Rotten
| Fresh 88%
| The Sure Thing (1985) | "
[A] hysterically oversold mix of comic cliches from the 30s and the 80s." — Chicago Reader Posted Nov 6, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 55%
| Robin Hood (1973) | "
What sinks this one is the utter lack of the childhood insight and sympathy that really give the Disney films their staying power." — Chicago Reader Posted Nov 4, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 65%
| The Aristocats (1970) | "
This 1970 animated feature is dull, careless, and all too typical of the Disney studio's slapdash output before the unexpected renaissance of The Rescuers." — Chicago Reader Posted Nov 4, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 73%
| The Sword in the Stone (1963) | "
There is still some life in the characterizations, though the animation is turning stiff and flat." — Chicago Reader Posted Nov 3, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 83%
| Peter Pan (1953) | "
Disney's depersonalizing habit of putting different teams in charge of different sections of the story really shows up here." — Chicago Reader Posted Nov 3, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 81%
| Alice in Wonderland (1951) | "
What's really disappointing is the undistinguished animation: the film looks and plays more like the Disney shorts than the Disney features." — Chicago Reader Posted Nov 3, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 59%
| Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971) | "
It's more sophisticated than the usual run of Disney product, but it lacks the inventiveness that could endow it with genuine charm." — Chicago Reader Posted Nov 3, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 65%
| Love at First Bite (1979) | "
Casting Dracula as the Last Romantic, Scott Fitzgerald-style, was a clever idea, but nothing clever remains in the film's hodgepodge of flat one-liners and graceless slapstick." — Chicago Reader Posted Oct 19, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 89%
| Horror of Dracula (1958) | "
This Grand Guignol treatment bowled people over in the 50s, and it still yields some potent shocks." — Chicago Reader Posted Oct 19, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 19%
| Perfect (1985) | "
John Travolta continues his wearisome trek through America's fleeting enthusiasms, though this time he arrives a day late (wasn't aerobics over a couple of years before this?) and a few dollars short." — Chicago Reader Posted Jul 26, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 83%
| The Unholy Three (1925) | "
Browning's obsession with deformity, sexual aberration, and death yielded many great moments but few wholly satisfying films -- up until his masterpiece of 1932, Freaks." — Chicago Reader Posted Jun 10, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 86%
| The Day of the Triffids (1963) | "
A sci-fi thriller (1963) that sticks in the mind, thanks to deft pacing and a vividly paranoid premise." — Chicago Reader Posted May 29, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 89%
| Saturday Night Fever (1977) | "
A small, solid film, made with craft if not resonance." — Chicago Reader Posted Apr 27, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 100%
| Au Hasard Balthazar (1966) | "
Perhaps the greatest and most revolutionary of Bresson's films, Balthazar is a difficult but transcendently rewarding experience, never to be missed." — Chicago Reader Posted Apr 27, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 97%
| La Strada (1954) | "
Early mush from the master, Federico Fellini." — Chicago Reader Posted Apr 27, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 100%
| White Heat (1949) | "
Raoul Walsh's heroes had a knack for going too far, but none went further than James Cagney in this roaring 1949 gangster piece." — Chicago Reader Posted Apr 27, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 97%
| Dog Day Afternoon (1975) | "
Enjoyable and even exciting at the start, Dog Day Afternoon degenerates into frustration and tedium toward nightfall -- an experience no less painful for the audience than for the actors." — Chicago Reader Posted Apr 27, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 100%
| The Last Laugh (1924) | "
The 1924 film in which F.W. Murnau freed his camera from its stationary tripod and took it on a flight of imagination and expression that changed the way movies were made." — Chicago Reader Posted Apr 27, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 96%
| Gun Crazy (1949) | "
One of the most distinguished works of art to emerge from the B movie swamp." — Chicago Reader Posted Apr 27, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 100%
| The Grapes of Wrath (1940) | "
Ford's admirers have rightly tended to play this down in favor of his later and more personal westerns, but there's much to admire here in Gregg Toland's sun-beaten photography and Henry Fonda's meticulous performance." — Chicago Reader Posted Apr 27, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 100%
| Shadow of a Doubt (1943) | "
Alfred Hitchcock's first indisputable masterpiece." — Chicago Reader Posted Apr 24, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 97%
| The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) | "
A great film, rich in thought and feeling, composed in rhythms that vary from the elegiac to the spontaneous." — Chicago Reader Posted Apr 24, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 86%
| Kiss of Death (1947) | "
The film is efficient enough, but it's a measure of Hathaway's limitations that it never once fulfills the paranoid delirium built into its subject." — Chicago Reader Posted Apr 24, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 100%
| Cool Hand Luke (1967) | "
Stuart Rosenberg's direction is a horror, but the cast teems with so many familiar faces that this 1967 film can't help but entertain." — Chicago Reader Posted Apr 23, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 100%
| Sweet Smell of Success (1957) | "
Mackendrick's nighthawk landscape is compellingly, poetically bleak." — Chicago Reader Posted Apr 21, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 98%
