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. Friends with Benefits
    I enjoy both Timberlake and Kunis; just this side of manic, they seem right together.
  2. Fright Night
    Plenty gory, but graced by a jovial sense of humor and an enjoyably guts-centric use of 3-D.
  3. Night of the Living Dead
    Though the broad outlines of the plot are the same - a disparate group of human survivors takes desperate refuge in a Pennsylvania farmhouse while waves of flesh-eating zombies roll up from the surrounding countryside - the characters have been deepened and the thematic emphasis shifted. [19 Oct 1990, p.C]
    • Chicago Tribune
  4. Flirt
    I liked Flirt better than any of Hartley's films since "Trust." The playfulness he shows here seems better integrated, more meaningful, than the strange narrative whimsies of 1992's "Simple Men" or 1994's "Amateur." [08 Nov 1996]
    • Chicago Tribune
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Jane Austen Book Club
    Overall, The Jane Austen Book Club is an admirable mix of heady and fluffy, the kind of wish-fulfillment fantasy that needn’t make filmgoers ashamed of what they wished for.
  6. U2 3D
    The neatest effects in U2 3D are simple ones. The wow/coolness of watching a revered superstar tilt his mic stand toward the camera creates a simple but irresistible feeling of being there in the flesh, with a phalanx of expensive digital 3-D cameras.
  7. Deep Blue
    In terms of pure visual scope, Deep Blue might be one of the best IMAX films never created for the IMAX screen.
  8. Joe the King
    One of my favorite U.S. fiction features at 1999's Sundance Festival.
  9. 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.
  10. Uncut Gems
    The latest nerve-shredder from Josh and Benny Safdie is worth seeing, even if it’s not their finest two hours, and even if half of any given audience will resent the hell out of it. Adam Sandler’s excellent.
  11. Paranormal Activity 3
    The films are not works of genius. They are, however, wily reminders of the virtues of restraint when you're out for a scare.
  12. Nenette and Boni
    Nenette and Boni, despite their plight, show us something small but vital about Marseilles, families, brothers, sisters, babies, pizza -- and even about the sensuous delights of kneading dough.
  13. Czech Dream
    A small but droll big-box comedy.
  14. They Drive by Night
    From A.I. Bezzerides' "The Long Haul," with George Raft and Bogie as tough trucking brothers and Ann Sheridan and Ida Lupino as the good woman and the bad.[06 Oct 2006, p.C8]
    • Chicago Tribune
  15. Honeymoon in Vegas
    A sometimes very funny comedy. [28 Aug 1992, p.C]
    • Chicago Tribune
  16. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
    Style is a tricky, elusive thing, and this film doesn’t so much have it as strive for it, constantly. But something in Watson’s story endures: The wish-fulfillment truly satisfies. And with the war clouds gathering by story’s end, the fairy tale acquires a bittersweet edge, nicely cutting all that whipped cream.
  17. Fugitive Pieces
    The performances are often more compelling than the movie's sometimes static storytelling.
  18. Woman at War
    As Halla/Asa, Geirharðsdóttir never forces a thing. The actress is the honest engine of this sincere, slightly off-kilter fable.
  19. High Tension
    Like all horror films, High Tension builds to a final, sobering flash of chaos that settles all scores. Some viewers will hate Aja's movie for its end-game reveal; others will love it for the very same reason.
  20. The Man Who Came to Dinner
    It's a pleasant movie, not quite up to its reputation. [06 Aug 2000, p.23C]
    • Chicago Tribune
  21. Only the Brave
    It’s stark, unadorned drama, and it feels real, reminding us that these are fine actors, giving their all.
  22. Other People's Children
    For some, Other People’s Children may feel a little too smooth. But the film’s success starts and ends with the natural vibrancy of the performances, and Efira leads the way.
  23. Out of Bounds
    Out of Bounds may be, like a comic book, pulp entertainment, but it's artfully done pulp--a pictorial page-turner whose pages turn themselves. [25 July 1986, p.A]
    • Chicago Tribune
  24. Hollywood Ending
    Not perfect, and neither are life or the movies. But you'd have to be blind yourself not to relish its qualities or laugh at its barbs.
  25. The Hummingbird Project
    Surprise! The Hummingbird Project basically works; it’s intriguing; the actors play it just straight enough to make it feel like a fact-based drama (though it isn’t) with a few darkly comic details.
  26. Batman Returns
    Our rooting interest is not for any macho act by Batman to save the city but for each character to achive some sort of emotional peace. That makes for a strange but refreshing action story.
  27. Major League
    Major League is a movie that knows what it's up to. It skims along agreeable surfaces, expertly balancing its comedy with melodrama and fulfilling expectations right on schedule. As a movie, it`s a superior industrial product.
