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 Luzhin Defence
    The film is elegiac and sad, beautifully mounted, but not as compelling as it should be.
  2. The Dancer Upstairs
    Elegantly, even languorously, photographed by Jose Luis Alcaine, who doesn't punch into things but regards them, so that we are invited to think about them. That doesn't mean the movie is slow; it moves with a compelling intensity toward its conclusion.
  3. The Princess and the Warrior
    What's special about the film is at a deeper level, down where (Tykwer) engages with the souls of his characters.
  4. Sleep Furiously
    A lovely film, but maddeningly complacent.
  5. The Chaser
    The Chaser is an expert serial-killer film from South Korea and a poster child for what a well-made thriller looked like in the classic days.
  6. Inside Deep Throat
    Inside Deep Throat, a documentary that premiered at Sundance and is now going into national release, was made not on the fringes but by the very establishment itself.
  7. Conan O'Brien Can't Stop
    This is not to say Conan O'Brien is a bad man. In fact, after the movie, I rather admired him. What we are seeing is a man determined to vindicate himself after a public humiliation.
  8. The Last Rites of Joe May
    The film, written and directed by Joe Maggio, only has this handful of characters and looks at them carefully. The dialogue is right, the conflicts are simple and sincere, the hopes are touching.
  9. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
    Lacks some of the idiocy of your average teenage rom-com. But it doesn't bring much to the party. It sort of ambles along, with two nice people at the center of a human scavenger hunt. It's not much of a film, but it sort gets you halfway there, like a Yugo.
  10. Ant-Man
    This is a lightweight, cliché-riddled origins story that veers between inside-joke comedy, ponderous redemption story lines and admittedly nifty CGI sequences that still seem relatively insignificant compared to the high stakes and city-shattering destruction that take place in most of the “Avengers” movies.
  11. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1
    Ultimately, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1 serves as solid if unspectacular first lap around the track of a two-lap race.
  12. Where to Invade Next
    In the occasionally poignant but ham-handed and only semi-funny Where to Invade Next, Moore is at his shtickiest.
  13. Big Time Adolescence
    To the credit of Orley’s screenplay and Davidson’s smiling-devil performance as the charming but toxic Zeke, we can understand how a vulnerable teen could mistake a loser for a legend — and we’re rooting like hell for the kid to realize that mistake before it’s too late.
  14. The Naked Prey
    The film itself remains pure fantasy. Sure, it's nice to think you could outrun half a dozen hand-picked African warriors simply because you'd been to college and read Thoreau, but the truth is they'd nail you before you got across the river and into the trees.
  15. Sirens
    The movie does indeed feature much footage of MacPherson and her sister sirens in the nude, but it is smarter, more thoughtful and more good-tempered than you might expect.
  16. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
    Though a bit bloated and overstuffed with explosion-laden, standard-issue action sequences we’ve seen in dozens of superhero movies, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is also an exhilarating, consistently funny, big-hearted adventure that packs a surprising emotional wallop.
  17. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
    Chitty Chitty Bang Bang contains about the best two-hour children's movie you could hope for, with a marvelous magical auto and lots of adventure and a nutty old grandpa and a mean Baron and some funny dances and a couple of moments when you've just GOT to cover your face and peek between your fingers, it's so scary.
  18. Popeye
    It's clear that this movie has an affection for Popeye, and so much regard for the sailor man that it even bothers to reveal the real truth about his opinion of spinach.
  19. Giant
    Because of the limitations imposed by the nature of Gigante, and because of Jara's simple, almost childish shyness, the film doesn't transcend its characters. Like Jara, it waits and watches.
  20. Chocolat
    The movie is charming and whimsical, and Binoche reigns as a serene and wise goddess.
  21. Grass
    Grass is not much as a documentary. It's a cut-and-paste job, assembling clips from old and new anti-drug films and alternating them with pro-drug footage from the Beats, the flower power era and so on.
  22. Jesus Christ Superstar
    A bright and sometimes breathtaking retelling of the rock opera of the same name. It is, indeed, a triumph over that work; using most of the same words and music, it succeeds in being light instead of turgid, outward-looking instead of narcissistic.
  23. The Hedgehog
    This a movie with such a light, stylish touch, it makes no claims to profundity and is a sweetly hopeful experience.
  24. Spelling the Dream
    Spelling the Dream is a fresh take on the competition, focusing largely on the phenomenon of Indian-American dominance over the last quarter-century.
  25. The Fall
    A movie that you might want to see for no other reason than because it exists. There will never be another like it.
  26. State of Play
    The movie never quite attains altitude. It has a great takeoff, levels nicely, and then seems to land on autopilot. Maybe it's the problem of resolving so much plot in a finite length of time, but it seems a little too facile toward the end.
