San Francisco Chronicle's Scores

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For 9,302 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 52% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 46% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.2 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 63
Highest review score: 100 Mansfield Park
Lowest review score: 0 Speed 2: Cruise Control
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 5,160 out of 9302
  2. Mixed: 2,656 out of 9302
  3. Negative: 1,486 out of 9302
9302 movie reviews
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  1. The Illusionist
    A rich and elegant film, full of sly, devious characters with complicated motives.
  2. Factotum
    A grim and sometimes funny examination of life on the margins and of a singular artist's world.
  3. Trust the Man
    Superficially entertaining romantic romp.
  4. Conversations with Other Women
    A smart, sexy romantic drama, directed within an inch of its life by Hans Canosa.
  5. Pulse
    Has maybe a half-dozen moderately frightening scenes.
  6. Step Up
    The dreary teen drama Step Up appears to be cobbled together from bits and pieces of successful movies.
  7. Zoom
    Zoom is a C-list production in every possible way, from the actors and the special effects to the music and the script. Even the product placement is completely third rate.
  8. Half Nelson
    You never catch Gosling doing anything out of character. It's the first Oscar-caliber performance I've seen so far this year.
  9. The Ordeal
    What sells this movie is the realistic attention to detail and the bravura direction of Fabrice Du Welz, who draws a gut-wrenching performance from Lucas, who cries, squeals and screams with the best of them.
  10. Poster Boy
    Some clunky writing and a distracting subplot limit the effectiveness of this ambitious low-budget indie. Great idea for a movie, though.
  11. House of Sand
    Most viewers will have no more fun watching this story than the characters do living it.
  12. World Trade Center
    Stone does everything he can to do justice to the real-life people he's depicting, and yet nothing he does can cover up the film's single but overarching weakness: The personal story he uses to portray the larger event is limited in scope and impact.
  13. Lunacy
    While dinner and a movie is in theory a great idea, I'd avoid eating before taking in Lunacy.
  14. The Descent
    Marshall takes a modest budget and a concept that isn't all that original and produces a frightening, intelligent and sexy thriller.
  15. Barnyard
    An often amusing but also an aimless and forgettable animated comedy that is noteworthy mostly for its random musical numbers and surprising amounts of violence.
  16. The Night Listener
    A movie with lots of heart but no heartbeat.
  17. Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
    This is a decidedly blue-state take on a red-state phenomenon.
  18. The Bridesmaid
    Claude Chabrol has a wonderful way of making audiences nervous.
  19. Quinceañera
    Glatzer and Westmoreland live in Echo Park, and they have given their film a remarkable sense of place.
  20. Boynton Beach Club
    The way Boynton Beach residents reach out to one another is enough to make you consider relocating to one of these communities.
  21. Miami Vice
    It's the supporting players who stand out.
  22. Scoop
    It's really, really funny.
  23. John Tucker Must Die
    Something to see and occasionally even to laugh at.
  24. The Ant Bully
    Family entertainment at its best.
  25. 13 Tzameti
    The film's simplicity and intensity are aided by the crisp black-and-white photography of Tariel Meliava. Director Babluani's greenness shows itself in the ending, which is weak, but the film nevertheless stays with you.
  26. Another Gay Movie
    An over-the-top, rollicking, candy-colored raunchfest.
  27. Brothers of the Head
    So cleverly constructed that it's easy to be taken in and believe these twins really rocked.
  28. Little Miss Sunshine
    Sly, near-perfect comedy.
  29. Darshan: The Embrace
    A loving if fawning documentary.
  30. Shadowboxer
    There's no satisfaction and no pleasure to be gained by sitting through it. The characters are ludicrous and, worse than that, boring. And this is despite all the lead actors doing the best they can.
  31. Clerks II
    Dawson turns out to be a necessary ingredient, propelling the emotional core of the film forward, while somehow convincing the audience that a smart, attractive woman could find a schlub like Dante desirable.
  32. Lady in the Water
    Has the strengths and weaknesses of a one-man show.
  33. Monster House
    Monster House was designed as a family movie and a scary movie. It may scare children, but it won't terrify them. So it's no scarier than it should be.
  34. My Super Ex-Girlfriend
    The movie is unable to achieve lift-off and transcend the formulaic stuff coming out of Hollywood, despite the perfect casting of Uma Thurman.
  35. Azumi
    It is probably Kitamura's best film.
  36. Little Man
    A bunch of gags, most of which you've seen in the trailer, strung together by any means necessary.
  37. You, Me and Dupree
    It's just off, odd and joyless.
  38. Changing Times
    Techine doesn't have much of a story to tell, so instead of moving the narrative forward, he expands it laterally.