  28. The Devil All the Time
    Extremely well wrought. Not overwrought. Not underwrought. Just wrought.
  29. Djomeh
    May strike some audiences as even more real than Kiarostami's work, because the story is so luminously open. Watching it, we enter, without barriers, a world.
  30. Suddenly
    At first look, it's a stark and thin story of misguided youth. But give it a week. The girls stay with you, the small moments echo, and you realize that, though this movie doesn't lend itself to a punchy summary, it lends itself to the screen.
  31. Lorenzo's Oil
    Miller's finely crafted, highly moving new film, seems meant as a new beginning, grounded in an entirely different kind of material and told in an entirely different manner than anything Miller has attempted before.
  32. Room
    The parent/child relationship at the movie's core is endlessly fascinating.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Big Country
    Wyler's return to the western form (where he specialized in the silent era) is a vast range-war saga full of majestic vistas and full-blooded characters brawling and firing away. [07 Jan 2011, p.C5]
    • Chicago Tribune
  34. Annabelle Comes Home
    Set in 1973, amid a forest of shag carpeting, Annabelle Comes Home is a nice little summer surprise, and quite unexpectedly the freshest of the three “Annabelle” movies spun off from the larger “Conjuring” galaxy of horror films.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Hard Target
    One super non-stop thrill show, it is also a dishearteningly detached and grim piece of work. [20 Aug 1993, p.C]
    • Chicago Tribune
  36. 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.
  37. On Moonlight Bay
    Weird attempt to turn Booth Tarkington's Penrod stories into a mini-Meet Me in St. Louis, co-starring Gordon MacRae and Leon Ames. [13 Apr 2007, p.C5]
    • Chicago Tribune
  38. Charlotte's Web
    Now, about the spider. Julia Roberts voices Charlotte in a way that suggests ... not much, I'm afraid. She may be a genuine movie star and can be a good actress, but her voice -- and what she does with it -- never has been one of her strengths.
  39. Alpha Dog
    Around the midpoint Alpha Dog becomes less sociological and more personal, developing a real sense of suspense.
  40. Wonder
    It has a wonderful message about tolerance, acceptance, understanding and respect. There's no guarantee the message would register with all moviegoers, but social ignorance can be cured one person at a time.
  41. Naqoyqatsi
    The film is a disturbing and frighteningly evocative assembly of imagery and hypnotic music.
  42. The Hunted
    Engrossing as it is, The Hunted is more a showcase for formidable talent than anything else. It's a brainy, exciting but shallow show -- an expert's action movie that almost runs out of breath.
  43. Selah and The Spades
    It's arresting to behold, but it almost seems to run out of steam at a certain point. But for any of its story flaws, Selah and the Spades is so tonally and aesthetically indelible, it announces the arrival of an exciting new cinematic voice in Poe, and cements Lovie Simone as a bona fide movie star.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The China Syndrome
    It's an archetypal '70s political movie: hard-core melodrama wedded to an important social issue, with slick direction (James Bridges) and big stars (Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon, Michael Douglas) playing valiant underdogs and reporters. [29 Oct 2004, p.C3]
    • Chicago Tribune
  45. Deep Cover
    Deep Cover is a rousing entertainment but also a cunningly subversive piece of work, one that burrows from within genre conventions to defeat expectations and undermine smug certainties. It`s a movie that gets under your skin in a way that no amount of speech-making can.
  46. Ushpizin
    The new Israeli movie Ushpizin, a film about man's clumsiness and God's grace, is a touching and amusing tale that expands our horizon and also should open our hearts.
  47. Destination Wedding
    The dialogue they deliver is crisp, witty and occasionally biting. Levin's script has the style and rhythms of the kind of romantic comedies of the '40s and '50s when actors like Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn used verbal banter like boxing gloves.
  48. Deja Vu
    It's an almost overwhelmingly professional picture, murderously fast, slick and full of outlandish notions, painstakingly realized. And it's also surprisingly satisfying -- thanks to Washington, a good cast, Tony Scott's swift direction and that unyielding professionalism.
  49. Margin Call
    On the facile side, but it's well-crafted and smartly acted.
  50. Not Fade Away
    If any one aspect of Chase's film keeps it from being more than merely coolly engaging (which it is), it's the casting.
  51. Tropic Thunder
    In the end Tropic Thunder is an expensive goof about an expensive goof, and the results are very impressive and fancy-looking.
