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. Virtuosity
    The usual bad movie sometimes gives a few chuckles, amuses audiences by making them feel superior. But young director Leonard makes a different kind of bomb. Fascinated with technology, Leonard makes cutting-edge techno-turkeys, with wildly elaborate visuals and ridiculous plots. [4 Aug 1995, pg. I]
    • Chicago Tribune
  2. The Gunman
    Director Morel brings some style and speed to the proceedings, though I found The Gunman increasingly numbing in the carnage department. Compared with someone like Neeson, Penn's avenging angel is a less relatable fellow.
  3. Daddy Day Care
    A likable little movie without much to offer but cute tots, recycled gags and a talented cast amiably wasting their time and ours.
  4. When Will I Be Loved
    Campbell and her character are willing to take chances. But Toback's tangled noirish plot, with Vera as a post-feminist femme fatale, isn't particularly clever or original.
  5. Creepshow 2
    The film's main fare is three Stephen King horror stories, presented as comic books come to life. Stringing them together are scenes about an all- American youngster, a Creepshow comics fan who outwits the neighborhood bullies with his mail-order Venus flytraps. The Creep, who delivers the comics, acts as host for this anthology. It's a complicated framing device, but it puts the film squarely in the camp of kids' movies. [07 May 1987, p.3C]
    • Chicago Tribune
  6. Legendary
    Legendary is so intent on paying heartfelt tribute to dogged young athletes that it neglects basic story needs.
  7. Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment
    They graduated but didn't really grow up. Most of the less than lovable troupe from the first movie are back, including Steve Guttenberg, and so is the low level of comedy. This time, at least, director Jerry Paris from the old Dick Van Dyke show is on hand to improve the timing and pace. [05 Apr 1985, p.C]
    • Chicago Tribune
  8. Final Destination
    Meets the low standards of a mediocre TV movie.
    • Chicago Tribune
  9. Down Periscope
    We're reminded of Police Academy because this is another story about outcasts and rejects banding together to beat the odds in a macho profession. And we're reminded of The Sting because that's how we feel after the movie is over. Stung.
  10. The Other Woman
    Written by newcomer Melissa K. Stack, The Other Woman offers roughly equal parts wit and witlessness, casual smarts and jokes, lingering and detailed, regarding explosive bowel movements. Based on that ratio, I'd say the screenwriter's future in Hollywood looks pretty good.
  11. Johnny English Strikes Again
    This limp, lifeless, one-joke action comedy sequel, directed by David Kerr, comes 15 years after the 2003 "Johnny English," and manages to overstay its welcome, even at a scant 88 minutes, mostly because writer William Davies didn't bother to write anything other than "Johnny English is bad at spying."
  12. Runaway Bride
    A shiny bauble full of dead weight, gloppy good feeling and airless cliches. And every time you try to grab onto "Bride's" characters, they run away. [30 July 1999]
    • Chicago Tribune
  13. All the Rage
    The trajectory of the film -- despite its excellent cast and intelligent mounting -- is too preordained.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    But I'm a Cheerleader
    Certainly no comedic masterpiece, but it does offer a few fine moments of biting satire.
    • Chicago Tribune
  15. The Sitter
    I hope Green one day finds a way to bridge the style and rhythm of his early pictures (the ones that didn't make money) and the bumper-car approach of The Sitter.
  16. Tammy
    The movie shoves McCarthy and Sarandon in a car together quickly, without much in the way of expository set-up.
  17. Ella McCay
    It never feels like Brooks has a grasp on the material here, which careens aimlessly through Ella’s harried day-to-day, in a handsomely bland, serviceable style.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    O Jerusalem
    As a pocket history of the battles over Jerusalem in the ’40s, O Jerusalem is serviceable enough. But all the melodrama cheapens the real drama, and turns a war-torn region into a soap-opera stage.
  19. Arthur and the Invisibles
    The movie--while it doesn't knock you out--doesn't self-destruct either. Besson may never rise to the level of his best American models here, but it's fun watching him try.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    P.S. I Love You
    One of the most gifted dramatic actors working in movies today, Swank is stunningly ill suited for romantic comedy (or this one, anyway).
    • 39 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare
    To sum it up, you should see this movie if you have a burning need to waste money to find out an obscure fact about a has-been villain committing an everyday crime - namely, taking that money you just wasted. [20 Sept 1991, p.K]
    • Chicago Tribune
  22. Dear Evan Hansen
    Mainly, the movie we have here reminds us that what works on a stage, within the non-realistic world and performance momentum of stage musicals, lessens a lot of story problems that movies tend to heighten.
