Chicago Tribune's Scores

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For 7,601 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 62% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 36% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 1.4 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 66
Highest review score: 100 Autumn Tale
Lowest review score: 0 Car 54, Where Are You?
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 5,106 out of 7601
  2. Mixed: 1,473 out of 7601
  3. Negative: 1,022 out of 7601
7601 movie reviews
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  1. 'Round Midnight
    My only quibble with the film is that the character of the Frenchman is too precious to be believed. But that's no reason to stay away from this lesiurely but powerful story of not a man and his music, but a music and one of its men. [24 Oct 1986, p.A]
    • Chicago Tribune
  2. Archangel
    Archangel is a perfectly self-contained aesthetic object, maddening in its arbitrariness and opacity, yet wholly absorbing in its flurry of urgent yet incomprehensible significations.
  3. The Illusionist
    Chomet himself has written the gentle waltz theme and other music. The piece glides by, effortlessly.
  4. I Am Love
    I Am Love makes no apologies for its style. None needed: The film, a two-hour swoon, is a cry for romantic freedom, perched on the edge of self-parody, as all good melodramas are.
  5. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
    Black's retro-noir reminds us why we love movies: because they can surprise us, even when we're ankle deep in bullet casings, bodies and enough twists to tie us in knots.
  6. The Set-Up
    To cop a phrase, it's a knockout. [05 Sep 1999, p.32C]
    • Chicago Tribune
  7. The Second Mother
    Muylaert's picture relates to many other South American domestic comedies pitting "the help" against the economic overlords, but this one has the grace to humanize everyone on screen. The results are both smart and curious.
  8. Beyond the Gates
    If Beyond the Gates were merely a well-intentioned bore, the reality might seem jarring. As is, the coda fits and feels like the only possible ending--proof that surviving to help tell the story of a genocidal nightmare is the best revenge.
  9. Dan in Real Life
    As a director Hedges is smart enough to allow his actors to share the frame and interact and let the material breathe.
  10. The Witnesses
    The Witnesses may be schematic, but it lets each character live and breathe. The film captures a time and place that seems very distant now.
  11. The Filth and the Fury
    The concerts are hypnotic, the music is swell, and the entire package moves along at just the right pace.
    • Chicago Tribune
  12. Piccadilly [re-release]
    German emigre Dupont directs all this with the style, flair and tension he brought to his 1925 Emil Jannings classic, "Variety." But it is Wong, shimmering with charisma, who gives Piccadilly its unforgettable center.
  13. The Maid
    Tone is everything here. While likely influenced by Chilean absurdists of another era, such as playwright Egon Wolff, in The Maid Silva treads an ultra-fine line between caricature and character, leaning toward the latter without weighing down an essentially featherweight creation.
  14. Amy
    Amy stays above the tabloid fray, up to a point. Kapadia hasn't made a groundbreaking documentary; it's more like a classy, high-end edition of "Behind the Music."
  15. The Devil Came on Horseback
    It is not an easy film to watch, nor should it be. It is, however, beautifully made. Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern, the co-directors, wrangle their information and lay it out clearly, vividly and with a sharp sense of focus.
  16. Hotel Rwanda
    Not a striking film visually. It's deliberately plain looking, focused on the appalling events with an almost documentary immediacy.
  17. Pink Cadillac
    Pink Cadillac is the most graceful, warm-hearted and engaging of Clint Eastwood's comedies. [26 May 1989, p.A]
    • Chicago Tribune
  18. Gasoline Rainbow
    See it, and see what you make of this new and quite wonderful example of this in-between cinematic tradition — and of Tony, Micah, Nichole, Nathaly and Makai, both real and imagined.
  19. The Cruise
    Even if you have no interest in documentaries or the facade that is New York City, The Cruise transcends its artistic boundaries to becomes something strange and unique.
  20. The Look of Silence
    Painful and unforgettable — a serious and honorable form, perhaps the highest, of "gotcha" journalism imaginable.
  21. The Kid with a Bike
    This is the first film the Dardennes shot in the summertime. Excellent choice of seasons. I'm not sure I could've handled Cyril's travails without it, or without de France's smile.
  22. Class Action Park
    The documentary infers a good deal about Mulvihill’s underworld connections and political maneuvers without quite nailing them down.
  23. Kissing Jessica Stein
    Delivers that rare combination of winning traits. It's a low-key comedy with a risque hook -- a seemingly straight woman dabbles in lesbianism -- yet it maintains an old-fashioned faith in literate dialogue, believable behavior and themes that reach beyond the plot points.
  24. The Beat That My Heart Skipped
    It's a thriller that comes at you with gut-clutching ferocity, spewing blood and sex, shaking you up and scrambling your responses.
