San Francisco Chronicle's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
For 5,494 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 53% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 45% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 0.1 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 62
Highest review score: 100 The Motorcycle Diaries
Lowest review score: 0 Dear Wendy
Score distribution:
5,494 movie reviews
  1. Heartfelt but interminable movie.
  2. Sordid, brutal and depressing.
  3. It boggles the mind that after six years of silence, all Tarantino has to offer is this garbage.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    It's a grueling 70-minute march toward the end credits.
  4. A lot of the acting is amateurish, and most of the plot feels like a rehash of a rehash. The music, written and performed in the spirit of L7, is small consolation.
  5. A film with its heart in the right place. Unfortunately, its head is stuck so far in the clouds that it dissolves into preachy do- gooder mush.
  6. After the first few minutes, viewers will get the feeling they just emerged from a 14-month coma. Even the non-movie jokes focus on last year's news.
  7. Dismal final installment.
  8. A bloody mess.
  9. It is an embarrassment and an insult to a character that has been beloved by kids for 45 years.
  10. Tolerable for undiscriminating horror fans but should be shunned by everybody else.
  11. There's no point complaining that Honey is a tired reworking of an old formula, because it's intended for a young audience that doesn't know the formula.
  12. A long-winded indulgence in tear-and-a-smile whimsy, elevated above the merely irritating and saccharine by compelling art direction.
  13. Yet another 'Stallion'? Talk about beating a dead horse.
  14. probably less painful than actual childbirth, but it's still a very long 86 minutes.
  15. It's only January, but already we have a strong candidate for the most thunderingly stupid movie of the year.
  16. A dull film with unsympathetic characters brought together by a gimmicky premise that's handled with no imagination and a pristine fraudulence of emotion. Aside from that, it's great.
  17. This tale of tortured love between a Mormon missionary and a West Hollywood tomcat renders its gay and religious characters so stereotypical that neither lifestyle appears attractive.
  18. A dreadful exercise, with a script full of contradictions and empty gestures and a leading lady who's such a novice it hurts to watch her.
  19. The movie [Sugarman] made gives little indication that she understands teen girls, dramatic or plain. Much of Confessions seems clueless and -- even worse for moviegoers of any age -- listless.
  20. Not surprisingly, only Samuel L. Jackson seems fully to understand that he's in a bad movie, and he makes a virtue of it, using it as an excuse to hang loose, overact and ride the scenes for wherever they might go.
  21. A glob of comedy, drama, action and suspense.
  22. One could criticize A Night at the Roxbury for being a comedy that provides not a single laugh. That would be too easy.
  23. Flimsy mockumentary.
  24. So desperate and silly that here and there, it's a lot of fun.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    It's a movie you want to like, but its sometimes laughably bad execution makes that difficult.
  25. This is an embarrassing film. It's a sex comedy that sets itself up as a satire of middle-class mores, except there's no truth behind any of its observations. LaBute tries to be shocking and manages only to be shockingly puerile -- tasteless in a high-school-boyish sort of way.
  26. Runs out of ideas long before the projector runs out of film.
  27. From watching this meandering, stilted movie, anyone unfamiliar with Charles Dickens' novel would be not only disinclined to pick it up but also clueless as to why it's considered great.
  28. It's standard slasher fare but has its moments.
  29. One of those comedies in which almost everything good about it is extraneous. There are funny lines and quirky bits, but in terms of story and character, the movie is empty and pointless.
  30. The overall premise, involving mental illness and suicide, isn't all that funny, at least not in practice, and the picture begins to seem labored and long.
  31. The ridiculous complications might have worked if there had been an awareness of how absurd they are.
  32. This clumsy, self-indulgent film veers from comedy to tragedy and is told in flashbacks, with treacly diary entries and unconvincing "testimonies" from friends providing a window into the past.
  33. As bad as its title.
  34. Lacks the clever twists and turns that made the original such fun. The sequel has exactly one twist, and it's not very clever.
  35. Nearly a scene-for-scene rip-off of "National Lampoon's Summer Vacation" -- where the only substantive change from the original is a reversed travel route.
  36. Muddled, to put it kindly.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Hernandez's debut feature is a thuddingly slow, often wordless portrait of emotional pain.
  37. With almost nothing else going for it, the sequel will likely be a disappointment to everyone except 10-year-old barf joke aficionados and a few stoned adults.
  38. The film is neither fish nor fowl nor some arresting new entity, but a lumpish coagulation of conflicting impulses and unrealized gestures.
