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 1.3 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. The Dark Knight Rises
    Now comes The Dark Knight Rises, which makes "The Dark Knight" look like "Dora the Explorer" and is more of a 164-minute anxiety disorder than a movie.
  2. Neil Young Journeys
    With its one-of-a-kind poetic lamentation, Young's voice sounds more peculiarly lovely than ever. A small picture, but good and true.
  3. Take This Waltz
    The actors are excellent. Rogen falls very comfortably into the role of a 29-year-old who has fallen very comfortably into a living thing - a marriage - and stopped working on it.
  4. Ice Age: Continental Drift
    It's not very funny, but your kids might like it.
  5. Beasts of the Southern Wild
    But even with the great good efforts of Wallis, the results, to some of us, betray a distrustworthy slickness reminiscent of a British Petroleum oil spill clean-up commercial.
  6. Savages
    It's not as if Stone is above this sort of pulp. But as rejiggered for the movies, Savages has trouble making us care what happens to the beautiful people - the untouchables - at the center of the sun-baked fairy tale.
  7. Katy Perry: Part of Me
    When you see and hear so many fans of so many backgrounds expounding on what "Firework" means to them, you realize that while a song may or may not be for you, it most certainly is for others.
  8. The Amazing Spider-Man
    When a new actor slips on the Spandex for a superhero franchise reboot, we should, you know, notice. And we do with Andrew Garfield.
  9. Portrait of Wally
    The documentary carrying the same name as Schiele's painting works like a suspense drama and a slippery chronicle of ownership, theft and vaguely unsettling resolution.
  10. Ted
    You can find this clever, or you can find it lazy, and this is why MacFarlane is the biggest mixed blessing in contemporary TV comedy: He is both.
  11. To Rome with Love
    The movie strolls through its paces, sometimes amusingly, though by the end you've heard "Volare" and "Arrivederci Roma" reprised often enough to make you wish "Volare" and "Arrivederci Roma" had never been written.
  12. People Like Us
    A fine and moving film could be made from this story, which was inspired, loosely, by events and situations in the lives of Kurtzman and Orci. But the script sets an awfully low bar for Sam's redemption.
  13. Magic Mike
    One of the pleasures of Magic Mike is its egalitarian spirit and dedication to the ensemble.
  14. Dark Horse
    It's a Solondz film; it's a given. Abe may deserve all that comes to him, but the question of how he got this way sustains the picture, against all odds.
  15. Seeking a Friend for the End of the World
    What it doesn't have is a way of making sense of its comic and dramatic strains, together, in the same movie.
  16. Brave
    At this point in Pixar's history, the studio contends with nearly impossible expectations itself. This is what happens when you turn out some bona fide masterworks. Brave isn't that; it's simply a bona fide eyeful.
  17. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
    It sounds fun. It's a little fun. For a while. But Bekmanbetov shoots every killing spree like an addled gamer, working that slow-down-speed-up kill-shot cliche like a maniac.
  18. Something from Nothing: The Art of Rap
    The interviews are often revealing and funny. And much of the music is tremendous.
  19. Safety Not Guaranteed
    You may buy the ending or not. The filmmakers certainly do, which helps. And the film is modest but skillful and heartfelt, spiced just so by Plaza and company.
  20. Your Sister's Sister
    It's pleasant as far as it goes. For all the blithe interaction among the central three performers, however, the material's conventional and predictable.
  21. That's My Boy
    Even with 87.5 years to go, the 21st century may never see a stupider comedy than That's My Boy.
  22. Rock of Ages
    The movie, full of talented performers in search of a more propulsive vehicle, settles for workmanlike cover-band status, which makes this a cover-band tribute to a jukebox musical - a long way from true, trashy exhilaration.
  23. Peace, Love, & Misunderstanding
    Keener alone finds the truth between the lines of this routine affair. She can't do much about the lines she has to say out loud, but as all first-rate screen performers realize, words are only part of the story.
