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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    • 45 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?
    Morgan Spurlock is a living, breathing cautionary tale. Take a good, long look, kids: This is what happens when society validates really annoying people.
  2. Peace, Love, & Misunderstanding
    Keener alone finds the truth between the lines of this routine affair. She can't do much about the lines she has to say out loud, but as all first-rate screen performers realize, words are only part of the story.
  3. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
    It is passable comic book stuff, dumb and loud. Loud. LOUD.
  4. Justice League
    The breathtakingly bad Justice League, with its corny banter and terrible effects just might signify a return to that goofy Batman form.
  5. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1
    Reveals a flash or two of real filmmaking (mostly in a suggestively grotesque birthing sequence), enough to save it from pure lousiness.
  6. Get Rich or Die Tryin'
    Sheridan's ensemble ensures that "Get Rich," the film, comes to life around the edges, if not at its center.
  7. Firewall
    This movie, an efficient time-passer at least until the plot starts obsessing over the fate of the family dog, is more into gadgets than people.
  8. Mr. Brooks
    cleverly conceived and professionally executed and to hell with that. It's a serial killer movie in the dime-a-dozen era of serial killer movies, with the selling point being that the murderer is played by a movie star. This way you'll like the guy.
  9. The Deep End of the Ocean
    Should have worked on our emotions like a scalpel, made us cry and bleed. But, though it's an affecting, polished film, it's not satisfying. [12 March 1999, Friday, p.A]
    • Chicago Tribune
  10. Maid in Manhattan
    The comedy part of the equation is awfully mild, however. This is a movie that aims for warm smiles rather than belly laughs.
  11. Life as a House
    This movie lets you feel something. Like George's house, if not his life, it's built well and full of heart.
  12. The Little Vampire
    An odd little ghoul too cleaned up to survive, a bloodless vampire movie that's mostly lifeless as well.
  13. Latter Days
    An odd mix itself, of contemporary sexual realism and unabashed romantic fantasy. If "Days" works, it's mostly on a sheer fantasy level.
  14. 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.
  15. 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.
  16. Valiant
    It's perhaps the first animated kids' film that can claim to be "based on a true story."
  17. American Dreamz
    Grant, playing a variation on Simon Cowell, resident meanie on "American Idol" and its inspiration, Britain's "Pop Idol," does what's required with seedy panache. Yet the characterization, both as written and acted, lacks a spark.
  18. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
    The wastrel Sparrow ends up both overexploited and underpowered in this fourth outing.
  19. The Paperboy
    To say The Paperboy doesn't work is one thing; to say it's dull is a lie. This movie is berserk, which is more interesting than "eh."
  20. Unforgettable
    It's a uniquely feminine kind of villainy that's transfixed us since classical Hollywood, and Di Novi and Heigl understand it implicitly in order to execute it perfectly.
  21. Sniper
    The result is a strong, amoral action film. [29 Jan 1993, p.C]
    • Chicago Tribune
  22. Click
    Aside from influences such as "A Christmas Carol" and "It's a Wonderful Life," Click is so much like the Jim Carrey vehicle "Bruce Almighty"--Steve Koren and Mark O'Keefe worked on both--the writers could sue themselves for plagiarism and then write a screenplay about it.
  23. Blindness
    This film is very different: chilly, methodical, a slave to 10-ton metaphor as opposed to metaphoric provocation.
  24. Elizabeth: The Golden Age
    It is a silly film about serious matters.
  25. Pride and Glory
    Full of interesting little grace notes, and the cast is excellent, yet it grows more and more frustrating.
  26. Sweet Home Alabama
    This movie is phony, phony, phony -- from its Disneyland version of the Deep South to its pious lessons about the values of simple rural living.
  27. Jefferson in Paris
    But, as with any other Merchant Ivory film, this one provides pleasures beyond the ordinary. [07 Apr 1995]
    • Chicago Tribune
  28. Upside Down
    Without a strong narrative engine, Upside Down ends up exactly where it shouldn't go: sideways.
  29. Taken 2
    Revenge is a dish best served cold, as some Albanian dramatist once said, but Taken 2 isn't good-cold, as in steely and purposeful; it's cold as in "lost the scent."
