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. The Cider House Rules
    A deliberately old-fashioned picture that succeeds in nearly everything it tries to do.
    • Chicago Tribune
  2. Cradle Will Rock
    Cradle Will Rock is the masterpiece that wasn't, a magnificent opportunity blown to hell.
    • Chicago Tribune
  3. Diamonds
    Kirk Douglas' performance...is so strong and inspiring it's a shame there isn't a better movie around it.
    • Chicago Tribune
  4. The Green Mile
    On many levels, it hits its marks -- but it still misses the impact of some shorter, less-ambitious movies that play with our emotions more deftly or deeply, walk their miles, deadly or not, with a lighter, faster, more confident tread.
    • Chicago Tribune
  5. Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo
    Custom-designed for 13 year-olds, laden with broad sight gags, gross sound effects and a bowlful of potty jokes.
    • Chicago Tribune
  6. Stir of Echoes
    A horror movie with a Hitchcockian veneer of the everyday, a story that taps into our fear not only of the paranormal but also of insanity and the secret evil that may lie beneath ordinary lives.
  7. Clouds of May
    This subtle, beautifully shot film is a gently ironic study of the relationship between a Turkish filmmaker, who has returned to his country home to make an independent movie, and his elderly father, whom he has recruited as an actor. [13 Oct 2000, p.L]
    • Chicago Tribune
  8. Agnes Browne
    A bawdy comedy that convincingly celebrates the resilience of the urban poor and the power of friendship in the teeth of despair.
    • Chicago Tribune
  9. The End of the Affair
    Few recent movie romances have a more chilling and peculiar feel -- and a more sobering aftertaste -- than Neil Jordan's heart-rendingly cold adaptation of Affair.
    • Chicago Tribune
  10. A Map of the World
    Strangely unmoving. So what went wrong?
  11. Holy Smoke
    As much fun as anything director/co-writer Jane Campion has ever filmed. Holy Smoke lets it all hang out.
    • Chicago Tribune
  12. Sweet and Lowdown
    Exquisitely designed, lovingly executed, beautifully scored and played, every hair and note in place, it's a movie full of irony, passion and bluesy riffs.
  13. Tumbleweeds
    This smart, hardscrabble, very likable film has a heart and spirit all its own: a rollicking, earthy flair and lusty intelligence.
  14. Ride with the Devil
    At a time when new westerns are in short supply, Devil a sight for sore eyes.
  15. End of Days
    An overblown, overspectacular, oversold movie without an original idea in its head.
    • Chicago Tribune
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Toy Story 2
    You can't ask for a family film to do more than Toy Story 2. It's smart and playful enough to entertain adults, yet it never aims above the heads of kids.
  17. Flawless
    In making a movie that preaches love for odd ducks, Schumacher has turned Flawless into the oddest duck of all.
    • Chicago Tribune
  18. The World Is Not Enough
    There's the script -- and that's the problem.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Sleepy Hollow
    Visually sumptuous and playfully creepy.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    All About My Mother
    Generous in spirit and always engaging as it demonstrates that no matter how difficult life may become, there's no excuse for being drab.
    • Chicago Tribune
  21. Mansfield Park
    Why should we keep seeing Austen fresh, through our own, modern eyes? Because she's a writer who has never really left our field of vision. And, as this new Mansfield Park proves again, she never will.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Liberty Heights
    Few mainstream films portray the religiousness or ethnicity of characters with such detail, warmth and humor as Liberty Heights.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Dogma
    Smith's strongest suit is writing dialogue that slips smart insights in between pop-culture references and raunchy language.
  24. Felicia's Journey
    A rare example of a literary film that preserves the best of its source while creatively filling up on it.
    • Chicago Tribune
  25. Anywhere But Here
    These are real characters, fully observed, gutsily written, beautifully acted by the two leads.
  26. Where's Marlowe?
    Although Where's Marlowe abounds with many supposedly clever ideas, it's about as badly made as anything you'll see anywhere on television.
  27. The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc
    Such a sour, mindlessly inflated experience that seeing it may temporarily put you off historical movies.
  28. Light It Up
    This is a good-hearted movie that unfortunately is wildly implausible and makes no sense.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Pokémon: The First Movie - Mewtwo Strikes Back!