  24. Prometheus
    The best of Prometheus is nonverbal and purely atmospheric: Fassbender's "Lawrence of Arabia"-loving character bouncing a basketball as he patrols the spaceship while his human cohorts finish up their two-year nap.
  25. Moonrise Kingdom
    First-time Anderson performers such as Willis, McDormand and especially Norton fold effortlessly into the melancholy end-of-summer vibe.
  26. Snow White and the Huntsman
    This is a violent film. It's rougher, in fact, than "The Hunger Games."
  27. Hysteria
    The movie lacks wit.
  28. Bernie
    As composite sketches go, it's a good one.
  29. The Dictator
    Cohen at his best is both brazen and sly. As is The Dictator.
  30. Headhunters
    Swift, amoral and nicely unpredictable.
  31. Dark Shadows
    Dark Shadows illustrates the fine line in a pop reboot between "relaxed" and "lazy."
  32. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
    The attitudes evinced by most of the characters, and the movie itself, are those of the admiring tourist, and as two-hour tours go, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel goes smoothly.
  33. The Avengers
    If the film is more solid and satisfying than terrific, so be it.
  34. Monsieur Lazhar
    Whatever the film's limitations, it's certainly engaging to watch. As is Mohamed Fellag, as Lazhar.
  35. The Pirates! Band of Misfits
    Uneven but rollicking, The Pirates! has a personality to call its own.
  36. The Five-Year Engagement
    As in last year's "Bridesmaids," an authentic, dimensional human element animates the jokes and the characters with whom we spend a couple of highly satisfying hours.
  37. The Raven
    The Raven squanders a promising scenario while half-burying Cusack's mercurial skills as a leading man with the wiles of a character actor.
  38. The Lucky One
    The leads' chemistry in The Lucky One is more theoretical than actual. Still, the sunsets and sunrises and sunbeams through the windowpanes fall easily on the eyes.
  39. Marley
    It all flows from the shum. The man's musical and political influence was no illusion.
  40. Think Like a Man
    Think Like a Man is what it is. But its hangout factor is considerable, because the actors' charms are considerable.
  41. Lockout
    The aftereffects of watching Lockout include an inability to focus or to complete a simple declarative sentence without an ill-timed cutaway in the middle.
  42. Damsels in Distress
    The film treats depression and despair and young love with just enough gravity so the movie doesn't float away completely.
  43. Bully
    The best Hirsch's film can do, in the end, is remind us that bullying means more than we admit, and its effects aren't always immediately clear, even to loved ones.
  44. The Cabin in the Woods
    The Cabin in the Woods is pure mechanics, as if the shadowy Dharma Initiative of "Lost" switched agents and found itself at the center of a brain-bending ensemble drama.
  45. The Three Stooges
    Absurdly brutal slapstick is a tough thing to sustain across a feature. I spent a lot of The Three Stooges staring, not laughing. For me this was a stare-out-loud affair.
  46. Jiro Dreams of Sushi
    We meet a variety of interdependent characters, from tuna vendors to rice experts, all in thrall to Jiro and his sons. I really wish Tokyo were closer.
  47. American Reunion
    Now and then the movie rouses itself to deliver. If you go to American Reunion - and many will, if they harbor fond memories of the first one, and if they can find a sitter - you should stay through the end credits.
  48. Musical Chairs
    Settles for being simple, familiar and ineffective, though I suspect it'll warm a few hearts.
  49. The FP
    This one's just OK, but at midnight, after who knows what, OK might be enough.
  50. 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.
  51. The Raid: Redemption
    The Raid is maniacal in its pacing and assault tactics. It's also, absurdly, rated R. Fantastic. I love that a film this gory secured the same Motion Picture Association of America rating as "The King's Speech."
  52. The Hunger Games
    The games have begun, and so far they're pretty gripping.
  53. Casa de mi Padre
    More than anything Casa de mi Padre is an exercise - and to those who find it more clever than I do, a valid one - in tone-funny, as opposed to joke-funny.
