Chicago Reader's Scores

  • Movies
Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. The Public Enemy
    Time hasn’t been terribly kind to this 1931 gangster drama, which suffers more than it should from the glitches of early sound. But James Cagney’s portrayal of a bootlegging runt is truly electrifying (he’d already made three films, but this one made him a star), and Jean Harlow makes the tartiest tart imaginable.
  2. There Will Be Blood
    This has loads of swagger, but for stylistic audacity I prefer Anderson's more scattershot "Magnolia."
  3. Kirikou and the Sorceress
    The plots of animated features are often excuses for visual showboating, but here the lilting story line, based on west African folktales, complements the alternately sumptuous and austere images.
  4. Monsters vs Aliens
    Children won't get the references to atomic-age monster movies, but the film offers more than nostalgia: there are slyly funny performances by Seth Rogen as an omnivorous blue blob and Stephen Colbert as the U.S. president, who faces down, and then flees, an alien invasion.
  5. Submarine
    Ayoade owes a debt to Wes Anderson (Rushmore), but the parents here are so beautifully written, and Hawkins and Taylor particularize them so well, that the movie manages to hold its own.
  6. The Rock
    High-octane nonsense but gives both the actors and the audience all that's needed to make this diverting--car chases, wisecracks, narrow escapes, explosions.
  7. City Slickers
    Director Ron Underwood (Tremors) does a fair job navigating all the key changes proposed by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel's script, and with the actors' help he makes this a diverting if bumpy ride.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ça commence aujourd'hui
    Tavernier gives the children vivid, sharply delineated voices; working with a largely nonprofessional cast, he strips bare the characters' frailty but grants them a decency and honesty that redeems them despite the mounting hardships and tragedies.
  9. The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift
    Despite all the silliness the drift races are gripping, and director Justin Lin captures Tokyo's energy and glitter far better than Sofia Coppola.
  10. Reprise
    The movie is enjoyable for its flashy surfaces--the witty editing, the narrative forecasting, the droll omniscient voice-over--but as drama it seems superficial.
  11. Terribly Happy
    Lurid and stylish, this 2008 Danish feature plays like a cross between "The Postman Always Rings Twice" and "High Noon," with a dash of Gothic thriller.
  12. Nothing Sacred
    The definitive Ben Hecht screenplay.
  13. Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One
    The title modifies a term coined by political scientist and philosopher Arthur Bentley that refers to the interactions between people and their environment, and the notion of a shifting center is what gives this experiment much of its interest and also limits it from going very far in any single direction.
  14. Alice et Martin
    The sheer neurotic intensity of Techine's characters--characteristically stretching both backward and forward in time, as in a Faulkner novel--holds one throughout, as does Techine's masterful direction and many of the other performances.
  15. Cet amour-là
    There's something self-defeating about approaching an unconventional artist so conventionally, and the story becomes touching only insofar as it overrides much of what made Duras special.
  16. Amazing Grace
    Flawed but ambitious, this biopic of British parliamentarian William Wilberforce closely tracks the political maneuvering of the late 18th and early 19th century as reformers campaign to end Britain's participation in the slave trade.
  17. I Confess
    The movie is more interesting than achieved: it's the most forthright statement of the transference theme in Hitchcock's work, but it's also the least nuanced.
  18. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
    In place of romance there are numerous talky espionage scenes that make the movie feel like one of those labyrinthine cold war pictures from the 60s.
  19. The Graduate
    The light ribbing of conspicuous consumption in southern California and the Simon and Garfunkel songs on the sound track both play considerable roles in giving this depthless comedy some bounce. [Review of re-release]
  20. Misery
    The economy of both script and direction is admirable—there's no wasted motion in sight—though the film's anthology of genre cliches ultimately undermines Bates's heroic efforts to make it something more.
  21. In Good Company
    A missed opportunity, though as usual Quaid is dazzling.
  22. Posse
    As in New Jack City, Van Peebles displays a distinctive visual style of tilted angles and frequent camera movement, and the script by Sy Richardson and Dario Scardapane also keeps things moving, but perhaps the best sequence of all is the opening one, which features the great Woody Strode.
  23. Friends with Benefits
    The jokes don't all work and the topical references can be irritably hipper-than-thou, but at least director and cowriter Will Gluck (Easy A) aims high: this is patterned on the Tracy and Hepburn comedies, albeit with a lot more skin.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Standing in the Shadows of Motown
    There's no denying the music's magic.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    L'Auberge Espagnole
    The film is a pleasant ramble through an eventful year. Klapisch's special effects--cameras speeding down hallways, superimposed images--are both amusing and annoying.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Good Hair
    An exposé of comic proportions that only Chris Rock could pull off.
  27. Nicholas and Alexandra
    One of the best of a bad genre, Franklin J. Schaffner’s Sweeping Historical Romance manages some moderately intelligent historical observations amid its lavishly re-created period decor and the puppy-dog pathos of the two central characters (Michael Jayston and Janet Suzman).
  28. Beautiful Boy
    The most daring aspect of the film, fully realized in Bello's grave performance, may be the notion that a parent can invest endless love in a child and one day find him unfathomable.
  29. Friends with Money
    In her third feature Nicole Holofcener leapfrogs between characters with wit and grace, gathering them in various clusters and adroitly showing how money or the lack thereof really does inflect their lives and interactions.
  30. ...So Goes the Nation
    Documentarians Adam Del Deo and James Stern present a cogent and comprehensive postmortem of the 2004 presidential election in Ohio.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »