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. A History of Violence
    If this all sounds very heavy, well, it is, but it's also very, very funny. Cronenberg may want to say something important about violence, but he's also head over heels for it, ending each gunfight and neck-breaking with a close-up on the victim, blood either pooling behind his head or brains spilling from his face. Big laughs.
  2. Oliver Twist
    Filming on locations in Prague and in various Czech locations serving as London and the English countryside, the director delivers Dickens' tale with some style. The style, however, is that of a more cautious artist than Polanski is at his best.
  3. Proof
    Madden honors the play's roots; he has not made the mistake of opening it up with a lot of obvious visual expansions. But the story's genial unpretentiousness has been darkened and weighed down, and what's left is less than prime.
  4. 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.
  5. Just Like Heaven
    A huge waste of talent (Witherspoon's) and time (ours), a supernatural romantic comedy that is neither romantic, comedic, super or natural.
  6. Lord of War
    Both script and performance, however, waver between black comedy and more routine international-thriller concerns.
  7. Everything Is Illuminated
    And although Schreiber's hip, intelligent eye is a nice match for Foer's hip, intelligent pen, his movie strays from its own history, creating instead a world, as Alex would say, that is "once-removed."
  8. Hard Goodbyes: My Father
    Like the moving 1999 American "A Walk on the Moon," with Diane Lane and Viggo Mortensen, Hard Goodbyes juxtaposes a family crisis with the excitement of the period before and during Neil Armstrong's 1969 moonwalk.
  9. Thumbsucker
    It's not a great movie, or one that should preoccupy you much afterwards, but it's certainly a good one. It's a fine debut for first-timer Mills.
  10. The Thing About My Folks
    Felitta and Reiser mean nothing but well with this project, but too many lines sound fraudulent, and Reiser, it must be said, is a hopeless ham in the reaction shot department.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Stupid Boy
    A caveat to viewers: This brand of movie sex, as directed by 30-year-old Lionel Baier, is emphatically not for the puritanical.
  12. G
    Cherot shot G on a tight schedule, but instead of this age-old indie predicament generating a certain scrappy passion, the film just looks cheap.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Venom
    Sadly, the concept of dialogue is totally lost on the makers of Venom, a laughably bad example of teen-scream movies.
  14. Separate Lies
    The writing isn't always up to the actors, who all give the kind of expert, theatrically ingenious performances that often seem director-proof.
  15. Corpse Bride
    If "Nightmare" was a jazzy pop number, "Bride" is a waltz--an elegant, deadly funny bit of macabre matrimony.
  16. An Unfinished Life
    Nothing unexpected happens in An Unfinished Life--the title comes from the engraving on the dead son's headstone--but Canada sure looks lovely, and the acting's pretty solid.
  17. The Exorcism of Emily Rose
    It's hard to get riled up one way or the other by a film about an exorcist who is forced, cruelly and relentlessly, to introduce one flashback after another.
  18. Cote d'Azur
    At every turn Cote d'Azur settles for tidy, tinny resolutions to seismic family crises--yet, with a message of tolerance and its heart on its sleeve, the film is certainly tolerable in a summer rental-by-the-sea sort of way.
  19. Keane
    The first 10 minutes of Lodge Kerrigan's Keane have a raw, hurtling reality that's as painfully engrossing as anything you'll see in a recent non-fiction movie, a searing portrait of one man's hell, from inside and outside.
  20. Green Street Hooligans
    This is "Fight Club" without the irony or the metaphysical gaming.
  21. The Man
    Both Jackson and Levy are better than director Les Mayfield's ("Blue Streak") meandering comedy.
  22. Touch the Sound: A Sound Journey with Evelyn Glennie
    Beautifully shot and filled with gorgeous music.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    A Sound of Thunder
    One redeeming feature of this picture is that it will make great fodder for those make-fun-of-the-movie TV shows.
    • 19 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Underclassman
    What's remarkable is how absolutely every character in the film is a movie cliche.
  25. Transporter 2
    Stands a triumph of stunts over plot, of style over substance--of the wool we pull over our own eyes. It's brainless, high-speed, popcorn fun.
  26. The Constant Gardener
    A sweaty, vital masterpiece that's always one step ahead of its audience.
  27. The Brothers Grimm
    Never calms down for a second. It's the visual equivalent of the "Sabre Dance," and its only oxygen comes from the actors, who are quite good.
  28. The Baxter
    Michael Showalter is a funny man, but … how to put this gently … not a funny movie star.
  29. The Memory of a Killer
    The movie itself is as slick, fast and terrifyingly violent as a top-grade American crime thriller, but a lot smarter than most.
  30. Undiscovered
    There is a good movie here--Strait actually sings the songs that stand on their own, and he's appealing, despite the rock movie cliches.
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