  30. Wonder Park
    The wonders of Wonder Park are dampened by the pall of grief that the protagonist is experiencing, while the wacky amusement park antics prevent the story from going especially deep.
  31. The Distinguished Gentleman
    It has a few good laughs in it thanks to Murphy, but mainly depends for its appeal on an uncomfortable manipulation of racial stereotypes. [04 Dec 1992]
    • Chicago Tribune
  32. Step Up 3-D
    It boasts a generous exuberance and, as entertainment products go, it's surprisingly sweet.
  33. Alien Nation
    Alien Nation is a sluggish, forced and hopelessly derivative action thriller, sporadically redeemed by the wit of its stars and the velvety sheen of Greenberg's night photography.
  34. Hall Pass
    It's secondhand, vaguely resigned material. And while Sudeikis has some talent, he's not yet ready to co-anchor a feature comedy. He's no Ed Helms, in other words.
  35. The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift
    For all its crashes and flash, this is a movie that drifts away as we watch it. Muscle cars and all, it's often a waste of gas.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Sydney White
    Director Joe Nussbaum (“Sleepover”) doesn’t do much with his cast; there’s a lot of standing around as he indulges Bynes’ tendency to mug.
  37. Prom Night
    A dreary, Carrie-type shocker about a high school student seeking to kill a bunch of classmates on their prom night. Very few thrills. [01 Aug 1980, p.10]
    • Chicago Tribune
  38. Vanilla Sky
    Crowe's chilliest movie. In part this is by design. Like "Open Your Eyes," to which Crowe is mostly faithful, Vanilla Sky is a head trip that merges thriller, romance and science-fiction elements while playing with our notions of dreams and reality.
  39. The Statement
    The Statement is an older man's film, and compassion is one of its strengths; Jewison and Caine make us feel pity and terror for the victims as well.
  40. Elizabethtown
    So many romantic comedies come and go without making the slightest impression. Elizabethtown is not one of them; I found it galling.
  41. The Legend of Billie Jean
    Teenagers, who may not have seen this picture's many hero/outlaw predecessors, might like its the pop soundtrack, better-than-average acting and modest punk attire. Everyone else is likely to find Billie Jean the very thing that becomes a legend least. [22July 1985, p.3C]
    • Chicago Tribune
  42. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze
    The new film is a fast, funny, engagingly unpretentious 88 minutes that, moving between martial-arts dustups and random satirical jibes, achieves a more successful mix of action and humor than the first. There is plenty for adults here as well as children.
  43. The 15:17 to Paris
    It’s the last thing he wanted, I’m sure, but Eastwood’s latest ends up feeling like a stunt.
  44. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
    For all the splurch and head-lopping, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is monotonal. It turns its action sequences into a noisy blur.
  45. The Running Man
    Dawson, though, burrows into his role with all the zeal of a perennial second banana recognizing the opportunity of a lifetime. It's the one naturalistic performance in this cartoonish film, carrying with it the implicit authority of years of firsthand experience shaped, perhaps, by some late-night introspection. [13 Nov 1987, p.B]
    • Chicago Tribune
  46. Cut Sleeve Boys
    Despite original touches, Cut Sleeve Boys is mostly a mediocre gay-themed movie plagued by tired humor and slapdash filmmaking.
  47. Fanboys
    A genial, sloppy, minor affair, offering a smidgen of inside baseball, which includes a gag at the expense of the forgotten, late '80s Lucas-produced epic "Willow."
  48. The Rhythm Section
    The movie is made well, if you’re buying what it’s selling, and if you don’t consider a story or a script as crucial to the quality of a thriller.
  49. She-Devil
    This has to be one of the greatest casting coups and consequently blown opportunities of recent years...Streep isn't that funny in what is a frivolous role, and Barr is only mildly successful in her angry moments. [8 Dec 1989, p.A]
    • Chicago Tribune
  50. Snatched
    Snatched, more about victimhood than women running their own show, is funny here and there, but in ways that make the bulk of the formulaic material all the more frustrating.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    The Hottest State
    This self-important movie can't save itself from being disheartening.
  52. HellBent
    This isn't a particularly good movie, and it's offensive in the way mid-range low-budget slasher shows usually are. But it works better than some, largely because Etheredge-Ouzts has a more original slant and a deeper sense of character than horror movies usually allow.
