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. Moonlight
    Laurien van den Broeck's masterful unblinking performance transcends the uneasy all-English dialogue.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Divided We Fall
    An amiable black comedy.
  3. Pierrepoint
    This 2005 feature has a drab "Masterpiece Theatre" feel, though Pierrepoint is a fascinating study in ethics: he takes pride in his work, wants his victims to die swiftly and painlessly, and considers hanging an absolution.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A Secret
    Bittersweet drama.
  5. The Human Stain
    Director Robert Benton allows the cast... to shine, but I was left wondering why such a very literary construction as this needed to be made into a movie.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A Single Man
    A romantic tale of love interrupted the isolation that is an inherent part of the human condition and ultimately the importance of the seemingly smaller moments in life.
  7. Inventing the Abbotts
    Apart from the script, it's the actors who make this a film worth seeing; all of them look and sometimes even act like real people rather than types or icons, and behind their interactions can be felt the depths of lived experience.
  8. 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.
  9. Land of the Pharaohs
    Howard Hawks’s only attempt at a wide-screen blockbuster (1955), much disparaged afterward by Hawks and many others, is actually fairly awesome if you can get beyond the clunky dialogue (some of it written by William Faulkner, as well as Harry Kurnitz) and the campy evilness of the Joan Collins character.
  10. The Rugrats Movie
    The dialogue reproduces infantile idiom even as it parodies the baby talk of adults, and a touching, didactic scene involving a baby blanket that’s become the object of sibling rivalry may appeal to a broad age range: it’s as strikingly elegant as it is obvious in its use of metaphor.
  11. Hold Back the Dawn
    Mitchell Leisen's polished direction serves this 1941 melodrama written by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett.
  12. Land of the Dead
    Romero's fourth entry, turns out to be his most conventional as an action thriller--though it's every bit as gory as the others and more clearly class-conscious.
  13. Broadway Danny Rose
    It seems meant to recapture Allen's lost audience: the verbal wit is fast and frequently hilarious, and the grating self-pity that has come to mar his films has been tempered.
  14. Road Trip
    At a relaxed pace, accompanied by restrained pop music.
  15. Walking and Talking
    Reasonably lifelike and nicely acted (Keener is especially good), but otherwise nothing special, this is an OK light comedy.
  16. Find Me Guilty
    This may be the most Brechtian thing Lumet has ever done -- a movie that repeatedly challenges us to think and then to reconsider.
  17. Show Me Love
    Powerful, funny romantic drama.
  18. Vitus
    Celebratory, family-friendly fable.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Witnesses
    This transcends the usual stodginess of period pieces with crucial historical testimony, delivered with verve.
  20. Secret Things
    I still can't decide whether it's a masterpiece of sexual provocation or just a really classy stroke film.
  21. The Driller Killer
    The script by Nicholas St. John (who would become a Ferrara regular) not only anticipates American Psycho but offers a fascinating look at New York's bohemian art scene circa 1979.
  22. Sugar Town
    Persuasive stylized drama.
  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 Puffy Chair
    The movie may not amount to much, but the genial tone and exceptionally good performances from the three leads make for a winning debut by the Duplass brothers.
  25. Reefer Madness
    The original antimarijuana film, offering the true inside story of the devil weed that drives men to savage lusts and women to unspeakable depravities, along with a little bit of dumb fun.
    • Chicago Reader
      • Posted Dec 6, 2017
  26. Coco Before Chanel
    The movie is most fascinating when it shows how Chanel communicated her enlightened sense of womanhood through her innovative designs, which in turn helped women feel differently about themselves.
  27. October Country
    There's rancor here, but also unexpected tenderness.
  28. The Black Cauldron
    It's quite good, though by the impossible standards the film sets for itself it inevitably falls short: the character design is a little smudgy, the backgrounds are somewhat unimaginative, and the secret of Disney animation's unique depth—its impeccable perspectives and shadings—seems to have been irretrievably lost.
  29. The Decomposition of the Soul
    Darkly poetic study of psychological brutality.
  30. Legal Eagles
    It's a pleasant commercial undertaking, though everything about this $30-million production seems a bit overscaled: the stars are too big for their parts, the mystery subplot is too complicated to take a comfortable backseat to the romantic comedy, the special effects (which include two spectacular fires) are too big for the action, and even the wide-screen image is too big for the intimate, offhanded humor.
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