  27. We Have a Pope
    There are elements of comedy here, and some very low-key slapstick, but the film is respectful to the Catholic Church and the papacy and takes no cheap shots.
  28. Little Odessa
    It seemed to me that the movie had raised too many serious issues to turn into a visual exercise at the end. It's a set piece when a dramatic scene is needed.
  29. Pineapple Express
    It's a quality movie even if the material is unworthy of the treatment. As a result, yes, it's a druggie comedy that made me laugh.
  30. St. Vincent
    Nearly every scene is contrived, but Melfi has a nice way with dialogue, and the cast is uniformly outstanding.
  31. Body Brokers
    Writer-director John Swab is clearly influenced by films such as the The Big Short and his grasp sometimes exceeds his reach as he indulges in a few too many stylized touches and meandering subplots, but Body Brokers keeps us in its grips throughout.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Hand That Rocks the Cradle
    The male characters are uniformly weak (Solomon is only the least articulate of the lot) and all the women, ultimately, are strong or aggressive. [10 Jan 1992, p.32]
    • Chicago Sun-Times
  33. Cradle Will Rock
    It needs a study guide, and viewing "Citizen Kane" might be a good place to start.
  34. Appaloosa
    What makes the movie absorbing is the way it harmonizes all the character strands and traits and weaves them into something more engaging than a mere 1-2-3 plot. I felt like I did in "Lonesome Dove" -- that there was a chair for me on the porch.
  35. Fried Green Tomatoes
    Fried Green Tomatoes is fairly predictable, and the flashback structure is a distraction, but the strength of the performances overcomes the problems of the structure. I especially liked Mary Stuart Masterson's work, but then I nearly always do (see her in Some Kind of Wonderful). And I enjoyed the vigor with which Jessica Tandy told her long-ago tale, about a woman not completely unlike herself.
  36. Arctic Tale
    In the end, I'm conflicted about the film. As an accessible family film, it delivers the goods. But it lives in the shadow of "March of the Penguins." Despite its sad scenes, it sentimentalizes.
  37. Everest
    Based on true events, filled with stunning visuals and featuring more than a half-dozen of our best actors delivering solid performances, Baltasar Kormakur’s Everest is a high-altitude roller coaster ride that will leave you drained.
  38. Downton Abbey
    It’s an extravagant dessert after a six-course meal. Absolutely unnecessary, but still a real treat.
  39. X-Men
    I started out liking this movie, while waiting for something really interesting to happen. When nothing did, I still didn't dislike it; I assume the X-Men will further develop their personalities if there is a sequel.
  40. Bright Young Things
    The movie has a sweetness and tenderness for these characters, poor lambs, blissfully unaware that they're about to be flattened by World War II.
  41. Stage Beauty
    Claire Danes is as fresh as running water in this role, exhibiting the clarity and directness that has become her strength; her characters tend to know who they are, and why.
  42. Wedding Crashers
    You know all those horror stories about a cigar-chomping producer who screens a movie and says they need to lose 15 minutes and shoot a new ending? Wedding Crashers needed a producer like that.
  43. Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon
    Supermensch sells the impression that its subject is a genuinely good guy.
  44. Kelly & Cal
    It’s easy to see how an unhappy transition to suburban mommyhood might be enough to unhinge any self-respecting former punk rocker but, even so, it’s a little hard to take the angst-ridden mid-life shenanigans in Kelly & Cal seriously.
  45. The Serpent and the Rainbow
    The Serpent and the Rainbow is uncanny in the way it takes the most lurid images and makes them plausible.
  46. Motel Hell
    Motel Hell is a welcome change-of-pace; it's to "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" as "Airplane!" is to "Airport." It has some great moments.
  47. The Train Robbers
    Kennedy goes for silhouettes and, as I’ve mentioned, for the kind of carefully casual arrangements of figures we find in samurai films - the Japanese Western. The result is a movie that isolates the John Wayne mystique and surrounds it with the necessary simplicity and directness.
  48. Rock Camp: The Movie
    Essentially an extended infomercial but works as a breezy, slightly goofy, occasional touching and infectiously upbeat slice of entertainment
  49. The Anthrax Attacks
    Writer-director Dan Krauss takes a creative risk by combining traditional non-fiction storytelling techniques with re-creations that go far beyond the usual shadowy-silhouette snippets.
  50. Gladiator II
    Much of the plot feels like we’re retracing the footprints of the original, especially in the early going, and there are a few moments when the CGI looks like one of those slick but cheap AI demonstration videos you see posted on social media, but “Gladiator II” is a welcome slice of R-rated, popcorn movie fun in the middle of the generally super-serious awards season.
  51. Something New
    Something New delivers all the usual pleasures of a love story, and something more. The movie respects its subject and characters, and is more complex about race than we could possibly expect.
