Chicago Sun-Times' Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
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:
8156 movie reviews
  1. The result is a raw and sometimes chilling and often darkly funny adventure filled with just enough nods to social media, e.g., we sometimes hear the familiar Twitter sound effect when something is posted.
  2. It’s yet another instantly immersive, richly layered and beautifully shot chapter in one of the most impressive directing careers of our time.
  3. The Ice Road is what we used to call a B-movie, but there’s no shame in a B-movie that carries out its mission with such competence and star power.
  4. This is a lovely tribute that will appeal to longtime fans and those who are just discovering the amazing Peanuts universe.
  5. 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.
  6. Lansky loses steam every time the focus is on somewhere other than Lansky.
  7. F9: The Fast Saga isn’t the worst entry in the long-running and popular Fast & Furious franchise, but it just might be the silliest and the loudest and the most ridiculous — and while that might well have been the filmmakers’ intention, it’s not a compliment.
  8. It will keep reminding you of better movies in the same genre.
  9. It’s nice to see Hart in a role where the comedy is relatively low-key and dialogue-driven (though there are a few hilarious physical bits of humor).
  10. Director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Baby Driver), who is of course British, aims to rectify that with The Sparks Brothers, a sprawling and comprehensive and cheeky film that documents the rise and fall and rise again and fall again and the leveling out and all the other peaks and valleys the group has experienced over the last 50 years.
  11. Director Enrico Casarosa is making his feature-length debut here, and he and the vast Pixar animation army have delivered a gorgeous and lovely coming-of-age fantasy with plenty of slapstick laughs, the obligatory heartwarming family moments and a friendship for the ages.
  12. It’s an intermittently entertaining endeavor thanks mostly to the effortlessly suave lead performance by Pierce Brosnan as a career thief who looks like he wakes up wearing a jacket with a pocket square and with his hair perfectly coiffed, but the action sequences are ho-hum, the editing is stunningly clumsy, and the main heist is so cartoonishly ridiculous we don’t even believe the actors believe it’s possible.
  13. The star power trio of Samuel L. Jackson, Selma Hayek and Ryan Reynolds have a few funny exchanges, and there are a couple of physical shtick routines so over the top it’s as if they dusted off the Monty Python playbook for a modern-day action film — but there are far more misfires than direct comedic/dramatic hits in this blood-drenched, explosion-riddled, live-action cartoon of a film.
  14. Infinite has some impressive set pieces combining practical effects and CGI, and the terrific cast approaches the material with grim-faced sincerity, but it’s ultimately a big bag of nonsense wrapped in glossy packaging.
  15. It would be a cliché to call In the Heights the Feel-Good Movie of the Year, but it would also be accurate. Perhaps for these times we might call it the Feeling-Better Movie of the year.
  16. With an almost circus-like score setting the tone, a supernatural touch and a terrific ensemble cast playing characters that range from the eccentric to the deeply eccentric, Monuments is at times grounded, at times almost hallucinogenic — and always smart and entertaining.
  17. What we have is the movie, and it’s a well-intentioned, well-acted and sometimes visually arresting picture that unfortunately features a primary character who is so foul and irredeemable it’s virtually impossible to believe certain happy-ending developments late in the film. It feels contrived and forced.
  18. It’s essentially a stand-alone film, though it doesn’t really stand so much as it wobbles and careens all over the place before exploding in an overwrought orgy of grotesque images, religious psychobabble and second-rate CGI nonsense.
  19. So many animated films are multi-layered efforts brimming with jokes only the adults will catch, but Spirit Untamed is pure and unbridled family fun, pardon the pun.
  20. Director Michael Barnett’s “Changing the Game” is an expertly crafted, empathetic, journalistically sound documentary following three strong, bright, likable and admirably accessible and forthcoming transgender teen athletes.
  21. Director Craig Gillespie (“Lars and the Real Girl,” “I, Tonya”) has delivered a clever, devilishly offbeat story with appropriately over-the-top and wildly entertaining performances from Emma Stone as the titular character and Emma Thompson as her nemesis, who is so casually cruel (in a manner of speaking), so cold and cunning, she makes Streep in “The Devil Wears Prada” look like the Employer of the Year.
  22. A Quiet Place Part II might not carry quite the same original wallop as the original (how could it?), but this is a meticulously crafted, spine-tingling, fantastically choreographed monster movie that expands the canvas, works as a stand-alone story and leaves us wanting more from this franchise.
  23. What makes Final Account so intriguing and, yes, so infuriating, is seeing and hearing from so many Germans who are near the end of their days and have somehow managed to make excuses, to rationalize, to distance themselves from the hell that was their homeland in the 1930s and 1940s.
  24. We can see every plot point rounding the turn long before the finish line, but that’s OK, because we’re having a (dare I say it) jolly grand time every step of the way.
  25. Smart, sly and subtle, Georgetown is in the tradition of Reversal of Fortune, The Informant! and Catch Me If You Can — fictionalized and stylized entertainment based on true crime events.
  26. It spirals downward into a ludicrous, dumbed-down horror story more concerned with grossing out the audience than in providing any compelling reason for this long-running franchise to keep chugging along, leaving a trail of blood in its wake.
  27. The Woman in the Window is filled with dramatic touches such as a dizzying overhead shot of a staircase, a skylight just begging for someone to come crashing through, pieces of evidence conveniently left lying about and visual references to far superior noir thrillers, including the aforementioned “Rear Window.” It’s also filled with cheap scares, false alarms, dumb cops, loud storms and tricky camera angles designed to make us feel as disoriented as Anna. The only thing those elements really succeed in doing is giving us a headache.
  28. Director Sheridan and his co-writers Charles Leavitt and Michael Koryta (whose novel is the source material) have fashioned a thoroughly engrossing tale filled with memorable characters, dryly funny dialogue and show-stopping, often brutal confrontations in which the weapon of choice varies from semi-automatic firearms to a deer rifle to a fire extinguisher to handguns to an axe to bare fists, depending on the circumstances.
  29. Despite an intriguing premise, it ultimately falls apart as the gimmick wears thin and the plot veers into ludicrous territory, with the heroine making a series of increasingly rash and idiotic decisions.
  30. This is an unapologetically over-the-top, blood-soaked, orgy of stylized violence filled with familiar action-movie characters going through familiar action-movie paces, with a whole lot of CGI, a bounty of epic set-pieces and a borderline exhausting number of kills.

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