  23. The Adventurer: The Curse of the Midas Box
    "The Misadventurer" is more like it.
  24. Eating Out 2: Sloppy Seconds
    A soft-core sex comedy that keeps throwing out comic variations on the idea of the line between gay and straight sexuality.
  25. Fat Albert
    Seems a little lightweight, even for a kids' movie.
  26. Michael
    The music is great. Jaafar Jackson is a star. But the movie itself is uncomfortably problematic in a way that’s hard to overlook.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Reign of Fire
    It's a decent, fast-moving and visually powerful summer action romp for the teenage demographic-the dragons are deliciously evil critters, with a nice retro identity.
  28. Woodshock
    Now and then the Mulleavys capture a moment or glimmer of true mystery; more often, and certainly in dramatic terms, Woodshock feels like a movie that never stops buffering.
  29. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul
    A dirge of unfunny scatological material, techno-anxiety and child endangerment masquerading as familial bonding. Settle in for the "Long Haul," because this is one bumpy, miserable ride.
  30. The Men's Club
    So the bad news about The Men's Club is that it leans heavily on cliche; the good news is that it treats the cliche with elan and it doesn't waste a splendid cast. [24 Sept 1986, p.4C]
    • Chicago Tribune
  31. Planes
    Planes has practically no visual distinction, it's a complete knockoff, but I think it'll get by with the kids.
  32. Till Human Voices Wake Us
    Pearce and Bonham Carter are remarkably photogenic, but the movie is fitful and mannered to a fault, full of watery allusions and stormy scares.
  33. The Lucky One
    The leads' chemistry in The Lucky One is more theoretical than actual. Still, the sunsets and sunrises and sunbeams through the windowpanes fall easily on the eyes.
  34. Morons from Outer Space
    From time to time, a movie comes along that is so unconventional, so weird, so flagrantly negligent of mainstream taste that it will develop a loyal cult following--"The Rocky Horror Picture Show," now celebrating its 10th profit-filled anniversary, being a good example. This is the kind of movie the makers of "Morons From Outer Space" set out to produce, but failed to deliver. But who knows? In Britain, they may eat this stuff up. [12 Nov 1985, p.C5]
    • Chicago Tribune
  35. Unbroken: Path to Redemption
    Hunt gives it as all as the tortured Louis, but Patterson is the heart and soul of the film, giving a far more interesting performance as his long-suffering wife.
  36. After the Sunset
    Sizzles for a half-hour, then fizzles.
  37. Two Moon Junction
    Director Zalman King has literally created a bad B-movie here, photographing breasts, buttocks and bubbleheads. The film is erotic until its first coupling; that's when we realize these dullard characters might as well be mannequins. Two Moon Junction deserves a genre all its own: very soft-core porn. [6 May 1988, p.A]
    • Chicago Tribune
  38. Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit
    It's like a class reunion in purgatory. All the familiar faces are there, but the air is sulfurous and murky, and hell is just an elevator ride away. [10 Dec 1993, p.A2]
    • Chicago Tribune
  39. 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.
  40. The Mysteries of Pittsburgh
    A coming-of-ager that nearly slaughters you by minute 30 with the relentlessness of its protagonist's voiceovers.
  41. Mile 22
    Freed from the respectful restraints of non-fiction, Berg goes completely hog-wild, cinematically, and it doesn't exactly work. The film is a riot of nearly incomprehensible editing, a violent melee of intertwining scenes, shots, characters, formats and timelines, straining the limits of coherence and cogency.
  42. The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green
    The film's tone veers from misjudged sincerity to shrill sketch comedy of the broadest stripe.
  43. Pet Sematary
    There is a crazed, dark poetry here, but Mary Lambert's direction of Pet Sematary captures none of it, and the film falls into a flat, frequently laughable literalism. [24 Apr 1989, p.C2]
    • Chicago Tribune
  44. 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.
  45. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
    Has no pretensions about sneaking up on you -- it simply charges, motor humming and blades flying, carving the spot where masochism and entertainment meet.
  46. Taking Lives
    Caruso, who showed flair in the Val Kilmer vehicle "The Salton Sea," has a penchant for the dark side. In this case, it's the plodding, predictable ZIP code of the dark side.
  47. Entourage
    Piven's performance basically made the series, and to the degree the new film works, which is a little, he makes that too.
