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. Steamboy
    Though Katsuhiro Otomo's animated Victorian-era adventure Steamboy stars British characters, it's a Japanese film through and through.
  2. Hostage
    Good action movies live on style and excitement. But they also need credibility, and in Hostage, ALMOST a good genre piece, plausibility keeps getting slaughtered.
    • Chicago Tribune
  3. The Upside of Anger
    It's a bizarre but engaging fling.
  4. Millions
    One of the more delightful and satisfying family movies.
  5. In My Country
    A stirring, large-souled movie.
  6. The Boys & Girl from County Clare
    An irresistible Irish comedy, lovingly told, beautifully acted and graced with the perfect balance of chuckles and bittersweet heartache.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Dot the I
    Despite some moments of genuine tension, Dot the i walks (and occasionally hops right over) a very fine line between thriller/drama and parody.
  8. Off the Map
    One of those sweet, intelligent, nicely made films.
  9. Robots
    Wildly inventive, sweetly subversive.
  10. Be Cool
    Even if you enjoyed the mean, funny 1995 John Travolta-Elmore Leonard crime comedy "Get Shorty"-and many of us did-this forced sequel isn't likely to help you repeat the experience.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Jacket
    A gripping drama that will leave thoughtful cinemagoers wrestling with basic Big Questions.
  12. The Pacifier
    Cheerful but mind-numbing.
  13. Gunner Palace
    Tucker has done a bang-up job, distancing and hypnotizing us with his frenzied, fragmented, sexy images. But war isn't a video game.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Walk on Water
    Despite the film's pat plot turns and instructional tone, there are moments of charm, thanks to the fetching, committed cast.
  15. 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.
  16. The Best of Youth
    A major cinema event of the year, a masterpiece of Italian film traditions in social/political realism and historical family epic.
  17. Cursed
    More an uninspired letdown than a flabbergasting turkey... One reason for this lack of bite lies in the werewolves themselves. They're a bit too teddy-bearish, even oddly cuddly, and the fright scenes work better when you don't see much of them.
  18. Diary of a Mad Black Woman
    The film may be bad-and mad-but it's not predictable.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Other Side of the Street
    It's a rare combination of romance and sly social commentary, delivered with a raw emotional punch.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Up and Down
    All of these folks are damaged souls, trying their best to find purpose and forgiveness.
  21. Man of the House
    A sweetly benign comedy that allows the actor (Jones) to lampoon his tough guy image honed in "The Fugitive" and "U.S. Marshals."
  22. Constantine
    Though the story is potentially fascinating and the visuals sometimes spellbinding, the movie itself is stranded in the purgatory of the second-rate.
  23. Son of the Mask
    Even with a new leading man and a more family-friendly rating, some things never change: The Mask still stars Industrial Light & Magic.
  24. Downfall
    Downfall, whatever its shortcomings, bears strong witness to great evil. That is its triumph as a film.
  25. Schultze Gets the Blues
    The scenery is pretty and the locals endearing, but Schorr never gets past charming.
  26. Turtles Can Fly
    A beautiful, intensely moving film.
  27. Because of Winn-Dixie
    Tries hard to be sweet but plays like "Pollyanna" with fleas.
  28. Her Majesty
    Against "Whale Rider's" well-acted, intimate story, Gordon's film feels like an endless spiral of sub-par soap-opera acting, mired in trite, predictable dialogue.
  29. The Animation Show 2005
    When applied properly, short-form animation can bring dreams and nightmares to life like no other medium.
  30. Bride & Prejudice
    It's "knowingly" off-the-rails--and if you're in a tolerant or adventurous mood, very entertaining.
  31. Hitch
    The movie, like Hitch, tries to be cool, funny and sweet but falls on its face without generating any real sympathy, smarts or humor.
  32. Inside Deep Throat
    Full of groovy music and comic characters--many with a priceless reaction to Lovelace's oral party trick--but it hardly manages to say anything new or thoughtful.
  33. Uncle Nino
    It's all neat and sweet and one-dimensional, more the moral to a story than a story.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Pooh's Heffalump Movie
    The film is more than a lesson about overcoming bigotry and ignorance. It's also just a beautifully animated romp through the world of Pooh as created by A.A. Milne.