  39. In Godsend, we have the spectacle of three good actors tied to the mast of a sinking premise.
  40. The freshest thing about Breakin' All the Rules is its dropped "g.''
  41. Flat and uninspired.
  42. Doesn't know what it wants to be: either a goofball satire or a heavy-handed social-message movie.
  43. Floats is corny and false, with a script by Steven Rogers that's almost 100 percent artificial sweetener.
  44. Just about everything in The Chronicles of Riddick is impenetrable, from the convoluted story to the dark and baroque art direction. It's an inane film rendered sometimes laughable by an atmosphere of dead-serious reverence.
  45. Nothing really works here, and nobody seems to have put in a huge amount of effort, except maybe the marketing department -- there are many product placements.
  46. Aspires to the breezy esprit of a Richard Lester comedy from the '60s, but it's a deadly, leaden affair.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Intrusive, excessively brooding and narcissistic.
  47. De Palma seems to be trying too hard to make somebody else's great movie, once again an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Would someone please tell this guy to relax?
  48. The biggest puzzlement about "What'' is what it's doing in major movie theaters around the country when it so clearly belongs on one of those small cable channels given to peculiar programming.
  49. Lacks a certain je ne sais quoi.
  50. Showcasing three individuals whose spiritual and physical journeys are both repellent and mundane, the film is just a long and pointless slog.
  51. In King Arthur, everything goes wrong. The film combines the plodding sincerity of a Ph.D. dissertation with the brains of a high-concept Jerry Bruckheimer- produced blockbuster (which it is), and no one benefits.
  52. Going after one innocent man was bad enough. Going after another constitutes a pattern. This marshal isn't a hero. He's a menace.
  53. What a waste of a great comedian. What demented casting.
  54. A feeble excuse for a movie.
  55. Bluntly speaking, Ju-On is anything but frightening. Ridiculous. Unbelievable. Unintentionally funny. It might as well be a parody of a horror film.
  56. Noirish thrillers live or die by their plot twists and dialogue -- talk literally being cheap compared to action shots. Unfortunately, the script by first-time filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson fails on both counts.
  57. Why, if Chase is such a funny guy, does he make such unfunny movies?
  58. About as awful as a film can be without being the ultimate awful, which is boring.
  59. The Village seems poised to become as cheesy in its effects as a low-budget horror film. Shyamalan's gracefulness keeps his movie just out of that abyss.
  60. Takes its name from the king protea, the national flower of South Africa. The stunning, artichoke-like shrub may be fragrant, but the movie's pretty much a stinker.
  61. An awkward and aggressively unfunny film.
  62. With no subtitles to explain what's going on in Yu-Gi- Oh!: The Movie, there's no reason for adults to come anywhere near it.
  63. A dreary, distasteful exercise, "Off the Leash'' favors dogs over humans, framing canine high jinks with an ugly story of domestic abuse.
  64. The sequel might have the formula down, but it lacks everything that made "Anaconda'' fun.
  65. Spending an hour and a half inside a uterus might be more entertaining than this tiresome sequel.
  66. The studio behind Wicker Park bills it as a "romantic thriller.'' But it's actually an example of an even more unusual subgenre: the dumb, suspense- free and undersexed stalker drama.
  67. An unflinching -- yet overlong and overindulgent -- film.
  68. It's just too bad that almost nothing in the movie seems original. The "Thriller" video may have featured hokey dancing zombies, but at least someone was making an effort.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Squanders its comic capital on redundant bits about her perplexed family and secret society of fellow sex addicts.
  69. A sour romantic comedy that arrives in theaters just in time to spoil Valentine's Day. Its plot is a catalog of unpleasantness. Its characters are repellent.
  70. Surprisingly, the results are embarrassing. As puppetry, Team America is stilted. As satire, it's gutless and lazy. And as comedy, it barely delivers laughs.
  71. Annoying, soporific and singularly humorless.
  72. The dragging pace is one of several agonizing defects in this bloated sci-fi action drama.
  73. Everything about it is manufactured -- the emotions are false, the sentiments are phony, and the story is a construction of mirthless silliness. It's a product, not a creative expression.
  74. It's strung together, with cliches instead of puka shells.
  75. Were there an award for most bizarre and dispiriting comedy-horror hybrid featuring killer dolls, the latest installment in the "Child's Play" series would have it locked up.
  76. A great role becomes an unenviable chore, in which a superb comic actress finds herself trying to sell a series of unfunny comic situations by mugging and pushing with all her might. It's an unflattering spectacle for all concerned.
