lassie Come Home
    Classic 1943 canine weepie.
  12. On Dangerous Ground
    One of the loveliest of Nick Ray's movies: this 1952 feature begins as a harsh film noir and gradually shifts to an ethereal romanticism reminiscent of Frank Borzage.
  13. Dragnet Girl
    One of the most striking of Ozu’s American-style silents.
  14. Oldboy
    There's a lot less here than meets the eye.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Morvern Callar
    Fans of director Lynne Ramsay's first movie, the bleak Ratcatcher won't be surprised that this little existential exercise makes The Stranger look like a funwagon.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    La Ciénaga
    Every frame is dense with life, with children and animals running in and out, yet it's not messy. Instead it's highly focused--and something of a small masterpiece.
  17. Jungle Fever
    The disparate themes never quite come together, but with many fine performances—John Turturro and Lonette McKee are especially good—you won't be bored for a minute.
  18. The Real Dirt on Farmer John
    A beguiling combination of agrarian ode and “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,” deepened by Peterson's square sincerity as he struggles to find himself in relation to his family's land.
  19. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
    For what it is, it's fine.
  20. Best in Show
    In general, the dogs-as-mirrors theme--the crazy things people do with and in relation to their pets--is what keeps this going, and the laughs are sporadic but genuine.
  21. Lost Boys of Sudan
    Moving documentary.
  22. Hard Eight
    Impressive for its lean and unblemished storytelling, but even more so for its performances.
  23. Innocence
    Hadzihalilovic, the wife of cinematic agent provocateur Gaspar Noé and his sometime collaborator, has created a work of limpid beauty and eerie menace that some undoubtedly will dismiss as kiddie porn.
  24. Chariots of Fire
    Despite its blatant mediocrity, this 1981 British film knocked 'em dead everywhere, which makes me suspect that audiences weren't responding to the film itself as much as to the attitudes that underlie it.
  25. Speed
    The deft arabesques of cinematographer Andrzej Bartkowiak juice up the suspense, and if you're not too put off by the sheer ridiculousness of the story you won't be bored.
  26. Detective Story
    Sidney Kingsley's Broadway hit, modeled a little too clearly on Greek tragedy, becomes a solid film d'art under William Wyler's supple, impersonal direction.
  27. Eve's Bayou
    Subplots are woven stealthily into the story, taking the pressure off the central drama, allowing it to be affecting rather than melodramatic, and heightening the atmosphere of the lush Louisiana setting.
  28. Dr. No
    All of the elements of the formula are there, but in pleasing moderation.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Ball of Fire
    Howard Hawks's 1941 version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a delight.
  30. Mississippi Masala
    The last act is rushed and soapy, but this is still a singular observation of American life.
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