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. The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle
    Musical bio of the early 20th Century dance team; their weakest. [03 Nov 2006, p.C5]
    • Chicago Tribune
  2. Office Christmas Party
    Office Christmas Party, which delights in a grotesque carnival of the worst behavior, and still has its heart firmly in the right place.
  3. Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour
    Even if Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour represents a triumph of novel distribution more than a triumph of the concert-movie form, its impact will be fascinating to chart.
  4. Me Myself I
    Far too self-absorbed a picture.
  5. Skin Deep
    There is one hilarious sight gag involving prophylactics, and one can't argue with the film's sobering message, but otherwise Ritter's character is mostly a bore. [3 March 1989, p.A]
    • Chicago Tribune
  6. Superman Returns
    Superman Returns has everything going for it except surprise.
  7. Eragon
    Eragon is a bit cheesy, but I rather liked it. It's sincere cheese... The special effects -- which include glowing-eyed heroes and villains, and flights over the mythical land of Alagaesia depicted in "dragon vision" -- are refreshing in their slightly out-of-date air.
  8. How to Make a Killing
    Ultimately, Ford hedges his bets with How to Make a Killing, and lands in an unsatisfying no man’s land.
  9. Shallow Grave
    There's something in Shallow Grave that is admirable, beyond its obvious display of youthful talent. [24 Feb 1995]
    • Chicago Tribune
  10. Austin Powers in Goldmember
    It's a shapeless, derivative-but-funny show with another loony parody plot about super-villain Dr. Evil.
  11. 200 Cigarettes
    Very much a looking-back movie; its most obvious model is "American Graffiti." But if you know that particular slice of early '80s Manhattan, you may be as amused as I was. [26 Feb 1999]
    • Chicago Tribune
  12. Man of Steel
    Snyder films the violence in Man of Steel the way he films most of the rest of the picture: Like a man chasing tornadoes and not even trying to keep subjects in frame. It's a choice, and not a bad one, necessarily — the Smallville farm scenes, in particular, respond well to the approach — but by the end it's a visually limiting one.
  13. An Affair of Love
    Halfway through, it becomes clear that the filmmakers don't know how to end the film.
    • Chicago Tribune
  14. Battle of the Sexes
    The performances of Holly Hunter and Ron Silver had something Stone’s and Carell’s lack: true drive and animal energy, a sense of athletic competitors who mean business even when they’re kidding, or saying they are.
  15. Gracie
    Dermot Mulroney takes the largest male role, that of the driven ex-soccer star and patriarch of the onscreen family. From certain angles he looks like a Shue too.
  16. Maze Runner: The Death Cure
    The script is just so-so, but Ball’s directorial eye, clear in the first “Maze Runner” film though largely AWOL in the second, saves the third and final adventure from its own bloat.
  17. Hamlet 2
    The film, which really is sloppy, slips around in terms of tone and goes every which way.
  18. Straight Outta Compton
    When the songs themselves take center stage the movie works. What remains in the wings constitutes another, fuller story.
  19. The LEGO Ninjago Movie
    Some aspects of the film are quite entertaining. Garmadon is a great character, especially as voiced by Theroux (his pronunciation of Lloyd as "Luh-Loyd" doesn't get old).
  20. The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone
    The tweaks are interesting, even if they can’t do anything about larger narrative frustrations.
  21. Lucy and Desi
    The relationship at the film’s center remains a combustible mystery.
  22. Broken English
    Cassavetes, who wrote the script, proves her skill with actors in this woozy push-and-pull of slurred compliments and shaky hopes for whatever lies beyond the next day.
  23. Betsy's Wedding
    As it is, Betsy's Wedding is pleasant fluff when Alda isn't on the screen. [22 Jun 1990, p.C2]
    • Chicago Tribune
  24. Exodus: Gods and Kings
    How you respond to the totality of Exodus: Gods and Kings will, I suspect, relate directly to how you responded to Ridley Scott's "Robin Hood" from 2010. Square, a little heavy on its feet, much of that film held me, even when its bigness trumped its goodness. Same with this one.
