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 Machinist
    The film presents a compelling portrait of mental illness, but looking at Bale may make audiences feel as though they're watching a documentary.
  2. The Grudge
    Shimizu can't quite pull everything together, trying to get off easy with a bargain-bin twist ending that most of the audience will see coming by the time the pile of corpses reaches double digits.
  3. Surviving Christmas
    Everything about it is manufactured -- the emotions are false, the sentiments are phony, and the story is a construction of mirthless silliness. It's a product, not a creative expression.
  4. Sex Is Comedy
    Annoying, soporific and singularly humorless.
  5. P.S.
    Goes disappointingly soft despite two dynamite lead performances.
  6. The Final Cut
    So fascinating and has so many implications that it balances out some real flaws in the story.
  7. Moolaadé
    Not always pleasant to watch.
  8. Being Julia
    A one-woman show.
  9. Shall We Dance
    Considering the talent on both sides of the camera and a story that worked beautifully the first time around, Shall We Dance? should have been a lot better than OK.
  10. Team America: World Police
    Surprisingly, the results are embarrassing. As puppetry, Team America is stilted. As satire, it's gutless and lazy. And as comedy, it barely delivers laughs.
  11. The Scandal
    Imaginative and properly wicked.
  12. Vera Drake
    Expansive, but succinct. Leigh tells a small story and doesn't try to make something huge of it.
  13. Around the Bend
    For the silent masses who cherish those "Hallmark Hall of Fame" specials, but wish they had just a little more profanity, the release of Around the Bend is occasion to rejoice.
  14. Vodka Lemon
    Director Hiner Saleem has created a magical movie that veers, even within scenes, from love story to tragedy to comic relief.
  15. Yes Nurse! No Nurse!
    A pleasant enough movie whose overt charm sometimes works against it.
  16. Go Further
    Actor Woody Harrelson is in his full activist mode in this low-key and loose documentary.
  17. Stage Beauty
    The film rarely matches Crudup's performance, appearing confused itself about whether it's farce or drama.
  18. Friday Night Lights
    Compelling.
  19. Primer
    Doesn't always work, but it challenges, nonetheless.
  20. Raise Your Voice
    Raises the bar for movies geared to teens.
  21. Tarnation
    An impassioned documentary about a damaged American family, includes moments that seem to cross the line of what is emotionally acceptable to show onscreen.
  22. Taxi
    How one likes Taxi has everything to do with how one responds to the hapless cop character, played by Jimmy Fallon.
  23. Tying the Knot
    Succeeds anyway, by putting a poignant human face on the struggle for equal rights.
  24. Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry
    An unabashed paean to Kerry's character at a time in the presidential election when Kerry's character is being questioned. It's also a riveting film.
  25. Woman Thou Art Loosed
    As a film it plays like a heavy-handed morality tale one might come across on a middling cable network.
  26. Dig!
    Remarkable rockumentary.
  27. Shark Tale
    By avoiding the usual animation cliches, by keeping the story moving, the pictures pretty and the characters consistently amusing, director and co- writer Rob Letterman cobbles together an entertaining 90 minutes.
  28. I Heart Huckabees
    A risky, foolish, intelligent comedy.
  29. Ladder 49
    Plays like a war movie made in a time of war: too careful, too programmatic.
  30. The Yes Men
    Thought-provoking, insightful and entertaining.
  31. First Daughter
    First Daughter can be measured in degrees of Holmes' discomfort... There's never a moment when she doesn't appear as if she'd rather be in a different movie.
  32. A Dirty Shame
    Squanders its comic capital on redundant bits about her perplexed family and secret society of fellow sex addicts.
  33. Rick
    Seems to want to be a fierce satire of corporate culture. But by hewing so faithfully to their source, the creators don't let the material pursue its own direction, and the result feels dramatically arbitrary.
  34. The Last Shot
    The film doesn't always work, but it captures the buzz of moviemaking, and that's infectious.
  35. The Forgotten
    The picture never comes out from under the weight of its dreariness, despite fine acting, foot chases and conspiracy theories galore.
  36. Infernal Affairs
    Unfolds as a masterful chess match of wit and ingenuity, a cat-and-mouse chase of the highest order.
  37. Shaun of the Dead
    Remarkably fresh and inventive.
  38. The Motorcycle Diaries
    A superb film.
  39. September Tapes
    The most disingenuous film of the year. A sham. Pathetic. Embarrassing. The people behind this movie, which was made in Afghanistan, should be ashamed of themselves.
  40. The Take
    A special film.
  41. Cowboys & Angels
    Enlivens the classic premise of innocent-in-the-city by moving its archetypal characters in unexpected directions.
  42. Goodbye, Dragon Inn
    An idiosyncratic, oddball movie that is funny and moody.
  43. Head in the Clouds
    A glossy, stiff melodrama.
  44. Zelary
    A well-deserved 2003 Oscar nominee for best foreign-language film.
  45. Mr 3000
    The always fierce Bassett is a little too fierce here, reacting with unwarranted emotion to each romantic twist and turn.
  46. Incident at Loch Ness
    A giddy mockumentary.
  47. National Lampoon's Gold Diggers
    A movie so filled with contemptible, ugly and unfunny characters that it is physically difficult to watch.
  48. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
    The movie is like one of those newfangled Vegas casinos, where what appears to be open sky is really painted ceiling. What's initially dazzling becomes stifling.
  49. Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence
    Has plenty to satisfy fans and bring in new admirers.
  50. Wimbledon
    There's no hiding a hokey love story that undercuts the picture's compelling tennis scenes.
