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 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 Muppet Movie
    After that first second we quit wondering: This is magic, after all, so who wants to know where Henson is?
  2. Raising Bertie
    It’s a portrait of communities and families striving to do right by their kids, but where schools and lack of job programs fail to meet communities’ most desperate needs.
  3. Egg
    There’s much truth and food for thought contained within even the most over-the-top moments.
  4. Vixen!
    Vixen is the best film to date in that uniquely American genre, the skin-flick.
  5. Joy Ride
    I avoid saying a comedy is “laugh out loud hilarious” unless that’s literally true, but I laughed out loud at least a half-dozen times at the edgy antics of Joy Ride — and I was genuinely moved by the warmhearted scenes depicting the complicated bonds of friendship and family.
  6. Kung Fu Panda
    Not one of the great recent animated films. The story is way too predictable, and truth to tell, Po himself didn't overwhelm me with his charisma. But it's elegantly drawn, the action sequences are packed with energy, and it's short enough that older viewers will be forgiving.
  7. Crazy Rich Asians
    Crazy Rich Asians glimmers and sparkles, gives us characters to root for, and is pure escapist fantasy fun.
  8. The Secret Garden
    Like all great stories for children, The Secret Garden contains powerful truths just beneath the surface. There is always a level at which the story is telling children about more than just events; it is telling them about the nature of life.
  9. Hercules
    The wonder is that it took Disney so long to get to the gods of Greek mythology. Hercules jumps into the ancient legends feet-first, cheerfully tossing out what won't fit and combining what's left into a new look and a lighthearted style.
  10. A Mighty Heart
    What is best about A Mighty Heart is that it doesn't reduce the Daniel Pearl story to a plot, but elevates it to a tragedy. A tragedy that illuminates and grieves for the hatred that runs loose in our world, hatred as a mad dog that attacks everyone. Attacks them for what seems, to the dog, the best of reasons.
  11. Breakdown
    Breakdown is a fine thriller, and its ending is unworthy of it.
  12. Sir! No Sir!
    Sir! No Sir! is a documentary about an almost-forgotten fact of the Vietnam era: Anti-war sentiment among U.S. troops grew into a problem for the Pentagon.
  13. Dream Scenario
    Writer-director-editor Kristoffer Borgli’s Dream Scenario has one of the most ingenious setups of any movie of the 2020s and, even more remarkably, delivers on that premise for at least three-quarters of the story, before it falls just short of greatness in a final sequence of events that feels just slightly, slightly underwhelming.
  14. Place Vendôme
    This human level is always there beneath the thriller elements. The screenplay takes care to bring the crime story and the personal histories together, so that even the crossed lines of romance work as plot points, not just sentiment.
  15. Invictus
    Clint Eastwood, a master director, orchestrates all of these notes and has us loving Mandela, proud of Francois and cheering for the plucky Springboks. A great entertainment. Not, as I said, the Mandela biopic I would have expected.
  16. Will & Harper
    Although this is the antithesis of a fly-on-the-wall chronicle, what with Will Ferrell being WILL FERRELL, it’s still an emotionally honest and deeply moving look at two friends bonding after one of them has found the courage to be her true self.
  17. Edward Scissorhands
    The disappointment is that Burton has not yet found the storytelling and character-building strength to go along with his pictorial flair.
  18. Starlet
    The film itself deserves praise for its portraits of these two women and the different worlds they inhabit.
  19. My Kid Could Paint That
    In the last analysis, I guess it all reduces to taste and instinct. Some paintings are good, says me, or says you, and some are bad. Some paintings could be painted by a child, some couldn't be.
  20. Two Lovers
    The whole movie is so well-cast and performed that we watch it unfolding without any particular awareness of "acting."
  21. Wag the Dog
    The movie is a satire that contains just enough realistic ballast to be teasingly plausible; like "Dr. Strangelove," it makes you laugh, and then it makes you wonder.
  22. Sin City
    This isn't an adaptation of a comic book, it's like a comic book brought to life and pumped with steroids.
  23. Neil Young Journeys
    It's an intimate performance portrait.
  24. She Said
    While the pace is occasionally glacial and the screenplay indulges in any number of journalism-movie tropes, and She Said is not in the same league as those aforementioned classics, it is nonetheless a solid and straightforward telling, with Carey Mulligan (as Twohey) and Zoe Kazan (as Kantor) doing authentic and finely calibrated work.
  25. Such a Long Journey
    So rich in atmosphere it makes Western films look pale and underpopulated.
  26. Shower
    Although it has some contrived plot devices (including the looming deadline of the city's threat to the bathhouse), it is warm and observant, and its ending is surprisingly true to the material.
  27. Metallica: Some Kind of Monster
    Doesn't require you to know anything about the band Metallica or heavy metal music, but it supplies a lot of information about various kinds of monsters.
  28. Source Code
    An ingenious thriller that comes billed as science fiction, although its science is preposterous.
  29. Joe
    Gripping and at times agonizing.
  30. Albert Brooks: Defending My Life
    With Brooks’ close friend Rob Reiner serving as director and interviewer, the HBO documentary Albert Brooks: Defending My Life serves as a wonderful Greatest Hits retrospective of Brooks’ invaluable contributions to the entertainment world, as well as a brief but insightful look at Brooks’ upbringing, which provides some therapist couch-worthy insights into his motivations and his particular brand of comedy.
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