Chicago Tribune's Scores

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For 7,603 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: 5,107 out of 7603
  2. Mixed: 1,474 out of 7603
  3. Negative: 1,022 out of 7603
7603 movie reviews
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  1. ...So Goes the Nation
    The film's triple thesis is that elections are run badly, Democrats are often clueless and Republicans are clever. Maybe--but that still leaves too many unanswered questions.
  2. Girl on the Third Floor
    The second half’s a letdown — the audience knows where the movie’s going, and gets there before the movie does. Nonetheless it bodes nicely for longtime horror producer Travis Stevens, here making his feature debut behind the camera.
  3. Lemming
    Begins like a house afire and then fizzles out into a quasi-supernatural dead end.
  4. Before the Fall
    The film is a competent but callow work dealing with a monstrous subject that automatically rejects callowness.
  5. Lee Daniels' The Butler
    The Butler tells a lot of different stories, some more effectively than others.
  6. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
    An oddity: an adaptation of a popular novel co-written and directed by the novelist himself. It's also a fine, gentle film love story and a cinematic tribute to the power and manifold benefits of communications between different cultures and nations.
  7. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
    Does it immerse the uninitiated into a new, fabulous world? Yes. To the book's many readers, does this feel like the real "Harry Potter"? For the most part, yes.
  8. Rain Man
    Though it's well directed, written and performed, Rain Main still slips irreversibly into the so-what category. [16 Dec 1988]
    • Chicago Tribune
  9. Closer
    Few directors are more adept at playing with all this anguish and exhilaration than Mike Nichols.
  10. Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
    In the end the violence is too realistic (though not terribly graphic) to qualify as cartoony escapism, yet the movie lacks the sophistication, vision or satirical edge to lay claim to any higher purpose. It's merely dark for dark's sake.
  11. In the Valley of Elah
    Tommy Lee Jones is marvelous in the film. He has one scene in particular, a simple two-person encounter, that's as good as it gets in the realm of American screen acting.
  12. The Debt
    Director Madden vacillates between treating the issues and historical context of The Debt seriously, and as the story demands, as pure, heavy-handed pulp. The cast does what it can in the service of this assignment. But some jobs simply resist satisfying completion.
  13. The Providence Effect
    For the film to be truer to the school’s reputation, it would have had to dig a little deeper.
  14. My Best Friend
    For all its silliness and negligibility--a finale involving the Parisian "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" is one of its sillier, more negligible elements--My Best Friend is an amusing reinvention of "The Odd Couple."
  15. The Client
    Sometimes, it's exciting to watch a movie formula jell on screen-and that's what you can see happening in The Client, the latest, and best, of three successive films adapted from legal thrillers by John Grisham.
  16. Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie
    For many, a little of this joking will go a long way; devoted fans, however, will wish for a double-bill. Count me closer to the latter group.
  17. Mr. Monk's Last Case: A Monk Movie
    If the central mystery is unsatisfying, Shalhoub remains the reason to watch. He imbues this difficult, ridiculous man with so much humanity in a performance that is both clenched and silly.
  18. Land of the Pharaohs
    Despite script collaboration by his friend William Faulkner, this is Hawks' hokiest movie, a stilted Egyptian period piece about pyramid-building and sexual intrigue with Jack Hawkins as the Pharaoh and Joan Collins a conniving temptress with a jeweled navel. Yet the director gives it real spectacle; it looks great. [13 Feb 1998, p.N]
    • Chicago Tribune
  19. Gay Sex in the 70s
    Largely male gay sex, with nary a lesbian in sight, or in mind.
  20. The Great Debaters
    Good story, well told. Interesting concept. I wonder if people will go for it.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Other Side of the Street
    It's a rare combination of romance and sly social commentary, delivered with a raw emotional punch.
  22. Bill & Ted Face the Music
    Cheesy, yes, hit-and-miss, maybe, but the bits that work really do work.
  23. The Seagull's Laughter
    Solid acting anchors "Laughter," but it's Margret Vilhjalmsdottir and Ugla Egilsdottir as Freya and Agga who carry the load.
  24. Being Julia
    Bening shines, and the film shines too.
  25. American Made
    It’s fairly entertaining even when it doesn’t quite work, directed for maximum pace by Cruise’s “Edge of Tomorrow” cohort, director Doug Liman.
  26. Not Fade Away
    If any one aspect of Chase's film keeps it from being more than merely coolly engaging (which it is), it's the casting.
  27. Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool
    The movie, directed by Paul McGuigan, may be a bit tame and well-behaved for its subjects. But it’s a valentine, not a psychodrama.
  28. 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
  29. La Femme Nikita
    Besson is an accomplished technician, and his choice of shots-with an emphasis on bizarre, low angles, darting camera movements and large, abstract color fields-is consistently entertaining if not particularly expressive. [3 Apr 1991, Tempo, p.3]
    • Chicago Tribune
  30. Jindabyne
    While not everything in Jindabyne works, especially in its final, redemptive third, the film and its faces stay with you.
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