Michael Phillips

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Chicago Tribune
For 2,578 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 56% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 42% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 1 point higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Michael Phillips' Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 67
Highest review score: 100 The Third Man
Lowest review score: 0 Did You Hear About the Morgans?
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,779 out of 2578
  2. Mixed: 510 out of 2578
  3. Negative: 289 out of 2578
2578 movie reviews
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    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Michael Phillips
    Hustlers
    The film’s half-real, half-fantasy treatment of a fact-based story is almost really good. But “good enough” is good enough, thanks mostly to Jennifer Lopez dining out on her best role in years. She’s terrific.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Phillips
    Let the Sunshine In
    The film itself isn’t dorky in the least. It’s an elegant and witty rumination on one woman’s quest for romantic fire.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Michael Phillips
    Life of Pi
    Life of Pi, Yann Martel's beautiful little book about a young man and the sea and a tiger, has transformed into a big, imposing and often lovely 3-D experience.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Michael Phillips
    Let Me In
    The original was a very good thriller. The new one is simply a good one.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 75 Michael Phillips
    France
    Even when it’s outlining its own ideas more through rhetoric than character, France keeps us on our toes regarding what’s around the corner. Seydoux’s the chief but hardly the only reason to find out.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Phillips
    Fences
    Robust, delicate, sublimely acted and a close cinematic cousin to the theatrical original, director Denzel Washington's film version of Fences makes up for a lot of overeager or undercooked stage-to-screen adaptations over the decades.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 63 Michael Phillips
    Puzzle
    Much of Puzzle feels schematic and, in the convenient solution to the family’s financial problems, a bit lazy. Yet Macdonald is so good, on her own or with a scene partner, director Marc Turtletaub’s movie refuses to fall apart.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Phillips
    Conclave
    Sleek, confident and peppered with delicious portraits in pursuit, deceit and evasion, the carnival of papal intrigue known as “Conclave” works like gangbusters.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Michael Phillips
    Fill the Void
    An elegant miniature, Rama Burshtein's Fill the Void labors under a narrative inevitability, but it's artful work nonetheless.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Phillips
    Searching for Sugar Man
    At 85 minutes, it's a tight, sharp achievement, yet one of the things I love about it is simple: It moves to a relaxed rhythm, in sync with its slightly otherworldly subject.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Michael Phillips
    Manufactured Landscapes
    Feels constrained and rather dutiful, no matter how passionate these people are about what they're observing.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Phillips
    Zodiac
    It's fascinating and unexpected both in its simple, looming images and its storytelling priorities, which may not intersect with the priorities of audiences who couldn't get enough of "Se7en."
    • 35 Metascore
    • 38 Michael Phillips
    Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
    Fox's cleavage is the only camera object that catches Bay's attention for more than a millisecond.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Phillips
    Brand Upon the Brain!
    The film is a singular achievement.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Phillips
    Priscilla
    Priscilla, the movie, exists in a state of hushed wonderment, magical one minute, bittersweet the next.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Phillips
    Black Swan
    Is Black Swan high-minded? I'm happy to say: No. It is extremely high-grade hokum, which is to say it offers several different and combustible varieties.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Phillips
    A Real Pain
    A Real Pain, shadowed by the Holocaust and the grandmother we never see, may be a modestly scaled second feature, but Eisenberg makes an enormous leap forward, coming off his promising directorial debut, “When You Finish Saving the World.”
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Michael Phillips
    i'm thinking of ending things
    It’s frustrating, although I’m grateful Kaufman didn’t simply film the book as written. The actors couldn’t be better attuned to the nervous system of this universe.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Phillips
    Indignation
    Lerman's excellent as Marcus, capturing his principles as well as his bullheadedness. Sarah Gadon's Olivia is no less fine.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Michael Phillips
    Enough Said
    Despite the movie's limitations, it's very satisfying to watch Louis-Dreyfus and Gandolfini enjoy each other's company on screen, as characters, because it's satisfying to watch them enjoy each other's company as performers.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Michael Phillips
    Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie
    Fox’s resolve, his ever-sharp wit and acuity, more than mitigates what’s not entirely useful in Guggenheim’s filmmaking approach.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Phillips
    A Different Man
    With a crucial performance from Adam Pearson to complement Stan’s fine work, the film is well worth seeing. It is, in fact, a serious joke about the act of seeing.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Phillips
    28 Weeks Later
    Swift, vicious and grimly imaginative, the zombie film 28 Weeks Later exceeds its predecessor, "28 Days Later," in every way.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Michael Phillips
    Control
    The cast is excellent, particularly Riley and Morton and, as Joy Division’s brash manager, Toby Kebbell. He’s a great character, bitter and hostile and a scoundrel: a born manager of talent destined to tear itself apart.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Michael Phillips
    Top Gun: Maverick
    It’s a pretty good time, and often a pretty good movie for the nervous blur we’re in right now. It’s cozy.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Phillips
    BlackBerry
    BlackBerry doesn’t sermonize or push the comedy or falsify the dramatic dynamics of wildly contrasting personalities. It’s a small but quite beautiful achievement, which you could also say about the smartphone that could, and did. For a while.
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