  25. The Hidden
    The film is violent and a little gross in one or two scenes, but there is an intelligence in its writing by Bob Hunt and direction by Jack Sholder that makes everything worthwhile. [30 Oct 1987, p.41C]
    • Chicago Tribune
  26. Spring Forward
    Not too many actors last year bettered or equaled Beatty and Schreiber here, separately or (better yet) together. It's a pleasure and a privilege to watch them work.
    • Chicago Tribune
  27. Hollywoodland
    With an uncredited assist from playwright/screenwriter Howard Korder, Hollywoodland features some tart, lively banter and welcome comedic touches.
  28. Oppenheimer
    The results are pretty gripping and occasionally brilliant; its peaks, particularly when Nolan suddenly changes gears, cuts out the sound and reveals the full weight of Oppenheimer’s tormented psyche, reach higher than anything this filmmaker has scaled to date.
  29. Urbania
    One of those small films that will, one hopes, find a larger audience through word of mouth.
  30. The Tree of Life
    This may be the most overtly Christian mainstream picture since "The Passion of the Christ." Unlike that one, though, Malick's comes with a generosity of spirit large enough to get all sorts of people (including non-believers) thinking about the nature of faith and what it's all about.
  31. True Crime
    This is an old-fashioned movie done with wit, grace, smarts and style. [19 March 1999, Friday, p.A]
    • Chicago Tribune
  32. My Sex Life... or How I Got Into an Argument
    My Sex Life . . .," one of the best and smartest French comedies in several years, is an epic voyage into paralysis and confusion among the educated young: a witty, brilliantly observed descent into the maelstrom of the modern Groves of Academe.
  33. A Christmas Story
    This richly remembered tale of Christmas past, with writer Jean Shepherd recalling the days when a Red Ryder BB gun really meant something, is already something of a Christmas perennial.
  34. Stronger
    Stronger is a movie you need to see, no matter how much you think you don’t need to see it.
  35. Higher Ground
    Farmiga's film doesn't state things directly, but we sense what is happening to Corinne, and how some turn to fundamentalism for complex and interconnected reasons.
  36. The Greatest Show on Earth
    Prototypical DeMille extravaganza about a circus tour beset with colorful crises, romance, train wrecks and spectacular melodrama from beginning to end. [21 Aug 1998, p.H]
    • Chicago Tribune
  37. Detective Story
    The first-rate cast, Lee Garmes' camerawork and the tense, excellent script (by Phil Yordan and, uncredited, Dashiell Hammett), all help build toward an unsurprising but memorable climax. [16 Oct 1996, p.2]
    • Chicago Tribune
  38. Mrs. Miniver
    This is perhaps the quintessential stiff-upper-lip homefront drama, with Minivers Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon at their noblest, Teresa Wright at her most adolescently angelic and assorted English-Hollywood expatriates (Dame May Whitty, Reginald Owen, Peter Lawford) at their hardiest. [11 Oct 1996, p.J]
    • Chicago Tribune
  39. Revanche
    Revanche has an unusual rhythm: Once it leaves the grotty urban despair behind for the deceptive calm of the countryside, it relaxes and explores the character’s interior lives.
  40. Holy Smoke
    As much fun as anything director/co-writer Jane Campion has ever filmed. Holy Smoke lets it all hang out.
    • Chicago Tribune
  41. Water
    The writer-director doesn't raise her voice, even as she firmly condemns the injustice. Water seduces us with its beauty and sorrow.
  42. Sing Sing
    Sing Sing exerts a strong pull on the heartstrings — but without the hard sell or the crafty, manipulative exertion.
  43. EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert
    It’s an exhilarating cinematic experience, whether you’re an Elvis fan or not — but Luhrmann makes sure you are by the end.
  44. Sound and Fury
    By the time the film is over, you may not feel differently about the key issues than you first did, but you will have many more facts (sound) and opinions (fury) to consider.
    • Chicago Tribune
  45. Sweetie
    One of the freshest, most exciting first features to appear in a very long time. [19 May 1989, p.1]
    • Chicago Tribune
  46. The Last of the Mohicans
    Never mind the gorgeous wilderness backdrop, the 18th-Century details, the carefully voiced and subtitled American Indian dialogue. From its very first frame until seconds before closing credits, "Mohicans" is an action movie. [25 Sep 1992]
    • Chicago Tribune
  47. The Tragedy of Macbeth
    Stripping “Macbeth” for parts, keeping the focus on the main narrative lines of political assassination and what Macbeth himself refers to as “supernatural soliciting,” Coen turns out to be ideally suited to a straight-ahead, let’s-get-on-with-it rendition.
  48. Last Days in Vietnam
    We need films such as Kennedy's as a corrective.
