Chicago Sun-Times' Scores

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For 8,156 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 5.9 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: 6,085 out of 8156
  2. Mixed: 1,243 out of 8156
  3. Negative: 828 out of 8156
8156 movie reviews
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  1. Southland Tales
    I recommend that Kelly keep right on cutting until he whittles it down to a ukulele pick.
  2. Fred Claus
    The movie wants to be good-hearted but is somehow sort of grudging. It should have gone all the way. I think Fred Claus should have been meaner if he was going to be funnier, and Santa should have been up to something nefarious, instead of the jolly old ho-ho-ho routine.
  3. Lions for Lambs
    There is a long stretch toward the beginning of the film when we're interested, under the delusion that it's going somewhere. When we begin to suspect it's going in circles, our interest flags, and at the end, while rousing music plays, I would have preferred the Peggy Lee version of "Is That All There Is?"
  4. No Country for Old Men
    Many of the scenes in No Country for Old Men are so flawlessly constructed that you want them to simply continue, and yet they create an emotional suction drawing you to the next scene. Another movie that made me feel that way was "Fargo." To make one such film is a miracle. Here is another.
  5. American Gangster
    This is an engrossing story, told smoothly and well, and Russell Crowe's contribution is enormous.
  6. Bee Movie
    All of this material, written by Seinfeld and writers associated with his television series, tries hard, but never really takes off.
  7. Darfur Now
    It is not a compelling documentary (too much exposition, not enough on-the-spot reality), but it is instructive and disturbing.
  8. Martian Child
    The movie leaves no heartstring untugged. It even has a beloved old dog, and you know what happens to beloved old dogs in movies like this. Or if you don't, I don't have the heart to tell you.
  9. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
    A superb crime melodrama.
  10. Bella
    The movie is a little more lightweight than the usual People's Choice Award winner at Toronto, but why not? It was the best-liked film at the 2006 festival, and I can understand that.
  11. Dan in Real Life
    If the film has a flaw, and I'm afraid it does, it's the Sondre Lerche songs on the soundtrack. They are too foregrounded and literal, either commenting on the action or expounding on associated topics. In such a laid-back movie, they're in our face.
  12. Jimmy Carter Man from Plains
    Shows a man whose beliefs, both political and religious, seem to reinvigorate him; he even carries his own luggage in airports and hotels.
  13. Music Within
    Just remember that its hero stands for countless others.
  14. Rails & Ties
    I found the opening third tremendously intriguing and involving, I thought the emotions were so real they could be touched, but then the film lost its way and fell into the clutches of sentimental melodrama.
  15. Slipstream
    Now is Slipstream worth seeing? I think so, if you'll actively engage your sympathy with Hopkins' attempt to do something tricky and difficult. If you want to lie back and let the movie come to you, you may be lying there a long time.
  16. 30 Days of Night
    It is well-made, well-photographed and plausibly acted, and is better than it needs to be.
  17. Gone Baby Gone
    The result is a superior police procedural, and something more -- a study in devious human nature.
  18. Rendition
    Rendition is valuable and rare. As I wrote from Toronto: "It is a movie about the theory and practice of two things: torture and personal responsibility. And it is wise about what is right, and what is wrong."
  19. Things We Lost in the Fire
    The movie is an engrossing melodrama, and it has its heart in the right place.
  20. Wristcutters: A Love Story
    The movie isn't laugh out loud funny, under the circumstances, but it is bittersweet and wistfully amusing; the actors enjoy lachrymosity. We witness the birth of a new genre, the Post-Slasher Movie.
  21. Canvas
    Marcia Gay Harden finds a fine balance between madness and the temptations of overacting. Yes, she runs wild sometimes, but always as a human being, not as a caricature.
  22. Elizabeth: The Golden Age
    Weighed down by its splendor. There are scenes where the costumes are so sumptuous, the sets so vast, the music so insistent, that we lose sight of the humans behind the dazzle of the production.
  23. Lars and the Real Girl
    How this all finally works out is deeply satisfying. Only after the movie is over do you realize what a balancing act it was, what risks it took, what rewards it contains. A character says at one point that she has grown to like Bianca. So, heaven help us, have we.
  24. Sleuth
    Caine, who has never been much for the stage, is a superb screen actor, so good his master classes on acting for the camera are on DVD. Here, dry and clipped, biting and savage, he goes for the kill.
  25. We Own the Night
    This is an atmospheric, intense film, well acted, and when it's working it has a real urgency.
  26. Control
    One of the most perceptive of rock music biopics.
  27. The Heartbreak Kid
    There are small moments of real humor.
  28. Michael Clayton
    I don't know what vast significance Michael Clayton has (it involves deadly pollution but isn't a message movie). But I know it is just about perfect as an exercise in the genre.
  29. 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.
  30. Lake of Fire
    This is a brave, unflinching, sometimes virtually unwatchable documentary that makes such an effective case for both pro-choice and pro-life that it is impossible to determine which side the filmmaker, Tony Kaye, stands on. All you can conclude at the end is that both sides have effective advocates, but the pro-lifers also have some alarming people on their team.
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