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. Passione
    There's a freedom in his structure. This isn't a formal documentary, but as I mentioned, a meander.
  2. Shame
    This is a great act of filmmaking and acting. I don't believe I would be able to see it twice.
  3. The Heir Apparent: Largo Winch
    Did I care if Largo Winch won his struggle for control of Winch International? Not at all. Did I care about him? No, because all of his action and dialogue were shunted into narrow corridors of movie formulas.
  4. The Last Rites of Joe May
    The film, written and directed by Joe Maggio, only has this handful of characters and looks at them carefully. The dialogue is right, the conflicts are simple and sincere, the hopes are touching.
  5. Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey
    Backstage at the Muppet works, we see countless drawers filled with eyeballs, eyebrows, whiskers and wigs. It's the only world Kevin wanted to live in, and he made it.
  6. My Week with Marilyn
    The movie seems to be a fairly accurate re-creation of the making of a film at Pinewood Studios at that time. It hardly matters. What happens during the famous week hardly matters. What matters is the performance by Michelle Williams.
  7. The Muppets
    A funny, wickedly self-aware musical that opens by acknowledging they've outlived their shelf life.
  8. Hugo
    The way Hugo deals with Melies is enchanting in itself, but the film's first half is devoted to the escapades of its young hero. In the way the film uses CGI and other techniques to create the train station and the city, the movie is breathtaking.
  9. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1
    Absorbing, if somewhat slow-paced, and has without doubt the most blood-curdling scene of live childbirth in a PG-13 movie.
  10. Happy Feet Two
    For me, Happy Feet Two is pretty thin soup. The animation is bright and attractive, the music gives the characters something to do, but the movie has too much dialogue in the areas of philosophy and analysis.
  11. 3
    The most that can be said for the characters here is they all seem mighty pleased.
  12. The Lie
    The Lie is dark enough, but it has affection for its characters and doesn't destroy them. It paints them in three fallible human dimensions, and the actors are warm and plausible.
  13. The Descendants
    What happens is that we get vested in the lives of these characters. That's rare in a lot of movies.
  14. Immortals
    The Immortals is without doubt the best-looking awful movie you will ever see.
  15. The Woman on the 6th Floor
    There are few reasons you must see this movie, but absolutely none that you should not.
  16. Revenge of the Electric Car
    So Paine's 2006 doc has a happy sequel. His film is just as polished and good-looking as his first one, gives us a good look at automakers we like, and is entertaining. But the first film was charged with drama. "Revenge" is somewhat anticlimactically charged with a wall plug.
  17. Into the Abyss
    Into the Abyss may be the saddest film Werner Herzog has ever made. It regards a group of miserable lives, and in finding a few faint glimmers of hope only underlines the sadness.
  18. Melancholia
    If I were choosing a director to make a film about the end of the world, von Trier the gloomy Dane might be my first choice. The only other name that comes to mind is Werner Herzog's. Both understand that at such a time silly little romantic subplots take on a vast irrelevance.
  19. J. Edgar
    As a period biopic, J. Edgar is masterful. Few films span seven decades this comfortably.
  20. The Son of No One
    Here's a bad movie with hardly a bad scene. How can that be? The construction doesn't flow. The story doesn't engage. The insistent flashbacks are distracting. The plot has problems it sidesteps. Yet here is a gifted cast doing what it's asked to do. The failure is in the writing and editing.
  21. Like Crazy
    Like Crazy is a well-made film. The scenes showing Jacob and Anna falling in love have a freshness, and I learn Doremus handed his actors an outline and together they improvised every scene. Some of the whispered endearments under the sheets are delightful.
  22. The Double
    The movie was directed by Michael Brandt, who co-wrote the script with Derek Haas. Together they wrote a much better movie, "3:10 to Yuma." The Double doesn't approach it in terms of quality. None of it is particularly compelling.
  23. Le Havre
    This movie is as lovable as a silent comedy, which it could have been.
  24. Tower Heist
    The movie is broad and clumsy, and the dialogue cannot be described as witty, but a kind of grandeur creeps into the screenplay by Ted Griffin and Jeff Nathanson.
  25. A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas
    I have no idea if this movie was made stoned. Like its predecessors by Cheech and Chong, it might as well have been.
  26. Oranges and Sunshine
    One question is not addressed by the movie: Why were the children deported in the first place? Yes, we know the "reasons," but what were the motives?
  27. Martha Marcy May Marlene
    A linear story, or one that was fragmented more clearly, could have been more effective. Still, a good film, ambitious and effective, introducing a gifted young actress and a director whose work I'll anticipate.
  28. The Rum Diary
    We have the feeling that Kemp/Thompson saw much of life through the bottom of a dirty glass and did not experience it with any precision. The film duplicates this sensation, not with much success.
  29. In Time
    Justin Timberlake continues to demonstrate that he is a real actor, with screen presence. But after the precise timing and intelligence he brought to "The Social Network," it's a little disappointing to find him in a role that requires less. He has a future in the movies.
  30. Anonymous
    Because of the ingenious screenplay by John Orloff, precise direction by Roland Emmerich and the casting of memorable British actors, you can walk into the theater as a blank slate, follow and enjoy the story, and leave convinced - if of nothing else - that Shakespeare was a figure of compelling interest.
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