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. My Cousin Rachel
    Weisz and the sharpest supporting players lift My Cousin Rachel to a higher plane. Holliday Granger as Philip's smitten family friend; Simon Russell Beale, a truly great actor, as the skeptical family solicitor; Tim Barlow, tottering around as the sublimely crusty servant: These are choice turns.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Piece By Piece
    An at-times deliriously entertaining biopic.
  3. The Merchant of Venice
    An important, timeless and sometimes troublesome classic has been filmed successfully and at long last.
  4. Kingdom of Heaven
    A gargantuan epic, a historical adventure-drama of overwhelming visual grandeur.
  5. Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic
    Pairing monumental insensitivity with a bright-eyed delivery, Silverman is the current valedictorian of the nothing-is-sacred school of comedy, a modern-day Lenny Bruce spared her forefather's legal woes by time, breasts and porcelain skin.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Chronicles
    This is an all-Latino film--a rarity and a pleasure--but what's most curious and refreshing is that Cordero allows the Latinos to naturally embrace their nationalities, accents and cultural peculiarities.
  7. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
    Even if this new version of "Hitchhiker" doesn't quite capture it all, you'll still want to stick your thumb out and catch a ride.
  8. A Cat in Paris
    Some of the action (and violence) in A Cat in Paris borders on the jarring, and the slam-bang finale - set atop Notre Dame Cathedral - favors bombast over wit. But getting there is a lot of fun, in part because the animators take time to make Dino a truly charismatic animal.
  9. Dahmer
    A tasteful, intelligent, well-acted film about one of the most ghoulish serial killers in American crime history - and I'm afraid that's a good part of what's wrong with it.
  10. The Way Home
    Director Lee has a true cinematic knack, but it's also nice to see a movie with its heart so thoroughly, unabashedly on its sleeve.
  11. Out of the Furnace
    Affleck, in particular, finds something fierce and noble in uneven material and in his character's rage. He's not like any other actor in American movies.
  12. Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant
    It’s the best film he’s made in years.
  13. Pitch Perfect 2
    It's a two-hour lesson in how to act like a frenemy to your alleged friends. And it's not funny enough.
  14. Mistress
    The satire is finally too thin and familiar (and not just from The Player - most of the observations here have been staples of the Hollywood comedy since the early '30s) to support the movie's pervasive tone of sourness and disgust. [21 Aug 1992, p.J]
    • Chicago Tribune
  15. Piercing
    What a deliciously demented and disturbing drama Nicolas Pesce's Piercing is, dripping with gore and laden with forbidden innuendo.
  16. A Coffee In Berlin
    The film's surprising, enveloping jazz score is often deliberately at odds with Niko's moody outlook.
  17. Dear Frankie
    Doesn't revert to hairpin plot twists or other dramatic trickery to hook us in; Auerbach simply lets us live with her characters-which, it turns out, is reward enough.
  18. Little Jerusalem
    The film, both light-hearted and serious, suggests that freedom comes more easily within restrictions--and that's true of Albou's approach as well.
  19. Atomic Blonde
    It's a shame, because Atomic Blonde is a visual cinematic delight. It's not that it's all style, no substance. But it doesn't seem to know what to do with its substance, and ultimately, Atomic Blonde becomes a film that's all dressed up with just nowhere to go.
  20. I'm Your Woman
    Hart and Horowitz map this hero’s journey onto her growth as a mother, her empowerment proving to be a source not just of strength, but love — a rare commodity in a crime flick.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Cachorro
    The audience gets all of the love, with none of the guilt. It's enough to give you faith in family dramas again.
  22. Vitus
    A Swiss movie that flirts back and forth between the French and German sensibilities at play in that nation.
  23. How She Move
    Mainly it’s a very solid dance picture, which is the point.
  24. Anna Karenina
    At its most frantic the cutting and staging here veers perilously close to Baz Luhrmann "Moulin Rouge!" territory for comfort. ... I'd rather have seen Wright's carefully elaborated production on a stage, instead of in a movie partly on a stage.
  25. Bad Influence
    The main performances are fine; it's the script that's cheap. [09 Mar 1990, p.C]
    • Chicago Tribune
    • 63 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2
    The four stars of Sisterhood are back for this smart, confident second act, based on novels by Anne Brashares.
  27. Friends with Benefits
    I enjoy both Timberlake and Kunis; just this side of manic, they seem right together.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Wild Safari 3D
    One caution: If you get motion sickness, beware, as much of the ride is bumpy and there's some hill-climbing and -descending that some might find disturbing, even in the comfort of an IMAX theater seat.
  29. Sade
    A fine, handsome-looking costume drama that works best as a historical account of a brutal era. But as a portrait of the Marquis de Sade, it is not titillating in the over-the-top manner of "Quills."
  30. Honey, I Shrunk the Kids
    Honey, I Shrunk the Kids is the happiest surprise of this summer so far, a children's film from Walt Disney Productions that effortlessly renews the best tradition of that studio's live-action features.
  31. It's Kind of a Funny Story
    The result is both a success and a disappointment. It's Kind of a Funny Story, divided into neat little daylong chapters in Craig's stay, lacks the staying power and bittersweet layering of "Half Nelson" and "Sugar."