  25. Life or Something Like It
    It's dispiriting to see Jolie wasting herself (and a good supporting cast) on a story that requires little more than an average pretty actress who can wear clothes well and laugh and cry on cue.
  26. The Rock
    [Cage] cracks wise throughout the third act and is almost entertaining enough to make this absurdly energetic movie recommendable.
  27. Shazam!
    The best of the movie lies in its hangout factor, when Levi and Grazer are discovering what Billy can do with electricity, or when the young actors playing Billy’s step-siblings — Grace Fulton, Ian Chen, Jovan Armand and Faithe Herman —get a chance to establish a rapport.
  28. Draft Day
    Draft Day feels like a play, and I don't mean a football play. It feels like a play-play at its sporadic best, in the same way J.C. Chandor's 2011 "Margin Call" felt that way.
  29. Hamlet
    As Almereyda unrolled his modern Gotham version, the story became gripping, the characters fascinating, the events mesmerizing, the resolution shocking and piteous.
    • Chicago Tribune
  30. 12 Strong
    12 Strong sticks to the basics, without much interest in the differentiating specifics of the men involved, or anything on a geopolitical scale beyond the impulse these Special Forces veterans shared in the wake of 9/11. It seems to me a qualified, limited success.
  31. Vertical Limit
    If you were forced to judge it simply on its action-movie visual and technical elements, you'd have to count it a roaring success... . But if you lay aside that action and watch the people instead, it's a morass of dimwitted family crises and hack action-movie cliches.
  32. 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.
  33. The Sisters Brothers
    Amid this conundrum of a movie, the actors provide what the facile screenplay cannot: a human pulse, shrewdly underscored by composer Alexandre Desplat’s time-traveling musical landscape.
  34. Stomp the Yard
    The results are corny beyond measure. Yet there's something sweet about them, in part because there's something sweet about hearing the line "Congratulations! Why didn't you tell me you pledged?" outside the realm of comedy.
  35. The Other Guys
    For a good hour, this is the picture Kevin Smith was trying to make with "Cop Out."
  36. Super
    Wilson does amusingly steely work, while Page goes bonkers, giving her gleeful nut job one of the more memorable horselaughs in recent American film history.
  37. Dom Hemingway
    The material, limited payoff; the performer at the center, never less than arresting.
  38. 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
  39. Bedazzled
    As for Ramis, he's no Stanley Donen. He can make us laugh, but he can't make a movie dance.
    • Chicago Tribune
    • 60 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Keeping the Faith
    Despite scattered bits of nice writing, the movie never quite comes together.
  41. The Dark Knight Rises
    Now comes The Dark Knight Rises, which makes "The Dark Knight" look like "Dora the Explorer" and is more of a 164-minute anxiety disorder than a movie.
  42. True Stories
    Byrne is a major musical artist, as he was shown to be in his rock concert film Stop Making Sense, but as a filmmaker he has barely stretched his muscles. [31 Oct 1986, p.A]
    • Chicago Tribune
  43. Happy Accidents
    Doesn't have the negative qualities of many big-studio romantic comedies, but it doesn't quite take flight.
    • Chicago Tribune
  44. Heartbreakers
    Heartbreakers itself is something of a con game: an expensive imitation of older, better films from older, often better times.
    • Chicago Tribune
  45. Dinosaur
    Of course, you expect talking animals in a Disney cartoon; you just may not initially realize that Dinosaur is the three-dimensional equivalent of one.
    • Chicago Tribune
  46. The Thomas Crown Affair
    Too expensive for its own good, too chic for comfort.
  47. Friend Request
    It's the highest praise to describe Friend Request as "a hoot" — the kind of midnight movie best seen with a large crowd laughing and screaming along, offering words of advice or encouragement to the naive characters on screen.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    The Puffy Chair
    An enjoyable road movie that feels both comfortable and completely fresh.
  49. Surviving Christmas
    As light, fluffy, cockle-warming holiday entertainment, this thing is pretty sweet.