  48. Terminator Genisys
    Everything's at stake yet nothing comes to much in Terminator Genisys.
  49. Gemini Man
    Gemini Man isn’t bad, but two Will Smiths — when one of them’s computer-animated — somehow feels like 66-75 percent of a real movie.
  50. 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.
  51. Blow Dry
    A cute, well-acted film that tries to mix tones sharply.
    • Chicago Tribune
  52. The Jungle Book 2
    At its core, a movie for children. There is no hidden adult story line, not much sexual innuendo and very little dry humor.
  53. Bad Boys II
    The kind of movie that gives sequels a bad name, even though, strangely enough, it's better than the 1995 hit that spawned it.
  54. Empire
    While Reyes seeks his own ambitious style, he can't quite step out from under De Palma's shadow and thematic choices. Everything from the voiceover narration to the final frame in Empire looks and feels like a low-budget hybrid of "Scarface" or "Carlito's Way."
  55. The Green Inferno
    It's clear that Roth was trying to say something about the brave new world of social media-enabled social justice, and public shame as a tool for change, but the message is garbled. That it comes wrapped in a horror package that just isn't truly scary or suspenseful is the real shame though.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Dark Streets
    Dark Streets lost me early, real early, like still-adjusting-my-eyes-in-a-dark-theater early.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Summer Rental
    Director Carl Reiner, an old comedy pro, does well enough with the comedy's dumb but funny big-bust and jock-strap jokes. [09 Aug 1985, p.D]
    • Chicago Tribune
  58. Capricorn One
    Early in the movie, Hal Holbrook (as the paranoid NASA administrator who sets the fake-out in motion) unloads an expository speech on Brolin (as one of the astronauts the administrator needs to convince to go along with his insane ruse). Is it a long speech? Dear reader, “long” doesn’t quite measure it. It’s endless. It’s an event horizon of a monologue and by the time it’s over, you can’t believe the coronavirus hasn’t left yet.
  59. Men in Black: International
    Men in Black: International isn’t bad; it’s an improvement over “Men in Black II” (2002) and “Men in Black 3” (2012), sequels that even its makers may have forgotten.
  60. Sleepwalkers
    Garris, filming mainly in a bobbing and weaving, hand-held camera style, keeps the scenes pared down to their functional essentials, wisely substituting speed for nuance. Sleepwalkers gets the job done. [13 Apr 1992, p.5C]
    • Chicago Tribune
  61. All Eyez on Me
    Shipp nails the energetic, motor-mouthed cadence of the outspoken Shakur. But the film surrounding Shipp is rough going.
  62. Just Visiting
    Recycled French farce isn't a bad thing, but do they really like all those pratfalls?
    • Chicago Tribune
  63. Never Die Alone
    Purports to be literate film noir but comes off more like the overwritten project of a film school kid who just memorized his textbook on the style.
  64. The Life Before Her Eyes
    Beautiful, horrifying, exasperating and just plain weird.
  65. Radio
    Although his is not a perfect film, Tollin employs his soap-opera dialogue and aim-for-the-solar-plexus message quite unapologetically.
  66. No Escape
    Unfortunately, No Escape can't stay 10 steps ahead of its misguided politics and overly dramatic storytelling and crumbles under its own preposterous climactic denouement.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    Confessions of a Shopaholic
    A thin, largely unfunny comedy that marries lazy filmmaking with bad timing.
  68. The Rite
    For an hour The Rite, as scripted by Michael Petroni, delivers the expected, but with panache.
  69. Nutty Professor II: The Klumps
    Despite greater resources and high-tech whiz bang than the first movie, has a lot more turkey than dinner.
  70. Laws of Attraction
    It's a middling film that wastes a lot of good opportunities, as well as two fine, charming co-stars.
  71. 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.
  72. The Other Side of Heaven
    Captures a breathtaking exotic landscape cluttered only by the smugness of its characters.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising
    At its best, The Seeker is a pretty vivid fantasy book come-to-life; it does a decent, passable job of adding to the canon of kid-lit flicks.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    Bad Santa 2
    This lazy sequel is a lump of coal in a dirty stocking.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    12 Rounds
    Noisy, cut into a head-snapping blur with little room for Cena to even try showing emotion, 12 Rounds is an occasionally exciting but always empty experience.
  76. 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.
  77. Think Like a Man Too
    The sequel is a disappointing step down, and backward.