  32. Reel Paradise
    Since Reel Paradise doesn't make the mistake of lionizing Pierson while it keeps up with him and his family, the results stay with you, like memories of an unexpected and surprising vacation.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    loudQUIETloud: A Film About the Pixies
    As Nirvana's Kurt Cobain acknowledges in the opening quote, without the Pixies there would be no "Smells Like Teen Spirit."
  34. Howl
    It's well-crafted, but I wish the film showed us an additional dimension or two of the central figure, who once said the great challenge in writing, any kind of writing, is "to write the same way you are."
  35. Les Miserables
    The camera bobs and weaves like a drunk, frantically. So you have hammering close-ups, combined with woozy insecurity each time more than two people are in the frame. Twenty minutes into the retelling of fugitive Valjean, his monomaniacal pursuer Javert, the torch singers Fantine and Eponine and the rest, I wanted somebody to just nail the damn camera to the ground.
  36. 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.
  37. Spy Game
    If you like Redford, Spy Game will be a real treat: a fast electric thriller full of the old Sundance charm and pizzazz.
  38. Two Brothers
    There's something simple yet miraculous about watching these beautiful animals interact with the wild and each other, even if their actions are being manipulated for the sake of drama. Annaud has taken his film's message to heart: He knows when to get out of nature's way.
  39. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
    The movie may lack a lot of things, but it doesn't lack comic timing--or, in its own way, a nose for the news.
  40. The Komediant
    Able to provide insight into a fascinating part of theater history, spanning from Russia to the New York Catskills.
  41. Internal Affairs
    Figgis (Stormy Monday), here making his American debut, doesn't possess the tight control necessary to really charge up the material. The result is a stylish but oddly slack film, which still features a couple of fine performances (from Andy Garcia and Laurie Metcalf) and a few effectively perverse moments.
  42. Changeling
    Changeling fundamentally works; it holds you. But these issues of texture and detail matter too, and they hold clues as to why Eastwood's latest is a good, solid achievement rather than a great, grieving one.
  43. Knock at the Cabin
    Knock at the Cabin is a real load — 100 lugubrious minutes of what is intended as steadily mounting dread and apocalypse prevention seminar.
  44. Shadow of the Thin Man
    This fourth entry is still full of sophisticated charm and slick thrills. [01 Jul 2005, p.C7]
    • Chicago Tribune
  45. Meet John Doe
    The elements don't quite jell here, and the ending doesn't work, but they all have a racy charm anyway. [19 Dec 1999, p.34]
    • Chicago Tribune
  46. Zoo
    To what degree does Zoo test our limits of tolerance? In the end, not much, which is why Devor's strange, carefully composed objet d'art is a limited achievement.
  47. Rocky Balboa
    The movie itself, defying all odds, comes close to a knockout.
  48. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
    At least the movie Pirates of the Caribbean is fun -- but only as long as you don't expect much. Take it from me: The ride is better.
  49. Lunacy
    While Lunacy leaves you with the impression that Svankmajer is more expressive with cutlets than he is with his atypically human-dominated dreamscape, some of the images are doozies.
  50. Biggie and Tupac
    Those not well versed in the rap music world may be a little lost at times, but you don't need to know your Ice-T's from your Cool-J's to realize that as far as these shootings are concerned, something is rotten in the state of California.
  51. Eating
    While the actresses seem authentic in these interviews, they are forced and unconvincing in Jaglom's script, which centers on characters who might kindly be described as narcissistic Harpies. [21 Jun 1991, p.G]
    • Chicago Tribune
  52. Honeymoon in Vegas
    A sometimes very funny comedy. [28 Aug 1992, p.C]
    • Chicago Tribune
  53. Green Zone
    Partly real and partly, increasingly, fantastic and outlandish in its wishful thinking.
  54. The Assassination of Richard Nixon
    It's a tribute to Penn's talent and guts that he manages to bring it off--even if the movie doesn't.
  55. Damsel
    Wasikowska struggles to activate a vague notion of female disenfranchisement and victimhood, triumphant. She and Pattinson fill in as many blanks as they can, where they can.
  56. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
    It remains an expertly assembled companion piece to its source material, with charms you can't overlook. But the great Harry Potter should be casting a more powerful spell.
  57. Booye kafoor, atre yas
    Farmanara, a gifted director, seems to be getting his artistic legs again, but he spends far too much time following his protagonist in and out of buildings as he smokes cigarettes and otherwise mopes about.
  58. Master Gardener
    Even when it falters, Master Gardener speaks from a place the filmmaker has always worked, with one foot in the character-building of “slow cinema,” and the other in spasms of violence. It may be hard to buy where this movie lands. But even an unstuck landing isn’t enough to un-recommend it.
  59. The 11th Hour
    If it gets people thinking about which light bulbs they buy and their current gas mileage and such, then it's good to have it in the world. It is, however, a panicky blur as documentaries go.