  77. Stone tries to make us like Alexander because he's good, when he should have made us want to watch Alexander because he's amazing.
  78. Filled with overly processed situations it tries to sell with manic energy, "Kranks" is canned, hammy and rolling as fast as it can.
  79. The film itself is wretched. A grueling, numbing black hole.
  80. Neither funny nor outrageous nor horrifying nor conventionally affecting.
  81. Jaw-droppingly awful.
  82. Dreary movie.
  83. Builds into a shapeless riff on the existentialist misery of company.
  84. The film's overburdened, silly plot renders it a disaster.
  85. The satire is unfocused, while the story goes nowhere. Too bad. The material is ripe for satire.
  86. What is meant to be brave comes off as gimmicky and immature.
  87. A hodgepodge of half-baked visual styles can't disguise the fact that this dismal thriller is all situation and no story.
  88. A disappointment, a precious and grotesque exercise reminiscent of Jean-Pierre Jeunet's "Delicatessen," only less amusing.
  89. Attempts to convey emotional dislocation and passion at the same time. All we get is distance.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    The only performer who breathes any life into the proceedings is Vincent Perez.
  90. In the same genre as the Farrellys' "There's Something About Mary" and "Dumb and Dumber," only lousy.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Things happen in a flat, deadpan way.
  91. A rather boring horror film.
  92. Another inert, soul-dead action drama that turns actors into zombies...It's garbage.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Held back by a story and script that is often silly and confusing.
  93. A thriller without thrills. It's also a thriller that cheats. The story is stretched to feature length only by having the film's incidents arranged in such a way as to reveal as little as possible.
  94. A convoluted mess, but there have been worse.
  95. Original enough to come up with new ways to go wrong. For one, the film is a blatant showcase to promote O'Neal as a rap artist.
  96. It's the worst kind of convoluted thriller -- it can never unravel satisfactorily because there's nothing simple at its center, just more confusion.
  97. The movie isn't hellish, because there's always hope of leaving it. It's more like purgatory, two whole hours of it.
  98. A comedy so unfunny, it's tragic.
  99. But the film suffers from a major and unforgivable flaw, one that grows more implausible and ridiculous over time.
  100. A white-trash burlesque that springs from the notion that people chasing each other in cars and doing stupid things in motels are inherently funny.
  101. Has that title going for it, which might annoy or provoke you. It makes me suspicious. It's the kind of flashy, meaningless title that's usually given to drab, pointless films.
  102. The Chamber has nowhere to go and it goes there slowly, flirting in all directions.
  103. A third-rate effort, with a weak script, cheap-looking effects and no genuine frights.
  104. [Brody's] mannered performance helps downgrade this picture from a middling sci-fi film to a bad, borderline-camp sci-fi film.
  105. This is a half-hearted, derivative action film with not a single honest artistic impulse behind it.
  106. Its story meanders and doesn't build, and the pace is deadly.
  107. Perfunctory, thrill- free sequel.
  108. An adventure in mediocrity that brings together some of the worst current techniques and trends.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Director Q. Allan Brocka loads up the screen with eye-candy for every preference -- no one keeps a shirt on for long. Think Skinemax with a gay twist. But his script overdoses on pop culture references and bitchy wisecracks that his trying-too-hard cast can't quite pull off.
  109. It's dreadful, but it's a special kind of dreadful -- the kind designed to appeal to intelligent people on principle.
  110. The mockumentary-style delivery of a serious subject proves to be an unworkable mash-up.
  111. Piles cliched character upon cliched character, and then doesn't give any of them very much to do.
  112. Not only not funny, it's unfunny. It kills humor. Sit in a room by yourself, look at a blank screen for 90 minutes, and you'll have more of a chance of laughing at your own thoughts than you will at this movie.
  113. 110 minutes of Euro silliness mitigated only by the presence of Huppert and the striking ability of the actors to keep a straight face throughout this mess.
  114. Devoid of thrills, and with nothing even vaguely frightening to distract moviegoers, it becomes clear that the story wasn't worth telling in the first place.
  115. A bigger mess than the gas crisis.
  116. The film is glossy, but awful. Frenetic, but awful. Expensive, but awful. ... And awful.
  117. Sharkboy relies almost entirely on 3-D for its kicks. The novelty, however, quickly wears thin with the thinnest of stories to project.