  78. August Rush
    It’s an unabashed feel-good weeper, and those eager for that type of fare might as well settle for this one. But an equal number will be put off by the bad dialogue, transparent manipulation and saccharine overkill.
  79. Girl Most Likely
    Girl Most Likely goes a little bit wrong in nearly every scene, its stridently quirky characters never quite making sense together in the same universe, let alone the same movie.
  80. 2 Fast 2 Furious
    Looks sleek and moves efficiently, but there's nothing too distinctive under the hood.
  81. I Don't Know How She Does It
    Doesn't know how to do what I think it's trying to do.
  82. And So It Goes
    The slapstick is awful; the pathos isn't much better, though it's far more plentiful.
  83. Navy Seals
    The naval equivalent of "Top Gun," focusing on the elite corps of warriors who in this tale must destroy American missiles that have fallen into the hands of Arab terrorists. The boys play together and then fight together. It's all a party. Some of the sequences play like music videos.
  84. Scrooged
    The film works very well, providing lots of laughs, in its first half, setting up the Bill Murray character and his callousness. For a Christmas Eve special he wants to staple antlers on a mouse. [25 Nov 1988, p.A]
    • Chicago Tribune
  85. A Dog of Flanders
    It was the adult in me that wept when the movie ended. Take the kid and have a good time.
  86. Don't Say a Word
    Almost nothing new to offer -- despite its good actors, flashy visuals and well-textured New York gloss and grit. But there are teasing hints of another, better movie buried inside somewhere.
  87. Death to Smoochy
    A dark comedy that blows up like an exploding cigar, leaving nothing much behind but smoke, noise and a bad taste.
  88. Rugrats Go Wild
    Though the Thornberrys provide some much-needed energy, asking them to carry the movie is like expecting a sweeps-week celebrity cameo to make an entire 30-minute sitcom episode funny.
  89. The Medallion
    A magic-meets-macho cop movie that's more gimmick than actual movie.
  90. The Pink Panther
    This Pink Panther really doesn't have to achieve the heights of the original; it just has to be funny on its own terms. But it pales there too. Kline, a master of comic hypocrisy, deserves more screen time, Emily Mortimer is wasted as Clouseau's adoring assistant Nicole and Knowles is over indulged as Xania.
  91. Yours, Mine and Ours
    Even as slapstick, it's a major snoozefest.
  92. Third Person
    How much of what we see in Third Person is the novelist's invention is part of the guessing game that goes on and on. And. On.
  93. Men, Women & Children
    All of it is plausible, if one were to break the narrative into its component parts; together, though, those parts resemble "Babel" or "Crash" or other determinedly topical mosaics that end up falsifying their own concerns.
  94. The Beyond
    You know the drill: Seven gates of hell. The walking dead. Blood and spurting eyeballs. Strictly for horror mavens hungry for kitsch. [03 Jul 1998]
    • Chicago Tribune
  95. My Science Project
    Bereft of wit or charm, the film is forced to rely heavily on its special effects. These, however, have a tacky, homemade feel. The dinosaur, for instance, recalls those goofy Godzillas from the heyday of Japanese monster movies. A Stone Age man and some goons from after the apocalypse look like they came from a wax museum. [13 Aug 1985, p.5C]
    • Chicago Tribune
  96. Spaced Invaders
    With its old-timey special effects, multiple plots and silly humor, it scampers through its 102 minutes untethered to the demands of strict logic, continuity or character development. This film is just out to have a good time. Often, it succeeds. [27 Apr 1990, p.D]
    • Chicago Tribune
  97. Crossing Over
    The movie expresses honest concern for the plight of so many newcomers to America, legal or illegal. What it lacks is moment-to-moment credibility.
  98. Ben-Hur
    The leading actors labor valiantly and to little effect.
  99. Midnight Sun
    Despite the ever-present layer of cheesiness, every now and again, some of those emotions are just big enough to land a somewhat effective blow right to the heart.
  100. Jurassic World Dominion
    The action is perpetual, and perpetually in need of a better director, and editing that heightens and sharpens our pleasurable excitement instead of dulling it. The appeal, I suppose, of the far-flung, constantly roving storyline this time around is its latitude for different sorts of mayhem and different genre shout-outs. But all too soon Jurassic World: Dominion made me long for the best bits of Spielberg’s “Lost World” or J.A. Bayona’s “Fallen Kingdom.” Those folks know how to set up a shot, vary the rhythm and deliver the payoff.
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