Chicago Tribune's Scores

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For 7,599 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: 5,104 out of 7599
  2. Mixed: 1,473 out of 7599
  3. Negative: 1,022 out of 7599
7599 movie reviews
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  1. Megalopolis
    Naive, decadent, sluggish, dazzling, touchingly sincere in its belief that “a vital conversation” about the state of our nation can save us, even with barbarians at the gates: There’s something to vex everyone in Megalopolis.
  2. Wolfs
    Does it matter that Wolfs is about literally nothing except itself and its star packaging? Maybe not. On the other hand, Watts hasn’t written a single fleshed-out character. It’s about genre tropes, distilled to minimalist quipping amid maximalist mayhem.
  3. The Substance
    [Moore's] gripping in ways the rest of the picture is not, transcending the thesis points and comic exaggerations simply by playing against the comic extremes and holding a card or two, always, in reserve. She reminds us here how good, and tough, she is at her best, when she gets half a chance.
  4. Speak No Evil
    The actors put it over, and Watkins is a genre filmmaker who believes in using his actors as more than pieces of plot in human clothing. That, I appreciate, with no reservations whatsoever.
  5. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
    What’s missing is not simply surprise, or the pleasurable shock of a new kind of ghost comedy. It’s the near-complete absence of verbal wit, all the more frustrating since Keaton is ready to play, and he’s hardly alone.
  6. Mountains
    Mountains does what it sets out to do with grace, and a sure instinct for music, color, faces and moments of decision regarding where we’ve come.
  7. Blink Twice
    As an actor (not onscreen here), Kravitz is so effortless, you rarely detect any overt planning or determination in her performances. Her movie’s a different case: a precise visual telling of a tale heading somewhere awful, but also cathartic.
  8. Alien: Romulus
    The movie doesn’t quite stick the landing, piling on while lingering at the gate for an extra 10 minutes or so. The gore level may not be a shock to fans of Alvarez’s previous features, but for the casual franchise fan, well, it’s gory. But the best of Alien: Romulus reminds us that some franchises are more open to a variety of directorial approaches than others.
  9. The Instigators
    The Instigators isn’t that bad, but it’s lazy, low-stakes stuff. Everyone on screen has done and been better.
  10. Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes
    Always vivid on screen, that quality also existed in her life and self-expression offscreen.
  11. Kneecap
    If Kneecap has a somewhat pushy sense of broad comedy or, in the final third, some predictable dramatic beats, its visual invention wins the day, because it’s so comfortably allied with the songs of protest and release.
  12. Trap
    Good, bad or middling, very little of Shyamalan’s works can be described as tightly plotted, well-sprung suspense.
  13. Sing Sing
    Sing Sing exerts a strong pull on the heartstrings — but without the hard sell or the crafty, manipulative exertion.
  14. Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger
    This is an elegant and eloquent love letter from one master filmmaker to two of his prized idols.
  15. Deadpool & Wolverine
    Reynolds retains his skittery comic timing, and Jackman (while tonally a little lost here) certainly put in his time with a personal trainer. But there isn’t a single shot in Levy’s film that flows excitingly into the next one.
  16. Twisters
    The biggest distinction between the first “Twister” and the new “Twisters” is one of conscience: This time, Kate, Javi and Tyler wrestle to varying degrees with how much of their time should be spent on their own pursuits versus helping tornado victims clean up after the latest round of misery.
  17. Last Summer
    It’s an unnerving portrait in forbidden desire and matched wills, sometimes acting as one barely controlled organism, often at fierce odds.
  18. Fly Me to the Moon
    The script never quite feels itself; it feels like contradictory impulses playing out in shuffle mode. And the scale of the movie does the putative romance no favors.
  19. Touch
    I admire this film’s craft. And I would’ve appreciated a messier, inner-life impulse to go with it.
  20. MaXXXine
    While there’s some payoff in the many visual callbacks to ’80s-and-earlier genre movies, at some point the filmmaker lost sight of how to best serve Goth a third time.
  21. Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F
    Ultimately the film functions as an elbow to the ribs: “Remember this? Remember how fun it was?”
  22. A Quiet Place: Day One
    If it has the edge over the 2018 and 2020 movies, the reason is simple though her talent certainly isn’t: Lupita Nyong’o.
  23. Janet Planet
    The film is a mite thin, and occasionally glib. But Baker knows where the bittersweet human comedy lies in this mother, and this daughter.
  24. Kinds of Kindness
    It’s a luxe treatment of some puny satiric ideas, toned up by a cast led by Emma Stone and Lanthimos first-timer Jesse Plemons, who won the best actor prize this year at Cannes. But everything has a chance to go wrong with a movie long before the actors film anything.
  25. Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1
    Chapter 1 feels like throat-clearing — a serviceable horse opera overture to a curiously dispassionate passion project.
  26. The Bikeriders
    Nichols has yet to make an uninteresting film; this one’s a stimulating collision of myth and realism, and keeping Comer at the core was a very smart move.
  27. Thelma
    Now 94, Squibb takes care of business every minute in the enjoyable contrivance Thelma, which succeeds, sometimes in spite of itself, for reasons revealed in the first minute of writer-director Josh Margolin’s comedy.
  28. Ghostlight
    It’s less about the healing power of theater and more about the persuasive power of the right actors working with two responsive filmmakers, sidestepping pitfalls and finding little nuggets of behavioral gold en route to a most unlikely Romeo’s opening night.
  29. Inside Out 2
    Even if “Inside Out 2” sometimes favors speed over, well, everything else, it’s gratifying to see an ordinary and, yes, anxious 13-year-old’s life, like millions and millions of lives right now, treated as plenty for a good, solid sequel, and without the dubious dramatics of the first movie’s climax.
  30. The Watchers
    Even with its drawbacks, I found “The Watchers” worth watching, even with its odd (and perhaps too faithful to the book) final 15 minutes. The director works well with cinematographer Eli Arenson to envelop the chamber-sized ensemble in various shades of dread, or comfort.
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