  50. Mule Skinner Blues
    There's nothing more uplifting than a documentary that celebrates a man's capacity to dream, and nothing more depressing than one that mocks those dreams. Stephen Earnhart's Mule Skinner Blues walks the razor's edge between these approaches.
  51. Green Book
    A crowd-pleasing hit at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, the movie may not be accurate history (welcome to the movies!). It may not even be particularly interested in one of its two main characters, for various reasons.
  52. Be Kind Rewind
    The film doesn’t hold together. But it’s the work of a real director, however fantastic his sensibility.
  53. Mother of Tears
    Mother of Tears can't rival the David Lynchian otherworldliness of "Suspiria," but at least you know you're in the hands of a director.
  54. New York, I Love You
    Provides some compensatory satisfactions, thanks mostly to the actors, as they make the most of a series of pencil sketches.
  55. The Overnight
    I like it up to a point — not a specific story point, but to a certain degree throughout. It's engaging but thin, and I couldn't buy screenwriter Brice's idea of Charlotte's antidote for her 10-year itch.
  56. Brad's Status
    When he finally learns to settle into the moment, to find contentment in the things he already experiences, it's a beautiful and quiet revelation, rendered with Mike White's singular sensitivity and gentle touch.
  57. Apollo 18
    Many will find Apollo 18 silly and derivative. It is. Yet it's also a break from the usual hyperbolic, down-your-throat brand of silly and derivative scare movies.
  58. Spies in Disguise
    A strange tonal mashup that turns the hypermasculine and hyperviolent world of glamorous spies, in the vein of James Bond or “Mission: Impossible,” and turns it into kid-friendly family entertainment.
  59. The Rum Diary
    There isn't a sophisticated or "adult" perspective to be found in The Rum Diary.
  60. World War Z
    The stakes are high and the excitement's there and the results, as previously stated, are messy but fairly entertaining.
  61. Play It to the Bone
    Fghting your heart out at the end of this movie can't win the prize or the crowd.
  62. Amen.
    Costa-Gavras' powerful, awkward Amen is a dramatically uneven historical thriller.
  63. Penelope
    I wish it were truly special instead of an interesting near-miss.
  64. Becoming
    There’s no way to experience Becoming apolitically, not now. You don’t have to consider it first-rate documentary filmmaking of any sort to feel something watching it.
  65. The Losers
    The movie is ALL revenge, all the time
    • 53 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    The Guardian
    Sometimes you want to buy an extra-large popcorn and settle in for a big budget Hollywood blockbuster replete with entertaining explosions, undemanding dialogue and completely unrealistic action sequences. If all that sounds like gloriously uncomplicated fun, The Guardian is your movie.
  67. The Commitments
    It looks like director Parker, who can be quite ambitious (Mississippi Burning, Come See the Paradise), is coasting this time, merely reworking his big hit, Fame.
  68. Silverado
    Silverado is a completely successful physical attempt at reviving the western, but its script would need a complete rewrite for it to become more than just a small step in a full-scale western revival. [10 Jul 1985, p.5]
    • Chicago Tribune
  69. Boiling Point
    Despite its title and promotion suggesting explosive action, Boiling Point is an almost leisurely thriller. It has less to do with Wesley Snipes' inner roilings than with writer-director James B. Harris' cool, sardonic view of criminology. [21 Apr 1993, p.C3]
    • Chicago Tribune
  70. 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.
  71. 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.
  72. Project X
    The drama is predictable, and the confrontations lack rational dialogue. In other words, this is just of the sort of movie that a 9-year-old would probably enjoy. [1 May 1987, p.A]
    • Chicago Tribune
  73. Late Night
    Amiable if frustrating picture.
  74. The First Purge
    The latest “Purge” is an erratic, fairly absorbing and righteously angry prequel.
  75. Winter Passing
    It's just OK. Not great. Not awful. Not particularly memorable. Not entirely forgettable. Just OK.
