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. Christopher Robin
    The core human/bear connection is treated with respect. Pooh’s wisdom and kindness cannot be denied. The same impulses worked for the two “Paddington” movies, God knows. Christopher Robin isn’t quite in their league, but it’s affecting nonetheless.
  2. Day of the Dead
    It's bankrupt in terms of imagination. All he (Romero) does is place his zombies in the basement of a missile silo and have a few crazed military types scream at the zombies and at each other. End of movie. [03 Sept 1985, p.5C]
    • Chicago Tribune
  3. Total Recall
    From first to last frame, Total Recall is in your face. Its rather elegant little science-fiction story is as suffocated as the Martians are. The director has violated his own movie, going so far over the top he's still out there-weightless. [1 June 1990, Friday, p.C]
    • Chicago Tribune
  4. Wonder Woman 1984
    It’s a moderately diverting sequel. That means it’s also a distinct drop down from the 2017 origin story.
  5. Body of War
    It’s uneven and, in many instances, avoidably cheesy.
  6. Ophelia
    Ridley is at her best in scenes with Watts, as both their characters are strong but must deal with romantic blindness. The film also takes some liberties with Gertrude’s story, adding a level that fits a modern telling.
  7. The Heat
    At its sharpest, The Heat actually moves and banters like a comedy, with sharply timed and edited dialogue sequences driven by a couple of pros ensuring a purposeful sense of momentum.
  8. Bad Times at the El Royale
    Like Tarantino, Goddard is a clever structuralist. He attracts strong actors, and lets them stretch out and try things, and gives them juicy dialogue.
  9. To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar
    OK, it's a formula picture, but the ingredients are lively and combined with style by director Beeban Kidron.
  10. Machete
    It's outlandishly gory and bluntly political, the latter being more interesting than the former. It wears out its welcome, though, long before la revolucion and sequels are promised.
  11. The Visit
    The very strong performances in this low-budget film deserve a better narrative structure to strut their stuff.
    • Chicago Tribune
  12. Illuminata
    A gloriously giddy movie about theater, love and artifice, an unabashed art film.
  13. Under solen
    Swedish cinema has been famous for a number of things: beautiful actresses, fine sexy psychological dramas, natural settings, cinematic bawdiness and a touch of melancholy. Under the Sun fits that profile well.
  14. In Her Shoes
    A great big wad of chick-lit gum, In Her Shoes gets by on the skill of its players.
  15. The Governess
    The film, despite some over-obvious stretches, is mostly sad, lovely, moving, haunting. It's a striking and promising debut from a fine new filmmaker. [21 Aug 1998]
    • Chicago Tribune
    • 60 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Tomorrowland
    At times Tomorrowland plays like such a throwback to those sweetly naive, low-rent, live-action Disney matinees of the '60s and '70s, George Clooney is like a Fred MacMurray with gravitas, gruff and grizzle, predictably warming up to a young dreamer (a terrific Britt Robertson) of cheer and vision.
  17. Point Break
    At her best—and even in a hand-me-down project like Point Break—Bigelow is a uniquely talented, uniquely powerful filmmaker. Where the male action directors are still playing with toys-with dolls and models and matte shots-Bigelow has tapped into something primal and strong. She is a sensualist of genius in this most sensual of mediums.
  18. Days of Thunder
    Days of Thunder, the latest Tom Cruise movie, which is a flimsy but nonetheless compelling story of a hot-shot amateur race car driver who wants to make it in the big-time world of championship stock car racing. Good writing by Robert Towne and a host of strong supporting performances complement the on-the-track visuals of director Tony Scott in giving us a sense of the leap of faith that is required by drivers at this level. [29 Jun 1990, p.C]
    • Chicago Tribune
    • 60 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    What Would Jesus Buy?
    It’s a wickedly effective indictment of America’s consumer compulsion, our mindless shopping and the multinational corporations controlling it all.
  20. Protocols of Zion
    In the end, Protocols of Zion is all context--a bit here about Father Coughlin, a minute there about the Holocaust, a stint with "The Passion" and a brief shot of Levin watching the beheading of Daniel Pearl--no soul.
  21. At Middleton
    Small as it is, the film itself functions as a catchy, bittersweet waltz. You've heard it before, but the dancers are fun to watch.
  22. Sea Fever
    Sea Fever only momentarily touches the highest registers of operatic bloody horrors and outlandish fantasy sci-fi. Rather, it remains in the realm of the moral, the ethical, the human-scaled losses and decisions, which makes for just as, if not more, torturous personal quandaries. It's an absorbing (if sometimes muted) wrestle with the notions of ethics and infection, in a moment that couldn't be more appropriate.