  54. Footnote
    The main thing with Cedar's film, I think, is to approach it not as a farce, not as a drama, not as a mystery, not as any genre in particular. It's a comic nightmare, in the vein of the Coen brothers' "A Serious Man," and Cedar proves masterly at playing the stakes for real.
  55. 21 Jump Street
    The drug humor in 21 Jump Street carries its own distinction, in that it's actually humor.
  56. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
    The wondrous cinematography is by Gokhan Tiryaki. It is not an easy picture. Not many masterpieces are.
  57. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
    The film's occasional toe-dips into real-world politics, sectarian conflict and the horrors of war are demure and unruffling. What's missing is a point of view beyond Hallstrom's interest in making his actors look as attractive as possible.
  58. Friends with Kids
    A smooth but frustrating third feature with an extremely good ensemble cast.
  59. John Carter
    John Carter isn't much - or rather, it's too much and not enough in weird, clumpy combinations - but it is a curious sort of blur.
  60. A Thousand Words
    In A Thousand Words the camera stays about two inches from Murphy's hyperactive face, and you start to see the strain and desperation in the actor's eyes.
  61. Bullhead
    Schoenaerts is often affecting and just as often scarily intense. The film's intensity, by contrast, beams on and off.
  62. Dr. Seuss' The Lorax
    You couldn't accuse the film of practicing what it preaches: careful stewardship of a precious resource.
  63. Act of Valor
    The action beats come straight out of the video game "Call of Duty." And when you have real SEALs placed in a picture that lives and dies on the same old first-person-shooter aesthetic, you have a film divided against itself.
  64. Crazy Horse
    One Crazy Horse staffer, also female, is asked on camera by a visiting journalist to define the cabaret's notion of eroticism. To "suggest," she says. To "seduce."
  65. Rampart
    In relation to the well-made and sensitive confines of "The Messenger," Rampart required a more unruly visual approach. Beginning and ending with Harrelson, this sophomore effort is full of malignant life.
  66. The Secret World of Arrietty
    Disney TV star Bridgit Mendler brings an effective if limited friendliness to Arrietty; Will Arnett and Amy Poehler are relatively restrained as her parents; Carol Burnett runs through a career's worth of vocal flourishes and aural panic attacks as the housekeeper.
  67. This Means War
    Pure, witless discombobulation.
  68. W.E.
    Madonna stayed married to director Guy Ritchie just long enough to absorb his most grating cinematic instincts - shooting in every style, in an addled, shuffle-mode, falsely glamorizing way until all is chaos. And, astonishingly, boredom.
  69. Safe House
    Director Espinosa shoots virtually everything in tight but wobbly close-up, and the human and vehicular combat often brakes right at the edge of visual incoherence. Just as often the brakes give out completely.
  70. Journey 2: The Mysterious Island
    Hutcherson spits his lines out as quickly as possible, which you appreciate, because the way the likable Johnson wrestles with his lines ("It looks like the liquefaction has tripled overnight!") you think, well, it's a living.
  71. The Vow
    The Vow is agreeable enough. It may be puddin'-headed but it's not soul-crushing.
  72. Big Miracle
    Big Miracle tells its sort-of-true version of events in a democratic and humane fashion, by way of a rangy, lively group of competing interests who actually do on occasion act like real people.
  73. Coriolanus
    You buy the concept, from start to finish, because it feels strong and purposeful and in sync with Shakespeare's own vision of a malleable, fickle populace and a leader raised by the ultimate stage mother.
  74. The Innkeepers
    Will The Innkeepers be enough for the young folk? These days there's little middle ground between the determined lack of gore in the "Paranormal Activity" franchise and the determined overabundance offered by so much else. West works in that No Man's Land, intelligently.
  75. The Woman in Black
    The film, a handsome nerve-jangler co-produced under the storied Hammer horror banner, amps up the scares without turning them into something completely stupid. Success!
  76. Man on a Ledge
    The supporting players in Man on a Ledge bring more to the party than the leads, and my suspension of disbelief seems to have gotten hung up in traffic while attempting to cross the suspension-of-disbelief bridge from the Brooklyn side.
