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. Great Balls of Fire!
    What's missing most conspicuously from Great Balls of Fire is an interest in the historical and cultural context that made Lewis' career possible - that moment when a dying rural tradition intersected with a booming urban economy to create a whole new kind of music and with it, a whole new America. McBride treats the '50s as a joke - a montage of "Leave It to Beaver" complacency and H-bomb panic. The truth is more complex than that, and a better story. [30 June 1989, p.A]
    • Chicago Tribune
  2. Mystery, Alaska
    Has the potential to be much more than it is, especially with the collection of able actors on hand.
  3. Jackpot
    The acting is primo and the cinematography, on high-definition video by the gifted M. David Mullen, is striking.
    • Chicago Tribune
  4. Paid in Full
    It's good, hard-edged stuff, violent and a bit exploitative but also nicely done, morally alert and street-smart.
  5. The Reckoning
    The notion that stories are the lies that tell the truth isn't new -- even Shakespeare knew that -- but the central conceit of "let's save lives by putting on a play" seems not only artificial, but also hollow.
  6. Out to Sea
    Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, the co-stars of Out to Sea, keep fooling, beguiling and surprising us. Nothing can sink or ruffle them. Even with substandard scripts or dubious projects, they remain one of the greatest comedy actor teams the American movies have had: two longtime stars with formidable talents who complement each other perfectly. [02 July 1997, p.2]
    • Chicago Tribune
  7. Al Franken: God Spoke
    Most of this doc is content to wander through Franken's recent show-biz resume, to no particular end.
  8. Raymond & Ray
    Hawke and McGregor are the kind of actors who hold your attention as the story evaporates around them. Even so, they deserve far more to play with than they get here.
  9. Gang Related
    Writer-director Kouf often comes up with seemingly sure-fire ideas and then fails to develop them. "Gang Related" takes some chances. But, while trying to shift the moral center and avoid cliches, it keeps floundering and stumbling back into them. Like the accumulating corpses on Divinci and Rodriguez's beat, it seems a victim of greed, confusion, mistaken identity and a mixed-up system that turns good guys bad. [8 Oct 1997, p.1]
    • Chicago Tribune
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Queens
    If frenetic pacing alone made a movie interesting, Queens would be cinematic solid gold.
  11. What Men Want
    The story is a lot harder on its female protagonist than the 2000 film was on its male equivalent. This makes a depressing amount of sense, given what women are up against in most workplaces. Henson’s Ali plays both the dramatic encounters and the slapstick opportunities for higher stakes than Gibson ever did.
  12. TRON: Legacy
    The results impart that "trapped" feeling all too well. It's a sullen affair, dominated by a grim visual palette that intrigues for about 30 minutes.
  13. Sidewalks of New York
    It's by far the best cast Burns has assembled -- so much so that, unlike his other films, he doesn't come near dominating it.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    The 6th Day
    Once Schwarzenegger got attached, the short-sighted, commercially minded forces took over; the man is desperate for a hit, so the movie dare not overestimate the audience's intelligence or tolerance for uneasily resolved dilemmas.
    • Chicago Tribune
  15. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
    Isn't likely to satisfy the gamers' appetite for action. It also probably isn't heady enough for the science-fiction crowd, and it's too remote for those who simply wish to be immersed in a head-spinning fantasy world.
  16. Tycoon: A New Russian
    This is a meaty, well-crafted thriller that absorbs and disturbs you from first frame to last.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Nicotina
    As entertainment, Nicotina manages a bracing balance. It arrests with violent bursts and anxious pauses until its three plots merge in a satisfying resolution; its laughs caught in my throat like smoker's cough.
  18. The Thing
    While I wish van Heijningen's Thing weren't quite so in lust with the '82 model, it works because it respects that basic premise. And it exhibits a little patience, doling out its ickiest, nastiest moments in ways that make them stick.
  19. The Fifth Estate
    We're snowed by a great deal of intersecting and crisscrossing information in The Fifth Estate, and Singer's script lacks organizational skills. I can relate. But that doesn't make parsing this busy film, or — crucially — its true, contradictory feelings about Assange any easier.
  20. My Fellow Americans
    Watching actors this good handle material this dopey is like waiting for Itzhak Perlman to pick up his violin and start playing variations on My Baby Does the Hanky Panky. It's funny. But it's also sad. The movie suggests we get the government we deserve, but do we really deserve this movie?
  21. Den of Thieves
    It’s a sidewinding but often effective L.A. crime thriller saddled with the wrong leading man.
  22. Richie Rich
    In Richie Rich, the cliches are generic, and the film runs out of gas early on. [21 Dec 1994, p.7C]
    • Chicago Tribune
  23. April Fool's Day
    If you have ever been the butt of a practical joke, you have some idea how you will feel during the last few minutes of April Fool's Day. [27 Mar 1986, p.2C]
    • Chicago Tribune
  24. Brigadoon
    With its lilting Lerner-Loewe score and great Kelly dance numbers, this is almost a Hollywood musical masterpiece. But it's sabotaged by the airless "outdoor" studio sets mandated by MGM. [13 Mar 1998, p.L]
    • Chicago Tribune
  25. American Reunion
    Now and then the movie rouses itself to deliver. If you go to American Reunion - and many will, if they harbor fond memories of the first one, and if they can find a sitter - you should stay through the end credits.
  26. The Sentinel
    Amid the nervousness Douglas and Sutherland do what they can to enliven their warring stereotypes. And now and then, blessedly, The Sentinel nudges toward camp.
  27. The Money Pit
    The Money Pit, a miserable ripoff of the old Cary Grant comedy Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, has nothing to do with such nuances of the human experience. Instead, it is an action comedy that regularly throws its actors around and through pieces of plywood, into and out of windows.
  28. Your Place or Mine
    In a funnier world, Zoë Chao and Tig Notaro are starring in their own romantic comedy together.
  29. New York, I Love You
    Provides some compensatory satisfactions, thanks mostly to the actors, as they make the most of a series of pencil sketches.
  30. People Like Us
    A fine and moving film could be made from this story, which was inspired, loosely, by events and situations in the lives of Kurtzman and Orci. But the script sets an awfully low bar for Sam's redemption.
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