San Francisco Chronicle's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
For 9,316 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 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:
9316 movie reviews
  1. The movie is overly long and much too intense for small children, yet it's filled with dialogue and plot turns that are too juvenile to thrill adult audiences.
  2. At the finish, the filmmakers give us at least three different endings, probably because they have no idea what Freedomland is saying, probably because it's not saying much of anything. But a film with this many virtues can't be written off as just another average entry.
  3. A spectacular failure, despite further evidence of the director's keen eye and bold cinematic ideas.
  4. A wildly entertaining fantasy thriller that propels Russian cinema into the 21st century.
  5. The film holds us rapt not through narrative suspense but through the eerie and demanding spectacle of profound moral courage, of a powerless good person in collision with absolute evil.
  6. This flawed drama about a self-destructive young actress and her reclusive novelist father has its rewards, mainly in some good performances.
  7. Douglas does his best acting while watching and reacting to what he sees on screen. If this ends up being his cinematic swan song, it will not have been a bad way to go.
  8. A brilliant and irresistible counterfactual overview of American history.
  9. The film has a little too much of the "new adventures" feel, but it's still fun.
  10. A ridiculous teen horror movie that piles on more than enough dry humor and freshly moistened gore to satisfy its lowbrow audience.
  11. I like it for the thing it is, a reasonably solid B movie, and I like it as one in the continuum of bizarre Ford vehicles that combine high-stakes action with household horror.
  12. A graceless, embarrassing effort.
  13. A film about profound ideas deserved more imagination.
  14. If London were a comedy, it just might work. Instead, it's a dead-serious marathon of angst from cool kids old enough to know they're mouthing cliches.
  15. A snapshot of a fabled career that's of little interest to anyone outside Young's fans.
  16. Entertaining and compelling.
  17. It's a weighty and visually interesting movie that unfortunately doesn't have a strong message beyond its overwhelming bleakness.
  18. Something is wrong with A Good Woman: The lightning never strikes. It's never quite alive.
  19. Even the element of surprise isn't enough to save this film, which has too many slow parts and features an ending that's extremely tepid by 21st century horror movie standards.
  20. Each time Something New touches on something controversial, it quickly retreats to some silliness.
  21. Fascinating and distinctly politically incorrect.
  22. It's reassuring to see Steven Soderbergh return to riveting down-and-dirty filmmaking with Bubble.
  23. A formulaic, predictable and yet reasonably likable picture.
  24. The result is an incredibly disorganized movie with a few funny scenes -- most of which are revealed in the commercials.
  25. Underlying the story is sadness, a sense of mystery and a quality of pain. Enjoy the movie for its surface pleasures, but when it's over, it's those subterranean qualities that will keep it lingering in the mind.
  26. It takes just the first shot to get sucked into Breaking News, the latest bit of destruction from mayhem master Johnnie To, and it's a doozy.
  27. An innocuous, fluffy little nothing of an almost-pleasant movie.
  28. The film is obvious, weak and scattered and seems more like a practical joke than a work of genuine passion. It is without exaggeration one of the most blindingly boring films I've seen in years.
  29. A workmanlike effort -- a precision piece of filmmaking that provides education for children and a refresher course that adults can benefit from as well.
  30. A highly amusing combination period film and mockumentary.

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