Chicago Sun-Times' Scores

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For 8,158 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: 6,087 out of 8158
  2. Mixed: 1,243 out of 8158
  3. Negative: 828 out of 8158
8158 movie reviews
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  1. Smallfoot
    It’s not often an animated children’s movie features lessons about critical thinking, especially when the movie on the whole is a zippy, silly, zany, cheery little tale with the obligatory upbeat musical numbers, wonderfully entertaining voice work from the eclectic cast, and a gentle, PG tone with nary a sequence that will have the little ones scurrying for cover under your wing.
  2. Continental Divide
    The movie itself is fun: goofy, softhearted, fussy, sometimes funny, and with the sort of happy ending that columnists like to find for their stories and hardly ever find themselves.
  3. Mortal Thoughts
    Alan Rudolph’s Mortal Thoughts is a movie just like the true crime stories I enjoy the most.
  4. Green Card
    Weir is good with his actors and good, too, at putting a slight spin on some of the obligatory scenes.
  5. A Compassionate Spy
    The film leaves no doubt Ted Hall was a brilliant man, and that he and Joan had a beautiful marriage. His legacy beyond that remains a subject of intense debate.
  6. Haywire
    A film like Haywire has no lasting significance, but it's a pleasure to see an A-list director taking the care to make a first-rate genre thriller.
  7. The Uninvited
    Emily Browning's face helps The Uninvited work so well...She makes you fear for her, and that's half the battle. Yet she's so fresh she's ready for a Jane Austen role.
  8. Wish
    Yes, this film is unapologetically corny and unabashedly self-congratulatory, and while it pales in comparison to many of the classic animated films referenced throughout, the little ones should find it entertaining enough and the parents should be at least mildly amused as well as grateful for a zippy 95-minute running time.
  9. Tim's Vermeer
    While Penn and Teller certainly know how to tell a story, Tim’s Vermeer is at times a chore to sit through, even with a brisk 80-minute running time. We’re literally watching paint dry.
  10. Paper Heart
    A quasi-documentary about love that is sweet, true and perhaps a little deceptive.
  11. Tommaso
    Tommaso has an appealing, casually messy, docu-style approach, as if we’re eavesdropping on these lives.
  12. Win Win
    I'm happy I saw Win Win. It would have been possible to be happier.
  13. Spartacus
    The most entertaining performance in the movie, consistently funny, is by Ustinov, who upstages everybody when he is onscreen (he won an Oscar).
  14. Hart's War
    The movie worked for me right up to the final scene, and then it caved in.
  15. The Reivers
    The Reivers is a pleasant, wholesome, straightforward movie of the sort (as they say) they don't make anymore.
  16. A League of Their Own
    The movie has a real bittersweet charm. The baseball sequences, we've seen before. What's fresh are the personalities of the players, the gradual unfolding of their coach and the way this early chapter of women's liberation fit into the hidebound traditions of professional baseball.
  17. Wah-Wah
    Wah-Wah has a sequence, based on old newsreels, in which the flag is lowered and the sun sets on another bit of the empire. Odd how many critics have felt the whole movie should be about this. I don't see why. The story is about people who lived closed lives, and a film about them would necessarily give independence only a supporting role.
  18. Bellflower
    A scrappy indie movie that comes out of nowhere and blows up stuff real good. It also possibly represents the debut of a one-of-a-kind filmmaker, a natural driven by wild energy, like Tarantino.
  19. Get Carter
    Get Carter has the sure feel for the underbelly of society, like the good American detective novelists have always had.
  20. Honey Boy
    Working from a sharp and unflinchingly honest screenplay by LaBeouf, director Alma Har’el delivers a smart and knowing inside slice of show business life that also serves as a harrowing cautionary tale about abuse and about encouraging your children to become professional entertainers when they’d most likely be better off having, you know, an actual childhood.
  21. The Adam Project
    With echoes of “Back to the Future,” “The Terminator” and even a little of “Heaven Can Wait,” this is a consistently entertaining comedy-actioner with a lot of heart — and the perfect ending. Fine work, Adam(s).
  22. Sinister
    And then there is Vincent D'Onofrio, as a university professor of the occult and mythological, who opens up a line of possibility that eventually saves the ending from being a red herring. Yes, the ending is horrifying, but I don't believe in that stuff. I'm pretty sure I don't.
  23. Last Vegas
    There’s virtually nothing subtle or surprising about the story, and yet one can’t help but smile throughout watching five Academy Award-winning actors breezing their way through an obvious but lovely and funny adventure.
  24. The Brink's Job
    What we have here is basically two hours of inventive, colorfully imagined entertainment, with the Brinks job laid on top: A movie-movie, so to speak, and fun from beginning to end.
  25. Hitman
    Hitman stands right on the threshold between video games and art. On the wrong side of the threshold, but still, give it credit.
  26. Charly
    Strangely enough, Ralph Nelson's Charly succeeds as a movie for reasons having little to do with the plot. As the story of a personality in crisis, it works. We care about Charly. But the whole scientific hocus-pocus, which causes his crisis, is irrelevant and weakens the movie by distracting us.
  27. The Monuments Men
    This is a solid albeit slow-building film with few dull moments.
  28. The Real Blonde
    A meandering movie that usually meanders in entertaining directions.
  29. V for Vendetta
    With most action thrillers based on graphic novels, we simply watch the sound and light show. V for Vendetta, directed by James McTeigue, almost always has something going on that is actually interesting, inviting us to decode the character and plot and apply the message where we will.
  30. Amigo
    Amigo is not as tightly crafted as "Lone Star." It's a messier work whose dialogue is at times a tad too purple, its political allusions a little too obvious, and it has a one-note character that is uncharacteristic of its creator.
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