  35. Ong Bak
    Infusion of comedy elements keeps the story light, without dragging it into the cartoonish.
  36. The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill
    The kind of well-crafted, character-driven work that wows regional film festival crowds and public television audiences but seldom gets seen outside those circles.
  37. The Wedding Date
    Wedding Date is neither good art, good entertainment nor even good trash.
  38. Nobody Knows
    Nobody Knows, by the often excellent Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda, is one of those special movies that can give us a new way of seeing.
  39. Rory O'Shea Was Here
    McAvoy does his best with this subpar, heart-tugging material. At times his mix of easy charm and inner demon pulls Rory out from under the tired script, but those pesky dramatic forces keep pushing him back in for every predictable plot development.
  40. Sunset Story
    You probably won't find two more fascinating camera subjects, two livelier conversationalists or two richer, more rewarding, more engaging and inspiring companions in any movie, fiction or non-fiction, this year.
  41. Alone in the Dark
    That this bit of pustulence is based on a video game of the same name is no surprise. It explains the thin plot, characters and abundant gunplay.
  42. Hide and Seek
    Surprises with its intensity and grip.
  43. Lost Embrace
    Seems small in subject and scope, but it's large in spirit and implication.
  44. Aliens of the Deep
    All in all, it's a fascinating, kid-friendly journey.
  45. Are We There Yet?
    Won't make your day, but it won't kill it either.
  46. Head-On
    It's a brutally convincing movie about two hell-bent young Turkish-German lovers dancing on the edge of destruction in a Hamburg underworld of drugs and casual sex. Yet it's also compassionate and even tender.
  47. Assault on Precinct 13
    The movie rips and roars.
  48. Machuca
    A fine, exciting film that makes a bloody historical event live all over again by showing it through the eyes of children on the edges of the conflict.
  49. Coach Carter
    A true story, feel-good parable and a respectable, uplifting descendent of "To Sir, With Love" and "Lean On Me."
  50. Elektra
    Devotees of awful filmmaking can't go wrong with this one.
  51. Racing Stripes
    Endearing but predictable.
  52. The Chorus
    Like all good popular entertainments, the best of it sings.
  53. Appleseed
    Whatever is lost in translation can't keep Appleseed from feeling a decade late--and its animation from looking like a relic on arrival.
  54. White Noise
    In White Noise, Hollywood and Michael Keaton try to make a decent thriller out of ghosts in the machine but come up with lousy reception and static.
  55. Sky Blue
    Sky Blue slows things down, creating a ponderous, almost languid movie-going experience.
  56. In Good Company
    Grace and Quaid imbue what could have been caricatures--with heart, intelligence and great comic timing.
  57. The Merchant of Venice
    An important, timeless and sometimes troublesome classic has been filmed successfully and at long last.
  58. 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.
  59. A Love Song for Bobby Long
    Bobby Long can enchant you. It's a film that feels lived in, confident despite its conventions.
  60. Fat Albert
    Seems a little lightweight, even for a kids' movie.
  61. The Woodsman
    Melodrama triumphs. But here's at least some muted applause for a fine cast and filmmakers trying to confront the real world and its shadows.
  62. Meet the Fockers
    Though it's hard not to play it, the expectations game is a dangerous one, especially for sequels. And Roach's original, just like his overexposed star, set us up good.
  63. The Phantom of the Opera
    Depending on your predilection, the movie version of The Phantom of the Opera is about as good - or as bad - as its phenomenally successful stage original.
  64. Hotel Rwanda
    Not a striking film visually. It's deliberately plain looking, focused on the appalling events with an almost documentary immediacy.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    In the Realms of the Unreal
    If this documentary were about a serious painter, it would be judged a travesty not unlike commercials that goose up the couple in "American Gothic" or show the Mona Lisa laughing.
  66. The Keys to the House
    Though "Keys" is not Amelio's best, it has an emotional power almost equal to anything he's done.
  67. The Aviator
    Sumptuously exciting, glowing with expertise, seething with life, gorgeously designed and thrillingly articulated.
  68. Spanglish
    Only resonates when he (Brooks) strips it all away and focuses on parent and child.
  69. Flight of the Phoenix
    This clunky remake can't rise from the ashes, nor would you want it to.