  49. Martha Marcy May Marlene
    The acting in Durkin's feature is excellent. Olsen is utilized largely as an object for camera adoration, but not in the usual glamorizing way. Olsen, Hawkes and company play slippery figures with lovely assurance.
  50. In Jackson Heights
    Wiseman's film allows everyone their say, so that In Jackson Heights becomes one of the truest images of gentrification and its costs on film.
  51. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
    A bittersweet comedy about the great sleuth's great love and the one case he couldn't handle. [07 Jan 2000, p.L]
    • Chicago Tribune
  52. The Royal Hotel
    Green has made two very different, extraordinarily efficient and compact movies in a row. That, too, may look easy but is anything but — unless you’re a filmmaker and writer of her particular gifts.
  53. Neil Young: Heart of Gold
    Pretty-near pure gold.
  54. 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
    The film is shockingly violent and bloody, but there are also profoundly poetic moments and images that pop up like wildflowers in a field.
  55. Out of Time
    It's a twisty, hell-for-leather crime thriller, and director Carl Franklin gives it all the slick, modern trimmings.
  56. Millions
    One of the more delightful and satisfying family movies.
  57. The Big Easy
    The film's strength is director Jim McBride's seemingly easy way of presenting us with a New Orleans that is more malevolent and intoxicating than the tourist trap that some think it to be.
  58. La Ciénaga
    Argentinean filmmaker Lucrecia Martel takes fundamental risks with form and style, and it pays off brilliantly.
  59. Space Cowboys
    Ends up working like a charm.
  60. Knives Out
    Even with some padding, it’s a whodunit canny enough to take the human stakes inside the artifice seriously. And that allows a fine ensemble of side-eye champs the leeway to make Knives Out funny, too.
  61. After Yang
    There are moments in the second half of After Yang when some of the narrative beats get a little confusing or vague. Kogonada’s steady, often still, but never static compositions may not be enough for some viewers. Whatever. Clearly, actors respond to what he’s after.
  62. The Iron Giant
    An animated tale equipped with heart, humor, blazing action and not a sappy song in earshot.
  63. Remember the Titans
    Works better and cuts deeper than the mostly fictionalized "Hoosiers."
  64. The Host
    The tone of The Host is slippery in the best way; you're never sure if you're in for a joke or a shock, yet nothing feels random.
  65. Lion
    The beauty of Lion is that it explores and allows for the unique possibilities and power of multiple homes, multiple families and multiple selves.
  66. The New World
    Malick's nature documentarian impulse has never been more flagrant than in The New World, yet it has never made more organic sense. The film, which is superb on every technical and design level, has both greatness and fuzzy-headedness in it.
  67. Limbo
    At its worst, Limbo is ersatz Conrad. But at its best, the film makes us feel that uncertainty and darkness, casting us into the cul-de-sac of modern life and love. [04 Jun 1999, p.A]
    • Chicago Tribune
  68. Something to Talk About
    Something to Talk About, which is something to see, makes us a delectable present of its own bright, brawling little world: wisecracks, venomous Charity Leagues, horse shows, last dances, skeleton-filled closets and all. [4 Aug 1995, p.C2]
    • Chicago Tribune
    • 80 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Little Miss Sunshine
    Funny, and thoughtful, and deeply, viscerally satisfying.
  70. The Hudsucker Proxy
    In The Hudsucker Proxy, the filmmaking Coen brothers make dark, startling, wittily extravagant sport of the American Dream. The movie is opulent and wry, a bitingly intelligent fable about business and romance. [25 Mar 1994, p.A]
    • Chicago Tribune
  71. Paranoid Park
    “Elephant” may have won the Palme d’Or at Cannes but it really didn’t have anything to say about anything. Modest and artful, Paranoid Park says a great deal.
  72. Rita, Sue and Bob Too
    Like "My Beautiful Laundrette," "Rita, Sue and Bob, Too" imagines an untraditional romantic relationship, outside the bounds of monogamy and exclusive heterosexuality, as the only effective alternative to a social structure that has reached the end of the line. [02 Oct 1987, p.A]
    • Chicago Tribune
  73. Mikey and Nicky
    By the time Mikey and Nicky reaches its conclusion, the film stands by itself as one of the few pictures to approximate the sloppiness, the randomness, the serendipity of life. [26 Apr 1985, p.A]
    • Chicago Tribune
  74. The Tailor of Panama
    Like a Bach toccata or a frosty drink on a sunlit veranda, a first-class movie spy thriller can offer one of life's cooler, more elegant treats. The Tailor of Panama fits that category.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Vengeance Is Mine
    Icily brilliant.