  52. The Cable Guy
    If nothing else, The Cable Guy will make you think twice before trying to pick up a free movie channel. [14 June 1996, p.C]
    • Chicago Tribune
  53. Potiche
    Potiche is very "Touch of Class" and "House Calls" in its comic vibe and trappings, and if you're old enough to remember those Glenda Jackson rom-coms, you'll probably respond favorably to Potiche.
  54. Airplane!
    A sometimes silly, occasionally hilarious, and often sophomoric spoof of airline disaster films in which a passenger tries to land a disabled plane. Some of the jokes are tasteless, but there is a general air of good cheer as the script laughs most of all at the already laughable "Airport" movie series. [11 July 1980, p.3-8]
    • Chicago Tribune
  55. The Lighthouse
    On its own terms, thanks to two fine, committed performances and a coastline made for this tall tale, The Lighthouse works its own stubborn form of black magic, pulling ideas and dynamics from silent and early sound cinema, from early Harold Pinter plays such as "The Dumb Waiter,” and from the recesses of the Eggers brothers’ fertile imagination.
  56. The Velvet Queen
    This is one of those poetical nonfiction eyefuls determined to make its primary subjects seem like they were alone with their thoughts, their camera equipment and their expectant yearning.
  57. The Blackening
    It’s a comedy with a lot of very big laughs.
  58. Captain Phillips
    It is, however, just about perfect in its wrenching emotion, expressed by an actor clearly up to the challenge of acting in a Paul Greengrass docudrama — which is to say, acting with as little capital-A Acting as possible.
  59. City of Gold
    It's a tasty primer on the man, the eater, the critic and the city.
  60. Bukowski: Born into This
    Raw and defining documentary about the man--and the myth.
  61. I Heart Huckabees
    As one might imagine, with such a neato premise and lofty goal, the plot's a little messy. So points docked for execution.
  62. Sky High
    Sky High doesn't aim for the highbrow and doesn't employ lowbrow toilet humor. Instead, it hits the exact middle -- a bull's-eye worthy of a superhero.
  63. Bandits
    The picture is written and acted as a lark and a romp.
  64. The Aristocats
    Children will not quibble over the fine points, and The Aristocats remains a first-rate entertainment for little ones. Compared to Saturday- morning television, the animation seems truly magical, although even in very young minds it probably will not linger with the same weight as "Snow White" or "Pinocchio." [13 Apr 1987, p.C3]
    • Chicago Tribune
  65. SPECTRE
    For all its workmanlike devotion to out-of-control helicopters, “Spectre” works best when everyone’s on the ground, doing his or her job, driving expensive fast cars heedlessly, detonating the occasional wisecrack, enjoying themselves and their beautiful clothes.
  66. Asteroid City
    Anderson keeps inventing and detailing new unrealities to explore. They don’t all satisfy, certainly not the same way, but they’re his, and nobody else’s. And this is his best movie since “The Grand Budapest Hotel.”
  67. Dunkirk
    With a bare minimum of dialogue, and a brutal maximum of scenes depicting near-drowning situations in and around Dunkirk, France, in late May and early June 1940, Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk is a unique waterboarding of a film experience.
  68. My Date with Drew
    Viewed through the right lens, "My Date…" succeeds as a warm, heartfelt story about childhood crushes and the pursuit of lifelong dreams. (Through another, it's downright unnerving.)
  69. The Long Riders
    A very Peckinpah-influenced film about the James Gang with four sets of real-life brothers playing the outlaw broods. [16 Jul 2004, p.C4]
    • Chicago Tribune
  70. Bossa Nova
    A breezy, elegant charmer of a movie.
    • Chicago Tribune
  71. C'mon C'mon
    This is a droll and extremely well-acted tale of a family in crisis, and in progress.
  72. Elysium
    With most films, that'd be enough to cut out half the potential American audience. But effective, evocative science fiction, which Elysium is, has a way of getting by with an ILA (Insidious Liberal Agenda) in the guise of worst-case dystopia.
  73. Year of the Dog
    In Year of the Dog, there are dark moments that are both strangely poignant and bizarrely hilarious. The ending took me by surprise. In a way it's a cheat, a redemption that arrives out of nowhere. But it's also a cosmic joke, a perfectly funny, sincere salute to dog and pet-lovers everywhere.
  74. The Skin I Live In
    The film is an exercise in improbable contrasts. The more extreme the actions of the characters, the more contained and fastidious the director's technique.
  75. They Shall Not Grow Old
    The film works best in its most acutely observed details of daily life in the trenches.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Band's Visit
    You can watch The Band’s Visit for its political idealism, or you can watch it for entertainment value alone. In either case, it doesn’t disappoint.
  77. McFarland USA
    It's nice to see a movie that is, well, nice. Nice but not dumb. It's also a comfortable fit for Costner.
