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 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: 6,085 out of 8156
  2. Mixed: 1,243 out of 8156
  3. Negative: 828 out of 8156
8156 movie reviews
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  1. Guess Who
    If the movie had spent more time walking that tightrope between the acceptable and the offensive, between what we have in common and what divides us, it would have been more daring.
  2. The Ballad of Jack and Rose
    An absorbing experience.
  3. D.E.B.S.
    At some point during the pitch meetings for D.E.B.S. someone must certainly have used the words "Charlie's Lesbians."
  4. Lipstick & Dynamite, Piss & Vinegar: The First Ladies of Wrestling
    The documentary visits elderly women who, then and now, can best be described as tough broads, and listens as they describe the early days of women's wrestling. What they say is not as revealing as how they say it.
  5. Oldboy
    Oldboy is a powerful film not because of what it depicts, but because of the depths of the human heart which it strips bare.
  6. Miss Congeniality 2: Armed & Fabulous
    It's unnecessary in the sense that there is no good reason to go and actually see it.
  7. Mondovino
    Despite its visual restlessness and its dogs, Mondovino is a fascinating film.
  8. Ice Princess
    This movie is just about perfect for teenagers, and it's a surprise that even their parents are allowed to have minds of their own.
  9. The Ring Two
    The charm of The Ring Two, while limited, is real enough; it is based on the film's ability to make absolutely no sense, while nevertheless generating a real enough feeling of tension a good deal of the time.
  10. Melinda and Melinda
    In its complexity and wit, this is one of his (Allen's) best recent films.
  11. Steamboy
    There may be possibilities here, but they're lost in the extraordinary boredom of a long third act devoted almost entirely to loud, pointless and repetitive action.
  12. Hostage
    The mechanics of the final showdown are unexpected and yet show an undeniable logic, and are sold by the acting skills of Willis and Pollak.
  13. Robots
    Like "Finding Nemo," this is a movie that is a joy to behold entirely apart from what it is about. It looks happy, and, more to the point, it looks harmonious.
  14. The Upside of Anger
    I liked these characters precisely because they were not designed to be likable -- or, more precisely, because they were likable in spite of being exasperating, unorganized, self-destructive and impervious to good advice.
  15. Millions
    A family film of limitless imagination and surprising joy.
  16. In My Country
    There is something not quite right about the film itself.
  17. Dot the I
    dot the i is like one of those nests of Chinese boxes within boxes. The outer box is a love story.
  18. Off the Map
    Off the Map is visually beautiful as a portrait of lives in the middle of emptiness, but it's not about the New Mexico scenery. It's about feelings that shift among people who are good enough, curious enough or just maybe tired enough to let that happen.
  19. Be Cool
    A classic species of bore: a self-referential movie with no self to refer to. One character after another, one scene after another, one cute line of dialogue after another, refers to another movie, a similar character, a contrasting image, or whatever.
  20. The Jacket
    You can sense an impulse toward a better film, and Adrien Brody and Keira Knightley certainly take it seriously, but the time-travel whiplash effect sets in, and it becomes, as so many time travel movies do, an exercise in early entrances, late exits, futile regrets.
  21. The Pacifier
    All very nice, sometimes we smile, but there's nothing compelling.
  22. Dear Frankie
    The bold long shot near the end of Dear Frankie allows the film to move straight as an arrow toward its emotional truth, without a single word or plot manipulation to distract us.
  23. Gunner Palace
    A ground-level documentary, messy and immediate, about the daily life of a combat soldier in Iraq. It is not pro-war or anti-war.
  24. The Best of Youth
    It is a luxury to be enveloped in a good film.
  25. Diary of a Mad Black Woman
    The Grandma is not merely wrong for the movie, but fatal to it -- a writing and casting disaster... I've been reviewing movies for a long time, and I can't think of one that more dramatically shoots itself in the foot.
  26. Up and Down
    Lacks any formulas or solutions, and is content to show us its complicated characters, their tangled lives, and the way that our need to love and be loved can lead us in opposite directions.
  27. Because of Winn-Dixie
    Sweet and warm-hearted, but there is another film with a similar story that is boundlessly better, and that is "My Dog Skip" (2000).
  28. Constantine
    Strange, that movies about Satan always require Catholics. You never see your Presbyterians or Episcopalians hurling down demons.
  29. Son of the Mask
    What we basically have here is a license for the filmmakers to do whatever they want to do with the special effects, while the plot, like Wile E. Coyote, keeps running into the wall.
  30. Downfall
    Against the overarching facts of his personal magnetism and the blind loyalty of his lieutenants, the movie observes the workings of the world within the bunker. All power flowed from Hitler. He was evil, mad, ill, but long after Hitler's war was lost he continued to wage it in fantasy.
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