  52. Nobody
    Most impressive of all is Odenkirk, who looks and sounds nothing like an action star until it’s time for Hutch to become an action star, and we totally believe this physically unimpressive, normally mild-mannered guy as a simmering cauldron of rage who could take that teapot over there and kill ya with it.
  53. Patriot Games
    The high-tech stuff is absorbing. Harrison Ford once again demonstrates what a solid, convincing actor he is, and there's good supporting work from Archer, Thora Birch as the Ryans' precocious daughter, and the irreplaceable James Fox as a British cabinet minister. But at the end, when a character is leaping into a burning speedboat in choppy seas, I wondered if this was exactly what Tom Clancy had in mind.
  54. The Ballad of Lefty Brown
    This is a Western that places the sidekick front and center, and in doing so gives reliable everyman supporting character actor Bill Pullman a rare chance to carry the film, and what a fine job he does with the added responsibilities.
  55. Finding Fela!
    In his dynamic and revealing documentary Finding Fela!, director Alex Gibney captures the many sides of Afrobeat king Fela Kuti, a complex character who is at once inspiring and vexing.
  56. The Horse Boy
    The whole enterprise seems to be Isaacson's project. He narrates the film. Kristin, his wife, seems fully in accord with him, and they're both courageous, but I would have liked more insights from the side of her that teaches psychology.
  57. Halston
    Unusual framing device aside, Halston is on balance a solid and affectionate tribute to an American original.
  58. Greenland
    Unlike the typical, effects-laden, comet-threatens-the-planet B-movie, Greenland is more in the vein of Steven Spielberg’s “War of the Worlds,” with the scenes of chaos and destruction serving as the backdrop for the story of one family’s desperate quest for survival — even when circumstances have ripped them apart.
  59. Kinds of Kindness
    This is the kind of film that will send some viewers to the exits by the halfway point, while others surely will hail the bold genius of Lanthimos’ absurdist flourishes.
  60. Dreamin' Wild
    This is a true story, and it’s now getting the feature film treatment in Bill Pohlad’s warm and elegiac and lovely Dreamin’ Wild, with Casey Affleck doing his disheveled-restless-socially awkward thing in a searingly strong performance as the brilliantly talented Donnie, and the versatile Walton Goggins making the most of an opportunity to play a genuinely nice regular guy in Joe, who always knew he was at best the Ringo to Donnie’s John.
  61. The Great Santini
    Sentimental without being corny, a tearjerker with dignity. The Great Santini is a movie to seek out and to treasure.
  62. Ready Player One
    You need to see this one on the biggest screen possible, and let it wash over you as if you had stepped inside the most incredible video game experience ever created — one in which events in the manufactured universe can have lasting and serious real-world consequences.
  63. It Could Happen to You
    The movie is not so much about romance as about goodheartedness, which is a rarer quality, and not so selfish. And Cage has a certain gentleness that brings out nice soft smiles on Fonda's face.
  64. Star Trek: Insurrection
    There is a certain lackluster feeling to the way the key characters debate the issues, and perhaps that reflects the suspicion of the filmmakers that they have hitched their wagon to the wrong cause.
  65. Proof
    An extraordinary thriller... The film centers on two remarkable performances, by Gwyneth Paltrow and Hope Davis.
  66. Amistad
    What is most valuable about Amistad is the way it provides faces and names for its African characters, whom the movies so often make into faceless victims.
  67. Jack Goes Boating
    The actors make it new and poignant, and avoid going over the top in the story's limited psychic and physical space.
  68. The Muppet Christmas Carol
    Will kids like the movie? The kids around me in the theater seemed to, although more for the Muppets than for the cautionary tale of Scrooge.
  69. The Lodge
    This is a scary movie that loves other scary movies.
  70. Café Society
    Café Society is a gorgeous and lightweight confection, a love letter to the Hollywood of the mid-1930s, as well as the New York of the same era.
  71. Peter Pan
    tT never grow up is unspeakably sad, and this is the first Peter Pan where Peter's final flight seems not like a victory but an escape.
  72. Nymphomaniac: Volume I
    Nymphomaniac Part 1 grows flat and monotonous, and comes across as just what it is: half a film.
  73. Gattaca
    This is one of the smartest and most provocative of science fiction films, a thriller with ideas.
  74. Robots
    Like "Finding Nemo," this is a movie that is a joy to behold entirely apart from what it is about. It looks happy, and, more to the point, it looks harmonious.
  75. Fire
    The two women are very beautiful, gentle and sad together, and the movie is all but stolen by Chowdhry, as the servant who lurks constantly in the background providing, with his very body language, a comic running commentary.
