San Francisco Chronicle's Scores

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For 9,303 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 2.1 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 9303
  2. Mixed: 2,657 out of 9303
  3. Negative: 1,486 out of 9303
9303 movie reviews
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  1. To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You
    It’s not for people in the midst of their teen years, but for kids who are right on the edge of that social, hormonal discombobulation and are anticipating it with fear and dread. If “To All the Boys” gives courage and reassurance to apprehensive preteens — and is there any other kind? — then it will have served its public service. Still, as a movie, as entertainment … eh, it’s OK.
  2. The Substance of Fire
    First-time film director Sullivan draws good performances from Goldwyn, Hutton and Parker, as well as Debra Monk, Elizabeth Franz and Eric Bogosian in minor roles.
  3. Best Sellers
    It’s an innocuous and cuddly film, even with Caine holding forth. It’s hard to tell if he transcends the role as written, or if he merely seized on the one shred of the screenplay worth showcasing. In any case, Caine brings his own shine to this rather dull affair, and shows again that he’s not ready to go gentle into that good night.
  4. Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy
    A lively, ultimately sad portrait.
  5. Groove
    The music and wizard DJs in Groove are better than the dopey story.
  6. Angela's Ashes
    The effect of the 2 1/2-hour film is deadening.
  7. Spiderhead
    In dramatic terms, Spiderhead is mostly a face-off between Hemsworth’s irresistible force and Teller’s immovable object. It offers the pleasure of watching two actors, just coming into their full powers, going at it full-bore, moment by moment. And each makes the other’s performance better.
  8. Zack Snyder's Justice League
    Zack Snyder’s Justice League may not be a great film, but it has the madness, strangeness and obsessiveness of a real work of art.
  9. Joe Bell
    It’s a flat, forlorn movie with occasional sparks of life.
  10. The Voyeurs
    One wonders how a master of truly twisted movies — say, a David Lynch or a Brian De Palma — would have approached “The Voyeurs.” One suspects they would have a bit more fun and taken us further down the moral rabbit hole. And the sex would have been better too.
  11. Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones
    Lucas knows his fans are un-boreable, un-annoyable and inexhaustible. For an artist, that's more a curse than a blessing.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Battle in Seattle
    Getting an inside view on events is fascinating enough to carry the movie.
  13. I Am Woman
    Still, I Am Woman, while it doesn’t roar, effectively tells Reddy’s story and speaks strongly about the women’s movement and the struggle that continues.
  14. Entrapment
    Entrapment is an adventure movie without two brain cells to rub together.
  15. Ya lyublyu tebya
    Intermittently funny.
  16. Jersey Boys
    You're in that world, sucked in by the music and the performances. Appreciate the big things, but while watching, also pay attention to the little grace notes that make up a quality production.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Effie Gray
    The film spends an excessive amount of time on Ruskin’s psychological abuse of his wife, which makes Effie’s eventual redemption feel rushed and out of the blue. But Thompson has once again proved herself to be a talented wordsmith, imbuing Effie with generosity of spirit and intelligence.
  18. Memoirs of a Geisha
    Too labored and cliched to incite passion in an audience.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Battle for Terra
    The plot is an obvious parable for modern dilemmas, yet in the hands of the film's creators, and with their graceful use of 3-D, viewers feel as if they're watching how the future might actually unfold, glimpsing a conflict that's destined to take place 300 years from now.
  20. Shuang long hui
    An American reissue, with a fresh new soundtrack and all the dialogue dubbed.
  21. Hidalgo
    After a slow start, it moves.
  22. Batman Forever
    It's an art-direction, Dolby-sound, special-effects extravaganza, a grand-scale effort that's more awe-inspiring than completely successful as entertainment.
  23. 4:44 Last Day on Earth
    The movie is probably best appreciated by devotees of the cult director, who has made some good films and some interesting ones (and some that are both): "King of New York," "Bad Lieutenant," "The Addiction." "4:44" isn't quite in that company.
  24. The Paris Opera
    For a documentary about one of the most prestigious opera institutions in the world, The Paris Opera has, maddeningly, very little opera.
  25. The Brady Bunch Movie
    The Brady Bunch Movie is fairly innocuous, and ought to satisfy the twenty- and thirtysomethings who grew up on the sitcom. Just one problem: It may be unsporting to point this out, but the whole notion of holding up the Bradys as the ultimate cultural icon of the '70s is basically a lie.
