Chicago Tribune's Scores

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For 7,609 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 1.5 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: 5,113 out of 7609
  2. Mixed: 1,474 out of 7609
  3. Negative: 1,022 out of 7609
7609 movie reviews
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  1. Happy Feet Two
    The sequel's themes of friendship and interdependency fail to generate much momentum.
  2. American Flyers
    Though the racing action scenes are initially satisfying, one soon tires of the mountain scenery. And the obvious-from-the-start ending robs the race of whatever dramatic tension it ordinarily might have possessed.
  3. Bob Marley: One Love
    All worldwide musical phenomena carry with them some enigmatic quality that encourages, deliberately or not, a kind of adoring guesswork on behalf of fans. In Bob Marley: One Love, both as written and acted, Marley himself remains more cipher than enigma.
  4. The Lake House
    This is a project whose elements, from concept to script to casting, refuse to follow the usual formulas, which is good, yet they never quite cohere.
  5. 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.
  6. Stone Cold
    Stone Cold has a basic proficiency, despite some notably awkward edits. Director Craig Baxley paces the story well, and Walter Doniger's script follows the classic formula for the genre: the more evil the villains, the greater hero the star and the more justified the film's gore. [20 May 1991, p.4C]
    • Chicago Tribune
  7. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
    It’s a strange, grimly comic collection offering many grotesque sight gags, the occasional moment of seriousness and a general wash of melancholic, photogenic, elegiac Old West atmosphere. I liked the least jokey tale the best; by the time it came along, in the fifth-out-of-six slot, I’d had it with the kidding.
  8. Napoleon
    Napoleon was many things, and with this dutiful career highlights reel, Phoenix and his director deliver glancing blows to as many aspects of the warrior-tyrant-genius-fool-lonely heart as cinematically possible in two and a half hours.
  9. Saints and Soldiers
    Shackles its characters with stale dialogue straight out of decades-old Sgt. Rock comic books.
  10. Nightbreed
    Barker unleashes the full force of his special effects crew and the movie implodes in a cataclysm of jelly-fleshed creepy-crawlies. It simply loses its grip. [17 Feb 1990, p.3C]
    • Chicago Tribune
  11. Das wilde Leben
    The film's tone is utterly indistinct, beyond fatuous adoration of its subject.
  12. The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio
    No one expects documentary realism in these memoir-to-movie transfers. It's reasonable, however, to expect more vibrant and expressive fictionalized treatment than this.
  13. The 355
    Now and then The 355 sticks a landing.
  14. First Kid
    Evans and Kelleher could have used the same premise to tell a different story -- one in which viewers could relate to some of the perks of being First Kid instead of just the inconveniences. Luke could show kids a more exciting world. [30 Aug 1996, p.C]
    • Chicago Tribune
  15. Live by Night
    The damper here is Affleck, who appears to have been too concerned with placing himself just so, and then posing, so that nothing drew attention away from cinematographer Robert Richardson's pretty light.
  16. Girls Just Want to Have Fun
    But what's the excuse for the film's script? What we get is a reworking of "Flashdance" and "Footlose" into a routine story about a couple of high school kids who want to become regular dancers on a show called "Dance TV," or "DTV" for short. [10 May 1985, p.LN]
    • Chicago Tribune
  17. Beowulf
    Beowulf is all right as far as it goes, and it goes pretty far for a PG-13 rating: Dismemberment, “300”-style blood globules comin’ atcha, and a digitally futzed and, for all practical purposes, completely naked!!!
  18. My Stepmother Is an Alien
    As a filmmaker, Benjamin is capable of the occasional light, graceful touch, but the overall view eludes him; just as he was unable to bring out the sly blend of satire and psychological drama in Bo Goldman's script for Little Nikita, he's unable to find any harmony of tone in this scattered, cacophonous material. [09 Dec 1988, p.B]
    • Chicago Tribune
  19. My Sister's Keeper
    The harder this assault weapon went at my tear ducts, the more duct tape I wrapped around them as a defensive measure.
  20. Don't Worry Darling
    Everything not right with Don’t Worry Darling wasn’t right from the beginning. Even a good director — and Wilde is that, though her hand in developing this material clearly wasn’t without some wrong turns — must deal with script problems if they’re there, in the story, lurking and waiting to mess everything up and send audiences out muttering, wait what?
  21. Barfly
    O'Rourke acts way over the top; Dunaway is more effective because she seems more desperate. Both characters are the kind of people who want to be left alone. That's what you may feel like after you spend a few minutes with them in one long brawl after one long argument after one long soliloquy.
  22. Three Men and a Cradle
    Predictably cute. The only surprise about 3 Men and a Cradle is that it is the hit in Paris, winning three French Oscars, being nominated for an American Oscar, and, unbelievably, outgrossing E.T. and Rambo at the French box office. But then the French have loved the last few Jerry Lewis movies, too.
  23. I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry
    The film is half rutting goat, half preacher.
  24. The Huntsman: Winter's War
    Every time Charlize Theron is on screen, the movie gets crazy campy, and therefore at least somewhat interesting.
  25. Dear John
    I truly wish Dear John were a better, less shamelessly manipulative movie, but a couple of the actors got me through it alive. One is Amanda Seyfried.
  26. After the Sunset
    Sizzles for a half-hour, then fizzles.
  27. 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.
  28. Pathfinder
    A bizarre, bloody adventure movie.
  29. The Living End
    The Living End is not a movie even vaguely interested in attracting a wide public. It's a movie meant to please its own niche audience, and at that it seems likely to succeed.
  30. Don't Make Me Go
    The performances are honest and true and that gives things a considerable boost.
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