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. I Think I Love My Wife
    The results fall short of the grown-up comedy about seven-year itches it could've been, asking the Hamlet-like question: to scratch or not to scratch?
  2. Premonition
    As Premonition zigzags toward its solution it loses its head completely, packing a risible final reel with left-field religious disquisitions and heartfelt warnings against infidelity.
  3. The Wind That Shakes the Barley
    A beautiful film, harrowing, tough and rife with grief.
  4. 300
    This is a mixed blessing. For a story replete with open-air combat 300 is strangely claustrophobic. And for a film with lotsa flesh and even more blood, it's light on flesh-and-blood characters.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. The Namesake
    Brims with intelligence, compassion and sensuous delight in the textures, sights and sounds of life--all the way from the Taj Mahal to Pearl Jam.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Ultimate Gift
    The plot, though of the made-for-TV ilk, makes for good discussion fodder if you're trying to impress life's lessons on children or others you love. That said, be prepared to be hit over the head by the message, edifying as it is.
  9. The Exterminating Angels
    The content may be dubious, but the execution is hypnotic.
  10. Wild Hogs
    Macy's character finds romance with the Madrid, N. M., diner owner played by Marisa Tomei. They're the only two people on screen who relate in any way. But there's no movie here. There is only a tired "City Slickers"-inspired idea for a movie.
  11. 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."
  12. The Cats of Mirikitani
    The Cats of Mirikitani seems all too short; it has enough meat to be turned into an excellent dramatic film.
  13. Full of It
    A wish fulfillment fantasy of staggering silliness, both smirkingly cutesy and gratingly offensive, this is one for the movie ash heap.
  14. Black Snake Moan
    Black Snake Moan strikes me as hogwash. It fundamentally does not work; its consciously far-fetched, out-there notions of the things damaged people do in the name of love are reductive and go only so far. It's as if the premise were tethered to a radiator or something.
  15. Into Great Silence
    A film of great spiritual intensity and haunting minimalism that enlarges your concepts of movies and of life. Like the monks of the Carthusian order, it distills something intoxicating through a style that's pure and rigorous.
  16. The Astronaut Farmer
    Wobbles between its comic and dramatic concerns; even those who buy the film more wholeheartedly than I might consider the overall tone uncertain.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Reno 911!: Miami
    This is not high art. It might not qualify as low art. But it is 90 minutes or so during which people can put their brains on the shelf and enjoy a few laughs.
  18. Amazing Grace
    Apted and his collaborators are so in awe of their subject they neglect to bring him to full human life.
  19. Glastonbury
    Best of all though, we get to experience the whole fest itself, over four turbulent decades-an era from which Glastonbury, like Woodstock in its day, offers a halcyon "timeout."
  20. Gray Matters
    Watching Heather Graham, Tom Cavanagh and a stridently adorable Alan Cumming do their wide-eyed, moony thing in the romantic comedy Gray Matters raises the question: Is it possible for a filmgoer to be twinkled to death?
  21. Starter for 10
    Starter for 10 is cute and smart, just like its star triangle, and it's also well-written, acted and directed.
  22. The Taste of Tea
    The most charming comedy in town, writer-director-editor Katsuhito Ishii's 2003 piece is a modern Japanese variation on "You Can't Take It With You," with some lovely fantastical flourishes.
  23. Breach
    Cooper is the reason to see the film, which was photographed by Tak Fujimoto in the dour tones he brought to a more flagrant realm of evil, and FBI detective work, in "The Silence of the Lambs."
  24. Bridge to Terabithia
    Elaborately mounted, expensively produced and filmed with style and empathy, it's an adaptation of Paterson's Newbery Medal-winning book that manages to expand the original vision, yet preserve much of its intense emotion.
  25. Avenue Montaigne
    Originally titled "Orchestra Seats," Montaigne takes a page from the "Amelie" playbook, without the fancy visuals or magical realism.
  26. Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams
    Zbanic, who lived through the Bosnian war in Sarajevo, is an unusual talent. Here, she makes us feel the hell her characters once lived through as well as the leftover, stinging pain of today.
  27. Music and Lyrics
    Grant and Barrymore are very enjoyable together onscreen. Who would've guessed that Barrymore would turn into such a deft comedian?
