Chicago Sun-Times' Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
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:
8157 movie reviews
  1. To our great benefit, the material is handled beautifully, even tenderly, without becoming maudlin.
  2. This is one of the best movies of the year.
  3. In a movie with the energy of this one, we're exhilarated by the sheer freedom of movement; the violence becomes surrealistic and less important than the movie's underlying energy level.
  4. It’s a brilliant character study, a devilishly confounding murder mystery, a legitimately haunting psychological thriller, a hell of a ghost story — and one of the most memorable viewing experiences I’ve had in the last few years.
  5. Mel Brooks will do anything for a laugh. Anything. He has no shame. He's an anarchist; his movies inhabit a universe in which everything is possible and the outrageous is probable, and Silent Movie, where Brooks has taken a considerably stylistic risk and pulled it off triumphantly, made me laugh a lot.
  6. This is one of the greatest performances in the history of the cinema.
  7. The strength of Leigh's film is that it is not a message picture, but a deep and true portrait of these lives.
  8. This was for me the best film at Cannes 2004, a story vibrating with urgency and life. It makes a powerful statement and at the same time contains humor, charm and astonishing visual beauty.
  9. Shines with a kind of inspired madness.
  10. No director since Fassbinder has been able to evoke such complex emotions with such problematic material.
  11. Man on Wire is about the vanquishing of the towers by bravery and joy, not by terrorism.
  12. The message is boldly displayed, but told with characters of such sympathy and images of such beauty that audiences leave the theater feeling more pity than anger or resolve. It's a message movie, but not a recruiting poster.
  13. Prince of the City is a very good movie and, like some of its characters, it wants to break your heart. Maybe it will. It is about the ways in which a corrupt modern city makes it almost impossible for a man to be true to the law, his ideals, and his friends, all at the same time. The movie has no answers. Only horrible alternatives.
  14. May be the most intimate documentary ever made about a live rock 'n' roll concert. Certainly it has the best coverage of the performances onstage.
  15. Persona is a film we return to over the years, for the beauty of its images and because we hope to understand its mysteries.
  16. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl has those handkerchief moments, but the laughs far outnumber the hard and sad punches. This is a movie that’s grounded in reality, has just enough whimsy and soars to the stars. It’s one of the best films of 2015.
  17. Helena Bonham Carter may be Burton's inamorata, but apart from that, she is perfectly cast, not as a vulgar fishwife type but as a petite beauty with dark, sad eyes and a pouting mouth and a persistent fantasy that she and the barber will someday settle by the seaside. Not bloody likely.
  18. A visionary roller-coaster ride of a movie.
  19. David Fincher's film has the rare quality of being not only as smart as its brilliant hero, but in the same way. It is cocksure, impatient, cold, exciting and instinctively perceptive.
  20. The impersonation of Welles by Christian McKay in Me and Orson Welles is the centerpiece of the film, and from it, all else flows. We can almost accept that this is the Great Man.
  21. Astonishing things happen and symbolism can only work by being apparent. For me, the film is like music or a landscape: It clears a space in my mind, and in that space I can consider questions. (Review of Original Release)
  22. The information they eventually dislodge about Rodriguez suggests a secular saint, a deeply good man, whose music is the expression of a blessed inner being. I hope you're able to see this film. You deserve to. And yes, it exists because we need for it to.
  23. Made with sublime innocence and breathtaking artistry, at a time when its simple values rang true.
  24. The story in the jungle moves ahead neatly, economically, powerfully.
  25. Camelot, then, is exactly what we were promised: ornate, visually beautiful, romantic and staged as the most lavish production in the history of the Hollywood musical. If that's what you like, you'll like it. I'll just crouch in the corner here and gnaw my haunch of beef and send the wench to fetch more ale.
  26. Harakiri is a film reflecting situational ethics, in which the better you know a man the more deeply you understand his motives.
  27. This is a viewing experience to be treasured. It is one of the very best films of 2019.
  28. There is the sense they're fighting for each other more than for ideology.
  29. The movie has an emotional payoff I failed to anticipate. It expresses hope in human nature. It is one of the year's best films.
  30. A beautiful and haunting film that tells this story, and then tells another subterranean story about the seasons of a marriage.

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