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. The Triumph of Love
    The story, based on an 18th century French play by Pierre Marivaux, is the sort of thing that inspired operas and Shakespeare comedies: It's all premise, no plausibility, and so what?
  2. The Substance of Fire
    The film, directed by Daniel Sullivan, is brave, I think, to offer us a complicated scenario without an easy moral compass.
  3. Harry Is Here to Help
    We realize that the most frightening outcome of the movie would be if it contained no surprises, no revelations, no quirky twist at the end.
  4. Rana's Wedding
    The movie is passable as a story but fascinating as a document. It gives a more complete visual picture of the borders, the Palestinian settlements and the streets of Jerusalem than we ever see on the news.
  5. Against All Odds
    There is a lot of plot in this movie - probably too much. The best thing to do is to accept the plot, and then disregard it, and pay attention to the scenes of passion. They really work.
  6. Goya's Ghosts
    Goya's Ghosts is like the sketchbook Goya might have made with a camera.
  7. Mom and Dad
    It’s a funky, violent, nasty exploitation film, highlighted by a performance of operatic madness by the one and only Nicolas Cage.
  8. Evil Under the Sun
    Evil Under The Sun is not, alas, as good as Beat the Devil, but it is the best of the recent group of Christie retreads.
  9. The Crime of Padre Amaro
    It's more of a melodrama, a film that doesn't say priests are bad but observes that priests are human and some humans are bad.
  10. Conviction
    In Hilary Swank, the film finds the right actress to embody gritty tenacity.
  11. I Went Down
    I Went Down is a crime movie in which the dialogue is a great deal more important than anything else. It takes the form of a road movie and the materials of gangster movies (do real gangsters learn how to act by watching movies?), but what happens is beside the point. It's what they say while it's happening that makes the movie so entertaining.
  12. Miles Ahead
    Cheadle the director, producer and co-writer boldly goes for broke with mixed results in this highly fictionalized version of the Miles Davis legend — and Cheadle the actor gives a brilliant performance worthy of an Oscar nomination.
  13. The Bad News Bears
    The Bad News Bears is, in a way, [Ritchie's] most harrowing portrait of how we'd sometimes rather win than keep our self-respect. He directs scenes for comedy even in the face of his disturbing material and that makes the movie all the more effective; sometimes we laugh, and sometimes we can't, and the movie's working best when we're silent.
  14. Miller's Crossing
    What it doesn't have is a narrative magnet to pull us through - a story line that makes us really care what happens, aside from the elegant but mechanical manipulations of the plot.
  15. The Caveman's Valentine
    To watch Samuel L. Jackson in the role is to realize again what a gifted actor he is, how skilled at finding the right way to play a character who, in other hands, might be unplayable.
  16. Breathe
    Breathe is an inspirational story well told, but it’s essentially a paint-by-numbers biopic of a very deserving subject, with only a few bursts of stylistic flair and a couple of minor surprises at best.
  17. The Walk
    As breathtakingly gorgeous and well acted as The Walk is, if you had to choose between the doc and this solid fictionalized version, I’d say go with the documentary.
  18. Jumanji: The Next Level
    There are far more laugh-out-loud moments in the first half of Jumanji: The Next Level than in the second hour, but I liked the unexpected (if kinda trippy) spiritual element that comes into play late in the story.
  19. Arachnophobia
    This is the kind of movie where you squirm out of enjoyment, not terror, and it's probably going to be popular with younger audiences - it doesn't pound you over the head with violence. Like the spider itself, it has a certain respect for structure.
  20. This Christmas
    What's surprising is how well Whitmore, the director, manages to direct traffic. He's got one crisis cooling, another problem exploding, a third dilemma gathering steam and people exchanging significant looks about secrets still not introduced. It's sort of a screwball-comedy effect, but with a heart.
  21. The Conquest
    The result at times approaches screwball comedy. But no, this isn't deliberate comedy. It's essentially realistic. It's simply that the real lives of these figures are funny.
  22. Work It
    There’s little in the way of originality in Work It, but there’s a fresh, upbeat, infectious vibe to the silliness, thanks in large part to the talented and likable cast of young actors.
  23. Madison
    What is it about Indiana that inspires movies about small-town dreamers who come from behind to win?
  24. You're Next
    You’re Next benefits from skilled script-keepers.
  25. Skins
    To see this movie is to understand why the faces on Mount Rushmore are so painful and galling to the first Americans. The movie's final image is haunting.
  26. Death and the Maiden
    Death and the Maiden is all about acting. In other hands, even given the same director, this might have been a dreary slog.
  27. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
    Fey is such a likable and funny screen presence, but she’s no lightweight when it comes to playing subtle, honest drama.
  28. With All Deliberate Speed
    The most valuable task of the film is to re-create the historic legal struggles that led to Brown, and to remember heroes who have been almost forgotten by history.
  29. 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.
  30. Gremlins
    Gremlins was hailed as another "E.T." It's not. It's in a different tradition. At the level of Serious Film Criticism, it's a meditation on the myths in our movies: Christmas, families, monsters, retail stores, movies, boogeymen. At the level of Pop Movie-going, it's a sophisticated, witty B movie, in which the monsters are devouring not only the defenseless town, but decades of defenseless clichés. But don't go if you still believe in Santa Claus.
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