  28. Bamako
    Sissako has an unusual camera eye, patient and alert to the ebb and flow of both the courtroom sequences and the outside scenes. The music is wonderful as well.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Hannibal Rising
    A sort-of combination of "Lambs," "Batman Begins" and "The Joy of Cooking," Hannibal Rising ostensibly dramatizes the atrocities that turned Hannibal Lecter from loving child to serial killer. But this film is larded up with so many food references that I'm undecided whether this story belongs in a film compendium or a recipe file.
  30. Norbit
    With his brazen gifts for mimicry, Eddie Murphy may now be the Peter Sellers of blockbuster toilet comedy movies.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Last Sin Eater
    The lovely shots of Appalachian vistas are spoiled by cheesy special effects straight from the 1960s Chroma-Key era.
  32. Because I Said So
    Formulaic romantic junk.
  33. Fired!
    A pleasant, leisurely 71 minutes, frequently beguiling thanks to Gurwitch's soft-sell version of the urbane, Second City-esque female noodge.
  34. Puccini for Beginners
    Considering how good "Puccini's" middle often is, it's a shame it falls down fore and aft. But Maggenti, who loves Carole Lombard and William Powell in "My Man Godfrey," is tapping a likable vein here. She should open it up again.
  35. Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore?
    The movie, like Smith, is breezy, fun and keeps comin' at ya. [22 Dec 2006, p.5]
    • Chicago Tribune
  36. An Unreasonable Man
    Mantel and Skrovan's documentary astutely reminds us of why we need the world's Naders. It's a reasonable movie about an often admirably unreasonable man.
  37. Catch and Release
    Making her feature-film directorial debut, Grant is going for an everyday conversational texture and a sense of life's curveballs. But the results wander and you never really believe them.
  38. Smokin' Aces
    This film was not based on a video game, but that's the vibe and the aesthetic at work here: YEAH! KILL!, followed by a few muttered expressions of the horror, the horror.
  39. Seraphim Falls
    You could say that Seraphim Falls, was no better than the typical Westerns of the 1950s and '60s--which I think underrates it. But those typical Westerns were pretty darn good, and so is Seraphim Falls.
  40. Becket (re-release)
    Becket, now richly restored, is one of those '60s British theatrical spectaculars that we always imagine as a bit better than they were.
  41. The Italian
    Earns its happy ending like few other contemporary dramas concerned with the fate of a child. It puts you through hell for that ending, in fact, hell being modern-day Russia.
  42. Mafioso [re-release]
    Mafioso is shaped like a comedy, and it is one, but its intentionally jarring clashes of tone and rhythm are truly out there.
  43. Alpha Dog
    Around the midpoint Alpha Dog becomes less sociological and more personal, developing a real sense of suspense.
  44. Stomp the Yard
    The results are corny beyond measure. Yet there's something sweet about them, in part because there's something sweet about hearing the line "Congratulations! Why didn't you tell me you pledged?" outside the realm of comedy.
  45. Abduction: The Megumi Yokota Story
    In a time when American TV is full of stories of missing loved ones, Abduction keenly explores the reactions of an altogether different society and also examines the universal, excruciating pain suffered by such victims and their families everywhere.
  46. God Grew Tired of Us
    A year into their new lives, all three men experience profound isolation. How, they wonder, can Americans live such anti-social lives, so unconcerned with the idea of societal interdependence? This is the chief unexamined question raised by a worthy picture. What is there holds you all the same.
  47. Tears of the Black Tiger
    The result is something so old it's new, so corny it's funny. And while Tears of the Black Tiger is nothing more than entertaining, at least it's that.
  48. Comedy of Power
    It's not often that you see the craft of cinema so perfectly executed--or a group of fancy scoundrels so ruthlessly caught and skewered. Comedy of Power, like all of Chabrol's Hitchcockian films, is dark, smart and delicious.
  49. Happily N'Ever After
    Happily was begun as an old-fashioned 2-D "flat" cartoon and then switched by producer John Williams (of "Shrek") and director Paul J. Bolger to 3-D during production. The style finally is an uncomfortable amalgam of both.
  50. Freedom Writers
    Hilary Swank gives a powerhouse performance as a maverick high school teacher in Freedom Writers, an often gripping and sometimes even inspiring film drama taken from the real-life story of Erin Gruwell.
  51. Miss Potter
    A scenic, well-behaved account of Potter's life and times.
