San Francisco Chronicle's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
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:
9303 movie reviews
  1. One of the most playful films about cinema in recent memory, and even with its angst, is more joyful than any film Bergman made on the island.
  2. Price has given us Yelchin’s most complete performance: himself. It is a cinematic gift to contemporary film fans everywhere.
  3. The film underscores the paradox in this man's life: the split between the mild-mannered New Yorker and the fearless vagabond who joined an Arakmbut hunting raid.
  4. While the end result, now directed by Soi Cheang (“Mad Fate,” “Limbo”), may not be quite as deliriously over the top as that version might have been, it’s nevertheless a solid entry in the ledger of Hong Kong crime sagas and was a huge hit when released in China earlier this year.
  5. Marty Supreme is so fast-moving that its 2½-hour running time passes quickly. Even with a uniformly excellent and eclectic cast and some over-the-top situations, it’s hard to take your eyes off Chalamet.
  6. The year's best romantic drama.
  7. One of the great Holocaust films.
  8. A story that's startling, soulful and absolutely unforgettable.
  9. The most entertaining movie of the year. Funny and action-packed, it's also got that rare thing, heart.
  10. In addition to being extremely funny, the film has a warm spirit and respect for the characters.
  11. It's big, perfectly cast and entertaining in every way, but more than that it feels like a generous public event.
  12. The new Planet of the Apes is not a remake, and it's not a sequel. It is an amazing display of imagination.
  13. Setting political movies in the past is an easy, usually safe way to signal virtue. But with its eerie resonances of 2021 reports from Moscow to Washington, D.C., this monochrome aesthetic object looks like something that draws real blood.
  14. Its virtues are velocity, energy, innovative storytelling - and something that seems even more the province of young directors: a certain heartlessness and ironic distance in the tone.
  15. The film benefits most of all from Rees' careful screenplay, which dances that shifting line between fear and emergent hope. One of Alike's poems says it best: "Even breaking is opening. And I am broken. I am open."
  16. The thing most people will take away from Stand Up Guys is that it contains Al Pacino's best performance in years. So if you don't think Al Pacino still has it in him, this is a welcome chance to be proved wrong. But here's something interesting. Stand Up Guys also contains Christopher Walken's best performance in years. In addition, the film is extraordinarily well cast, and the acting, even in the smaller roles, is more than noteworthy.
  17. One of the greatest of all epics.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Artful, beautiful in parts and unbelievably brutal in others, and no less honest for its stagecraft.
  18. Superb.
  19. A movie that is not only achingly funny but also full of serious and philosophical truisms.
  20. Playtime is sharp and colorful, and visually makes quite an impression.
  21. Potentially oppressive subject matter is redeemed by impeccable moral integrity and stunning artistry.
  22. But it would be a mistake to leave the impression that the rewards of They Shall Not Grow Old are in any way akin to that of the usual BBC historical documentary. There is some overlap, to be sure, but by and large this Peter Jackson film does not offer a historical encounter, so much as an encounter of humanity, a psychic linking of hands across time.
  23. An exceptional example of Shakespeare on film.
  24. Wise and wondrous.
  25. Extraordinary.
  26. Hacksaw Ridge is one of the best films of 2016. And the victory is all the more sweet for Gibson in that he succeeds on his own weird terms.
  27. Ran
    In Ran, the horrors of life are transformed by art into beauty. It is finally so moving that the only appropriate response is silence.
  28. The human connection the two characters make in this film would be understandable to anyone in any century, past or future. For that reason, there’s a very good chance here that Hall, Penn and Johnson have made more than a good movie with “Daddio.” They may have made a classic.
  29. Ford's bottled-up fierceness is perfectly in sync with the sustained atmosphere of quiet tension provided by director Alan J. Pakula (Sophie's Choice, All the President's Men). Presumed Innocent is more than two hours long and has a leisurely pace, yet maintains a high level of interest most of the way. [27 July 1990, p.E1]
    • San Francisco Chronicle

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