  60. The River Wild
    The River Wild is more of a family movie, a thrill-ride where all the crazier dips and turns are straightened out by the ride's end. Hanson keeps the action clean, the tensions simmering. As a family movie, it's actually pretty good. [30 Sep 1994, p.C]
    • Chicago Tribune
  61. Unsane
    It’s a grubby, fairly intriguing genre exercise given a weird, did-it-myself-in-a-hurry visual quality.
  62. 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.
  63. Undertow
    For anyone who likes classic, offbeat American moviemaking, in the rural-thriller genre from "Moonrise" to "Macon County Jail," Undertow is one to check. Seething with violence, bleeding with lyricism, it's a poem from the junk heap, a cry from the swamp.
  64. The Jungle Book
    This is nothing more than a half-hour Ramar of the Jungle episode, blown up to motion-picture length.
  65. Single White Female
    Schroeder brings a decidedly un-Hollywood approach to the material, which is both the source of the film's greatest aesthetic strength (it is unusually attentive to questions of character and form) and most crippling commercial weakness. American audiences, used to nonstop action, will probably grow impatient with Schroeder's slow, nuanced approach.
  66. Spring Breakers
    Starts out like a salacious, rump-centric and blithely bare-breasted hip-hop video and ends up in the realm of scary and inspired trash. That's not meant negatively.
  67. Everything Put Together
    Takes a couple of curious turns that you will either applaud or hiss at, depending on the type of film you are looking for.
  68. The Cat's Meow
    The movie leaves us with the image of rich folks frantically dancing the Charleston because if they stop, they'll have nothing. The point is as untrue as it is simplistic.
  69. Open Water
    A slow drip, but one all the more intense for its Gothic minimalism and its underlying parable of naturalistic determinism: It's no fun to fool with Mother Nature.
  70. Happy Times
    Just as Zhao uses his comic gifts to create an affecting human, so Dong's performance as Wu is a triumph of honesty and tact.
  71. Luz
    Writer-director Tilman Singer casts a trancelike swirl incorporating elements of hypnosis, demonic transference, memories of sexual abuse and one of the furthest-out, least by-the-book police procedurals put on film.
  72. Rio
    The movie isn't dull, exactly; the problem lies in the other, antsy direction.
  73. Let Him Go
    A 1960s-set Western laden with big skies, steady gazes and slow-roasted narrative corn, Let Him Go gets by on the strength of its female leads, Diane Lane and Lesley Manville. Kevin Costner’s effective, too, and he’s right in his taciturn sweet spot, muttering about this and that.
  74. Things We Lost in the Fire
    Things We Lost in the Fire finds Bier at an interesting juncture, half-Dogmatic, half traditionalist.
  75. City of Men
    Director Morelli and editor Daniel Rezende know how to set up complex lines of action and keep the screws tight.
  76. Cry-Baby
    Cry-Baby doesn`t have a subject, but only a format-a rickety framework erected to suport a few broad gags and a few indifferently filmed production numbers.
  77. World War Z
    The stakes are high and the excitement's there and the results, as previously stated, are messy but fairly entertaining.
  78. 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.
  79. The Foot Fist Way
    Staggers and wanders and feels far longer than its 85 minutes, and it's best considered a calling card for better things to come.
  80. À Tout de Suite (Right Now)
    Its gorgeous black-and-white photography, dirty and matte, will almost convince you that anything this slow, small and bereft of dialogue must be important.
  81. Split
    While McAvoy is known for his dramatic roles, and as the young Charles Xavier in the "X-Men" franchise, he's delightful when let off the leash and allowed to show off his loud, campy, unhinged side.
  82. Bombay Eunuch
    A short film with a unique subject matter. But you won't soon forget its people, its places or its sad, surprising revelations about all the sexes.
  83. 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.
  84. I Capture the Castle
    Smith's story is a charmer: touching, funny, romantic, perceptive, absorbing and full of color and character. And the movie, which has been respectfully and affectionately handled by people who obviously love their source, captures most of those qualities.
  85. Alpha
    It's sweet, really, to imagine the kind of devotion Alpha might inspire, a film that's very simple, kind of strange, but will melt any dog-lover's heart.
  86. Life
    Life can be funny, sad, conventional, unpredictable -- or a pain in the tail. And so can Life, the new Eddie Murphy movie. [16 April 1999, Tempo, p.4]
    • Chicago Tribune
  87. L'amour fou
    Berge is a meticulous and intriguing host, though one gets the feeling he's relaying, very selectively, only so much of the messier side of his life with Saint Laurent. So be it.
  88. The Upside of Anger
    It's a bizarre but engaging fling.
  89. Scoop
    A major sticking point is that none of these characters have been developed into people who are interesting enough to carry what is ultimately an exceedingly thin story, and the lack of intrigue becomes a glaring issue.
  90. The Dreamers
    Ablaze with poetry and danger, and suffused with an odd kind of intellectual kitsch.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    The Caine Mutiny
    Director Edward Dmytryk, working from a top-notch script adapted from Herman Wouk's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, makes Bogie's gradual breakdown under relentless cross-examination from defense lawyer Jose Ferrer a superb example of screen melodrama. [21 Nov 1986, p.92]
    • Chicago Tribune
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