    The sense that the movie serves mostly to showcase a slew of purchasable cartoon figures loses nothing in the translation.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    The Bachelor
    Too bad the movie concentrates on the male point of view because it kicks to life when Zellweger is on screen.
    • Chicago Tribune
  31. The Bone Collector
    Two gifted co-stars, Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie, and the highly imaginative thriller specialist Phillip Noyce lend some luster and credibility to another borderline-absurd scenario.
    • Chicago Tribune
  32. Train of Life
    A fairy tale comedy with the Holocaust as the background, a collision of terror and community, death and beauty.
  33. The Insider
    This is a first-class muckraking melodrama: an admirable picture.
  34. American Movie
    Of all the many documentaries that take you along on a movie shoot, one of my all-time favorites is this delightfully scrappy, sometimes poignant, often hilarious show.
    • Chicago Tribune
  35. The Legend of 1900
    The sort of movie that both rewards and tries your patience.
    • Chicago Tribune
  36. Beefcake
    Much to enjoy in this potpourri of silly fun and forbidden games, but a bit less ambition and a tad more focus might have helped.
    • Chicago Tribune
    • 24 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    The Suburbans
    The storyline isn't coherent, the music stinks, the characters are one-dimensional, the dialogue is insipid and it is neither funny nor romantic.
  38. Music of the Heart
    Wonderful spirit, humanity and humor.
  39. House on Haunted Hill
    Contains too little of the original's campy spirit and too many whistles, bells, explosions and screams.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Princess Mononoke
    Rarely does any film, animated or otherwise, immerse you in such a vivid landscape and engage your senses so strongly.
  41. Being John Malkovich
    Weird to the max, smart, sneaky as a Wall Street pickpocket and revved up with cruel wit and brazen imagination, Being John Malkovich is a dark movie comedy that you couldn't forget if you tried.
    • Chicago Tribune
  42. Three to Tango
    Television sitcom-style directing and writing.
  43. Body Shots
    Like an episode of "Friends" where the entire cast has been given aphrodisiacs and locked up.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Crazy in Alabama
    Although Banderas occasionally shows flashes of style, individual elements too often go together like grits in a puff pastry.
  45. The Best Man
    Largely a disappointment.
  46. Bringing Out the Dead
    Blazes up constantly with a stunning, off-kilter brilliance, an incandescent force that sometimes explodes the space between us and the screen.
    • Chicago Tribune
  47. Show Me Love
    A light, breezy, often charming little film, with a good cast playing mostly shallow characters.
    • Chicago Tribune
  48. Bats
    Perfect late-summer drive-in fare.
  49. The Story of Us
    Disturbingly lightweight and emotionally risk-free.
  50. The Source
    Like Workman's other films, it's a time capsule that sings.
  51. Joe the King
    One of my favorite U.S. fiction features at 1999's Sundance Festival.
  52. That's the Way I Like It
    Spins a fairy tale web that is hard to escape.
  53. The Straight Story
    A great, haunting film; it affects us in ways we're not used to...it is capable of both lifting our hearts and chilling us to the bone.
  54. Fight Club
    It's a genuine shocker - a dazzler of a film - a hellishly funny picture.
    • Chicago Tribune
  55. The Grandfather
    At once proudly conservative, passionately idealistic and beautifully assured.
  56. Random Hearts
    It's still strangely remote, only fitfully romantic, never really convincing.
  57. The Limey
    Intoxicatingly well-crafted entertainment about hunting down your enemy.
  58. Beyond the Clouds
    As we watch, we can sense, once again, the eye of a painter, the dreams of a poet and, tying them together, the vision of a master.
    • Chicago Tribune
    • 42 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Superstar
    From my vantage point, it doesn't include a single laugh.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Boys Don't Cry
    A stirring, emotionally true testament to foolish bravery as well as shameful evidence of the severity with which it is so often punished.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland
    Subtle lessons on friendship, materialism and cooperation along with clever touches.
    • Chicago Tribune
  62. Happy, Texas
    Don't expect a lot, and you'll probably enjoy Happy, Texas, as I did -- mostly. At the very least, Steve Zahn will make you laugh.
  63. Mystery, Alaska
    Has the potential to be much more than it is, especially with the collection of able actors on hand.
