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. Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason
    The trouble with Bridget redux is also simple: Thai jail.
  2. Kinsey
    This hip, highly partisan biography of Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey is a surprisingly entertaining movie about the perils of studying sexual behavior in a sexually uptight culture--our own.
  3. Little Lili
    Miller's quiet artistry is at its peak, and though "Lili" is not as subtle, profound or moving a work as Chekhov's play, it's an intelligent, first-rate piece of cinema.
  4. After the Sunset
    Sizzles for a half-hour, then fizzles.
  5. Noel
    So dark and dirge-like are its first 85 minutes that a few uplifting minutes at the end can't dissipate the somber cloud Noel summons.
  6. The Polar Express
    This movie, which aspires to be a Christmas movie classic on the "It's a Wonderful Life" level, is overwhelming, enjoyable and impressive, without being really entrancing.
  7. Overnight
    Overnight's only narrative hole is an inability to pinpoint why Miramax stonewalled him.
  8. Alfie
    What a bright, entertaining, cleverly updated and utterly satisfying comedy the new Alfie turns out to be.
    • 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.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Callas Forever
    Sometimes it's best to let sleeping divas lie.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Brother to Brother
    Ambitious but clumsy, it's a movie to appreciate rather than to be engaged by.
  12. Fade to Black
    Whether a legend was born (or retired) that night at the Garden remains to be seen, but even on film, it was one killer show.
  13. The Incredibles
    Delivers the perfect union - a vivid, sublime parody and valentine to the superhero genre.
  14. Ray
    A fit tribute to an entertainer who, no matter what hate or hardship threw in his way or how many mistakes he made, we can't stop loving.
  15. Birth
    For awhile, the stately symphonic score, urbane setting and understated dress make Birth feel powerful--until it feels empty, lacking what Glazer so furiously exhibited in his equally stylized freshman endeavor: heart.
  16. Enduring Love
    A gripping, very intelligent British thriller. Slowly, inexorably, it ties you in knots.
  17. Saw
    Wan's tense, grisly cinematic morsel won't go down easy. But once it hits bottom, Saw is oddly satisfying, though the gag reflex never entirely goes away.
  18. Sideways
    A boisterous, brilliant, heart-warming comedy--strikes me as just about perfect.
  19. Surviving Christmas
    As light, fluffy, cockle-warming holiday entertainment, this thing is pretty sweet.
  20. Lightning in a Bottle
    A movie which, like all the best blues, makes good times out of bad times, makes smiles out of hurt, makes tears taste like honey.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Machinist
    A moody psychological thriller with a stunning performance by Christian Bale at its core.
  22. 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.
  23. The Grudge
    A master of atmosphere, Japanese director Takashi Shimizu leads his audience along on a celluloid leash to his pitch-black attic of horror, inviting each hair on the back of your neck to stand up.
  24. Sex Is Comedy
    The "comedy" part of Sex is Comedy comes intentionally from cast-crew interaction.
  25. Shall We Dance
    The movie tries hard to duplicate the original's mood and story, but, like Gere or Lopez, is too much of a visual knockout to rope us in.
  26. Being Julia
    Bening shines, and the film shines too.
  27. P.S.
    Ultimately, p.s. confirms Kidd's talent without expanding it or achieving the comic/dramatic heights of "Roger Dodger."
  28. Moolaadé
    A beautiful picture with a great heart, a classic-to-be with a common touch.
  29. The Final Cut
    Fairly well done but deadly dull futuristic thriller.
  30. Team America: World Police
    Team America's strengths are in its musical numbers, especially Kim Jong Il's mournful "I'm So Ronery" (translation: "Lonely"), a heartfelt peek into the dictator's soul.
  31. Saints and Soldiers
    Shackles its characters with stale dialogue straight out of decades-old Sgt. Rock comic books.
  32. The Scandal
    Pictorially sumptuous and sexually provocative.
  33. Vera Drake
    Among its many excellences, Vera Drake functions superbly as a pure thriller; the last half is reminiscent in structure and detail of Hitchcock's "The Wrong Man."
  34. Friday Night Lights
    There isn't a bad performance here, but besides Thornton, Luke stands out.
  35. Around the Bend
    A well-intentioned, ill-conceived blip of a movie that just happens to star two of the most esteemed actors of our time--Michael Caine and Christopher Walken.
  36. Stage Beauty
    A rich, shining valentine to the British theater and the eternal joys of Shakespeare,
  37. Raise Your Voice
    Worst of all, though, is the movie's moral maneuvering.
  38. Tarnation
    Watching Jonathan Caouette's amazing autobiographical documentary Tarnation is like descending into a pop-music, underground-movie hell and heaven, the shattered and shattering landscape of a living body and mind.
  39. Taxi
    Riddled with comic potholes.
  40. Ladder 49
    Instead of cashing in on barely healed wounds, Ladder 49 could have taken a different cue from pornography and gone the way of "Boogie Nights," a fascinating, difficult and honest glimpse into another storied profession.