  26. The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim
    Tolkien’s fantasy world is always worth revisiting, and that makes “The War of the Rohirrim” worthy of watching even if it ultimately doesn’t amount to much once you look past the obvious visual panache.
  27. 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.
  28. Ricki and the Flash
    If only Streep would have put down the microphone and let Springfield sing “Jessie’s Girl,” Ricki and the Flash might have had half a chance.
  29. Life Stinks
    Life Stinks will never stand with the classics -- it's basically a diversion -- but its plea for economic equality is well taken. And Brooks, after years of lousy movies, finally seems back on sure footing. [27 July 1991, p.C3]
    • San Francisco Chronicle
  30. So I Married an Axe Murderer
    Dopey but rather sweet. [30 July 1993, p.C1]
    • San Francisco Chronicle
  31. Sparkle
    Sparks' strengths include not just a powerful voice but also a radiant niceness, and that becomes part of the story.
  32. The Devil's Rejects
    A tough internal struggle must take place before one can come forward and admit enjoying The Devil's Rejects, a movie so fundamentally horrible that even its creator has to admit he's basically made a 101-minute snuff film.
  33. Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa
    The uneven result is definitely not for prudish moviegoers, definitely funny for everyone else, and even approaches poignancy in one or two scenes.
  34. 10 Items or Less
    Proceeds at that pace to an ending that is as inevitable as it is poignant.
  35. Hands of Stone
    A film that can’t decide whether it wants to be “Raging Bull” or “Remember the Titans.” In the end, it’s a little too much of both.
  36. Goodbye Christopher Robin
    It touches, in a way movies rarely do, on some essential current of life.
  37. A Walk in the Clouds
    The fuzziness is suddenly and definitely gone, and Reeves emerges as a mature, charismatic movie star.
  38. Gauguin: Voyage to Tahiti
    It’s never easy to translate visually the inner turmoil of a struggling artist, and “Gauguin” is a prime example of that.
  39. 12 Strong
    It might be enough that 12 Strong makes you feel good that the United States still produces guys like this. Too bad we didn’t get to know about the real guys and their actual story.
  40. Melinda and Melinda
    More accomplished, adventurous and original. Instead of Allen's usual investigation into the nature of existence, this new film looks at the way stories are created, particularly comedies.
  41. Die, Mommie, Die!
    Neither hilarious nor a credible spoof.
  42. Friday
    It takes about 20 minutes to catch on that Friday is without narrative drive - and about as long to figure out that the film offers nothing better in place of it.
  43. Arthur the King
    The film, “based on the incredible true story” that happened in 2014, is an efficient, fun but by-the-numbers movie that has the distinction of being shot on location in the Dominican Republic, which looks quite lovely onscreen.
  44. Hamlet 2
    Like its low-key star, Hamlet 2 is more likely to elicit quiet chuckles than raucous laughter.
  45. Bruno
    The bad outweighs the good and the cringes outnumber the laughs in Brüno, a disappointment from Sacha Baron Cohen, whose "Borat" was one of the funniest movies of the decade.
  46. Bad Boys: Ride or Die
    Going into this movie, there was a question whether “Bad Boys” might just feel like entertainment from an earlier time, but instead it feels like a cozy return — at least as cozy as possible, given that the movie is extremely violent.
  47. Strays
    The brilliant comic observation behind Strays is that dogs never quite get the complete picture. They misunderstand much of what they see — they believe rival dogs are in the mirror and that the mailman is the devil — and thus by staying entirely inside the dogs’ point of view, the movie taps a major source of humor.
  48. Puccini for Beginners
    Puccini for Beginners is literate and sensitive, characterized by witty dialogue and smart, emotional two-person encounters.
  49. Get Smart
    Remaking Get Smart for the big screen might have sounded like a bad idea, but the movie shows it to have been something else: a REALLY bad idea.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    CSNY/Déjà Vu
    The documentary seems equally divisive. Like most of Young's recent work, it's scattered and unsubtle.
  51. The Château
    A culture-clash comedy that, in addition to being very funny, captures some of the discomfort and embarrassment of being a bumbling American in Europe.
  52. Julien Donkey-Boy
    A self-indulgent mess.
  53. Return to Me
    Saved throughout by its inviting atmosphere and richness of characters.