  23. Brothers at War
    Made with the full cooperation of the Pentagon, Brothers at War makes the war on-screen seem eminently winnable, eminently noble. Rademacher's desire to prove himself to himself, and to his soldier brothers, may stir different reactions among different audience members. And that's as it should be.
  24. RED
    Red starts repeating itself and spinning its wheels and looking for an ending, well before the ending arrives. The actors have considerable fun with it, though.
  25. Rules Don't Apply
    It would still be a stinker even if it wasn't cloaked in a dark shroud of cultural and political relevancy. It's just that bad.
  26. Never Been Kissed
    Never Been Kissed features a fierce tug of war between the charm of Drew Barrymore and the stupidity of the script.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Debut
    Delightful coming-of-age film that becomes universal by way of its subject matter.
  28. Interview with the Assassin
    Neil Burger's sharply conceived, inventive movie is a highly involving piece of work.
  29. Happy Accidents
    Doesn't have the negative qualities of many big-studio romantic comedies, but it doesn't quite take flight.
    • Chicago Tribune
  30. Spartan
    Mamet being Mamet, the story has far greater repercussions than whether the kidnap victim will be returned to safety. This is a tale of grand conspiracies, formidable forces, shadow warfare; the more that is revealed, the higher the stakes become.
  31. 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.
  32. The Blues Brothers
    An exceptional comedy...Car wrecks and blues-related music galore in the best movie ever made in Chicago. [11 July 1980, p.3-8]
    • Chicago Tribune
    • 60 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Coffy
    Set the standard for the black woman (Pam Grier) as the aggressor in motion pictures. [04 May 2012, p.C3]
    • Chicago Tribune
  34. Analyze This
    Maybe the problem with Analyze This is that it isn't enough of a Ramis movie. [5 Mar 1999]
    • Chicago Tribune
  35. They Came Together
    Occasionally very funny, and moderately funny the rest of the time. In mathematical terms that adds up to pretty funny or "funny enough."
  36. Isn't It Romantic
    There’s not much kick to Isn’t It Romantic, even after it goes over the rainbow. It gets by, and commercially it may well be a modest hit — but has more to do with Valentine’s Day timing than the film itself.
  37. Red Dragon
    Red Dragon is very much a product, and a superior one, of our times. So is Anthony Hopkins' top-notch fiend, the bad doctor.
  38. The Beaver
    Director Jodie Foster's film reasserts the feverish, defiant, often gripping talent of actor Mel Gibson.
  39. Time and Tide
    Gives you your money's worth and then some.
    • Chicago Tribune
  40. Manic
    This clear-eyed, low-budget drama is populated by troubled teens whose stories aren’t packaged in neat little bows. Their histories are sad, their feelings raw, their futures uncertain.
  41. Calendar Girls
    It creates a strong sense of a living, breathing community, and you root for its affectionately drawn characters as they experience the giddiness of triumph without forgetting the project's bittersweet inspiration.
  42. Gray's Anatomy
    The movie Gray's Anatomy demonstrates that fully stimulating the senses isn't the same as fully engaging them. Gray still begins talking in his trademark plaid shirt with a notebook and glass of water at his table, but soon Soderbergh is sending him on a Disney ride of scenery changes, lighting effects and moody music. [1 August 1997]
    • Chicago Tribune
  43. The Iceman
    So it's a bit squishy at the center. But the film is sleek, purposeful and extremely well acted.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Aeronauts
    Playing a pair of complementary trailblazers that start off on the wrong foot, the duo hand-in-hand elevates Harper’s 1862-set, based-on-a-true-story film, from a flimsy action-adventure to something worth watching on the biggest possible screen, even if it operates on a handful of clichés with little character-based substance to speak of.
  45. The Godfather: Part III
    An air of embarrassing familiarity hangs over the entire project, as if it were a story told by an aging relative not quite aware of how many times, and how much better, he has been over the same material before. [25 Dec 1990, Tempo, p.1]
    • Chicago Tribune
  46. Trust
    His (Schwimmer) film deserves some attention for the remarkable performance from Liana Liberato as Annie.
  47. What About Bob?
    A broadly played, by-the-numbers comedy that pits your consummate classic nut case against your quintessential screwed-up shrink. [17 May 1991]
    • Chicago Tribune
  48. Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw
    Vanessa Kirby of “The Crown” and “Mission: Impossible — Fallout” is the primary reason “Hobbs & Shaw” rises above pure formula and borderline-contemptible familiarity.
