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. Liam
    Some will find Dad's last big act in the movie too melodramatic. I think it follows from a certain logic, and leads to the very last shot, which is heartbreaking in its tenderness.
  2. The Invisible Man
    Elisabeth Moss delivers the best performance of her film career, carrying the story every step of the way.
  3. Bullet Train
    Unlike so many of the cookie-cutter, wisecracking-assassin movies in recent memory, Bullet Train acknowledges its outlandishness from the beginning and yet also manages to connect so many dots in creative, gotcha fashion.
  4. What Dreams May Come
    So breathtaking, so beautiful, so bold in its imagination, that it's a surprise at the end to find it doesn't finally deliver.
  5. Heavy
    You don't guess the true horror of the place, which is that there are no secrets, because everyone here knows all about everyone else, inside and out, top to bottom, and has for years.
  6. Elizabeth
    The texture of the film is enough to recommend it, even apart from the story.
  7. Sylvie's Love
    Like the great Douglas Sirk melodramas of that time period, Sylvie’s Love is unabashedly sentimental and just gorgeous to behold — but the difference here is the terrific ensemble cast is primarily Black and Latinx.
  8. The Patience Stone
    Rahimi simply made an inspired decision when he chose Farahani...who quietly but powerfully works her way through subtle shadings of emotion from fear to despair to anger to love to righteous vindication.
  9. Whiplash
    The music is brilliant, Chazelle’s writing and directing are something to behold, Teller is really good — and Simmons delivers one of the most memorable performances of the year.
  10. Martha Marcy May Marlene
    A linear story, or one that was fragmented more clearly, could have been more effective. Still, a good film, ambitious and effective, introducing a gifted young actress and a director whose work I'll anticipate.
  11. Oldboy
    It’s generally a respectful homage that has every bit as much stylishness and visual flair.
  12. The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi
    The kind of film I more and more find myself seeking out, a film that seems alive in the sense that it appears to have free will; if, in the middle of a revenge tragedy, it feels like adding a suite for hoes and percussion, it does.
  13. 48 Hrs.
    What makes the movie special is how it's made. Nolte and Murphy are good, and their dialogue is good, too - quirky and funny.
  14. Jagged Edge
    The machinery in this movie is so efficient that we don't know the answer until the very last shot.
  15. False Positive
    With Ilana Glazer leading an outstanding cast, False Positive is not a movie you can easily shake off in a day or two. Or three.
  16. The Karate Kid
    If you've seen “The Karate Kid” (1984), the memories will come back during this 2010 remake. That's a compliment.
  17. Hanna
    Here we have an odd cross between a fairy tale and a high-tech action movie. It could have been a fairly strained attempt at either, but director Joe Wright ("Atonement") combines his two genres into a stylish exercise that perversely includes some sentiment and insight.
  18. We the Party
    Despite its flashy cinematography and colorful sets, it contains a great deal that is serious about growing up in America today.
  19. Meek's Cutoff
    Meek's Cutoff is more an experience than a story. It has personality conflicts, but isn't about them. The suspicions and angers of the group are essentially irrelevant to their overwhelming reality. Reichardt has the courage to establish that.
  20. Guardians of the Galaxy
    It’s filled with a kind of giddy energy that leaps off the screen. It’s corny, it’s dopey, it’s sincere, it’s romantic, it’s thrilling and it leaves one anticipating the next adventure of these heroic goofballs.
  21. Back to the Beach
    I don't know what I was expecting from Back to the Beach, but it certainly wasn't the funniest, quirkiest musical comedy since Little Shop of Horrors. Who would have thought Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello would make their best beach party movie 25 years after the others?
  22. Irreconcilable Differences
    Irreconcilable Differences is sometimes cute, and is about mean parents, but it also is one of the funnier and more intelligent movies of 1984, and if viewers can work their way past the ungainly title, they're likely to have a surprisingly good time.
  23. Frozen
    Disney’s Frozen works beautifully as a timeless fairy tale with a modern twist.
  24. The 40 Year Old Virgin
    Surprisingly insightful, as buddy comedies go, and it has a good heart and a lovable hero.
  25. Snow Falling on Cedars
    Uusually satisfying in the way it unfolds.
  26. Capturing the Friedmans
    By the end of Capturing the Friedmans, we have more information, from both inside and outside the family, than we dreamed would be possible. We have many people telling us exactly what happened. And we have no idea of the truth. None.
  27. Chances Are
    The movie itself is surprisingly affecting, perhaps because Shepherd never goes for easy laughs but plays her character seriously.
  28. Nicholas Nickleby
    The actors assembled for Nicholas Nickleby are not only well cast, but well typecast. Each one by physical appearance alone replaces a page or more of Dickens' descriptions, allowing McGrath to move smoothly and swiftly through the story without laborious introductions.
  29. The Hangover
    A funny movie, flat out, all the way through. Its setup is funny. Every situation is funny. Most of the dialogue is funny almost line by line.
  30. My Sister's Keeper
    The movie never says so, but it's a practical parable about the debate between pro-choice and pro-life. If you're pro-life, you would require Anna to donate her kidney, although there is a chance she could die, and her sister doesn't have a good prognosis. If you're pro-choice, you would support Anna's lawsuit.
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