San Francisco Chronicle's Scores

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For 9,302 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: 5,160 out of 9302
  2. Mixed: 2,656 out of 9302
  3. Negative: 1,486 out of 9302
9302 movie reviews
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  1. The Devil All the Time
    The Devil All the Time is really a portrait of a place, told through the lives of several people across a span of about a dozen years, and the thing that makes it interesting — from start to finish — is that this place is so brutal and appalling and unexpected in its various cruelties that we cannot stop watching.
  2. The Broken Hearts Gallery
    A sweet, innocuous romantic comedy.
  3. Our Time Machine
    The issues of aging and familial relationships and the appealing nature of this family would make “Our Time Machine” worthy of a look in any case, but what puts it over the top is Maleonn’s fascinating visual inventions.
  4. I Am Woman
    Still, I Am Woman, while it doesn’t roar, effectively tells Reddy’s story and speaks strongly about the women’s movement and the struggle that continues.
  5. The Social Dilemma
    The Social Dilemma should be mandatory viewing for everyone who has a social media account. After seeing it, you may look at your phone differently, as something that isn’t really your friend.
  6. Sibyl
    Sibyl is for people who like French movies even when they’re a little ridiculous.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Feels Good Man
    Jones uses Furie’s story, and some gorgeous animation, as a wonderfully succinct window into the way social media has changed the country. By letting 4channers speak for themselves, the film also puts a face to the bad actors without ever letting them off the hook.
  8. i'm thinking of ending things
    The movie asks us to wonder what’s real and what’s false, and what it all means. But it goes on for 134 minutes without ever giving viewers a reason to keep watching. Few Netflix customers will make it all the way to the end, and even fewer will be glad they did.
  9. The Personal History of David Copperfield
    It all makes for a very different type of summer-movie experience, one far removed from superheroes and special effects. Best of all, you need not have read a word of Dickens to be captivated by the world that Iannucci has created.
  10. Mulan
    Mulan is a spirit lifter, and though it doesn’t arrive as planned, it could not arrive at a better time.
  11. Robin's Wish
    Robin’s Wish, of course, can’t lessen the tragedy of Williams’ death, but it helps us better reconcile the suicide of such a joyous, irrepressible soul.
  12. Bill & Ted Face the Music
    Any movie that celebrates the power of music, friendship, family and all of that scientific stuff Kid Cudi keeps jabbering about has got to be somewhat welcome at this particular point in the space-time continuum, right?...Oh, and stay past the closing credits for a little extra excellence.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    All Together Now
    There is a “Good Will Hunting” vibe to the film, a gifted young person sliding toward obscurity who is helped by the intervention of friends and colleagues. And the film may end with all the lose ends tied up into fancy bows, but its heart is pure.
  14. Get Duked!
    Doff is a music video guy who’s made a deceptively well-crafted feature debut here. While Get Duked! may lean on stupidity too much for some tastes, it’s nevertheless that rarest of movie creatures: a smart dumb comedy. Perhaps they can only be spotted in the Scottish Highlands these days.
  15. Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula
    With its bigger budget and wider scope but less gripping story, “Peninsula” is much more of a generic, CGI-reliant action movie that often feels like a video game coupled with a few pages ripped from the scripts of “Mad Max” and “Escape From New York.”
  16. Chemical Hearts
    What makes Chemical Hearts so good is it’s unafraid of its feelings. It tackles complicated emotional issues such as depression, suicide, sex and love with a straightforward honesty. For once, a film about young people is completely free of snark and irony.
  17. The One and Only Ivan
    The One and Only Ivan has within it a much more interesting film waiting to break out that really could have been for the whole family, but alas it is trapped within the cement walls of Disney’s cookie-cutter formula.
  18. Unhinged
    It’s a simple, sick, ridiculous story told with relentless tension and forward thrust.
  19. Tesla
    Hawke is effectively brooding, which recalls his first collaboration with Almereyda, a 2000 adaptation of “Hamlet” set in modern-day New York City.
  20. Represent
    Bachelder’s fly-on-the-wall approach reveals great details, and she picked compelling subjects.
  21. Boys State
    Boys State is the most depressing film about boys since “Lord of the Flies.” If anything, it’s even more bleak, because it’s not fiction and it’s not allegory. No, this is a documentary about actual boys.
  22. An American Pickle
    That none of this seems snarky, but sweetly human, is largely thanks to Rogen, who never makes Herschel ridiculous, but aspirational, as if he has a vision he’s working toward.
  23. The Secret Garden
    Things get quite Gothic in the film’s final stretch, with genre add-ons that “Garden” purists may also find distasteful. The extra melodrama can feel unnecessary. However, it leads to moments of life-restoring beauty (core theme here again) and love.
  24. Creem: America's Only Rock 'n' Roll Magazine
    As the documentary shows, while it lasted, it was really something.
  25. Waiting for the Barbarians
    The film is deadly slow and uneventful, with brilliant scenes bursting to life, here and there, like roses in a wasteland.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Black Is King
    Shot primarily in Africa over the past year (primarily before the coronavirus pandemic swept the world), the big-budget film plays out like a collection of opulent music videos. It’s not a live concert film, but it does take cues from the theatrical pacing of Beyoncé’s tour performances.
  27. The Secret: Dare to Dream
    Despite most everything else in the movie being predictable, Bray’s mystery is hard to guess.
  28. Rebuilding Paradise
    An occasionally powerful, yet occasionally frustrating documentary.
  29. The Fight
    It’s a well-made film in many ways but also frustratingly skin-deep for a news junkie like me.
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