San Francisco Chronicle's Scores

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For 9,317 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:
  1. Positive: 5,172 out of 9317
  2. Mixed: 2,659 out of 9317
  3. Negative: 1,486 out of 9317
9317 movie reviews
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  1. The Quick and the Dead
    Yet all this work, all this skill, serve as little more than an elaborate setting for a rhinestone. At its core there is no passion, no sincerity of conception, nothing that might have made The Quick and the Dead into anything more than moment-to-moment stimulation. You get lots of clothes here, but no emperor. Or rather, no empress.
  2. The Rookie
    For all its faults, some of the action scenes in The Rookie are spectacular. [07 Dec 1990, p.E1]
    • San Francisco Chronicle
  3. 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.
  4. Smile
    Overall, it's pretty elementary stuff, along the lines of a Disney Channel TV movie. It's uplifting, and it's in a good cause.
  5. Infinitely Polar Bear
    More emphasis on these darker, subterranean elements might have made for a fuller experience, but Infinitely Polar Bear is really all about a father as seen from a child’s perspective. It’s better than a scrapbook item, as in a film made to be appreciated by one family. But it’s not quite a successful movie.
  6. Borstal Boy
    The result is a film that will probably please people already fascinated by Behan but leave everyone else yawning with admiration.
  7. Pierrepoint
    A peculiar little film -- grim and disturbing yet perversely riveting.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Empire of the Sun
    Although he misses reaching to the heart of Jim's spirit and his relationship to other people, Spielberg has clearly taken an impressive step forward in shaping his new and adult vision for the screen. [11 Dec 1987]
    • San Francisco Chronicle
  9. Broadway Idiot
    Director Doug Hamilton was given extraordinary access from the very beginning, so that we see Green Day composer and lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong having some of his initial meetings with Broadway director Michael Mayer, who conceived the show.
  10. Get Low
    The movie's pleasures are acting pleasures, but the movie doesn't compel attention and never seems like more than the frame for a performance.
  11. Boys and Girls
    Watching this film is a little like wallowing in warm surf with soft pop music wafting in the breeze.
  12. Only the Young
    A charming, aimless film about the aimless. It plays like a nuanced MTV reality show (an oxymoron, perhaps, but you get the idea).
  13. The Ladykillers
    The film never settles into an assured rhythm, and instead the actors always seem to be pushing, putting the hard sell on an audience that, however distracted by the strenuousness of the sales pitch, still isn't buying.
  14. Vivo
    Like practically every other animated movie meant for mass consumption, the movie gets lost in the chase — the point where story flow is interrupted so that characters get lost as they try to achieve their objective and a manufactured villain is trying to keep them from their goal.
  15. Neon Bull
    So there’s talent on view here, but in service of a questionable proposition, with the whole thing tiptoeing toward the exploitative. It would be nice to see Mascaro try his hand at less volatile material.
  16. Beyond the Reach
    The flat-out awful ending, though, deflates much of the goodwill built up by the rest of the film.
  17. Selena
    The movie, directed and written by Gregory Nava ("My Family/Mi Familia"), is only so-so but Lopez, who appeared recently in "Jack'' and "Blood and Wine," is so vibrant that you almost forgive the movie's paint-by-numbers script and moldy formula.
  18. Just Like Us
    Though it's only 72 minutes, by the time it's over, you'll be ready for it to end. Still, as a glimpse of the Arab world right before the Arab Spring, this documentary may be of some lasting interest.
  19. Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life
    It's a so-so film with jarring tone changes and a plot that sputters before a predictable ending. But there are moments of inspiration and authenticity.
  20. Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker
    Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker does the most important thing, the one thing it absolutely had to do. It ends well.
  21. Anna and the Apocalypse
    Apocalypse also doesn’t excel in the teen angst department, because the characters are not fleshed out enough. The love triangle is not convincing, and except for Anna and her father, we don’t care a whole lot about what happens to the characters, perhaps because we didn’t get enough time to know them in the beginning.
  22. Middle Men
    Sober and dispiriting, tense and morose.
  23. The Cruise
    The movie's strength is that it makes us want to know more about Levitch, and we pay attention as the tidbits are dropped -- that he's from a middle-class Jewish family in upstate New York, and that he did time in prison. The movie's flaw is that, having gained our attention, it fails to tell us what we want to know.
  24. Mad Money
    A caper comedy with some definite problems.
  25. Baywatch
    Baywatch should have been a lot more fun.
  26. Life Happens
    Coiro, who directed and co-wrote the film with Ritter, has a firm hold on snappish humor and bookish references, but the whole thing sags under a creaky narrative structure.
  27. Kate
    Kate looks like most other productions from 87North, the company behind such cinematic cage fights as Atomic Blonde and the John Wick films. Honestly, this could have been called “Nuclear Brunette.” But with heart.
  28. A Little Chaos
    Isn’t a bad film. But it’s a little slow and a little too un-chaotic for its own good.
  29. Unfrosted
    Seinfeld’s over-the-top, throw-in-everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach makes for an uneven film, with some gags inspired, others groan-inducing. But its 1960s period detail and constant parade of familiar faces keeps things rolling.
  30. The Tender Bar
    Tender Bar is a lovely movie — so long as it stays within a half mile radius of the bar. When it drifts from the bar, it collapses. When it goes back to the bar, it lifts a little. But it stays away too often to be called a success.
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