  77. We Need to Talk About Kevin
    All the movie has, really, is Tilda Swinton acting up a storm, which is more than enough for some. For me, given what's up with the rest of the picture, it's not quite.
  78. Albert Nobbs
    The play itself, some felt, was static. The charge I'm afraid will stick to the film version as well. But the acting is considerable compensation.
  79. The Grey
    Call The Grey "Deliverance" Lite, with snow, and wolves. And call it a solid January surprise.
  80. A Separation
    The film is a singular achievement, a piece of realist cinema with the pull of a suspense thriller.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Flowers of War
    When it comes to storytelling, Zhang Yimou's 19th feature is decidedly backward-looking: A lavish period weepie set against the atrocities of the Nanking Massacre, "Flowers" abounds with well-worn movie archetypes and slathers on schmaltz.
  82. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
    If actors this good cannot overcome their material, then we can only say: Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock … Max von Sydow, Zoe Caldwell, Viola Davis, Jeffrey Wright, John Goodman… thanks for your honest efforts in the service of a fundamentally dishonest weepie.
  83. Pina
    In both theatrical environments and open-air ones, with Wenders paying close attention to the geometrics as well as the psychology of the movement, Pina is the best possible tribute to Bausch, and to adventurous image-making.
  84. Red Tails
    Red Tails squanders a great subject, reducing the real-life struggles and fierce heroics of the Tuskegee Airmen to rickety cliche.
  85. Haywire
    In terms of its title, Haywire doesn't quite go there; it's more "Haywire-ish." But it's eccentric, and the on-screen violence is sharp and exciting - brutal without being either subhumanly sadistic or superhumanly ridiculous.
  86. Carnage
    A lot of people have no use for Carnage, especially in its unapologetically hemmed-in film version. And yet there isn't a sloppily or casually considered shot in any of the 80 minutes.
  87. The Iron Lady
    Meryl Streep excels as Margaret Thatcher. And the movie itself does not work.
  88. Joyful Noise
    The movie's all right, if you can take its rampant artificiality - and I'm not even talking about Parton's face yet.
  89. Contraband
    Wahlberg has the presence, the glower and the laconic line readings to guide us through a mess of pain, painlessly.
  90. The Devil Inside
    The Devil Inside joins a long, woozy-camera parade of found-footage scare pictures, among them "The Blair Witch Project," the "Paranormal Activity" films and certain wedding videos that won't go away.
  91. Pariah
    The payoffs here begin and end with Oduye, and as we see this character confront her obstacles with bravery, grace and resolve, "Pariah" exhibits many of the same traits, for which filmgoers can be thankful.
  92. In the Land of Blood and Honey
    If her movie cannot fully resolve the demands of the love story with the horrifying particulars of the context, she's smart and honest enough as a first-time filmmaker to make "Blood and Honey" off-limits for those who prefer easy viewing. Even with a subject such as this.
  93. We Bought a Zoo
    Pap, but easygoing pap with a cast you can live with for a couple of hours.
  94. War Horse
    Take the theatrical flourish away from this story, however, and the story's thinness becomes apparent.
  95. The Artist
    The Artist may not be great art, but it's pearly entertainment.
  96. The Adventures of Tintin
    I fear Spielberg and Jackson hitched their wagon to the wrong technological star here.
  97. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
    The most coldly compelling version yet of the tale dreamed up by the late Stieg Larsson.
  98. Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol
    Bird has serious promise outside the animation realm; in "Ghost Protocol" he errs, I think, by shoving the camera too close to the bodies in the frame, so that the momentum and spatial relationships become awfully hard to parse.
  99. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
    This is one of the finest achievements of the year, and while it's easy to lose your way in the labyrinth, I don't think Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is most interesting for its narrative pretzels. Rather, it's about what this sort of life does to the average human soul.
  100. A Dangerous Method
    The wonderful thing about Fassbender and Mortensen? Several things, actually. They're effortlessly convincing in period, and they know how to make recessive characters intriguing.
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