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 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
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    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Steel City
    Jun, a downstate native, has an ear for plainspoken dialogue and neither glamorizes nor patronizes his characters.
  2. Berlin Babylon
    Unfortunately the film never establishes either a perspective of its own or a coherent geography of the city, so the politicians pontificating at ceremonies and architects commiserating at building sites become deadly dull long before the the film exhausts its 88 minutes.
  3. The Fisher King
    If you treasure Gilliam at his best and take his ideas seriously, you'll probably be infuriated as well as delighted.
  4. Decasia
    The film asks us to embrace not only the death of beauty but the beauty of death.
  5. Fellini: I'm a Born Liar
    Offers a fascinating inquiry into memory and art, mixing clips from Fellini's films with contemporary shots of the same locales in and around Rome.
  6. Stir of Echoes
    The conventional ghost-appeasement scenario isn't very suspenseful, which may be part of the reason it's so gripping.
  7. Fahrenheit 9/11
    There are plenty of laughs whenever Moore wants to twist the knife, but the bottom line is that he respects and trusts his fellow Americans a lot more than Bush does.
  8. An Ideal Husband
    The only problem I was faced with was trying to understand what exactly it was that I enjoyed, and how this movie differed from the play I'd read.
  9. Mondovino
    This cagey and compelling 2004 documentary looks at the world of wine, but it's actually a nuanced, provocative piece of journalism about globalization and its discontents.
  10. Die Hard 2
    If your idea of a good time is watching a lot of stupid, unpleasant people insult and brutalize one another, this is right up your alley.
  11. Synecdoche, New York
    It seems more like an illustration of his (Kaufman) script than a full-fledged movie, proving how much he needs a Spike Jonze or a Michel Gondry to realize his surrealistic conceits.
  12. Edge of Seventeen
    Apart from McVay and Lea DeLaria (as a lesbian who befriends and advises the hero), the actors mainly come across as movie types rather than characters, and despite the obvious sincerity of the project, deja vu seems written into the conception.
  13. Charlie Wilson's War
    As creator and head writer of "The West Wing," Aaron Sorkin had a gift for making policy debate seem sexy, but what worked in the context of that liberal fantasy founders badly amid the realpolitik of this cold war drama.
  14. Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid
    Carl Reiner comedy whose technical execution (Michael Chapman's cinematography is masterful) is better than its script.
  15. Take the Money and Run
    Woody Allen's first film as a director, in which he plays Virgil Starkwell, Public Schmuck Number One. This ragged collection of gags and sketch fragments was reportedly pieced together from an incoherent mass of footage by ace film doctor Ralph Rosenblum.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Melancholian 3 huonetta
    Honkasalo's bleak, meditative 2004 documentary, about children who have been orphaned or dispossessed as a result of the Russian-Chechen conflict, eschews any attempts to make sense out of this long-running war.
  17. Sammy and Rosie Get Laid
    Recklessly biting off more than they can possibly chew, the filmmakers still give us a memorable apocalyptic view of 1987 England.
  18. My Bodyguard
    A film of ingredients, rather than ideas realized and integrated: it panders on different, disjunctive levels.
  19. Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
    The crazy color schemes and visual effects once made this a popular head picture, though you'd have to be stoned to tolerate the score, which includes The Candy Man.
  20. Reflections in a Golden Eye
    Either you like this movie a lot or you run screaming for the exit; I find it rough going.
  21. 2 Days in Paris
    Among the many offhand virtues of Julie Delpy's first feature as solo writer-director is the fact that she's as attentive to French foibles as American ones.
  22. Last Days
    A film about a junkie rock musician, played by Michael Pitt at his most narcissistic, doing nothing in particular for the better part of 97 minutes isn't my idea of either a good time or a serious endeavor.
  23. Life and Debt
    Powerfully illustrates what globalization has been doing to underdeveloped countries around the world.
  24. Better Luck Tomorrow
    The performances are strong without calling attention to themselves--which is more than I can say for the occasionally hackneyed use of rock on the sound track.
  25. A Decade Under the Influence
    As one might expect from IFC, actors and directors dominate the interview segments, which may be the reason the narrative never finds its way to Heaven's Gate.
  26. Young Adam
    Despite the flashback structure, this is a film in which mood matters more than plot, while the hero's heroic stature steadily shrinks.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Finding Neverland
    The plays and amusements the boys put on--by far the most successfully magical scenes in the movie--inspire Barrie to create his great work, "Peter Pan."
  28. The Business of Strangers
    The film raises many interesting questions about our own responses, but it may finally be too open-ended for its own good.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    To Each His Own
    A fine example of the genre, but not for jaded tastes.
  30. Haywire
    There's a good deal of pleasure to be had in the clockwork precision of her hand-to-hand combat, which Soderbergh often shoots in profile to showcase her wall-climbing backflips. The story surrounding it is comparably smooth, skilled, and mechanical, though a lot less memorable.
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