  76. Gaslight
    Somewhat illogical but full of terrifyingly sustained sado-masochistic emotion. [05 Dec 1997, p.L]
    • Chicago Tribune
  77. Get Low
    This film, calm but full of feeling, relays an intriguing story brought to life by some beautiful actors.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Nothing Like the Holidays
    It's what we need at the holidays, and it's the modest goal of a modest little picture like this--to capture something heartfelt and real.
  79. Hot Tub Time Machine
    Accomplishes what "Snakes on a Plane" did not: It offers a merrily idiotic movie to go with its willfully idiotic title.
  80. ...And They Lived Happily Ever After
    With husband and wife starring, you can't help but wonder which details here are autobiographical. No matter: This is obviously a deeply personal work for Attal, whose comic timing and passion can only serve him well both on screen and off.
  81. Eden
    The Coens' film is a wisenheimer, a mordant black comedy. Eden is utterly different, more muted and humane in tone. It won't be enough for some audiences.
  82. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
    An oddity: an adaptation of a popular novel co-written and directed by the novelist himself. It's also a fine, gentle film love story and a cinematic tribute to the power and manifold benefits of communications between different cultures and nations.
  83. Carny
    Gary Busey, Robbie Robertson, and Jodi Foster star in a romantic triangle about some carnival sharpies and a runaway girl. A beautiful portrait of the carnival as an American institution. [18 July 1980, p.8]
    • Chicago Tribune
  84. The Man Who Knew Too Much
    Hitchcock's glossier and more complex remake of his classic 1934 spy thriller, with James Stewart and Doris Day as the average American couple caught in a whirlwind of intrigue and terror. [26 Nov 1999, p.A]
    • Chicago Tribune
  85. The Guard
    Part Joel & Ethan Coen and part John Millington Synge, this grotty little fairy tale casts a deft line and reels you in. I'd see it again just to hear the drug smugglers argue over the use of the Americanism "good to go."
  86. Babel
    It's a powerhouse, demanding film that sometimes stretches the limits of credibility. But it's done with such consistent technical brilliance--and with such a first-rate cast and company.
  87. Dave
    Dave has been directed by Ivan Reitman in a refreshingly restrained fashion-there are plenty of quiet passages, rare for American movies these days-which compliments Kevin Kline's wonderful work as well.
  88. Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret
    This book deserved a really good film version, and writer-director Kelly Fremon Craig (”The Edge of Seventeen,” also really good) captures Blume’s humane wit and spirit, while adding some new emotional and narrative wrinkles.
  89. The People vs. Larry Flynt
    There's a gentleness and open-mindedness in that touch and throughout the film that's a little at odds with the shallower script. But, in the end, that humanity pays. [27 Dec 1996]
    • Chicago Tribune
  90. Blood Work
    A violent, improbable movie done in tersely elegant style, and it may be the last action movie for one of the cinema's great action stars, Clint Eastwood.
  91. Oklahoma!
    This 1955 Todd-AO blockbuster, made from the landmark American stage musical, faithfully preserves the play's robust spirit and extroverted charm, while resetting it among vast golden and green outdoor vistas. [15 Nov 2005, p.C3]
    • Chicago Tribune
  92. Tiny Furniture
    The movie is full, assured and extremely wry.
  93. The Yes Men
    These are some terrifically funny and gutsy guys who want to draw attention to what they see as the natural limit of WTO policy.
  94. The Farewell
    Crucially, Wang and company found all the right actors to populate a semi-autobiographical tale of familial deception.
  95. High Hopes
    It's this balance of vivid performance and directorial detachment that allows Leigh to move freely between delicate sentiment and highly caustic wit; even in his most harshly satirical moments, he never denies the humanity of his characters.
  96. Diane
    It’s harder than it should be to describe Kent Jones’ Diane in a way that makes it sound distinctive or special, which it is.
  97. The Miracle Worker
    Anne Bancroft won the Oscar playing Helen Keller's teacher, Annie Sullivan, in this intelligent adaptation of William Gibson's Broadway hit, and it's a fierce, moving job, highlighted by the incredibly savage battles between teacher Annie and pupil Helen (fellow Oscar winner Patty Duke). It's a model serious bio-drama.
  98. Monkey Shines
    One of Romero's most complex and challenging creations. The film shifts effortlessly between playfulness and outrage, between a distanced irony and an awful, immediate horror.
  99. Always
    It's the film in which an entertainer at last becomes an artist, dealing with manifestly personal, painful emotions and casting them in a form that gives them philosophical perspective and universal affect. It's Spielberg's finest achievement, a film that will look better and better with the passage of time. [22 Dec. 1989]
    • Chicago Tribune
  100. Volver
    You always get more than one genre with this filmmaker. Volver draws upon all sorts of influences -- a little Hitchcock, a little Douglas Sirk, a little telenovela -- but from those sources Almodovar and his collaborators, both on screen and behind the camera, make an improbably organic whole.
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