  52. Pan's Labyrinth
    A brilliant work of the imagination capable of truly seizing and igniting our fantasies.
  53. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
    By the time Perfume arrives at its ridiculous mass orgy, staged at the gallows where Grenouille is supposed to meet his end, you really would rather see him meet his end than endure a ridiculous mass orgy.
  54. The Dead Girl
    The way Moncrieff has structured The Dead Girl, it's catnip for actors: Divided into five chapters, the script affords juicy roles requiring only a few days' work from each member of its impressive ensemble.
  55. Arthur and the Invisibles
    The movie--while it doesn't knock you out--doesn't self-destruct either. Besson may never rise to the level of his best American models here, but it's fun watching him try.
  56. Factory Girl
    It's lively but chaotic and evasive. The period re-creation switches on and off. We get a sense of what the silver-walled Factory was like, but not the rest of swinging Manhattan in the '60s.
  57. The Flying Scotsman
    A sports bio movie that I really enjoyed about a sport and sports hero I barely knew existed: the World Hour Record competition for bicyclists and its gutsy, tormented and most unusual champion, Graeme Obree.
  58. Notes on a Scandal
    Leave it to the first-class actors dining out on those roles to make the cat and the mouse interesting and unpredictable.
  59. Children of Men
    It is that rare futuristic thriller: grim in its scenario, yet exhilarating in its technique.
  60. The Good Shepherd
    It's fitting that a drama trading in classified information would turn out to be such a cryptic bugger.
  61. Night at the Museum
    Stranded in this charmless fantasy, Stiller is reduced to his old halting, squirming tricks.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    We Are Marshall
    Surprisingly restrained and undeniably entertaining.
  63. Venus
    Peter O'Toole, still a British cinematic lion at 74, performs another movie miracle in the Roger Michell-Hanif Kureishi film Venus.
  64. Curse of the Golden Flower
    It's a work by cinematic geniuses that reveals beauty and terror in a long-ago time with a virtuoso intensity. You won't soon forget its mad, lovely sights and sounds.
  65. Letters from Iwo Jima
    The word masterpiece costs nothing to write and means less than nothing in an age when every third picture and each new Clint Eastwood project is proclaimed as such. After two viewings, however, Letters From Iwo Jima strikes me as the peak achievement in Eastwood's hallowed career.
  66. The Painted Veil
    The Chinese locations ache with beauty. And when Watts and Norton focus, intently, on Maugham's often dazzlingly vindictive characters, The Painted Veil really does feel like a story worth filming a third time.
  67. Rocky Balboa
    The movie itself, defying all odds, comes close to a knockout.
  68. Dreamgirls
    Dreamgirls is performed, shot, edited and packaged like a coming-attractions trailer for itself. Ordinarily that would be enough to sink a film straight off, unless you're a fan of "Moulin Rouge." But this one's a good time.
  69. The Good German
    The Good German is just stiff. When Soderbergh tries one of those patented swoop-in-on-the-diagonal moves at a key dramatic moment, the effect is comic. And at that precise moment, the story starts dying a slow, oxygen-deprived death.
  70. Breaking and Entering
    One of the more intelligent, better-made new movies around right now, but, despite everything, it doesn't really connect with the nerves and heart. It's a romance without anguish, although the pain of love is really what it's all about.
  71. 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.
  72. Eragon
    Eragon is a bit cheesy, but I rather liked it. It's sincere cheese... The special effects -- which include glowing-eyed heroes and villains, and flights over the mythical land of Alagaesia depicted in "dragon vision" -- are refreshing in their slightly out-of-date air.
  73. The Pursuit of Happyness
    While the film is roughly half grit and half sugar, it works because Smith sticks to a tougher, more rewarding recipe of 99.9 percent grit and only .1 percent sugar.
  74. Automatons
    A mild and static attempt at sincere camp.
  75. The Holiday
    The Holiday is a 131-minute romantic comedy for those who, if they had their way, would still be watching "Love Actually."
  76. Blood Diamond
    A visually sumptuous, bullet-train-paced thriller with a really provocative theme.
  77. Apocalypto
    With "Braveheart," "Passion" and now Apocalypto, Gibson clearly has established his priorities as a director. History is gore, plus a few hearthside family interludes. The trick is instilling the audience with enough rageful bloodlust to make the story work.
