Chicago Tribune's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. The Village
    A big, creepy dollhouse of a movie--a sometimes engrossing shocker with a surprise ending that isn't especially shocking or surprising.
  2. Festival Express
    The results are spine-tingling. There's only one thing to say about this movie and its rescuers, recovered from the dead--and the Dead: Rock on.
  3. Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle
    This stoner buddy movie is filled with raunchy, gross-out humor. It's immature, clunky and probably the best bit of groundbreaking social commentary we've seen in years.
  4. Intimate Strangers
    Such a triumph of simplicity, subtlety and tact--and of the eroticism in words, looks and glances--that the actors ravish us with sheer talent and intelligence.
  5. Garden State
    Though too dear at times, overly sentimental in its conclusion and sporadically overreaching to be the voice of a generation, it's otherwise emotionally spot-on as it follows Andrew back to his Garden State hometown for his mother's funeral.
  6. She Hate Me
    A daring, entertaining, but somewhat disappointing affair, something of an overreacher despite Lee's usual pyrotechnics and a brilliant cast.
  7. The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi
    A masterpiece of wry violence and stylized mayhem, The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi turns loose one of Japan's most brilliant film auteurs, Takeshi Kitano, on one of its most enduring pop legends.
  8. The Bourne Supremacy
    Close to perfect example of an expertly designed and executed thriller.
  9. A Home at the End of the World
    The novel's interesting character of Alice, Jonathan's mother, is so cut and drained of complexity that it becomes a polite, blank waste of Sissy Spacek's talent.
  10. This Old Cub
    When a loving son makes a documentary about his father, you can forgive him for laying it on a bit thick - especially when his love for his subject, Ron Santo, is shared by an entire city.
  11. Catwoman
    The "Showgirls" of superhero movies. This is not a compliment. A vacuous lingerie show posing as feminism, it's the biggest movie hairball this side of "Garfield."
  12. Donnie Darko: The Director's Cut
    With 20 additional minutes of screen time, the director's cut of Richard Kelly's genre-splicing "Donnie Darko" offers new viewers a second chance to discover his mind-bending masterwork.
  13. A Cinderella Story
    Of all the teen performers out there, Duff has to be the blandest (especially since the Olsens hit the skids).
  14. I, Robot
    It's a high-tech thriller that really works.
  15. Touch of Pink
    Sweet-tempered but superficial.
  16. Maria Full of Grace
    Takes a simple story and molds it into something eloquent and menacing.
  17. The Door in the Floor
    The Door in the Floor feels more about a situation than actual people. It's sensitively rendered, filled with those necessary evocative details, and it never rings true.
  18. 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.
  19. Sleepover
    A sweet, effective installment, an often bright and efficient repository for the slapstick laughs and cutesy sentiments so beloved by this age group.
  20. Riding Giants
    It's the tales from Noll and his mates, now older and chubbier, that give heart to what otherwise could have faded into PBS special-land.
  21. Metallica: Some Kind of Monster
    A counterintuitive, riveting documentary so honest that it will either become a rock movie classic or a severe embarrassment for the heavy metal band.
  22. King Arthur
    Overall, King Arthur sinks into a grim, gray torpor - though it's an odd, not unentertaining movie. The approach is different, if not edifying or convincing.
  23. De-Lovely
    Kline, though, does give one of the great movie performances of the year so far.
  24. Before Sunset
    This is a romance with minimal physical contact and sex--and that's part of what makes it work so well as a love story.
  25. The Clearing
    Just an OK thriller, full of standard scenarios and cookie-cutter characters.
  26. Spider-Man 2
    Until it develops a bad case of verbosity toward the end, it improves upon its predecessor in almost every way, delivering flashier thrills while digging deeper into its characters and adding an overlay of wit.
  27. The Notebook
    May be corny, but it's also absorbing, sweet and powerfully acted. It's a film about falling in love and looking back on it, and it avoids many of the genre's syrupy dangers.