  70. Beyond the Sea
    The imagination, energy, chutzpah and sheer affection shown for Darin by director-writer-star Spacey, who plays the singer, are admirable, kicky. This is a movie, that, like Darin himself, takes a lot of chances and delivers on many of them.
  71. The Sea Inside
    Wrings honest emotion and riveting dramatics from its tale.
  72. Imaginary Heroes
    Good in many ways, full of talent and intelligence, and marks the debut of a promising young American writer-director, Dan Harris.
  73. Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
    Exceptionally clever, hilariously gloomy and bitingly subversive.
  74. Million Dollar Baby
    Achieves a mellowness and melancholy that recalls the jazzy dissonance of director (and here, composer) Eastwood's best work: "The Outlaw Josey Wales," "Bird," "Unforgiven" and "Mystic River."
  75. Ocean's Twelve
    Likable as it is, suffers from that modern big-movie vice: overkill.
  76. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
    A comedy that seems to have most everything going for it but the ability to make us laugh.
  77. Dolls
    A work both rigorously stylized and deeply personal. Devotees of Kitano and Japanese cinema will admire Dolls.
  78. A Talking Picture
    It's a great film that, sadly, may be ignored by all but the most dedicated, knowledgable filmgoers.
  79. A Tale of Two Sisters
    It's a stunningly creepy specimen of Asian horror.
  80. Born Into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids
    This film carries us so touchingly into their world, it would take a heart of stone, finally, to ignore them.
  81. Blade: Trinity
    Thankfully, Reynolds (bearded, looking a bit like Jason Lee) adds some scrappiness and humor to a series that might otherwise have collapsed under self-parody.
  82. Closer
    Few directors are more adept at playing with all this anguish and exhilaration than Mike Nichols.
  83. House of Flying Daggers
    It's as thrilling and lushly beautiful a movie as has been released all year, matched only by Zhang's epic "Hero." And I think this film is the more powerful.
  84. Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine
    One of the best films ever about that game, one of the most exciting, instructive and sheerly entertaining of all chess films.
  85. The Green Butchers
    Macabre, oddly gripping.
  86. I Am David
    The beautifully shot but dramatically strained I Am David falls prey to the defect of all poor road movies: In gluing together unbelievable but convenient episodes with sugary sentimentality, it loses most of its credibility.
  87. A Very Long Engagement
    It's a magical film which manages to transport and rivet us in the same highly-imaginitive, breezily playful way "Amelie" did.
  88. Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst
    A compelling piece of press criticism as it probes the media as terror's conduit of choice, spreading message and validating violence in the 1970s and today.
  89. Straight-Jacket
    A talented craftsman of dark raillery, Day and his fixation on Hollywood melodrama are indulged to delicious effect in his sophomore effort.
  90. Alexander
    Vast, riveting, madly audacious movie biography.
  91. Christmas with the Kranks
    Phony, disingenuous family entertainment, suffocated by its green bean casserole approach to Middle America, spineless cardboard characters and paper-thin plot "twists."
  92. Notre musique
    Though it's a sad, somber, deeply questioning work, it's done with a light, loving spirit.
  93. Paper Clips
    There's something both moving and crass in how directors Elliot Berlin and Joe Fab film these tiny paper fasteners.
  94. National Treasure
    Overall the film is alluringly over-the-top without being overcooked.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie
    If your kid has SpongeBob SquarePants underwear, it's a good bet she or he will relish The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie.
  96. Fear and Trembling
    With the exception of Amelie's voiceover narration in French, Fear and Trembling is entirely in Japanese. And the Japanese cast is superb.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Ya lyublyu tebya
    There might have been something in this stew if the screenwriter and directors had stayed in the moment, but to actually explore the tough stuff they bring up might have made this movie less cool and breezy.
  98. Days of Being Wild (re-release)
    Sometimes cinema's highest achievements become clear only in retrospect. Days of Being Wild--now clearly revealed as one of the peaks of Hong Kong filmmaking and a masterwork of contemporary cinema giant Wong.
  99. Bad Education
    If only Bad Education engaged the heart as much as the head, Almodovar's fractured tale might have risen above its alienating noir conventions.
  100. Finding Neverland
    It's an intellectual family film for literate parents and children, immensely pleasing if not perfect, perhaps a smidgen too brightly evasive and determinedly charming.
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