  64. Plunkett & Macleane
    Scott treats the material as if it were grist for a 30-second spot or a rowdy music video.
  65. Drive Me Crazy
    An innocuous teen film.
    • Chicago Tribune
  66. Three Kings
    A genre movie with an agenda that's too packed. Inevitably, some of the many balls it's juggling get dropped -- (but it's) one of the most entertaining and original actioners in several years.
  67. Divorce Iranian Style
    A highly provocative documentary.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    Double Jeopardy
    So nonsensical you don't understand why anyone would actually make it.
  69. Mumford
    On a direct line with the whimsical small-town comedies of the '40s and '50s.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Jakob the Liar
    I never lost awareness that I was watching actors speaking lines, not real people --a problem I didn't have in the more unreal "Life Is Beautiful."
  71. Guinevere
    A shy and depressed college graduate falls in love with a Bohemian artist, as in Woody Allen's "Manhattan."
    • Chicago Tribune
  72. Sugar Town
    Just because it's true to life doesn't mean it can sing.
  73. Romance
    A singularly cheerless trip, explicit but sterile, racy but dull.
  74. For Love of the Game
    Much of this movie seems a crock.
    • Chicago Tribune
  75. Blue Streak
    Offers two or three worthwhile laughs.
  76. Get Bruce
    This one's worth the ticket price only if you are a showbiz-aholic.
    • Chicago Tribune
  77. Lucie Aubrac
    This is one not to be missed.
  78. American Beauty
    I've got to admit it's a stunner.
    • Chicago Tribune
  79. The Minus Man
    Minimalism be damned; even a postmodern noir needs more than Minus Man gives us. So do the actors.
  80. Love Stinks
    Stewart's insistently ironic delivery of every line becomes an irritant in a movie that is already monstrously irritating.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Earth
    An extraordinary movie on many levels.
  82. Best Laid Plans
    The plot thickens and thickens and thickens until it chokes on a tangled mess of double-crosses.
    • Chicago Tribune
  83. Black Cat, White Cat
    Astonishing, crazily delightful.
  84. Stigmata
    Tom Lazarus and Rick Ramage should be ashamed to have written such nonsense.
  85. All the Little Animals
    Beautifully produced: a moving film with a fascinating story and exemplary acting.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Outside Providence
    Like Richard Linklater's "Dazed and Confused," Outside Providence reminisces vividly, recalling the era fondly but not with too much sugar.
  87. Chill Factor
    It's one of those movies that are unfortunately so technically well done, it's hard to tune out on the senseless story.
    • Chicago Tribune
  88. The 13th Warrior
    Has a remote feel. It sometimes impresses but never soars.
    • Chicago Tribune
  89. A Dog of Flanders
    It was the adult in me that wept when the movie ended. Take the kid and have a good time.
  90. The Muse
    A real gem: a deadpan fantasy that turns into one of the best pictures ever about the post-"Star Wars" studio moviemaking era.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    Dudley Do-Right
    Like an obnoxious uncle desparately trying to amuse the young'uns with poo-poo humor and dum-dum pratfalls.
  92. In Too Deep
    An oft-told tale.
    • Chicago Tribune
  93. Teaching Mrs. Tingle
    The same bland vision of teendom that's become inescapable on the small and big screens.
  94. Mickey Blue Eyes
    A limply derivative, disappointingly trivial and hokey fish-out-of-water crime comedy.
  95. Brokedown Palace
    The movie, directed by veteran Jonathan Kaplan, has enough in common with such American-in-foreign-jail movies as "Midnight Express" and the recent "Return to Paradise" to make you wonder why it ever got made.
  96. Bowfinger
    One of the best and funniest things that Martin, as writer and actor, has ever done.
  97. Detroit Rock City
    A rock 'n' roll film should be funny-crazy -- not just a big, dumb promo for some over-the-hill dudes in makeup who are trying to sell today's kids on yesterday's glory by championing deliquency.
  98. 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
  99. The Thomas Crown Affair
    Too expensive for its own good, too chic for comfort.
  100. Mystery Men
    They're a ragtag assembly for sure, and the results aren't pretty. But on a simple mission of entertainment, they get the job done.
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