| Vertigo (1958) | "
One of the landmarks--not merely of the movies, but of 20th-century art." — Chicago Reader Posted Apr 20, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 77%
| Rock 'N' Roll High School (1978) | "
It's more cleverly cut than shot -- which means that it moves quickly and energetically even as the concepts and characters disintegrate." — Chicago Reader Posted Apr 14, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 89%
| The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) | "
The film is uncharacteristically rigid and pious for Hitchcock; it feels more like a work of duty than conviction." — Chicago Reader Posted Mar 27, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 86%
| The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) | "
Although the film is fast and consistently clever, it is more deeply flawed than any other Hitchcock film of the period, failing to find a thematic connection between its imaginative set pieces." — Chicago Reader Posted Mar 27, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 85%
| The China Syndrome (1979) | "
A tightly assembled didactic thriller." — Chicago Reader Posted Mar 27, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 95%
| Bad Day at Black Rock (1954) | "
An action film for people who don't like action films." — Chicago Reader Posted Mar 27, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 100%
| North by Northwest (1959) | "
A great film, and certainly one of the most entertaining movies ever made, directed by Alfred Hitchcock at his peak." — Chicago Reader Posted Mar 27, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 96%
| Kiss Me Deadly (1955) | "
This independently produced low-budget film was a shining example for the New Wave directors -- Truffaut, Godard, et al -- who found it proof positive that commercial films could accommodate the quirkiest and most personal of visions." — Chicago Reader Posted Mar 27, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 65%
| The Boys From Brazil (1978) | "
The plot is less suspenseful than the overacting contest between the two leads, Laurence Olivier and Gregory Peck, who spend most of their screen time one-upping each other in affectations." — Chicago Reader Posted Mar 27, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 93%
| Foreign Correspondent (1940) | "
This film contains one of Hitchcock's most famous set pieces -- an assassination in the rain -- but otherwise remains a second-rate effort, as immensely enjoyable as it is." — Chicago Reader Posted Mar 27, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 71%
| Stardust Memories (1980) | "
With its blunt, artless angst, the picture leaves you feeling depleted, squashed." — Chicago Reader Posted Mar 23, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 93%
| That Darn Cat! (1965) | "
Robert Stevenson directed, and it's one of Disney's more watchable live-action efforts." — Chicago Reader Posted Mar 10, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 83%
| Gentleman's Agreement (1947) | "
It looks pretty timorous now." — Chicago Reader Posted Feb 17, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 100%
| My Man Godfrey (1936) | "
Gregory La Cava's improvisational style received its highest critical acclaim for this 1936 film, a marginally Marxist exercise in class confusion during the Depression." — Chicago Reader Posted Feb 6, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 91%
| Trouble in Paradise (1932) | "
It's possible to prefer other Ernst Lubitsch films for their more serene stylings and more plangent emotions, but this 1932 production is probably the most perfectly representative of his works." — Chicago Reader Posted Feb 4, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 98%
| Manhattan (1979) | "
Woody Allen's great leap forward into character development and dramatic integrity." — Chicago Reader Posted Feb 4, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 91%
| Charade (1963) | "
A terrifically entertaining comedy-thriller." — Chicago Reader Posted Feb 4, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 100%
| Ninotchka (1939) | "
The satire may be mostly a matter of easy contrasts, but the lovers inhabit a world of elegance and poise that is uniquely and movingly Lubitsch's." — Chicago Reader Posted Feb 3, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 86%
| Monkey Business (1952) | "
Monkey Business ranks with the best works of the American cinema." — Chicago Reader Posted Feb 3, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 60%
| Sabrina (1995) | "
Sydney Pollack directs with the sort of polish that was easy to take for granted two decades ago but almost looked like classicism in 1995." — Chicago Reader Posted Feb 3, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 100%
| Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) | "
One of the first films to integrate musical numbers into the plot, it explores, without condescension or simplemindedness, the feelings that drive the family members apart and then bring them back together again." — Chicago Reader Posted Dec 15, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 97%
| Amarcord (1974) | "
Uneven, loosely structured, and at times pretty vulgar as well as sentimental, but with some touching and lovely episodes." — Chicago Reader Posted Dec 3, 2008 |
Rotten
| Fresh 63%
| The Andromeda Strain (1971) | "
Robert Wise brings his Academy Award-winning sobriety and meticulousness to a pulp tale that cries out for the slapdash vigor of a Roger Corman." — Chicago Reader Posted Nov 5, 2008 |
Rotten
| Rotten 59%
| Psycho 3 (1986) | "
Perkins tries to imitate Hitchcock's visual style, but most of the film is made without concern for style of any kind, unless it's the bludgeoning nonstyle of Friday the 13th." — Chicago Reader Posted Oct 21, 2008 |
Rotten
| Rotten 54%
| Psycho 2 (1983) | "
Though far from a worthy successor to the original (but why make impossible demands?) the film clearly could have been much worse." — Chicago Reader Posted Oct 20, 2008 |
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