  49. Wayne's World 2
    Wayne's World 2 may not be much of a movie, but at least it's funny. And, hey, what else does it have to be? What do you want from a movie? Blood? Rock on, Wayne. Party hearty, Garth. [10 Dec 1993, p.A]
    • Chicago Tribune
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Go for Zucker
    It remains a diverting, mildly entertaining movie, far short of provoking the controversy (or hysterical laughter) it apparently prompted during its release in Germany.
  51. Gifted
    This contrived mashup of "Proof" (earth-shaking algorithms), "Kramer vs. Kramer" (nerve-wracking custody battles) and "Little Man Tate" really isn't much.
  52. Lone Survivor
    Wahlberg remains one of our most reliable and least actorly of movie stars, innately macho but vulnerable enough to seem like a human being caught in an inhuman situation.
  53. Bandits
    The picture is written and acted as a lark and a romp.
  54. Rare Birds
    Rendered bland and frustrating by its endless attempts to make the odd odder.
  55. Treasure Planet
    Combining cutting-edge computer animation with traditional two-dimensional characters, Treasure Planet pops off the screen, reviving Stevenson's adventure with surprising accuracy.
  56. House of Gucci
    We often take a talent like Scott’s for granted. He’s truly gifted in the realm of period pictures, all kinds; next up is a Napoleon epic starring Joaquin Phoenix. In House of Gucci, he sees the material as a cautionary, globe-trotting tale of greed, no less, no more. The movie does the job without diving too far beneath any of its lovely surfaces.
  57. Middle Men
    Who would have believed a film with this much skin and reckless, life-threatening excess could end up a rather dull muddle?
  58. Being the Ricardos
    Sorkin’s approach is to focus on the things that are happening rather than to inquire as to the contours of Lucy or Desi’s internal monologues, and so they remain unknowable, moving through a biopic that offers little more than an exercise in re-enactment.
  59. Bad Moms
    Bad Moms keeps settling for less than it should, given the talent on screen. It's lazy, and tonally indistinct; half the time you wish it went further, and risked something with the Kunis character. The other half of the time you may find yourself frustrated with the puerile caricatures filling in the margins.
  60. Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again
    Much like its predecessor, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again is escapist fluff of the highest order — joyful, filled with beloved pop songs and incredibly bizarre. Go ahead and treat yourself to this raucous seaside summer confection, you deserve it.
  61. Nell
    There's something so charged and beautiful about Jodie Foster's performance as a Smoky Mountains wild child in Nell that it carries you past a lot of glossy bumps in the movie. [23 Dec 1994, p.C]
    • Chicago Tribune
  62. True Romance
    A stupid, stylized road picture. [10 Sept 1993]
    • Chicago Tribune
  63. Celeste and Jesse Forever
    Jones is first-rate (and her fellow writer McCormack is fun as the wild-eyed pot dealer, Skillz). The film has a conventional fake-documentary look, but underneath it is an honest concern about how to learn to treat people well and kindly after the end. Or to get to an ending, or a new beginning, in the first place.
  64. Under the Same Moon (La misma luna)
    An estimated 4 million Latinas leave one or more children behind when they travel north to find work. They deserve a more nuanced film, but this one’s often affecting.
  65. Fantasia 2000
    Though not as good or as massively innovative as its predecessor, is still a mountainous undertaking.
    • Chicago Tribune
  66. The Perfect Storm
    Unabashedly designed to blow its audience away.
  67. Only the Strong Survive
    The frustrating part is that Only the Strong Survive includes at least as many mundane moments as soul-stirring ones -- and the film isn't much more than a collection of moments.
  68. Big Eden
    By creating a kind of politically correct version of Andy Griffith's "Mayberry," director Bezucha has drained the movie not only of bigotry but also of dramatic conflict.
    • Chicago Tribune
  69. The Rundown
    Has what we usually want to see in movies like this: bravura action, tongue-in-cheek humor, but most of all attitude.
  70. Ping Pong
    There's nothing particularly original or striking about Ping Pong except its style. It's a breezy, likable story, and the director here, Fumihiko Sori, obviously enjoys his work.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Gunnin' for That #1 Spot
    Yauch clearly understands this world, but his film would have profited from looking more deeply at fewer players.
  72. Beowulf
    Beowulf is all right as far as it goes, and it goes pretty far for a PG-13 rating: Dismemberment, “300”-style blood globules comin’ atcha, and a digitally futzed and, for all practical purposes, completely naked!!!
  73. White Boy Rick
    Director Yann Demange's film White Boy Rick balances these details, both outlandish and intimate, carefully.