  41. Shark Tale
    Boasts a really spectacular cast to voice those reasonably funny jokes.
  42. 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.
  43. Dig!
    Anton, because after watching your tantrums, abuse and addiction in DIG! I went straight to the record store to buy your music. And that's something.
  44. Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry
    It's not a hasty, knocked-together promo job--though it is clearly pro-Kerry.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Thérèse: The Story of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux
    Therese's story would work better as a marionette show than on the big screen. The camera is best at picking up subtleties, and there are simply none here.
  46. Woman Thou Art Loosed
    Jakes' characters are points to be made, flesh and blood cautionary tales that don't particularly feel human. His dialogue, even in the mouths of Michelle and her troubled mother, sounds as if it comes straight from the pulpit.
  47. Infernal Affairs
    It's hard to breathe in Andrew Lau and Alan Mak's Infernal Affairs, a relentlessly taut Hong Kong cop thriller that, unlike many of its cinematic peers, doesn't burn off tension in choreographed action sequences.
  48. First Daughter
    It's a glossy, well-mounted, slickly done but almost stuporously predictable affair, both formula-bound and utterly illogical.
  49. The Forgotten
    The stylish and imaginative imagery in director Joseph Ruben's film, not to mention the parapsychological twists and mysteries, evoke the work of director M. Night Shyamalan.
  50. The Motorcycle Diaries
    Salles' movie isn't fiery or didactic. It doesn't rage or storm. Salles romanticizes the youthful Ernesto.
  51. The Last Shot
    Flockhart, as an actress desperate to show the world her talent but lethally unsure if she has any, embodies the obsessively driven personality it must take to make it, or to try to make it, in pictures. She's the personification of what The Last Shot could have been.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Anatomy of Hell
    Although several of her (Breillat's) previous films were intriguing and provocative, this one seems styled more as raw material for satire on "Mad TV" or "Saturday Night Live."
  53. A Dirty Shame
    John Waters is back with this awfully bawdy, never sexy, rarely funny, actually boring, one-note sex comedy.
  54. The Yes Men
    These are some terrifically funny and gutsy guys who want to draw attention to what they see as the natural limit of WTO policy.
  55. Shaun of the Dead
    A gleefully gory, pitch-perfect parody of George Romero's zombie films. But this isn't a movie about other movies. Shaun of the Dead stands on its own.
  56. Wimbledon
    It's a harmless enough movie, and quite a good-looking one; Bettany and Dunst are an attractive enough couple, even if Lizzie has been written as a selfish little snip and he as a whining man-child.
  57. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
    Conran has got himself a looker, with Paltrow in soft focus, the whole world larger than life and a title that, said in the proper low-pitched voice, conveys the tone of the film: exuberant, idiosyncratic and timeless.
  58. Head in the Clouds
    Townsend seemed to me ill-matched as a romantic hero: way too moony-eyed and mushy to cope with the likes of the towering Theron and torchy Cruz.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Cowboys & Angels
    Here we witness a healthy friendship between a gay and straight male that doesn't call for stilted changes in personality or sexual orientation.
  60. Goodbye, Dragon Inn
    A weird, funny, melancholy tribute to movies and movie-going, an opus for film geeks that rang my personal bell. A bizarre minimalist epic that will either transport or infuriate, it's defiantly, exquisitely eccentric.
    • 6 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    National Lampoon's Gold Diggers
    For the most part, The Gold Diggers is not even chuckle-producing. At best, it might warm a cockle or two or provoke a bit of a smile.
  62. Mr 3000
    Commits the cardinal sin of not being quite as funny as its star.
  63. Silver City
    It's a dense, winding tale with all of Sayles' razor-sharp dialogue and intrigue. But instead of tracing character paths, Sayles sacrifices solid storytelling in favor of forwarding a political (and environmental) ideology.
  64. Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence
    Like "Blade Runner," it's dense enough to be rewarding on multiple viewings, the hallmark of a classic.
  65. Cellular
    Slickly produced, well cast and very excitingly made, it's based on plot hooks so silly, most of them blow up in your face.
  66. Criminal
    Criminal is an exercise where viewers are likely to ponder not "How did the characters do it?" but "Who cares?"
  67. Evergreen
    The entire film is poorly lit, and the melancholy music, much of it from the wonderful Wilco spin-off band Autumn Defense, gives us the sense that things are getting heavy. But in the end, we observe more than feel.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Testosterone
    The kind of movie that produces a particular series of questions: How the heck did this get made? Who needed a tax shelter? Who had money to burn?
  69. When Will I Be Loved
    Campbell and her character are willing to take chances. But Toback's tangled noirish plot, with Vera as a post-feminist femme fatale, isn't particularly clever or original.
  70. Resident Evil: Apocalypse
    Might be justified as "mindless fun" if it weren't for the acute lack of fun in its 93 minutes.
  71. Wicker Park
    To work, it has to make us feel crazy with love, like "Vertigo" did. Instead, it often just makes us feel crazy for believing any of it.
