San Francisco Chronicle's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
For 9,306 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:
9306 movie reviews
  1. A first-class genre entry stacked with dandy performances and some crackerjack action to boot.
  2. It's a life worth remembering.
  3. The chief asset of Ain't Them Bodies Saints is Rooney Mara, who gets more interesting with every movie.
  4. There is history as it's remembered, and then there's history as it happened. This documentary gives us the latter, and it's a true education.
  5. In Darkness is an extraordinary movie, and somehow good art creates its own uplift.
  6. Don't be fooled by the casual style. There is nothing casual about these emotions, or about the talent of these two filmmakers.
  7. Downbeat, ultimately tragic, but there's a wondrous, sad beauty here.
  8. Re-creates that chilling sense that comes when, in the middle of a pleasant conversation, one realizes the other person is off his rocker.
  9. At 80 minutes, this might have been a delight. At more than two hours, it's so much of a good thing that it starts to become a bad thing.
  10. Absorbing and exquisite.
  11. A must-see documentary about not just a would-be assassin and moment in American history, but a snapshot of the Bay Area during turbulent times.
  12. At the end of the day, though, thanks to the moral complications expressed by the abortion doctors and patients, this movie gives us more than enough room to help weigh these issues on our own terms.
  13. Though the material might lend itself to heavy-handedness, director Ole Christian Madsen is steady, and he gets fine performances from the two leads and Stengade.
  14. In the end, Sully is a broadly crowd-pleasing movie, at a time when we could use the straight-forward entertainment.
  15. Go
    A nasty little picture with a lot of wit and impudence.
  16. Herzog, as ever, is obsessed most of all with human nature: Into the Abyss explores our deepest urges to love, and live, and kill.
  17. Despite its many virtues, Interstellar feels as if it doesn’t quite hit the target.
  18. The real joy here is the gorgeous nature cinematography.
  19. Bridge to Terabithia is a good movie, but it could become truly great with a director's cut that leaves the fantastic elements a little more vague.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    There's nothing new here about the conflict, but the film portrays the two sides fairly - both right, both wrong. Overall, The Attack is thought-provoking, even if it doesn't address how to solve the problem. We'll probably never know the answer in our lifetime.
  20. The end result is an interesting documentary that is as unpolished and gutsy as the championship-caliber high school hoop stars at the other end of his camera.
  21. A quirky character study of the four-man team, led by Sam Neill as the crew leader who seems surrounded by an aura of sadness but is so dedicated that he's not above lying to Houston to buy time when something goes wrong.
  22. (Washington) raises it to the level of importance with an acting job that's one unbroken chain of intense emotion.
  23. People who see it may feel like dancing out of the theater afterward. Go for it.
  24. It's clear by the end that one Ruth Gruber is worth more than 100 pundits fighting about partisan politics.
  25. What stays with the viewer is a sense of a man unraveling from his own mistakes and weaknesses.
  26. Breezily bounces back and forth from Baja to Los Angeles, and it’s a pleasant diversion, on both sides of the border.
  27. Byrne is the furthest thing from being a manipulative filmmaker. But Raising Bertie is moving nonetheless.
  28. Joy Ride feels like it easily could have been better, but it’s certainly good enough, and it might be remembered as an early milestone in some significant careers.
  29. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that this is probably the best movie so far this year about a kung-fu fighting panda.

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