  78. Unaccompanied Minors
    If the writers had the guts (and the jokes) to fashion a bittersweet comedy with a fully earned happy ending, Unaccompanied Minors probably wouldn't have been made. As is, it's a prefab slapstick-'n'-pathos stew that doesn't taste like anything.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    I Have Never Forgotten You: The Life & Legacy of Simon Wiesenthal
    Ever Again isn't a subtle film, but then it never pretends to be. More lecture than conversation, it's not designed to delicately challenge opposing viewpoints.
  80. Family Law
    This is a comedy made for people who think, who like smart talk and who, like the Perelmans, know the score.
  81. Off the Black
    There's something very right with Off the Black in terms of pure emotion and performance craft.
  82. Screamers
    A commendably brave piece, but less focused and powerful than you'd like. In the end, Garapedian might have been better off concentrating her energy on the 1915 Armenian story--which has been told on film various times (for example, in "Forty Days of Musa Dagh" and Atom Egoyan's "Ararat"), but never with the power of, say, "The Pianist" or "Schindler's List."
  83. Days of Glory
    Its social impact is part of what makes this movie memorable. But as with almost any exceptional, truthful war picture, Days of Glory moves us because we know the soldiers -- because we share their fear, triumph and pain.
  84. Inland Empire
    It may not look like anything he's done before, but Inland Empire joins "Mulholland" and the whatzit "Lost Highway" (1997) to form the strangest show-business triptych around. All three concern artists whose identities demand more than one body. The films give new meaning to the phrase "dual citizenship."
  85. The Nativity Story
    The Nativity Story surprised me. I didn't expect such an obvious art film approach. Yet the Bible, in the King James version, is great English literature.
  86. 3 Needles
    Writer-director Thom Fitzgerald's ambitious but hopelessly inchoate AIDS drama is actually three separate, sequentially-told stories.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    10 Items or Less
    Moves at an agreeable, meandering pace but never loses its verve or its sharp humor.
  88. The Architect
    It's a fairly well-written piece and an even better acted one. And these days, when independent films are increasingly the salvation of the serious American dramatic movie, it's heartening to see something like The Architect, which tries to reawaken a major American dramatic tradition and sometimes succeeds.
  89. Highway Courtesans
    Highway Courtesans carries a feeling of truth, of bravely facing problems that are pressing and real. It's a good, informative piece on the oldest profession--and on how the world differs from what we usually see in the movies.
  90. The Lives of Others
    Works beautifully, both as a social and psychological drama and as a taut, tightly wired thriller.
  91. Turistas
    The stalwart American hero of Turistas comes off as a dislikable blank in the hands of Josh Duhamel, of the TV series "Las Vegas." More relaxed is Melissa George, who co-stars as the Aussie.
  92. Eating Out 2: Sloppy Seconds
    A soft-core sex comedy that keeps throwing out comic variations on the idea of the line between gay and straight sexuality.
  93. The Fountain
    It's possible to admire or respect a movie without enjoying it too much, and that's partly the reaction I had to Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain. It's an incredibly ambitious film of sometimes thrilling visual achievement, but it didn't connect fully to my mind and nerves.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    Deck the Halls
    Nobody expects every holiday film to ascend to classic status; in fact, we're happy to let most fade from memory as soon as the decorations are taken off the trees. We can, however, demand they live up to a certain level of fun, thereby allowing parents to watch along with their kids without plotting the most direct route to the exit.
  95. 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.
  96. Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny
    A large amount of dope is smoked in The Pick of Destiny, perhaps the most since the salad days of Cheech & Chong. This may be the problem. Pot rarely helped anybody's comic timing.
  97. Backstage
    The results aren't gothic and bloody, as they were in the Lauren Bacall film "The Fan," or elegant and ironic as in the Bette Davis classic "All About Eve"--though the plot suggests a bit of both.
  98. Opal Dream
    Sophisticated cinephiles aren't likely to go ga-ga over this one, but Opal Dream is a worthwhile family film, graced with an ambivalent, bittersweet ending and just the right touch of cinematic poetry turning on the gemstone in its title.
  99. The History Boys
    The film is worth seeing, if you have any fondness for the writer who co-created "Beyond the Fringe" and who is second only to Stoppard in his sprightly but mellow wit.
  100. Casino Royale
    Eleven years ago director Campbell made "GoldenEye," the first of the Brosnan Bond pictures. Casino Royale trumps it every which way.
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