  53. The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra
    Like all B-movies (or in this case, pseudo B-movies), "Skeleton" contains sparkling moments of promise and camp performance.
  54. Full Frontal
    It's a weird little movie that's amusing enough while you watch it, offering fine acting moments and pungent insights into modern L.A.'s show-biz and media subcultures. But it doesn't leave you with much.
  55. Novocaine
    The absurd meets the violent meets the droll, and we just watch from the outside, never having been drawn in by anything resembling believable feelings or behavior.
    • Chicago Tribune
  56. Just Looking
    A teen comedy wise beyond its years.
  57. 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.
  58. EuroTrip
    Finally, a teen sex comedy that's funnier than both its trailer and its outtakes. More important, Eurotrip -- with its laser-guided sex toys and infectious theme song, "Scotty Doesn't Know" -- just might be the best comedy so far this year.
  59. Kicking & Screaming
    It's Ferrell who is the vehicle, a mow-you-down comic engine, and everyone else is just along for the ride in this marginally effective, starkly unoriginal family comedy.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Madea's Family Reunion
    Gussied up for the big time, Perry now is aiming himself squarely at a mainstream, middle-class female audience -- with some sops for their dates.
  61. Smokin' Aces
    This film was not based on a video game, but that's the vibe and the aesthetic at work here: YEAH! KILL!, followed by a few muttered expressions of the horror, the horror.
  62. Mean Machine
    Sports movies are never easy to pull off, but Skolnick does a fine job of balancing the drama with the on-field action.
  63. Secret in Their Eyes
    Writer-director Billy Ray's Americanized redux isn't a disaster, exactly; it keeps its head down and does its job. But nothing quite gels, or clicks, or makes itself at home in its adopted setting.
  64. Imperfections
    As a caper, it’s a breezy hour and 43 minutes of well-done indie filmmaking. And the look and sound of the film (a driving funk-inflected score from Singer that says “heist!”) is right.
  65. Cocoon: The Return
    As directed by Daniel Petrie from the slightest excuse for a story by Stephen McPherson and Elizabeth Bradley, Cocoon: The Return amounts to little more than a desperate effort to fill a couple of hours of screen time, to which the commercially potent title can be affixed. [23 Nov 1988, p.C1]
    • Chicago Tribune
  66. Our Father
    At the moment, far too many true crime documentaries function as little more than an episode of “Dateline.” They report information but lack analysis or even thoughtful ideas about how to use the medium of film to tell a story at once shocking and infuriating. Such is the case with Our Father on Netflix.
  67. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me
    The details of this Twin Peaks are slight and repetitious, and their meanings are numbingly obvious. Behind small town America's facade of sweetness and light, there exist darkness and evil-news that is a day late and about $7.50 short. [28 Aug 1992]
    • Chicago Tribune
  68. Angel Has Fallen
    At the heart of the “Has Fallen” franchise is the affection between men, and Butler has always shared the best chemistry with his male co-stars. That spark in “Angel” comes from Butler’s scenes with Nick Nolte, as his father, Clay, a veteran living off the grid.
  69. The Mother
    The second half of The Mother settles for the usual. But getting there makes for a fairly diverting series of melees in the name of child protection, with services rendered by a tough-love mom who does it all.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Stella
    Stella is a mother-daughter, best friend, Mom-must-sacrifice-all movie that will surely force a good many members of the audience to weep, sob, bawl, blubber, whimper, lament and/or shed a few tears. Yes, folks, this one's a bit lugubrious. [9 Feb 1990, p.J]
    • Chicago Tribune
  71. Country Strong
    My God is this script predictable. Each relapse and betrayal shows up announced, and then announced again, a little louder, by the dialogue equivalent of an aggravating doorman.
  72. The Good Mother
    The strongest minutes in The Good Mother belongs to Chicago-trained Karen Aldridge. She takes care of business so well in her monologue about her character’s grief and loss, her exit from the narrative becomes just one more oh-well factor in an indifferent Albany noir.
  73. Rampage
    Rampage is a drag.
  74. The Expendables
    At one point Rourke delivers a monologue about his time in Bosnia, and the conviction the actor brings to the occasion throws the movie completely out of whack. What's actual acting doing in a movie like this?