  74. The Last Mimzy
    The sense of the unknown that "Padgett" created are largely absent. And the movie fails to supply us with an antagonist to work up some dramatic conflict. Nor are the toys themselves very interesting and Mimzy is a toy bunny of no distinction.
  75. Breakfast on Pluto
    Some road pictures take you somewhere. Breakfast on Pluto, from its archly poetic title on down, promises a lulu. Yes, well. Promises, promises.
  76. Spider-Man 3
    You want big wows with this sort of entertainment, and the wows here are medium.
  77. Mission: Impossible II
    Blanks, in a sense, are what M:I-2 is firing. You see the flash, you hear the bang, but the impact never comes.
  78. Mom and Dad
    Mom and Dad may be a blood-soaked lark of uneven quality, but it has the good sense to use Reagan Youth’s punk anthem “Anytown” as an accompaniment to Cage’s parental … change of heart, let’s call it.
  79. Unbroken
    Rightly, Jolie didn't want to tell the man's entire life story. But as is, at too-convenient dramatic junctures, the screenplay darts back into flashbacks of Zamperini's childhood or young adulthood, when we should really be sticking with the crisis at hand.
  80. 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.
  81. The Living Daylights
    In The Living Daylights, Dalton establishes his claim to the role; in the films that will follow, he'll have the chance to dig deeper.
  82. The Shallows
    The climactic battle of wits between human and shark leads to a conclusion that got the audience whooping pretty good. The rest of it's OK.
  83. The Experiment
    For all its slickness, is an R-rated version of "Survivor," "Big Brother" or any number of reality-TV shows that present voyeurism as entertainment and exploitation as insight.
  84. Jin Roh: The Wolf Brigade
    I liked the idea of the movie more than the movie itself -- though sections of it are mind-blowing.
    • Chicago Tribune
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Waking the Dead
    By the time of Fielding's and Sarah's final, gooey encounter, she's not the only one who needs waking.
  86. 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.
  87. The Best Man Holiday
    A far more Tyler Perry-ish mixture of comedy and tragedy than the easygoing "Best Man" was, back in the pre-Perry movie era.
  88. Copying Beethoven
    Copying Beethoven, at its best, is a sort of grand cinema opera of the composer's life and music.
  89. Better Than Chocolate
    Despite its familiar trappings, Better Than Chocolate turns out to be quite enjoyable, thanks to some very engaging acting, a few involving subplots and an energy that must be credited to director Anne Wheeler. [27 Aug 1999, p.I]
    • Chicago Tribune
  90. I Smile Back
    While it's a cliche to praise a performance requiring some harsh, fairly explicit on-screen behavior and interactions, Silverman's doing the opposite of grandstanding here.
  91. Tower Heist
    For what it is - recessionary wish-fulfillment escapism, with a lot of highly skilled familiar faces in its amply qualified cast - it's fun.
  92. Untamed Heart
    Tony Bill directs a fresh and only occasionally too purple script by Tom Sierchio. [12 Feb 1993, p.C]
    • Chicago Tribune
  93. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
    By the second hour of The Battle of the Five Armies, the visual approach becomes a paradox: monotonously dynamic epic storytelling.
  94. Army of Darkness
    But here's the problem: Bruce Campbell's character is a complete stiff, and so is everyone else he meets who isn't a special effect. The result is that we couldn't care less who wins any battle in the movie no matter how inventively photographed. What about a love interest? Embeth Davidtz, as the lady who's waiting, doesn't have a sexy scene in the movie. [19 Feb 1993, p.C]
    • Chicago Tribune
  95. Anywhere But Here
    These are real characters, fully observed, gutsily written, beautifully acted by the two leads.
  96. Happenstance
    The movie is funny, but it's also touching and poetic -- and Bertin's scenes are devastating.
  97. Winter Solstice
    All three men turn in superb and understated performances.
  98. 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.
  99. Godzilla vs. Kong
    Even if Godzilla vs. Kong feels more a tad more mecha than human, it satisfies nonetheless. The MonsterVerse remains a better-than-average franchise, pulling enough variations on its theme of Titans, clashing, to keep on keepin’ on.
  100. Cry Freedom
    The stirring, somewhat too earnest story of a white newspaper editor in racist South Africa who rallied to defend black activist Steve Biko, who was beaten to death in jail in 1977. The film is weighted to the story of the editor (Kevin Kline)-his education about Biko, his subsequent determination to spread the word of the widespread bigotry in South Africa and his adventure story of his family fleeing their native land before they were all jailed for treason. Directed by Richard Attenborough (Gandhi) in the same noble, yet effective manner. [06 Nov 1987, p.41]
    • Chicago Tribune
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