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 6.1 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: 6,085 out of 8156
  2. Mixed: 1,243 out of 8156
  3. Negative: 828 out of 8156
8156 movie reviews
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  1. Affliction
    Nolte and Coburn are magnificent in this film, which is like an expiation or amends for abusive men. It is revealing to watch them in their scenes together--to see how they're able to use physical presence to sketch the history of a relationship.
  2. Hilary and Jackie
    The movie makes no attempt to soften the material or make it comforting through the cliches of melodrama.
  3. A Civil Action
    Civil Action is like John Grisham for grownups.
  4. Stepmom
    The skill of the actors, who invest their characters with small touches of humanity, is useful in distracting us from the emotional manipulations, but it's like they're brightening separate rooms of a haunted house.
  5. Patch Adams
    Made me want to spray the screen with Lysol. This movie is shameless. It's not merely a tearjerker. It extracts tears individually by liposuction, without anesthesia.
  6. Mighty Joe Young
    Mighty Joe Young is not meek and harmless; it's a full-blooded action picture, all right, but with a certain warmth and humor instead of a scorched-earth approach. You feel good at the end, instead of merely relieved.
  7. Down in the Delta
    Angelou's first-time direction stays out of its own way; she doesn't call attention to herself with unnecessary visual touches, but focuses on the business at hand.
  8. The Theory of Flight
    The Theory of Flying is actually fairly enjoyable. At least it doesn't drown its message in syrup and cornball sentiment.
  9. You've Got Mail
    The appeal of You've Got Mail is as old as love and as new as the Web.
  10. The Prince of Egypt
    One of the best-looking animated films ever made.
  11. The General
    Boorman's film is shot in wide-screen black and white, and as it often does, black and white emphasizes the characters and the story, instead of setting them awash in atmosphere. And Boorman's narrative style has a nice offhand feel about it.
  12. A Simple Plan
    One of the year's best films for a lot of reasons, including its ability to involve the audience almost breathlessly in a story of mounting tragedy.
  13. Shakespeare in Love
    I was carried along by the wit, the energy and a surprising sweetness.
  14. Rushmore
    Seems torn between conflicting possibilities: It's structured like a comedy, but there are undertones of darker themes, and I almost wish they'd allowed the plot to lead them into those shadows.
  15. Star Trek: Insurrection
    There is a certain lackluster feeling to the way the key characters debate the issues, and perhaps that reflects the suspicion of the filmmakers that they have hitched their wagon to the wrong cause.
  16. Jack Frost
    Jack Frost is the kind of movie that makes you want to take the temperature, if not feel for the pulse, of the filmmakers.
  17. Little Voice
    Little Voice is unthinkable without the special and unexpected talent of its star.
  18. Psycho
    The movie is an invaluable experiment in the theory of cinema, because it demonstrates that a shot-by-shot remake is pointless; genius apparently resides between or beneath the shots, or in chemistry that cannot be timed or counted.
  19. A Bug's Life
    The story, about an ant colony that frees itself from slavery to grasshoppers, is similar in some ways to the autumn's other big animated release, "Antz," but it's aimed at a broader audience and lacks the in-jokes.
  20. Very Bad Things
    Isn't a bad movie, just a reprehensible one. It presents as comedy things that are not amusing. If you think this movie is funny, that tells me things about you I don't want to know.
  21. Home Fries
    It has elements of sweet romance and elements of macabre humor, and divides its characters between the two.
  22. Babe: Pig in the City
    It is more of a wonderment, lolling in its enchanting images--original, delightful and funny.
  23. Waking Ned Devine
    One of the joys of Waking Ned Devine is in the richness of the local eccentric population.
  24. Central Station
    The movie's success rests largely on the shoulders of Fernanda Montenegro, an actress who successfully defeats any temptation to allow sentimentality to wreck her relationship with the child.
  25. Celebrity
    The movie's shot in black and white; Allen is one of the rare and valuable directors who sometimes insists in working in the format that is the soul of cinema.
  26. The Rugrats Movie
    The target audience for "Rugrats" is, I think, kids under 10. Unlike both insect cartoons, the movie makes little effort to appeal to anyone over that age. There is something admirable about that.
  27. Enemy of the State
    In too much of a hurry to be much of a people picture. And the standoff at the end edges perilously close to the ridiculous, for a movie that's tried so hard to be plausible.
  28. Meet Joe Black
    The movie contains elements that make it very good, and a lot of other elements besides. Less is more.
  29. I Still Know What You Did Last Summer
    Assembles the building blocks of idiot-proof slasher movies: Stings, Snicker-Snacks, false alarms and point-of-view baits-and-switches.
  30. Elizabeth
    The texture of the film is enough to recommend it, even apart from the story.
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