  76. Marathon Man
    If holes in plots bother you, Marathon Man will be maddening. But as well-crafted escapist entertainment, as a diabolical thriller, the movie works with relentless skill.
  77. Starting Over
    Starting Over actually feels sort of embarrassed at times, maybe because characters are placed in silly sitcom situations and then forced to say lines that are supposed to be revealing and real. When the gags do work, and occasionally they do, it's more a matter of acute social observation than good writing.
  78. The Apprentice
    Most impressive of all are the performances by Sebastian Stan as the raw and ambitious younger Trump, and Jeremy Strong (the “eldest boy” from “Succession”) as the unconscionable Cohn. This is “The Art of the Deal” told as a Frankenstein dark fable.
  79. Greyhound
    While The Greyhound pays great attention to detail and feels authentic, especially in the claustrophobic and intense scenes in the bowels of the ship, the battle sequences that look like something straight out of a video game dominate the movie and keep us at a safe distance from getting emotionally involved on a level this story deserves.
  80. The Mystic Masseur
    A wry, affectionate delight, a human comedy about a man who thinks he has had greatness thrust upon him when in fact he has merely thrust himself in the general direction of greatness.
  81. Trekkies
    Trekkies talk at length about how the world would be a saner and more peaceful place if the "Star Trek" philosophy ruled our lives. No doubt it would be a lot more entertaining, too, especially during root canals.
  82. Looney Tunes: Back in Action
    Not as inspired as "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" but in the same spirit. It's goofy fun. Or maybe we should make that daffy fun.
  83. Blood Work
    The strength of the picture, directed by Eastwood, is that it has three intersecting story arcs: The investigation, the health issues, and the relationship that builds, step by step.
  84. The Fourth Protocol
    The Fourth Protocol is first-rate because it not only is a thriller, but it also pays attention to its characters and shows how their actions grow out of their personalities. Like Michael Caine's other recent British spy film, "The Whistle Blower," it is effective not simply because it's a thriller but also because for long stretches it simply is a very absorbing drama.
  85. The Nutty Professor
    And the movie succeeds in two different ways: It's sweet and good-hearted, and then again it's raucous slapstick and bathroom humor. I liked both parts.
  86. Silverado
    This movie is more sophisticated and complicated than the Westerns of my childhood, and it is certainly better looking and better acted.
  87. In Search of a Midnight Kiss
    We increasingly admire the quality of the acting: Both actors take their characters through a difficult series of changes, without ever seeming to try, or be aware of it.
  88. Lymelife
    Lymelife doesn't have the sheer power of "The Ice Storm," but it's not just another recycling of suburban angst. By allowing their characters complexity, the Martinis spill open those tiny model homes as thoroughly as a dropped Monopoly game.
  89. The Professional
    Besson has a natural gift for plunging into drama with a charged-up visual style.
  90. The Grey
    Sit through the entire credits. There's one more shot still to come. Not that you wouldn't be content without it.
  91. The Bad Guys
    This is a great-looking film with terrific performances, some lovely messaging and a steady parade of solid laughs—some the kids will enjoy and just as many targeted squarely at the grown-up kids in the audience.
  92. District 13: Ultimatum
    This is a hot modern martial art. Not only do the shots look convincing, not only are they held long enough to allow us to see an entire action, but Belle in real life does a version of this stuff.
  93. Serial Mom
    I am not sure why this isn't very funny, but it's not.
  94. Film Socialisme
    This film is an affront. It is incoherent, maddening, deliberately opaque and heedless of the ways in which people watch movies.
  95. Synchronic
    Through the psychedelic journeys and the blood-spattered crime scenes and the brooding atmosphere, Synchronic is at heart a good old-fashioned buddy movie about two friends who will risk all for each other.
  96. The Tin Drum
    My problem is that I kept seeing Oskar not as a symbol of courage but as an unsavory brat; the film's foreground obscured its larger meaning.
  97. Tokyo!
    Do these films reflect actual aspects of modern Tokyo? The hikikomori epidemic is apparently real enough, but the other two segments seem more deliberately fantastical. The entertainment value? Medium to high: "Merde." Tokyo? Still standing.
  98. Little Big Man
    Arthur Penn's Little Big Man is an endlessly entertaining attempt to spin an epic in the form of a yarn.
  99. Defending Your Life
    The movie is funny in a warm, fuzzy way, and it has a splendidly satisfactory ending, which is unusual for an Albert Brooks film 
  100. Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult
    It occurred to me, watching the film, that what Leslie Nielsen and Priscilla Presley do here is not easy, and is done well. It would be fatal to the movie if either one ever betrayed the slightest suggestion that they know funny things are going on. They play everything on a level of seriousness that would be appropriate, say, for a 1960s TV cop drama. Their timing is impeccable. And they provide the sure, strong center around which the madness revolves.
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