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 2.2 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. First Reformed
    First Reformed has a confidence about it, the presence of filmmaking consciousness that can’t do wrong, because this time he knows exactly what he wants to say, not only in a general sense, but second by second and shot by shot.
  2. Show Dogs
    Show Dogs is really bad, even for a talking-dog movie.
  3. Anything
    Suffice to say that McNeil plays it way too safe. Trying to have it both ways, he satisfies no one.
  4. Book Club
    There is a built-in pleasure in seeing Diane Keaton, Candice Bergen, Jane Fonda and Mary Steenburgen in the same movie. We’re used to them. We like them. We like being around them — but not so much that we can’t notice that Book Club is a pretty strained affair, not especially funny and weirdly off key.
  5. Dark Crimes
    Regardless of how one might feel about its inherently icky subject matter, Dark Crimes needs more narrative momentum. The cast is game, the production design is impressive and a few surprises await — but even as things heat up, the film somehow remains cold.
  6. Beast
    Even if it has B-movie trappings and the tension wanes in the second half, it’s a stylish psychodrama.
  7. Pope Francis - A Man of His Word
    The director is clearly an admirer of Francis (both the saint and the pope), and was able to conduct extensive and exclusive interviews with the pontiff.
  8. The Guardians
    The performances are extraordinary, as they often are in Beauvois’ films, with Baye a study in quiet suffering and Bry wonderfully enigmatic — seemingly simple, but hinting at a soul capable of expansion and adaptation.
  9. The Seagull
    The Seagull has all the big things going for it and yet so many little things going against it that it’s just not the movie it might have been.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Boom for Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat
    Driver keeps their tales engaging with great music and vintage clips of CBGB, Club 57, the Mudd Club and the crumbling Lower East Side.
  11. Solo: A Star Wars Story
    The last half hour and the lively opening make us almost forget the movie’s so-so middle. It brings all the elements together, points to the future and keeps the action to a human-scale minimum. If you want to see Solo: A Star Wars Story, I wouldn’t talk you out of it.
  12. Deadpool 2
    After shooting lots of people and cutting lots of throats, Deadpool tries blowing himself up, something he probably should have done first. And with that, the movie shifts. Deadpool 2 becomes less violent and a lot funnier. It becomes a much better movie than the original “Deadpool,” not an action bloodbath with laughs, but a knowing spoof of the superhero genre.
  13. Measure of a Man
    Measure of a Man is intended as a touching coming-of-age film about one crucial summer in a young man’s life. But it’s a movie of gestures and feints, in which we’re constantly being told of events and relationships rather than seeing or feeling them.
  14. Lu Over the Wall
    It’s colorful and imaginative, but other than Lu, the characters don’t have much depth. Emotional, that is, not oceanographic.
  15. Breaking In
    If there’s a weakness to the movie, it’s that, despite its gut-level appeal, it doesn’t dazzle us with anything brilliant or unexpected. However, there are some nifty turns here and there, so it’s not entirely mediocre.
  16. Life of the Party
    Life of the Party presents a situation more than a story, and in that it’s more like a sitcom than a conventional movie.
  17. Racer and the Jailbird
    Two good characters and two good performances go into the old poubelle — or, as we say in English, the garbage bin.
  18. Tully
    Tully doesn’t expand as it goes along. It feels insulated and hermetically sealed, and it seems to get smaller.
  19. Overboard
    The new version is a weak facsimile of an already mediocre film.
  20. Disobedience
    The women are remarkable, unforgettable. But don’t overlook Nivola, an enigmatic figure as the rabbi and husband.
  21. Bad Samaritan
    Sometimes the movie is a little too slick. Some of the characters, such as Sean’s girlfriend (Jacqueline Byers) and the FBI agents who begin to believe Sean’s story, are underdeveloped. But Tennant, excellent as a creep, and Sheehan, who is appealing in his helplessness, provide the necessary depth.
  22. RBG
    Ginsburg herself is determined to last. Several scenes show her working out with a trainer. Her goal is to live long enough for a Democratic president to appoint her successor.
  23. Let the Sunshine In
    It’s a deep and moving investigation into one woman’s inner struggle as she goes about looking for true love.
  24. Bye Bye Germany
    A formidable exercise in storytelling. Even at the end, when the inevitable goodbye toast occurs, there is a twist awaiting us.
  25. The Judge
    In 2009, Kholoud Al-Faqih became the first female judge in the Palestinian Shariah (or religious) court system. As Erika Cohn’s fascinating documentary The Judge shows, al-Faqih has fought for justice for Palestinian women ever since.
  26. Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami
    A film with no context, it is a sporadically interesting, overlong look at the legend as she nears 70, still performing before her legions of fans.
  27. Godard Mon Amour
    In color, style and humor — even in its graphics and editing — it’s very much like a Godard film from the mid-1960s. Thus, the experience is like watching an actual Godard film — the first great Godard film since “Masculin Féminin” in 1966.
  28. Zama
    All this makes Zama interesting and unique and something to be respected. But none of this translates into anything resembling a satisfying narrative or even entertainment as we know it. Still, as bleak experiments go, Zama is the real thing.
  29. Ghost Stories
    This is a filmmaker who cares less about horror cinema as a theme park ride, and more about mood.
  30. Avengers: Infinity War
    Over the last few years, the Avengers, together and separately, have spawned a number of good, very good, or reasonably entertaining movies. But with Avengers: Infinity War, the Marvel Comics franchise arrives at the stage of decadence. There’s just too much of it. A victim of its own success, there are just too many appealing characters here to stuff into one story.
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