  118. There's just the matter of facing it: that The Perfect Man is just something slapped together -- by people who don't care, for an audience they figure will care even less.
  119. Yes
    Mostly unbearable.
  120. At best a little boring and at worst stomach-churningly offensive.
  121. They take on special powers that the filmmakers are incapable of making interesting, partly because the characters are ciphers, and partly because the story is listless and uninventive.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    An entirely unconventional, hypnotic, meandering film.
  122. This disappointing new film from director Michael Winterbottom ("24 Hour Party People") suffers from a similar malaise: It's poetic and pretty, strives for profundity without attaining it, and finally ends up saying nothing.
  123. It's astonishing what little impact even the most imaginatively choreographed and well-filmed aerial escapades can have when they're presented as neither an expression of a character's personality, nor in the context of a compelling mission.
  124. A well-intentioned horror film that is weighted down by stellar cast members who for the most part act as if they don't want to be there.
  125. Has more in common with a horror movie than with a genuine political work.
  126. At times, "European Gigolo" feels more like an international incident than a movie.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    While there's no blood to be seen in Supercross, the film is rated PG- 13, due to some crash scenes, a little strong language and some mild sexuality. That's a shame. This movie was tailor-made for 12-year-olds.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Degenerates in the second half.
  127. It's the cinematic equivalent of an all-dessert meal: After the initial jolt, the lack of any real nourishment is apparent, and it becomes a struggle to stay awake.
  128. The Cave is National Geographic mixed with Roger Corman, and by the end you'll probably be wishing you saw "Red Eye" instead.
  129. The movie plays more like a WB network teen drama than something audiences should be expected to pay to see.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Just plain bad.
  130. Approximately the last hour of Dante's Peak is made up of action scenes, and how well one likes computer-generated destruction will determine how well one likes the movie.
  131. It's a perfect fit for Williams -- a hunk of slapstick, a dose of schmaltz -- and yet he can't save the film, which is overproduced, mechanical and resoundingly unfunny.
  132. Hoodlum is an overlong gangster movie, a bloated and often laughable attempt at an epic.
  133. Boyle isn't the first British or European filmmaker to make his obligatory zesty American road movie (apparently it's a dream for anyone raised on American cinema), but knowing that doesn't make A Life Less Ordinary any less tiring or its numerous pilferings any less obvious or annoying.
  134. Less an original product than a shoddy tribute to other mediocre cop movies.
  135. Arrives in theaters today with a sheet over its head and a tag on its toe. So to speak. What we have here is a complete systemic failure, a comedy that's not funny, with action that's not thrilling.
  136. Has no truth, wisdom or honesty, and it's barely entertaining.
  137. It isn't smart or even very scary.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Dull and uninteresting.
  138. Almost every moment has flashes and explosions and a pulsing, relentless soundtrack. It's like being trapped inside a video game.
  139. Beneath the handsome production values, the steady motor of Ron Howard's direction and the solid acting of Mel Gibson as a flashy airline tycoon whose son is abducted in Central Park, Ransom is pure poison: the kind of hang-'em-high rouser that feeds off our basest impulses and prods us into cheering the hero on as he commits grisly, retributive acts of violence.
  140. Two hours of senselessness and overkill, decked out in lurid, bad-trip colors.
  141. Like most movies based on games, this film appears to have been quite literally doomed from the start.
  142. Visuals can't fill a spiritual vacuum, and Stay remains a pretty package that's empty on the inside.
  143. Yet, it's watchable -- not remotely enjoyable, but watchable.
  144. Nora Ephron directed it and had a hand in the screenplay, but without Travolta this film would have no reason for being.
  145. But Congo leads to nothing but a fierce battle with the gray gorillas, a kind of guns vs. fangs scene; and a convenient and incongruous volcano eruption that looks as artificial as a video game.
  146. Poor casting is compounded by a ludicrous script.
  147. What a waste.
  148. May be a good tactical move for the artist's career, but it's a bad movie.
  149. A turkey.
  150. There is little debauchery to be had in Laurence Dunmore's adaptation of The Libertine. In fact, hedonism has never looked so bleak.
  151. It's hard to sit all the way through Aeon Flux while fully awake.
  152. On its own terms, the film is overlong, repetitive and lacks impact. Even if this were the first gorilla-in-love movie ever made, audiences would come away vaguely dissatisfied, suspecting there was an intriguing idea buried somewhere in here, but it didn't quite come off.
  153. Bezucha made something perverse, a feel-bad holiday film about a repellent family, with a milquetoast dad and a smug, devious harpy of a mom.
