Chicago Sun-Times' Scores

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For 8,157 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 73% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 25% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 6.1 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 71
Highest review score: 100 Falling from Grace
Lowest review score: 0 Jupiter Ascending
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 6,086 out of 8157
  2. Mixed: 1,243 out of 8157
  3. Negative: 828 out of 8157
8157 movie reviews
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  1. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
    The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is as violent and gruesome and blood-soaked as the title promises -- a real Grand Guignol of a movie. It’s also without any apparent purpose, unless the creation of disgust and fright is a purpose. And yet in its own way, the movie is some kind of weird, off-the-wall achievement. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to make a movie like this, and yet it’s well-made, well-acted, and all too effective.
  2. Ten
    The shame is that more accessible Iranian directors are being neglected in the overpraise of Kiarostami.
  3. Brazil
    Perhaps it is not supposed to be clear; perhaps the movie's air of confusion is part of its paranoid vision. There are individual moments that create sharp images (shock troops drilling through a ceiling, De Niro wrestling with the almost obscene wiring and tubing inside a wall, the movie's obsession with bizarre duct work), but there seems to be no sure hand at the controls.
  4. Buena Vista Social Club
    It is a touching story, and the musicians (some over 90 years old) still have fire and grace onstage, but, man, does the style of this documentary get in the way.
  5. Lady Chatterley
    Watching this film I reflected that there are only so many Cracker Jacks you can eat before you decide to hell with the toy.
  6. Reprise
    The movie itself is good and shows promise, except for the ending, when Trier shouldn't have been so poetic. Not only does Reprise generate itself, it contains its own review.
  7. Dead Poets Society
    Not the worst of the countless recent movies about good kids and hidebound, authoritatian older people. It may, however, be the most shameless in its attempt to pander to an adolescent audience.
  8. The Elephant Man
    I kept asking myself what the film was really trying to say about the human condition as reflected by John Merrick, and I kept drawing blanks. The film's philosophy is this shallow: (1)Wow, the Elephant Man sure looked hideous, and (2)gosh, isn't it wonderful how he kept on in spite of everything?
  9. The Substance
    The satire becomes almost numbingly obvious over the far too long running time of 140 minutes, and with all due appreciation for the strong work by the leads, the horrifically impressive VFX and prosthetics, and a few moments of pitch-black humor, we exit the film feeling more pummeled than enlightened.
  10. A Clockwork Orange
    It is just plain talky and boring. You know there's something wrong with a movie when the last third feels like the last half.
  11. Shanghai Triad
    There are two basic weaknesses. One is that the boy supplies the point of view, and yet the story is not about him, so instead of identifying with him, we are simply frustrated in our wish to see more than he can see. The other problem is that Gong Li's character is thoroughly unlikable.
  12. Keep On Keepin' On
    Hicks may devote too much time on hospital errands and bedside moments as Terry’s health declines. But he succeeds at honoring the career of one man who is helping another’s.
  13. Children of the Revolution
    It is enormously ambitious -- maybe too much so, since it ranges so widely between styles and strategies that it distracts from its own flow.
  14. Iris
    Because the film is well-acted and written with intelligence, it might be worth seeing, despite my objections. I suspect my own feelings.
  15. The Loneliest Planet
    All of this grows tiresome. We're given no particular reason at the outset of The Loneliest Planet to care about these people, our interest doesn't grow along the way, the landscape grows repetitive, the director's approach is aggressively minimalist, and if you ask me, this romance was not made in heaven.
  16. mother!
    The action and the scale of the acting are often more befitting an elaborate stage play than a film.
  17. Straw Dogs
    The most offensive thing about the movie is its hypocrisy; it is totally committed to the pornography of violence, but lays on the moral outrage with a shovel.
  18. Anton Chekhov's The Duel
    Somehow isn't as exciting as a duel over a woman should be.
  19. The Cider House Rules
    The story touches many themes, lingers with some of them, moves on and arrives at nowhere in particular. It's not a story so much as a reverie about possible stories.
  20. The Crucible
    The Crucible is a drama of ideas, but they seem laid on top of the material, not organically part of it.
  21. The Stunt Man
    A film that depends on deceiving us has got to play by its own rules. If we are going to be deceived in general, fine, but then we can't be cheated on particulars.
  22. Augustine
    An obliquely clinical love story.
  23. Western
    The same material, filmed in America, might seem thin and contrived; the adventures are arbitrary, the cuteness of the men grows wearing, and when Nino has an accident with a chainsaw, we can see contrivance shading off into desperation.
  24. Jackass Forever
    Sure, these guys now have a budget to work with and they can pull off some elaborate stunts, but we’ve seen so much viral, backyard Jackassery through the years, the shock value has dissipated and all that remains is the cringe factor and a growing feeling of restlessness as the gags become repetitive and tiresome.
  25. Edward Scissorhands
    The disappointment is that Burton has not yet found the storytelling and character-building strength to go along with his pictorial flair.
  26. Behind the Sun
    It has some of the simplicity and starkness of classical tragedy, but what made me impatient was its fascination with the macho bloodlust of the two families.
  27. All About Lily Chou-Chou
    So enigmatic, oblique and meandering that it's like coded religious texts that requires monks to decipher.
  28. The Daytrippers
    The outcome of this journey is going to be predictable and disappointing. Mottola does his best to make the trip itself enjoyable.
  29. Erin Brockovich
    A screenplay with the depth and insight of a cable-TV docudrama.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Big
    It's too involved in administering its reversion fantasy to acquisition-guilty yuppies to cast an eye on its own venture status. And the contradictions don't stop there. That this celebration of the Peter Pan syndrome was directed by a woman, Penny Marshall, adds another layer of dishonesty. [3 Jun 1988, p.31]
    • Chicago Sun-Times
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