  75. Adventures in Babysitting
    Adventures in Babysitting not only panders to expectations but also attempts to exploit fears and prejudices. [03 July 1987, p.A]
    • Chicago Tribune
  76. The Kid
    Falls flat on its face.
  77. S.W.A.T.
    Technically clever but emotionally bankrupt...it's an almost laughably opportunistic movie.
  78. How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
    I can't think of much that might happen on a date evening that could be more annoying than this movie.
  79. Return of the Living Dead II
    ROTLD II may be junk, but at least in the hands of director Ken Wiederhorn it's efficient, well-filmed junk. [18 Jan 1988, p.7C]
    • Chicago Tribune
  80. Like Father Like Son
    Like Father Like Son has the cheap, florid look of a rejected television pilot, and the same air of anything-for-a-laugh desperation. [02 Oct 1987, p.J]
    • Chicago Tribune
  81. The Bedroom Window
    The Bedroom Window is not at all an unskillful film, but that, in some ways, is what is most discouraging about it: Hanson is more than good enough to do something of his own. In its drive to imitate the past, Hollywood is leaving itself without a present. [16 Jan 1987, p.L]
    • Chicago Tribune
    • 45 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience
    The film is awkwardly stitched together from candy-gloss arena concert footage and somewhat grimier-looking backstage/limo/hotel room moments. There is no attempt to make it all hang together as an organic whole.
  83. Above the Law
    The action sequences are sleek and strong enough, but the story that chains them together is too ambitious for its own good
  84. The Dogwalker
    Gordon, she of the Selma Diamond voice and mournful glare, is by far the most interesting aspect in a picture that might be termed unreleasably dull, if it weren't in fact in release at the moment en route to DVD.
  85. Rules of Engagement
    Written with such murderous gravity, certainty and gloomy solemnity - such an absence of real life or feeling - that it tends to kill our interest.
  86. Levity
    A film of almost paralyzing gravity and large ambitions that, almost inevitably, it can't quite meet.
  87. Bangkok Dangerous
    Always watchable and cinematically lively, but it never quite engages the emotions -- despite torrents of sentimentality and would-be heart-tugging scenes interspersed with the carnage.
  88. The Scorpion King
    A dumb movie, but it's also a knowing one: a cheap castle of lewd trivia and corny excitement built on The Rock.
  89. Bootmen
    What it gains in fun, the film loses in credibility, as the production number itself more closely resembles a high-priced Las Vegas extravaganza than a quickly organized charity event.
    • Chicago Tribune
  90. Necessary Roughness
    Hector Elizondo and Robert Loggia are fine as the team's coaches. [27 Sept 1991, p.C2]
    • Chicago Tribune
  91. Queenpins
    As a sort-of-true-crime comedy, spinning a yarn of middle-class larceny and extreme, deeply unlawful couponing, it’s likely to offend no one but the most grimly law-abiding consumers among us. But like the people it’s about, you want more.
  92. Legends of the Fall
    There's a lot of beauty and excitement in Legends of the Fall - not least from the actors. [13 Jan 1995]
    • Chicago Tribune
  93. The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
    The Incredible Burt Wonderstone serves as a reminder that everything in a film has a chance to go wrong before a film begins filming. In other words: It's the script, stupid.
  94. Rails & Ties
    All the astute acting in the world can’t bring such a preposterous story into the station on time and intact.
  95. K-9
    However you look at it, K-9, a crime comedy starring Jim Belushi, Mel Harris and a German shepherd named Jerry Lee, barks up a few of the right trees. Its moments of hilarity are due entirely to the dog, whose orchestrated growls and grimaces could start a whole new school of dog acting. [28 Apr 1989, p.N]
    • Chicago Tribune
  96. Miracles from Heaven
    While the film runs a bit too long, and the heartstring tugging becomes overwrought, overall, this family melodrama about a devastating illness and the freak accident that cured it is surprisingly effective, even for those of little faith.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    School for Scoundrels
    This ultimately disappointing comedy starts reasonably strong, delivers a few good laughs, then rolls over and plays dead.
  98. Kate & Leopold
    An oppressively cute Manhattan time-travel romantic comedy that’s lost in time, space and cliches.
  99. 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.
  100. Saban's Power Rangers
    Power Rangers maintains the essence of its origins in that it's rather pleasantly bonkers.
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