  154. In the important things, in all the ways that really count, Caché is a handsome fraud.
  155. A few amusing moments mixed in with the painful ones.
  156. Hoodwinked is a computer-animated, "Shrek"-style satire of "Little Red Riding Hood" that offers a few laughs but overall is pretty tired.
  157. The prologue sets a simpleton tone that, distressingly, continues throughout.
  158. Everything connected with the lovers, who are the point of the movie, is either ordinary or unwittingly funny, and the laughs come early.
  159. A Christian-themed film about redemption with almost no redeeming qualities as entertainment.
  160. Humorless, confusing and not very fun to watch.
  161. The result is an incredibly disorganized movie with a few funny scenes -- most of which are revealed in the commercials.
  162. The film is obvious, weak and scattered and seems more like a practical joke than a work of genuine passion. It is without exaggeration one of the most blindingly boring films I've seen in years.
  163. Even the element of surprise isn't enough to save this film, which has too many slow parts and features an ending that's extremely tepid by 21st century horror movie standards.
  164. If London were a comedy, it just might work. Instead, it's a dead-serious marathon of angst from cool kids old enough to know they're mouthing cliches.
  165. A lame pastiche of Hollywood romances.
  166. The movie is overly long and much too intense for small children, yet it's filled with dialogue and plot turns that are too juvenile to thrill adult audiences.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    A spectacular failure, despite further evidence of the director's keen eye and bold cinematic ideas.
  167. It's a movie that scrounges so desperately for laughs, it features both a flatulent moose and a flatulent train.
  168. A disappointing sequel to the far funnier "Diary of a Mad Black Woman."
  169. A film to be enjoyed only by science-fiction movie completists and middle school boys with extreme cases of attention deficit disorder.
  170. It's a well-meaning but ultimately feeble and misguided attempt to say something profound about the aftereffects of the 2001 attacks on New York.
  171. The film is a particular disappointment considering its pedigree.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Unwatchable.
  172. It's a shame Arnold is stuck on the loudmouth clod schtick, because there are moments he's downright pleasant on screen. But in Carpool, these moments are kept to a minimum.
  173. A "nonstop thriller" that is also a nonstop dud. Underline the word "long" in the title.
  174. Although the movie doesn't turn the Zodiac saga into a slasher film, it has the look of a straight-to-video movie, or at best a Project Greenlight production.
  175. Pretentious drama.
  176. Works better as unintentional comedy than horror.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Almost so bad it's good. Almost.
  177. The sequel is one big tease.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Anyone who puts production gloss above performance, plot, dialogue and editing may thrill to Drawing Restraint 9.
  178. An attempt at a beautiful film about renewal -- about past love, love lost, longing and rediscovery -- but it has no emotional truth.
  179. It's a movie packed with so many idiot characters that Rob Schneider is cast as the cool guy -- and sort of pulls it off.
  180. With Hard Candy, the innocent are tortured along with the guilty -- the innocent, in this case, being the audience.
  181. Repressed desire! A sultry soap-opera star! Incest! Gay politics! "La Mujer de Mi Hermano" has it all. Now if it only had a decent plot.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Hao doesn't seem to have a point of view. Mongolian Ping-Pong is episodic and meandering, with several tedious stretches.
  182. The result is a well-intentioned mess -- a dishonest fantasy that begins with promise and gets more frustrating with every scene.
  183. A big disappointment.
  184. RV
    RV is a horrible movie about horrible people, and just because they call it a comedy doesn't mean we have to play along.
  185. This is the type of movie that you should be getting for free on television.
  186. The picture gives us two protagonists and sets up a situation in which only one of them can have a decent life. Then, having devised this sour souffle, the screenwriters find no adjustment to make it palatable. The resolution is flip, at best.
  187. This is not one of the good Altmans. This isn't even one of the mediocre Altmans.
  188. For all the precision shooting, Autumn is a colossal misfire, a tedious film noir wannabe. It doesn't even qualify as film gris.
  189. Lucas Black, who looks as much like a high school kid as George Bernard Shaw, speaks in a thick Southern accent that hasn't been heard on any leading man since the second act of "Our American Cousin."
  190. Children will enjoy the physical humor, but discerning adults are advised to pawn their sons and daughters off on some other unsuspecting chaperone -- preferably one who doesn't read movie reviews.
  191. Two guys panting over the same babe leads to tedium, despite a near-record number of overheated sex scenes.
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