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. The Fighter
    Bale dominates the movie as Dicky Eklund, a pathetic loudmouth who's let his own fight career slip away from him, yet what really holds this together is Wahlberg's low-key, firmly internalized performance as a man torn between his loyalty to the clan and his responsibility to himself.
  2. A Room for Romeo Brass
    A sense of authenticity overshadows any contrivance in this subtly classic drama.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Original Sin
    Retained my interest and sympathy -- at least until the nonsensical ending,
  4. Toast
    Sentimental, obvious, but well-nigh irresistible, this jubilant comedy equates England's bland cuisine with its sexual inhibition and suggests we could all use something a little more tasty (at dinnertime, that is).
  5. The Virgin Suicides
    A very curious and eclectic piece of work--fresh even when it's awkward.
  6. Sid and Nancy
    A few too many moralistic foreshadowings, but most of the time Cox's situations and characters develop on their own eloquently entropic terms.
  7. Spider-Man 2
    As Dr. Octopus, Alfred Molina makes a more baroque supervillain than Willem Dafoe did as the Green Goblin, but the other stars--seem happy to be giving us more of the same.
  8. The Devil and Daniel Johnston
    Johnston's childish, repetitive tunes prove that he's no Brian Wilson (or even Roky Erickson), which makes you wonder whether Feuerzeig is examining the singer's exploitation or participating in it.
  9. Control
    Sam Riley is fascinating as Curtis, a hypersensitive young man hobbled by his incurable disease, and Samantha Morton is poignant as his put-upon wife.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    This Is Spinal Tap
    The material is consistently clever and funny.
  11. Sanjuro
    This is fun but, compared with Kurosawa’s other 60s efforts, relatively slight.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    My Mexican Shivah
    Uses the seven days of shivah to launch a series of hilariously escalating confrontations, including one in which elderly men nearly come to blows over who's the more genuine Jew.
  13. The Dinner Game
    Shtick isn't all this movie has to offer.
  14. Mystery Men
    The characters have been designed to make fun of themselves, disguising the craft of writer Neil Cuthbert and director Kinka Usher in getting us to laugh at them.
  15. Praying with Lior
    Lior is an irrepressible character as he works a room, doing exactly what a bar mitzvah boy should: challenging, instructing, and, in his own way, healing the world.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Devil
    The great cinematographer Tak Fujimoto has the time of his life on this low-budget horror feature, playing with dolly shots, abrupt zooms, and negative space inside the widescreen frame, and the fun is infectious.
  17. Hotel for Dogs
    A bright, funny family movie that gets everything right, from story to production design to cast (both human and canine).
  18. Inspector Bellamy
    Depardieu brings such easygoing authority to the title character that you're pulled into the investigation, even as Bellamy becomes increasingly bewildered by his home life.
  19. La Nouvelle Ève
    Effective portrait of an independent woman with a troubled and unstable sense of herself.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Singing Detective
    The musical fantasy scenes in the new Singing Detective are raw and purposely amateurish. Although Gordon sometimes fumbles the tonal shifts of the material, the acting is rock solid.
  21. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
    Persuasively re-creates the experience of sailing aboard a British man-o'-war during the Napoleonic era, but its story never attains comparable grandeur.
  22. 5x2
    Austere and formally complex, the drama may nevertheless be Ozon's most accessible film due to the physical attractiveness and vitality of the intelligent couple.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Stuart Little 2
    The film is fairly formulaic, though some of its puns and wisecracks are hilarious, especially those delivered by the Littles' lazy and cynical Persian cat (Nathan Lane).
  24. Bob Roberts
    Robbins is attempting too much here, but the 70 percent or so that he brings off borders on delightful.
  25. Chocolat
    The director (Hallstrom) and cast are all excellent.
  26. Something's Gotta Give
    In the end I didn't believe in their relationship, but I was pleased to see Keaton tearing it up for two hours.
  27. Waste Land
    The movie might have amounted to no more than a sunny eco-parable, but it begins to bite harder when the catadores, captivated by their sudden importance, face the unhappy prospect of returning to their previous existence.
  28. Destry Rides Again
    The material makes no demands on the talents of James Stewart and Marlene Dietrich, but they enter gamely into the farcical tone set by director George Marshall.
  29. Entrapment
    It's the romantic sparring with Catherine Zeta-Jones as another glamorous thief -- not the unsuspenseful heists -- that makes this silly thriller lightly bearable.
  30. Four Eyed Monsters
    So playful and imaginative that only at the very end -- in a metafictional tag about their project's success on the festival circuit -- does its narcissism become off-putting.
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