  39. The Oh in Ohio
    The star's amusingly inventive performance keeps your attention through predictable early scenes when "Ohio" repeats familiar material on women's sexuality. It's like a continuation of "The Vagina Monologues" to see Liza Minnelli, as a New Age orgasm coach.
  40. Time to Leave
    Not up to Ozon's standards.
  41. Gabrielle
    The film's impact has a lot to do with Fabio Vacchi's original score, which is both plaintive and coldly modernist, with echoes of Charles Ives.
  42. Overlord [re-release]
    Overlord is an ambitious, important experiment that has come to light after three decades of neglect.
  43. The Groomsmen
    This is like any other Edward Burns film, except for one thing. It's unmistakably better. This is the movie I believe Burns has been trying to make since "The Brothers McMullen," 11 years ago.
  44. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
    More than the usual bad or even numbingly horrible movie. It's an amalgam of many of the modern cinema's worst tendencies and modern filmmaking's most unfortunate misconceptions.
  45. A Scanner Darkly
    The visual style and lethargic pace can be frustrating -- at least if you're sober -- but the animated tragedy is still a success.
  46. Beowulf & Grendel
    Imagine the worst "Deadwood" episode ever, and you'll get an idea of the general tone of Beowulf & Grendel, which is full of anachronistic cursing, tortured syntax, dark humor and lots of hairy, homely, filthy-looking people.
  47. Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos
    What fun this documentary is.
  48. Cease Fire
    As a romantic comedy, Cease Fire is more annoying than amusing.
  49. Heading South
    The film offers something unusual, a tragic spectacle of normal, recognizable and utterly sympathetic people condemning themselves.
  50. The Devil Wears Prada
    Prada just feels authentic, from its glossy look to the specific and sometimes curious behavior of the secondary and tertiary characters. To watch it is like being entertained while getting an anthropological crash course.
  51. Superman Returns
    The movie consistently delivers in lots of little ways, but in a big way only once, in a spectacular sequence that begins with a series of earthquakes and culminates in an airline catastrophe.
  52. The Motel
    Pleasant and surprisingly hard-edged coming-of-age indie film.
  53. Strangers with Candy
    The best thing about Strangers With Candy is its relentlessness. It doesn't back off on its absurd humor, doesn't try to make sense and doesn't soft-pedal the characters.
  54. Who Killed the Electric Car?
    A balanced examination of the reasons for the electric car's disappearance, reasons that include corporate collusion and greed, governmental spinelessness and oil company propaganda -- but also consumer indifference and the limitations of the vehicles themselves.
  55. Wassup Rockers
    The result is a well-intentioned mess -- a dishonest fantasy that begins with promise and gets more frustrating with every scene.
  56. Click
    One of the best American films of the year so far.
  57. Waist Deep
    Sometimes excessiveness and implausibility are virtues in disguise. Movies this enjoyable don't come about by accident.
  58. Two Drifters
    An overwrought weepie, it may be inspired by the recent dramas of Pedro Almodóvar, but it comes off as Almodóvar Lite -- muy lite.
  59. The Hidden Blade
    Deeply affecting, "Blade'' portrays an oddly elegant way of life that will soon be like the era in that other movie, "Gone With the Wind."
  60. The Road to Guantanamo
    A film that must be seen to understand the sad truths of our times. It's been made with a sensitivity and creativity that's come to exemplify Winterbottom's work.
  61. Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man
    In some cases, the songs themselves shine most brightly.
  62. The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift
    Lucas Black, who looks as much like a high school kid as George Bernard Shaw, speaks in a thick Southern accent that hasn't been heard on any leading man since the second act of "Our American Cousin."
  63. Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties
    Children will enjoy the physical humor, but discerning adults are advised to pawn their sons and daughters off on some other unsuspecting chaperone -- preferably one who doesn't read movie reviews.
  64. The Lake House
    The measure of this kind of movie is its seductiveness, not its logic, nor the ways in which it exploits the supernatural angle, and The Lake House is seductive.
  65. Nacho Libre
    The comedy is hit and miss, with good bits interrupted by dead patches. It's a movie to root for more than to enjoy.
  66. Lower City
    Two guys panting over the same babe leads to tedium, despite a near-record number of overheated sex scenes.
  67. The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green
    With words streaming out of their mouths instead of into bubbles, Ethan and his gang of past, present and future lovers sound laughingly unbelievable. They're on the road to inanity.
  68. Only Human
    There's a manic quality to the film that may wear you down. But at least you won't be bored.
  69. Wordplay
    Opens up a world of words.
  70. Cars
    Curiously and unexpectedly, the movie brings on a suffocating feeling of constraint. It's a consequence of seeing characters with such terribly limited mobility.
  71. A Prairie Home Companion
    This is not one of the good Altmans. This isn't even one of the mediocre Altmans.