  28. 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.
  29. White Chicks
    Some film premises are so outlandish, so thinly worked out and so deep-down ridiculous that they wind up sinking the show -- and White Chicks collapses under a real doozy.
  30. Fahrenheit 9/11
    This movie, the subject of controversy, is a defiantly personal statement on what the war really is--laced with that now-familiar "Roger and Me" mix of homespun wit, pop culture playfulness, populist heart twisting and "gotcha" guerilla film-making tactics.
  31. Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
    Stiller, a DodgeBall producer, is revealing an unfortunate craving for the cheese of his childhood.
  32. The Terminal
    The movie is a delight in many ways: an unabashed romantic comedy and Capraesque fable that takes Spielberg into realms he's rarely traveled before.
  33. The Hunting of the President
    Although the film presents plenty of compelling material, it suffers from the same weakness of "Fahrenheit 9/11": an utter lack of dot connection.
  34. What the #$*! Do We (K)now!?
    What the Bleep Do We Know? is both modern science for dummies and a feisty extension of our ongoing religious debate.
  35. Facing Windows
    Ozpetek brings a straight love story and world politics into the mix, but it's his brilliant cast which completes the connection.
  36. Seducing Doctor Lewis
    It's not revolutionary filmmaking. But Seducing Doctor Lewis sails by on charm and confident character acting, even if it's navigating well-charted waters.
  37. Around the World in 80 Days
    Brightly colored, spiffily designed and easy to sit through in a harmless Disney sort of way, but the comedy never accumulates any momentum.
  38. The Chronicles of Riddick
    Despite being positioned as a mold-breaker, Riddick now blends in with a sizable crowd of reluctant loner cinematic heroes, just as the movie fails to convince that it's going where no movie has gone before.
  39. The Stepford Wives
    Trying to be more antic and cuttingly funny, it misses the premise's shivery tension. The story loses us at precisely the moment it should put us in the vise.
  40. Napoleon Dynamite
    It's fairly entertaining--but not the second coming of indie comedy some notices might lead you to expect.
  41. Garfield
    The cinematic Garfield: The Movie feels like an 82-minute commercial for Garfield, The Brand rather than cinematic dumb fun.
  42. Imelda
    When a filmmaker can get Imelda Marcos, once one of the 10 richest women in the world, to pull out a Sharpie and draw a Pac-Man, she's alright by me.
  43. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
    With Cuaron leading the way, Harry has burst from the printed page to soar on-screen.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    The Story of the Weeping Camel
    The film is really just a documentary about nomads masquerading as a feature about camels. Which is why it's okay to be distracted by the details, and perhaps why its subtext--about the younger generation's real and inevitable loss to modernity--is more effective than the storyline about the camel.
  45. The Corporation
    It's good stuff: a non-fiction film on weighty issues that also manages to entertain.
  46. Deadline
    A prime example of advocacy journalism--a form often criticized but perfectly honorable. Most importantly, it gives you a chance to ruminate on some crucial questions of human error, justice and life-and-death.
  47. The Day After Tomorrow
    This often entertaining movie mixes grand, epic effects and amazing visualizations of catastrophe with a sappy family-in-crisis plot that would look hackneyed in a '60s Disney TV movie.
  48. Soul Plane
    Let's make this simple: If you spend money on Soul Plane, you've been played.
  49. Baadasssss!
    Overall, Baadasssss! succeeds marvelously at evoking the passion and frantic energy behind "Sweetback" and putting it all in the context of its politically charged era.
  50. Bukowski: Born into This
    Raw and defining documentary about the man--and the myth.
  51. The Mother
    Self-absorption is the vice of all these characters. That, not sex, is their sin--and Michell, Kureishi and their fine cast show this with a lucidity that cuts to the bone, a candor that draws blood.
  52. Saved!
    After bravely lampooning an institution so many consider beyond reproach, Saved! chickens out, imparting its most direct and lasting message in its disappointing conclusion: Don't Offend. Amen.