  76. Knives and Skin
    A different editing rhythm (and a less narcotic musical score) would substantially change the personality of this movie, for better or worse.
  77. The Apprentice
    It’s an actual, conflicted and sporadically insightful film, dramatizing what made Trump Trump at an especially impressionable period in his rise.
  78. Arctic Tale
    Watching bear cubs and walrus pups struggling to survive against increasingly tough odds, and on ever-slushier ice shelves, has both its shamelessly manipulative side and its dramatically necessary side, as handled here. This proves one thing: Unlike global warming, some stories really do have two sides.
  79. Rounders
    Lazy, predictable and even dumb about what happens away from the tables. [11 Sept 1998]
    • Chicago Tribune
  80. Him
    This movie looks so good, it’s tempting to overlook things like character, story and theme. As a purely sensorial experience of sound and image, it’s sensational. As a searing examination of the body horrors of football, fandom and fame, it’s weak.
  81. The Armstrong Lie
    The Armstrong Lie gets going, and gets pretty good, when Gibney is able to focus on the 2009 Tour de France itself, a race fraught with old rivalries and backstage dramas. It's the movie he set out to make in the beginning, after all. But getting there is tough going.
  82. Lady Jane
    There`s nothing really seriously wrong with the movie, save for the casting of Elwes. Lady Jane simply states and restates its premise, and then it`s over in a predictable manner.
  83. The Promotion
    Then there's screenwriter Steve Conrad. He's interesting. He likes his protagonists to suffer a little en route to finding a better place, and not in the usual sitcomic ways.
  84. Bullhead
    Schoenaerts is often affecting and just as often scarily intense. The film's intensity, by contrast, beams on and off.
  85. Unforgiven
    Individual scenes work, but the movie seems overstuffed-why is the Harris character necessary-and halting.
  86. 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.
  87. Avenue Montaigne
    Originally titled "Orchestra Seats," Montaigne takes a page from the "Amelie" playbook, without the fancy visuals or magical realism.
  88. Anonymous
    Anonymous is ridiculous, and like Oliver Stone's "JFK" it sells its political conspiracy theories by weight and by volume. But dull, it's not.
  89. Away We Go
    Glib and charming in roughly equal measure.
  90. Inglourious Basterds
    The result is a Jewish “Death Wish,” to borrow Pauline Kael’s description of “Marathon Man,” amped up to epoch-changing proportions, made by a gentile writer-director with an unlimited appetite for celluloid, right down to its highly flammable properties.
  91. Solomon & Gaenor
    Has a melodramatic glow.
  92. Charlie's Angels
    I wish there were as many big payoffs and clever jokes as there are Bosleys in this movie. But Stewart and company have their fun, and we have a reasonable percentage of theirs.
  93. Flannel Pajamas
    Love can be a battleground, and, despite its homey-sounding title and gentle, almost nonchalant air, Jeff Lipsky's Flannel Pajamas gives us a series of messages from the front.
  94. War, Inc.
    This script bumps along, good ideas jostling with weak, derivative ones, and Seftel doesn't seem to know which way he wants to handle the material. Also, with Cusack playing yet another soul-fried wiseacre running on emotional autopilot, the piece doesn't have much of an engine.
  95. What We Do Is Secret
    Like so many earlier movie biographies, Secret suffers from bathetic storytelling and dialogue, some of it laughable.
  96. Resurrection
    Rebecca Hall makes Maggie’s past and present states scarifyingly real. The film is often good; never for a moment is Hall’s performance anything less.
  97. Hidalgo
    A sometimes stirring, sometimes preposterous movie.
  98. 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.
  99. Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed
    The documentary is strongest when it simply lets Steve — who resembles his father, minus the poof of hair — sift through his memories. There’s a lot of regret and melancholy there. Admiration too. And legitimate anger at how the Ross name itself is no longer his own. It’s a messy and complicated story.
  100. Evil
    Bullying is not easy to watch on screen, even--or perhaps especially--if the viewer had the fortune to avoid either side of the bully/bullied equation.
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