  72. Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War
    Belongs to that brand of sweeping, conflict-era drama epitomized by "Saving Private Ryan," "Gone with the Wind" and TV miniseries "North and South."
  73. Vanity Fair
    Graced with Nair's loving direction, Witherspoon's radiance and that great cast, it is a treat, if somewhat less so than the novel.
  74. The Brown Bunny
    The kind of fascinatingly bad film only a really gifted and fearless moviemaker could make: a 92-minute long raggedy-raunchy vision of sex, transit and alienation in which Gallo focuses on himself so obsessively, it's as if he'd become his own stalker.
  75. Hero
    Swooningly beautiful, furious and thrilling, Zhang Yimou's Hero is an action movie for the ages.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid
    To be fair, it's little better or worse than the original. But, to be honest, the original--minus its nascent stars--wasn't very good.
  77. Suspect Zero
    The script isn't really good enough to worry about whether it's being over-directed; in fact, E. Elias Merhige's over-direction is one of the best things about this movie--along with Ben Kingsley's grimly unstoppable killer-of-killers, Benjamin O'Ryan.
  78. Bush's Brain
    Even if the movie's only goal is to preach to the choir, its fondness for hyperbole and lack of discernment is more insult than rallying cry.
  79. Bright Leaves
    Another of his (McElwee) beguiling "personal chronicle" movies.
  80. Without a Paddle
    Led by a trio of dumb, dumber and dumbest, Without a Paddle is a testosterone comedy that might just as well be titled "Without a Brain Cell."
  81. Exorcist: The Beginning
    The movie goes too far on too little motivation - and the middle section, with its maggoty villains, roiling skies and native revolts, seems almost barmy. Yet Exorcist: Beginning does score a small victory. It's not as bad as you'd think.
    • Chicago Tribune
  82. Almost Peaceful
    Like the work of an expert tailor, it's done with unobtrusive skill, essential warmth and seamless grace.
  83. Bright Young Things
    A brilliant, giddy satiric romp with a discreetly moralistic viewpoint beneath its high-style wit.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    End of the Century
    Much to their credit, filmmakers Michael Gramaglia and Jim Fields leave almost all the talking to band members and their inner circle. That gives this documentary--their first film--a brisk authority, humor and directness true to the band's scrappy story.
  85. Red Lights
    The sights, sounds and traffic in Red Lights are oppressively ordinary; the people are unnervingly real. That reality doubles the suspense we might feel in a more slickly made but thinly plotted thriller.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Nicotina
    As entertainment, Nicotina manages a bracing balance. It arrests with violent bursts and anxious pauses until its three plots merge in a satisfying resolution; its laughs caught in my throat like smoker's cough.
  87. Mean Creek
    If Estes' future efforts can offer us such potent, character-centered Molotov cocktails, Mean Creek may well signal the rise of America's next auteur director.
  88. AVP: Alien vs. Predator
    It's a murky, empty-headed dive into the depths of the Antarctic and the heart of monster movie cliches that leaves you praying for most of the cast to get killed off fast, to put them (and us) out of our misery.
    • 15 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Movie
    Shallow and repetitive.
  90. We Don't Live Here Anymore
    Usually American marital problems are left to the soap operas; it's nice to see them tackled by experts, piercing personas and peeling open hearts.
  91. The Leopard (re-release)
    Sumptuous and beautiful, suffused with a serene melancholy and deeply ambivalent love for a long-vanished past, Luchino Visconti's 1963 The Leopard is one of the greatest of all historical costume epics.
  92. Danny Deckchair
    Sweet-tempered, good-looking, goofy and not too sharp. The movie doesn't make much sense and neither does Danny, played by Welsh heartthrob Rhys Ifans.
  93. The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement
    Ends strong, in an ultimately smoother, smarter sequel.
  94. Collateral
    Really two movies: a taut, terrific, realistic crime drama, and, by the end, an over-the top, high-tech extravaganza which tries to out-Woo John Woo and turn Cruise into another Terminator.
  95. Code 46
    Too ambiguous, too meandering to envelop us. It's ambitious work but ultimately cold, distant and difficult to piece together.
  96. 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.
  97. Little Black Book
    Though trailers for Little Black Book try to sell it as a zany romantic comedy, don't judge this book by its cover. Those who stick with it will be surprised and maybe even laugh in between a tear or two.
  98. Bang Rajan
    Might be best described as Thailand's version of "The Alamo."
  99. The Manchurian Candidate
    Demme's movie is just as sophisticated and knowing as Frankenheimer's, but it isn't as hip or daring. It doesn't haunt your mind or stir your sense of dread the way the '62 movie did--and it lacks almost totally the earlier film's piercing, oddball satire and humor.
  100. Thunderbirds
    It's a pretty entertaining, extremely good-looking cinematic blip--not important, not outstanding, but better than a lot of PG stuff that attempts to reach both parents and their 8-year-old kids.
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