  53. Raising Helen
    You can take the director out of television, but sometimes you can't take television out of the director. Although Garry Marshall has been making movies for longer than he spent creating such series as "The Odd Couple," "Happy Days" and "Laverne and Shirley," his work retains the scent of the small screen.
  54. Control Room
    Control Room isn't a systematic dissection of Al Jazeera's possible biases regarding the U.S. or Israel; it's noted that Arabs almost invariably view the war with Iraq in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while Americans rarely do.
  55. Fanny and Alexander (re-release)
    If the uncut Fanny and Alexander is Bergman's greatest work, as I think, it's because it's his most inclusive. He shows almost everything: all his moods, conflicts, styles and many of his favorite actors.
  56. Love Me If You Dare
    It's a pitch-black, Grimm Brothers-style fable that enchants, frustrates and ultimately dares you to love it. Even if you don't, you'll be riveted.
  57. Stateside
    Ultimately, Stateside ends up a diluted, scattered drama--less than the sum of its parts, but with an impressive cameo list.
  58. Shrek 2
    Shrek is something of a poignant hero here and not terribly ogre-like; Myers obviously wasn't being paid per giggle generated. Diaz's Fiona feels increasingly fleshed out, while the "annoying talking animals" provide most of the laughs.
  59. Breakin' All the Rules
    Isn't exactly a good movie, but it turns out not to be bad, either. It's a romantic comedy that strains to be screwball but at least is likable.
  60. Troy
    In a league with Hollywood's top historical epics, ancient or otherwise. It's stunningly handsome film, with an equally stunning cast and engrossing story.
  61. Carandiru
    A prison movie of unusual richness and jarring power.
  62. Coffee and Cigarettes
    The draggy ones make you restless while the best ones, like the movie's title ingredients, provide a buzz that doesn't last long enough.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    A Day Without a Mexican
    Never really moves beyond its premise. It never takes us to a place of real understanding.
  64. Strayed
    Techine's terrifying setup quickly gives way to a slower and less explicit suspense, in which every step and spoken word is heavy with intrigue.
  65. A Slipping-Down Life
    Released in theaters five years after its 1999 Sundance Film Festival premiere, Kalem's film is too precious, too self-conscious and far too enamored with itself to ever have any kind of genuine emotional truth.
  66. With All Deliberate Speed
    As a document of his history, it's breathtaking, inspiring stuff. As an overlong documentary, it still manages to be inspiring, but also an uphill viewing experience.
  67. 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.
  68. New York Minute
    The cinematic equivalent of Trix. It's just made to be enjoyed by certain folks more than others. Will girls like it? More than their parents.
  69. Van Helsing
    A movie that's underwritten, overdirected, overproduced and almost constantly over-the-top. But it's also, at its best, a big tongue-in-cheek extravaganza.
  70. Super Size Me
    The movie is zippy, laugh-out-loud funny, persuasive and at times horrifying, as Spurlock undergoes his unpleasant changes with good humor and bad tummy aches.
  71. The Mudge Boy
    Simply photographed and well acted, The Mudge Boy captures "Deliverance"-level disturbing images as it takes an unsentimental approach to its characters.
  72. A Foreign Affair
    A Foreign Affair's flaws make it even more of an enigma, as graceless as it is endearing.
  73. Seeing Other People
    Whatever the film lacks in presentation, it makes up for in laughs and ensemble performances that sing.
  74. Superstar in a Housedress
    It's an engrossing peek at an era that now seems as meteoric, crazy and distant as the Roaring Twenties.
  75. Envy
    Envy is a shaggy dog-poop story that'll make you wish you could spray something at the screen to make it disappear.
  76. Laws of Attraction
    It's a middling film that wastes a lot of good opportunities, as well as two fine, charming co-stars.