  54. From Hell
    Mystery skillfully evokes Victorian London's dark depths.
  55. The Bread, My Sweet
    A touching, sophisticated film that almost seems like a documentary in the way it captures an Italian immigrant family on the brink of major changes.
  56. LBJ
    There is something of a Halloween costume about Woody Harrelson’s appearance in the film. He looks as if frozen midway into some morphing process between himself and Lyndon Johnson, a process that, by pure chance, happened to stop at the precise moment he began to look comical.
  57. The First Purge
    First Purge further lessens the drama by offering a hero and villains too mercenary to care about.
  58. Blue Chips
    Blue Chips is in many ways like a modern Frank Capra movie, about a battle between corruption and idealism, money vs. love, the pack vs. the individual. It's an Americana story about white farm boys and black ghetto kids bringing their talents together in a pure endeavor and about the cynical forces that would pollute that. [18 Feb 1994, p.C3]
    • San Francisco Chronicle
    • 54 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Fierce People
    Plays like a movie that some teenage boy cooked up in his chemistry lab. There are lots of potent things floating around in it - sexual initiation, drugs, fantasy-land wealth, brute violence, primitive rituals, Diane Lane and Donald Sutherland - but the mix just sits there without producing any notable reactions.
  60. Night of the Living Dead
    'Night' is the kind of horror movie where a zombie puts his hand through a window, grabs the hero's face with a decayed hand and fellows in the audience laugh, knowingly. The laugh I can understand. The "knowingly" part I don't even want to think about it...As horror movies go, it's a little better than average. [22 Oct 1990, p.F1]
    • San Francisco Chronicle
  61. Escape from L.A.
    The movie is so cleverly entrenched in its sardonic style that Russell's toughest act must have been keeping a straight face. Escape From L.A. is surprisingly effective in picturing a former nirvana clenched in the twisted rubble of its own excess.
  62. Wasp Network
    A mostly absorbing but strangely inert espionage drama that could have been a heart-pounding thriller.
  63. False Positive
    While False Positive has lapses in logic and could have a quicker pace in the second half, it fully embraces a bizarre sense of the macabre that is irresistible.
  64. Eddie the Eagle
    Maybe it’s unfair, but I came away feeling cheated by Eddie the Eagle. It’s a jolly real-life tale about an underdog who made a splash at the 1988 Winter Olympics, and it does make you feel good, but it turns out that the film’s story is 90 percent fiction.
  65. Bobby
    Why such a structurally scattered movie should hang together at all is a mystery. That it does more than that, that it works brilliantly, is a miracle, or at the very least the product of unquantifiable causes.
  66. Booty Call
    Booty Call never quite gets tiresome, thanks to the appealing cast and its sexy-goofy spirit. The picture succeeds in finding jokes within jokes.
  67. Seberg
    With Stewart, we arrive at the only saving grace of Seberg, but a genuine saving grace. She is the only reason to see the movie, but she’s a really good reason.
  68. Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
    But who cares what grumpy old grown-ups think? This reviewer watched with two movie-loving kids, and they did each laugh. Twice.
  69. Warriors of Heaven and Earth
    Eminently watchable, with enough majestic vistas and heroic derring-do to get by. It could have been so much more.
  70. Malèna
    Qualifies as director Giuseppe Tornatore's second full-fledged masterpiece. His first: "Cinema Paradiso."
  71. An Adolescent
    An interesting film, and while it is not entirely successful (and at times most puzzling), it achieves a certain poignancy.
  72. Paper Heart
    A cute movie, a little too cute and a little too aware of its own cuteness.
  73. U Turn
    It demonstrates a filmmaker in complete command of his craft and with little control over his impulses.
  74. Oblivion
    After a slow start, this is the rare film that gets better as it goes along. The story, about two scientists working in a post-apocalyptic New York, deepens and builds an intense rooting interest. The action sequences are too much out of a video game, but this is intelligent science fiction -- and it benefits enormously from Tom Cruise in the lead role.
    • San Francisco Chronicle
      • Posted Apr 18, 2013
  75. Spies in Disguise
    Feels like a regifting of previous action adventure favorites, lifting elements from the “Mission: Impossible” series, “Skyfall” and, most of all, “The Incredibles.” It’s fast-moving, entertaining, kinda clever and instantly forgettable.