  78. Sammy and Rosie Get Laid
    Sammy and Rosie is a writer's film, with all the pluses and minuses that go with that status. The language is marvelously clear and the structure exquisitely wrought; on the other hand, the film lacks the sense of discovery and spontaneity a more creative director might have brought to it.
  79. Escaflowne: The Movie
    Plenty of dramatic action, stunning imagery and an operatic score add weight to Escaflowne. It may not appeal to fans of traditional animation.
  80. Rain
    What lingers are the unsettling feelings, inexplicably potent images and realization that some of life's key crossroads are visible only in the rearview mirror.
  81. Love Affair
    This is a good movie, made by splendidly talented people-including Beatty, Annette Bening and Katharine Hepburn, co-writer Robert Towne, designer Ferdinando Scarfiotti and composer Ennio Morricone-but it fumbles some gems, hearts and flowers on the way to the fadeout. [21 Oct 1994, p.C]
    • Chicago Tribune
  82. The Lost City
    Throbbing with music, seething with anger and romance, The Lost City is a film that breaks your heart, bewilders, alienates and ravishes you by turns.
  83. Valentin
    Valentin is cut from the Woody Allen school of movie kids. With oversized black glasses and small-size suits, he is the total know-it-all package, right down to his insightful voice-over.
  84. Chavela
    More than a female singing cowboy, Vargas was ranchera incarnate, whether singing the material of drinking companion Jose Alfredo Jimenez or her own cathartic cries from the heart. The film is a fond but clear-eyed tribute.
  85. Lost in La Mancha
    You can interpret Lost in La Mancha as a sort of triumph of the creative spirit. Gilliam's darkest gallows humor always comes with a smile.
  86. Reign Over Me
    Reign works better much better than "Upside" because of the cast and because Sandler and Cheadle together keep it lighter. It's an easy film to watch, but less easy to be moved by.
  87. Elemental
    She’s spunky and hot-headed, he’s sweet and adorable — if they touch, it could be a disaster, but somehow, their chemistry just works, bringing the charming “Elemental” to a lively roiling boil.
  88. The Lover
    Erotically charged American films invariably are spiked with criminal danger. So "The Lover" - a movie about a young French girl's sexual awakening in colonial Vietnam that relies entirely on cinematic effects to evoke the sensuality of its time, place and events - is refreshing evidence that we don't need fear to trigger arousal.
  89. Hannah Takes the Stairs
    Intimacy is graphically portrayed, down to recurring moments in a bathtub, including a memorable duet trumpet rendition of “The 1812 Overture.” Chop off a star if you’re not up for highly experimental cinema.
  90. Sitting in Bars with Cake
    Though Sitting in Bars with Cake goes in a clearly charted direction, there’s enough going on between the plot points to make it feel like there’s something real at stake between these women.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Nim's Island
    For all its limitations, the film still looks terrific. Flawless CGI and forays into animation keep things visually lively, and Nim’s enviable life is likely to hook kids into the story early and keep them entranced.
  92. One Way Passage
    One of the quintessential Hollywood shipboard romances, with William Powell and Kay Francis as the seemingly doomed lovers who meet on the high seas. [26 Mar 2000, p.35]
    • Chicago Tribune
  93. A Star Is Born
    Cooper is very much a real director, with a genuine facility with filming musical numbers. We believe in the characters’ talents, and spend time soaking them up without a lot of nervous, overcompensating editing. Between songs, he and Gaga make even the bluntest cliches about love and career and misery minty-fresh, all over again.
  94. Fast Food Nation
    Linklater's working-class mosaic is seriously interested in how most of this country gets by for a living. And that, sadly, makes it distinctive.
  95. Jindabyne
    While not everything in Jindabyne works, especially in its final, redemptive third, the film and its faces stay with you.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Cake Eaters
    In her first feature film, Masterson creates a slice of life that is very believable (especially if you've ever seen "The Jerry Springer Show") and often endearing.
  97. The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till
    If you don't believe film can change the world, you haven't seen the documentary The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till.
  98. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
    More often then not, the relationships and performances are strong and moving, with an effect both breezy-fun and profound.
  99. Enemy at the Gates
    A physically gorgeous production with a strong, clear conflict at its center. It's grueling but also exhilarating. Perhaps its ambitiousness is the film's biggest problem. Trying for dramatic sensitivity, historical scope, touching romance and shocking violence and suspense, it gets stretched too thin.
    • Chicago Tribune
  100. Sweet Land
    The film's most memorable performance is in another supporting role, by Alan Cumming as hapless Frandsen, Olaf's sympathetic neighbor and a hopelessly inept farmer.
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