  72. Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul
    Has two main flaws: the emphasis it puts on German bassist Alexander Hacke, the film's ostensible narrator, who shows up in too many scenes, and the fact that it doesn't identify many of the film's performers until the very end. Even so, Crossing the Bridge is satisfying to watch.
  73. The Heart of the Game
    The end result is an interesting documentary that is as unpolished and gutsy as the championship-caliber high school hoop stars at the other end of his camera.
  74. Autumn
    For all the precision shooting, Autumn is a colossal misfire, a tedious film noir wannabe. It doesn't even qualify as film gris.
  75. The Omen
    The remake is a solidly crafted movie with a lot of good scares, but it also raises the question: Why even bother with an update?
  76. The Break-Up
    Imagine watching Bergman's "Scenes From a Marriage," except without good scenes, without a marriage (legal or spiritual) and without people worthy of anybody's attention, even each other's. Now imagine something even worse.
  77. District B13
    If you can still be entertained by a thriller that unabashedly borrows from others of its ilk and don't mind reading subtitles, you could do worse than District B13. It's over so fast, in a quick 85 minutes, there's scarcely time to get bored by the silly plot.
  78. The War Tapes
    There's a lot to process when watching The War Tapes, and that's probably why the documentary gets even better a few days later.
  79. The Puffy Chair
    Under the cover of what seems like a charmingly slapdash style, the Duplass brothers have created a disarmingly shrewd movie.
  80. Typhoon
    Kwak is indeed a highly original voice, but you wouldn't know it from Typhoon. It seems as if he's constrained by the conventional material.
  81. Favela Rising
    For all its drive and passion, Favela Rising is an uneven, spasmodic film.
  82. Peaceful Warrior
    The film is better than it has any right to be, considering the prosaic source.
  83. X-Men: The Last Stand
    Almost as mindless as "Fantastic Four," but more annoying in that this one has philosophical pretensions.
  84. Cavite
    This is by no means a polished film. But it has an energy lacking in thrillers that cost hundreds times more to make. It should be viewed as a calling card from gifted and resourceful filmmakers whom I hope some Hollywood producer will have the sense to sign up immediately.
  85. An Inconvenient Truth
    Virtually everyone who sees this movie will be galvanized to do something about global warming -- and everyone should see this movie.
  86. La Moustache
    It's a broad generality to say that French filmmakers have a particularly perverse sensibility, but it can be backed up by one import after another. The latest, La Moustache, is wonderfully odd in a minimalist kind of way.
  87. The Da Vinci Code
    There are reversals of expectation, miraculous escapes from certain doom -- all the things that make thrillers thrilling. But The Da Vinci Code isn't thrilling.
  88. Over the Hedge
    This has to be the first children's film to weave a Grand Theft Auto joke into the script -- and like most things in the movie, it's pretty amusing.
  89. See No Evil
    If you like gore, this is the movie for you.
  90. The King
    Dark, disturbing and audaciously original in a way only indies are given license to be anymore, the film never telegraphs where it's heading. But you don't need a pathfinder to sense the general direction is toward hell.
  91. Twelve and Holding
    Except for an ending that's so implausible it might have derailed a less solid work, Twelve and Holding is a realistic and sympathetic portrayal of what it's like to be young and confused
  92. Poseidon
    Exciting and nerve-racking in the moment, but empty.
  93. Just My Luck
    The picture gives us two protagonists and sets up a situation in which only one of them can have a decent life. Then, having devised this sour souffle, the screenwriters find no adjustment to make it palatable. The resolution is flip, at best.
  94. Goal! The Dream Begins
    Goal! hits the back of the net and is an early candidate for the funnest movie of the summer.
  95. Keeping Up with the Steins
    The tribute to an aging parent is moving and gives this routine comedy an extra something.
  96. Wah-Wah
    To label the parents in Wah-Wah dysfunctional doesn't adequately describe their wildly inappropriate behavior.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Sketches of Frank Gehry
    When Pollack admits that he is not a documentary filmmaker and that he knows nothing about architecture, Gehry says that makes him perfect for this project. But the joke does not redeem the frustration Pollack creates by the choppy, restless views he gives us of Gehry's buildings.
  98. Russian Dolls
    The smarter way to make this movie would have been to edit out everything extraneous to the story of Xavier and Wendy. They're the soul and heart of the movie, while everything else is pretty much dead weight.
  99. Mission: Impossible III
    In Mission: Impossible III, we find out whether it's still possible to look at Tom Cruise and not see a weirdo. The answer is yes, but a complicated yes, because it takes time.
  100. Art School Confidential
    Art School Confidential exudes confidence as long as it is satirizing a questionable, at least according to Clowes, institution of higher learning. But the film loses its way with multiple subplots, becoming a hodgepodge that isn't particularly hard to follow, but, far worse, provides no compelling reason to bother.
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