  51. Silver City
    Wildly uneven, with long stretches as dull as Dickie.
  52. Reconstruction
    The director has a natural's gift for storytelling and eye for casting.
  53. Criminal
    The problems lie not with the actors but with a glib approach that exposes the flaws of the original story.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Testosterone
    Heavy on the eye candy, light on plot and logic.
  55. Cellular
    Distressingly predictable and not a tad scary. But as a parody of the genre, it's a scream, like the "Scream'' franchise, only funnier. It's as if all the ingredients for a thriller coagulated into Silly Putty.
  56. When Will I Be Loved
    Another art film that's more pretentious than it needs to be.
  57. Resident Evil: Apocalypse
    It's just too bad that almost nothing in the movie seems original. The "Thriller" video may have featured hokey dancing zombies, but at least someone was making an effort.
  58. Evergreen
    As drama it's thin stuff. Aiming for simplicity, it ends up simplistic.
  59. A Letter to True
    It's all so cute -- except that Weber wants this to be a thoughtful film.
  60. Remember Me, My Love
    Often is on the verge of spilling over into melodrama, but that doesn't bother me because life is the same way.
  61. 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.
  62. Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War
    An intense, powerful film.
  63. Wicker Park
    The studio behind Wicker Park bills it as a "romantic thriller.'' But it's actually an example of an even more unusual subgenre: the dumb, suspense- free and undersexed stalker drama.
  64. Rockets Redglare!
    An unflinching -- yet overlong and overindulgent -- film.
  65. Vanity Fair
    Yet something's missing in director Mira Nair's treatment -- specifically, a point of view about the material, a compelling reason for this historical excavation beyond the fact that Reese Witherspoon makes a convincing Becky Sharp.
  66. Brothers in Arms
    The most compelling reason to see this movie is the profile we get of the horrors of war.
  67. Suspect Zero
    It's merely adequate, with one riveting element but limited chills.
  68. The Brown Bunny
    An idiosyncratic document of sexual obsession and guilt, it alienates as easily as it mesmerizes.
  69. Bush's Brain
    The film is a damning look at a key Bush operative.
  70. Hero
    Not as profound as it is pretty, Hero nevertheless gives us something to ponder beyond Zhang's feat in mounting such a magnificent production.
  71. Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid
    The sequel might have the formula down, but it lacks everything that made "Anaconda'' fun.
  72. Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2
    Spending an hour and a half inside a uterus might be more entertaining than this tiresome sequel.
  73. L.A. Twister
    The semiserious comedy by director Sven Pape is in its own category, and unfortunately it's not always an interesting one.
  74. Bright Leaves
    Bright Leaves' takes on a sizable foe -- in this case, big tobacco -- but with such grace and wit that his message never seems medicinal.
  75. End of the Century
    Details the group's raucous history with humor and a minimum of hero worship.
  76. Rosenstrasse
    Worth seeing.
  77. Mean Creek
    One of very few films to accurately portray the experience of growing up male.
  78. Bright Young Things
    A witty, energetic adaptation.
  79. Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War
    A thorough indictment of the Bush administration's focus on Iraq.
  80. Red Lights
    An eerily affecting domestic drama combining elements of "The Lost Weekend'' with "Lost Highway.''
  81. Exorcist: The Beginning
    While the fourth "Exorcist" movie may have unmitigated disaster written all over it, the finished product is somehow sort-of-kind-of not all that bad.
  82. Benji: Off the Leash!
    A dreary, distasteful exercise, "Off the Leash'' favors dogs over humans, framing canine high jinks with an ugly story of domestic abuse.
  83. Without a Paddle
    Dax Shepard from MTV's "Punk'd," in his first major big-screen role, steals Without a Paddle. Not that it's too hard to do.
  84. AVP: Alien vs. Predator
    Take a wretched premise. Imagine the worst picture that could be made from it. Then imagine something even worse. That's Alien vs. Predator.
  85. The Leopard (re-release)
    One of the greatest of all epics.
  86. We Don't Live Here Anymore
    A movie for adults, of a kind that usually isn't made in America,
  87. Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Movie
    With no subtitles to explain what's going on in Yu-Gi- Oh!: The Movie, there's no reason for adults to come anywhere near it.
  88. Danny Deckchair
    Danny Deckchair offers some welcome cinematic comfort food in a summer filled with bloated special-effects movies and bad teen comedies.
  89. The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement
    Offers enough glossy good cheer to appeal to everyone.
  90. Bang Rajan
    While the battle scenes are impressive, they are repetitive; and while the characters are likable, they never rise above the level of cliche.
  91. Last Life in the Universe
    A hell of a movie.
  92. Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism
    Capable of astonishing even the already cynical.
  93. Stander
    An extremely good picture that, with a little tweaking, might have been a great one.
  94. Code 46
    Updates a classic premise -- the struggle for personal freedom -- by pairing it with ethical and moral quandaries.
  95. Little Black Book
    An awkward and aggressively unfunny film.
  96. Open Water
    The nagging desire to help these people underscores the involvement of the audience in this superbly told story. You can almost taste the saltwater, and the fear.
  97. Collateral
    Collateral is a good idea for a movie, backed up by expert execution... It's straight-up entertainment, not something to see and then talk about a month later, but definitely something to enjoy.
  98. Festival Express
    Must-see cinema for any serious rock fan.
  99. Gozu
    Stay far, far away.
  100. Thunderbirds
    A fun afternoon for preteen moviegoers that has just enough charm, humor and game- for-anything actors to keep parents halfway interested as well.
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