Chicago Tribune's Scores

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For 7,608 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: 5,112 out of 7608
  2. Mixed: 1,474 out of 7608
  3. Negative: 1,022 out of 7608
7608 movie reviews
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  1. The Current War: Director's Cut
    I never saw the earlier version. This one remains a bit of a mess but a pretty interesting one, as well as one of the few films this year deserving (in both admirable and dissatisfying ways) of the adjective “instructive.”
  2. King of the Corner
    Moments of this film reminded me of Alexander Payne's great library of male dysfunction -- "Election," "About Schmidt," "Sideways" -- not because King of the Corner actually reaches Payne's plane, but because I wish it had tried.
  3. The Conspirator
    Heartbreakingly average, director Robert Redford's The Conspirator errs in the way so many films do, especially films about unsung pieces of American history. It focuses on the wrong character.
  4. The LEGO Ninjago Movie
    Some aspects of the film are quite entertaining. Garmadon is a great character, especially as voiced by Theroux (his pronunciation of Lloyd as "Luh-Loyd" doesn't get old).
  5. The Lion King
    The new music helps, a little. But the movie is a karaoke act, re-creating the original movie’s story beats beat-by-beat-by-beat.
  6. The Secret Life of Pets 2
    We want to watch pets behave exactly as we expect them to, and sometimes in a completely incongruous manner. Like the original, “Pets 2” delivers just that, nothing more.
  7. MirrorMask
    It's hollow.
  8. The Astronaut Farmer
    Wobbles between its comic and dramatic concerns; even those who buy the film more wholeheartedly than I might consider the overall tone uncertain.
  9. Tusk
    The chief argument regarding his (Smith) "Human Centipede" riff is pretty basic: good trash or stupid trash? I'd say roughly half and half.
  10. Harry Brown
    The tragedy is that the performance comes to nothing. Nearly everything else in the film is vile.
  11. All the Pretty Horses
    Thornton and his excellent company summon up for us the long rides, dangerous companions, rites of passage, the mad love and, most of all, the special relationship between the man/boys that rode over the border and the horses that carried them there.
    • Chicago Tribune
  12. Evelyn
    If the real-life story is genuinely inspirational, the movie stirs us as well.
  13. Invincible
    Erratically acted and, at times, clumsily written.
  14. Hearts in Atlantis
    Sometimes thrilling, sometimes suffocatingly tasteful adaptation of Stephen King's 1999 novel.
    • Chicago Tribune
  15. Snatch.
    The abundance of visual and verbal wit here ensures that the pleasure of watching Snatch need not be guilty.
    • Chicago Tribune
  16. Secret Things
    Trashy porno pretending to be deep.
  17. Facing Windows
    Ozpetek brings a straight love story and world politics into the mix, but it's his brilliant cast which completes the connection.
  18. Screamers
    A commendably brave piece, but less focused and powerful than you'd like. In the end, Garapedian might have been better off concentrating her energy on the 1915 Armenian story--which has been told on film various times (for example, in "Forty Days of Musa Dagh" and Atom Egoyan's "Ararat"), but never with the power of, say, "The Pianist" or "Schindler's List."
  19. Cirque du Soleil: Journey of Man
    Commits the cardinal sin of all bad IMAX films: It favors visuals over narrative, glitter over substance.
    • Chicago Tribune
  20. Woman Thou Art Loosed
    Jakes' characters are points to be made, flesh and blood cautionary tales that don't particularly feel human. His dialogue, even in the mouths of Michelle and her troubled mother, sounds as if it comes straight from the pulpit.
  21. Volunteers
    It's a shame that this often cute script couldn't have better served, and been better served by, its actors.
  22. Crossroads
    Crossroads doesn't contain most of the common sins of today's youth films: cheap sex, fast cars and food fights. But you can't reward a film very much for what isn't there, if what is there leaves you wishing that its lead characters would break free from a tired story and sing and play with abandon. [14 March 1986, p.A]
    • Chicago Tribune
  23. The Missing
    Good movie westerns these days may be too few and far between, but Ron Howard's The Missing is almost a great one.
  24. Romance & Cigarettes
    But by the end, when Gandolfini and Sarandon sing their sweet, hesitant little duet, it’s clear Turturro knew where he was going all along.
  25. The Good Liar
    The Good Liar takes its sweet time to pick up steam and pulls its punches in places where it could have been even darker and more daring. Erring on the side of caution isn’t exactly the approach one should take when it comes to suspense thrillers.
  26. The Last Samurai
    May fall short of its great model, "Seven Samurai" (almost all action movies do), but it's miles ahead of most of the gadget-ridden adventure epics around now.
  27. Baby Mama
    Midway through I started wondering why I wasn't laughing more. "Baby Mama" was not written by Fey and/or Poehler, which may be the reason.
  28. Song to Song
    Frequently maddening in its reiteration and circularity, Song to Song nonetheless offers more of interest (along with the hooey) than I found in "Knight of Cups" or "Voyage of Time," his recent IMAX cosmos travelogue.
  29. Pride
    Howard, playing an inspirational and resourceful man up against long odds, really is an inspiration.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    National Lampoon's Vacation
    There are two, maybe three, good gags in National Lampoon's Vacation, which otherwise is poorly paced, sloppily put together, and full of inept, ill-conceived performances.
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