  77. Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius
    It was Mark Twain who famously said, "Golf is a good walk spoiled." I'm telling you that Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius is 120 minutes wasted.
  78. Since Otar Left
    Though Bertuccelli's film orbits around a lie, the story is really less about deception and suspense than it is a moving portrait of female and familial bonds.
  79. The Saddest Music in the World
    It's a work for specialized tastes: for audiences who adore old movies, dark jokes and some high camp.
  80. Godsend
    Downright scary in some places, Godsend might be more potent if it wasn't watered down by religious trope predictability.
  81. Mean Girls
    Though not a perfect comedy, it manages to be quite often laugh-out-loud funny. The film's strong cast, including scene-stealing "SNL"er Tim Meadows as the school principal, also helps smooth out most of the rough edges.
  82. 13 Going on 30
    Plays like it was made by people who are 30 going on 13. The movie is as flighty and mixed up as the adolescent girl at its center.
  83. Man on Fire
    Man on Fire, which starts off as a good example of super-glitz moviemaking, gradually turns into a movie on fire -- another helter-skelter, big-studio spending spree. Too bad. It could use a lot more of Walken, Fanning and some more honest drama.
  84. The Twilight Samurai
    Twilight is a great samurai film in the way that "Unforgiven," "The Gunfighter" or "Will Penny"--all muted, somber films about aging gunfighters--are great westerns.
  85. The Agronomist
    This film--one of the best and most memorable documentaries of the year so far--brings that truth-teller to us once again.
  86. Kill Bill: Vol. 2
    For those seeking the vibrant innovation of Tarantino's first movies or the sheer rush of "Kill Bill, Vol. 1," Vol. 2 feels like a dulled blade.
  87. Connie and Carla
    Vardalos and Collette have mighty pipes, but it's Collette who moves with the confidence and flair of a musical theater veteran. Watching this film, I found myself caring less and less about the fairly predictable and safe story and waiting impatiently for the next number.
  88. A Thousand Peace Clouds Encircle the Sky
    By embracing a static plot, making Gerardo a depressed Robotron and Mexico City a ghost town, Hernandez only succeeds in alienating us, even while focusing on the most universal of themes: Breaking up is hard to do.
  89. Lana's Rain
    This genuinely ambitious and accomplished Chicago production does have strong points, not the least of which is Lana herself. When the fiery, emotionally transparent Orlenko lets her talent and presence pour down on Lana's Rain, the movie springs to life.
  90. Young Adam
    It's a movie drama with a surface so bleak and an interior so hot with eroticism that it twists your guts to watch it.
  91. The Punisher
    In a case study of how to screw up a simple, powerful revenge story, director Jonathan Hensleigh punishes audiences with an unbearably sluggish action movie that requires the word "action" to be placed in quotes.
  92. The Alamo
    A professionally made movie, just not an essential one. There's little fresh or provocative here, and if you can't be shaken by this story, why bother?
  93. The Girl Next Door
    In the end it's not the tricks that elevate this movie. It's the acting.
  94. The Whole Ten Yards
    A big, empty picture full of star turns, artificial energy and jokes that don't quite work, even if stars Willis and Perry do their best to slam them across.
  95. Ella Enchanted
    The movie's computer-generated castles, magic visuals and sloppy effects echo a low-budget fantasy movie on cable. It's glossy, shiny candy that tastes oddly familiar yet lacks sugary punch.
  96. I'm Not Scared
    A virtuoso piece of dark storytelling.
  97. Johnson Family Vacation
    Johnson Family Vacation is simply a bad trip.
  98. Hellboy
    Hellboy's adventures may take him to you-know-where and back, but the movie remains in limbo.
  99. Home on the Range
    Isn't good satire or good slapstick. It does have those lyrical, catchy Menken tunes, and the film perks up whenever Raitt or lang sing one of them. But much of this movie is deadly.
  100. The Prince and Me
    It's one of those movies where talented filmmakers waste time with stale, phony material.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »