San Francisco Chronicle's Scores

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For 9,300 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: 5,158 out of 9300
  2. Mixed: 2,656 out of 9300
  3. Negative: 1,486 out of 9300
9300 movie reviews
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  1. Rustin
    Domingo, who began his career as a stage actor in San Francisco, brings velocity to all the scenes involving the march. He seems unbound, possessed by an understanding that he’s doing something bigger than himself.
  2. Radical
    Radical follows a predictable formula, and Derbez, a major star in Mexico whose last American projects were the Hulu film “The Valet” and the Apple TV+ series “Acapulco,” lifts the material with his typical vibrant energy.
  3. Fingernails
    The problem with Fingernails is it takes itself too seriously. Co-writer and director Christos Nikou takes a clinical, dramatic approach to such a high-concept, over-the-top and ridiculous premise. He seems so enamored by the concept of the movie that he forgot that the movie was supposed to be about relationships and not the testing.
  4. Pain Hustlers
    Emily Blunt is so emotionally present that she almost redeems the movie. She doesn’t, but she at least makes the first half of Pain Hustlers watchable.
  5. Priscilla
    Priscilla could be described as the story of how the virginal wife finally got a clue, but it takes her too long. We’re left with a movie that mostly consists of a confused woman-child stumbling around a mansion in high heels.
  6. The Pigeon Tunnel
    For le Carré fans, The Pigeon Tunnel is a must-see, but the film will also be useful to people wanting an introduction to his work.
  7. The Killer
    This is a perpetrator’s perspective on the business of violence, carried out with notions of professionalism while slowly shaking the sociopath’s sense of self. Michael Fassbender’s unnamed contract killer is as delusional as he is dead-aimed focused; it’s both chilling and humanizing.
  8. The Persian Version
    The Persian Version tries to pivot and fashion itself as a celebration of women’s strength across the generations, but it’s transparently something else — a daughter’s attempt to come to terms with a problematic mother. And it’s an effort in which there can be no suspense because Keshavarz’s strenuous effort to whitewash mom tells us that the movie, and the relationship, can only resolve in one way.
  9. The Holdovers
    Here and there, there are moments when the energy dips, but what carries the film from scene to scene are the truthful performances and the genuineness of the storytelling.
  10. Butcher's Crossing
    Though Butcher’s Crossing has its share of conflicts and drama, it can move as slowly as the glaciers that cut its imposing scenery.
  11. Nyad
    The movie explores the real essence of determination, and it’s not what people imagine as they recite affirmations to themselves. Nyad shows us determination almost at a level of pathology, as a single-mindedness that could be considered sick, except that Nyad wasn’t delusional about her capacities.
  12. Killers of the Flower Moon
    Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon is a bladder-buster of a movie with no obvious bathroom break, no section where the story starts to sag. This makes it, almost by definition, a good and admirable piece of work. But Killers of the Flower Moon is also a lumbering mess, an ungainly and tonally odd film that, for all the strength of its parts, has little cumulative impact.
  13. The Burial
    In The Burial, every character gets a chance to shine, but not like in a “Star Trek” movie, where Sulu gets his moment and then Chekov. Rather, it all feels natural and organic. There’s something almost philosophical in a directorial point of view that understands that supporting and featured players are just as human as the main characters.
  14. Joan Baez I Am A Noise
    The bottom line on Joan Baez I Am a Noise is that if you absolutely love Baez and her work, you will find nothing here to challenge your preconceptions and will probably learn some things you didn’t know. But if you’re merely Baez-curious, this documentary will not satisfy and might even make you less curious.
  15. Foe
    It would be easy to dismiss Foe as a lugubrious downer, except that the reality of its world feels palpable and that marriage seems real. I believed Ronan and Pescal as two people bound up in love, shared history and torment.
  16. The Exorcist: Believer
    For all the movie’s modest but palpable virtues, The Exorcist: Believer has one problem it cannot solve: No one has come up with a new way to do an exorcism.
  17. Dicks: The Musical
    It’s a deliriously demented LGBTQ+ riff on “The Parent Trap” about accepting love in all forms, repairing broken families and finding your true self, but it accomplishes all of that in the raunchiest way possible.
  18. She Came to Me
    Miller pulls the various threads together at the end in a rush, like a college student dashing off the final pages of a term paper in the wee hours. But until then, she hops from one plotline to another, leaving the audience scratching their heads and waiting for another visit to the opera house.
  19. The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial
    The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial is tasteful and restrained, and though it was made by someone known as a wild man, there’s no grandstanding here. The performances are modulated, not pushed. If anything, the viewing experience is like being a fly on the wall of a real court-martial. The difference is that every minute of it is interesting.
  20. Pet Sematary: Bloodlines
    First-time director Lindsey Anderson Beer and her co-adapter Jeff Buhler have some nice ideas that never quite gel.
  21. Totally Killer
    Despite some gruesome brutality, Totally Killer has a very light-on-its-feet quality. But as artificial entertainment goes, this one’s put together with ruthless care.
  22. Flora and Son
    As always in Carney’s films, the music is emotional and lovely, with instruments played by its actors. The songs feel like they’re improvised on the spot, and Dublin is as inviting of a setting as usual.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Fair Play
    Would you like a side of erotic revenge this evening? How about a nightcap of noir? If you have a taste for the savage, you might easily split the difference with Fair Play.
  24. Saw X
    Saw X is “Saw 1.5” chronologically, taking place between the first and second films in this granddaddy of torture porn franchises. Quality-wise, though, it is closer to a 10 than a zero, which cannot be said about most of the other nine movies in this distressingly popular series.
  25. The Creator
    If The Creator were any more slanted, any more in the tank for the coming AI onslaught, you would think it was produced, written and directed by AI.
  26. Reptile
    In his feature director debut, Grant Singer (previously a music video director who’s worked with artists from Sam Smith to Skrillex) adopts a measured pace that lends the movie a somber, mysterious aura. But he breaks that up with smart, psychologically insightful cutting.
  27. 26.2 to Life
    The film doesn’t deny that justice must be served, and those who commit crimes must pay. Its question is: How it is paid fairly to the satisfaction of victims and their families and to the benefit of society? The answers are down the road, many miles ahead.
  28. Expend4bles
    It took the franchise four tries, but with Expend4bles, they’ve finally made a solid and consistently effective action movie.
  29. Dumb Money
    Dumb Money is a tale of 2020, and the movie captures that 2020 feeling — gray, depressed, anxious and almost comically miserable.
  30. Superpower
    Superpower, one of several documentaries about the war in Ukraine, doesn’t break any news, but Penn, a two-time Oscar-winning actor and director of several feature films, is a skilled storyteller. He and Kaufman do an excellent job of providing a contextual overview of the conflict, from its origins — the trajectory of both Russia and Ukraine in the post-Soviet era — to its political stakes, the mood of the Ukrainian people and the fascinating man who is leading them.
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