  76. The House of Yes
    Stylized dialogue tends to play awkwardly onscreen -- we're conditioned to naturalistic conversation in films -- and Waters, who makes his feature directing debut with The House of Yes, fails to create an emotional tone or attitude to match the characters' goofy repartee.
  77. Greta
    Greta is not just silly but obvious, and without any hint of a larger purpose, beyond hitting the various plot points of the human monster genre. Twenty minutes before the finish, it degenerates into a joke, and not a good one, but just fair enough to see through to the end.
  78. The Craft: Legacy
    This is the sequel to “The Craft,” folks. For what it is, the movie’s OK, except that it tried to be more than it is, and it isn’t.
  79. A Little Help
    Some of the film is imaginatively put together. But the melodrama feels forced - manipulated by filmmakers hell-bent on teaching its main character a lesson or two about life and the need to seize it.
  80. Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters
    Difficult to recommend, without first knowing the sobriety of the viewer.
  81. Draft Day
    Entertaining and suspenseful, the movie shows the politicking and strategies that go into this annual ritual, and Costner is at his beleaguered best.
    • San Francisco Chronicle
      • Posted Apr 10, 2014
  82. Becky
    Becky is no “Straw Dogs.” Really, it’s mostly just a nasty genre movie with some gruesome scenes of violence. But it’s served well by a script that doesn’t merely embrace the gimmick of a pubescent girl fighting bad guys — it takes it seriously enough to explore it, at least a little.
  83. Blue Steel
    It's a likable action picture that's fun and entertaining even when it's a bit silly. [16 Mar 1990, p.E1]
    • San Francisco Chronicle
  84. Boogie
    Boogie has some hops. But its all-around game could use a little work.
  85. Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu
    The Mandalorian’s memorable catchphrase is: “This is the way.” His first theatrical feature gets about halfway there.
  86. Music of the Heart
    Feels more like an earnest commercial for music education than successful entertainment.
  87. Gerry
    Gerry is ragingly bad art that contributes to a definition of independent film as something no one would want to sit through.
  88. Family Business
    Family Business has star power going for it, and all three names above the title get the job done. [15 Dec 1989, p.E1]
    • San Francisco Chronicle
  89. Life in a Day 2020
    There are so many rich, colorful scenes that it’s a worthy watch just as an ethnographic record of our planet in a moment of time.
  90. Cocaine Bear
    Cocaine Bear is a movie that will appeal mostly to people who think it’s hilarious to get their dog stoned. If you’re someone who loves to sit on an old couch with a bong between your legs, crying with laughter as your dog bangs into furniture, “Cocaine Bear” might be your “Citizen Kane.”
  91. Luckiest Girl Alive
    The movie maintains interest throughout and it’s ultimately satisfying, though with one qualification: The last minutes treat the story as though its whole purpose was to illustrate a social and political issue. It’s actually, for 98% of its running time, the story of a person — and it’s better that way.
  92. Observe and Report
    Funnier than the silliest comedy because it's surprisingly real.
  93. The Freebie
    Aselton gets a lot said in 78 minutes. I think the main thing she says is something never overtly spoken, that life is essentially a lonely experience - even when we're surrounded by activity, and even if we never shut up.
  94. The Magnificent Seven
    Go in with low expectations and you might be pleasantly surprised.
  95. Good on Paper
    Margaret Cho goes over the top in the new Netflix comedy Good on Paper, mugging and delivering lines too emphatically. But as the movie progresses, you see the San Francisco native’s approach not as overacting, but heroism. She appears to be trying to single-handedly breathe life into this nearly laugh-free movie.
  96. Sympathy for the Devil
    Sympathy for the Devil does the two things that every good Nicolas Cage movie must do: It gives him license to be manic, but it also gives him a realistic context in which his mania can delight and surprise.
  97. Echo Valley
    Sweeney gives the movie its extra spark, its sense of occasion.
  98. The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
    The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes has an overwrought title, but it’s the best movie of the film franchise.
  99. The Little Things
    Though he crafts a story worthy of a thriller, Hancock’s main concerns here are twofold: the type of personality drawn to this kind of police work, and the effect this work has on them.
  100. Bran Nue Dae
    A very slightly plotted, over-the-top film with hammy acting suitable for an old "Benny Hill" episode. If that sounds like fun, go see it, mate.
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