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. Summertime
    Director Carlos López Estrada’s Summertime creates a mosaic of pre-COVID Los Angeles (it was filmed in 2019) through words, action, dance and music. The usual movie musical building blocks, in other words. But not in the usual way.
  2. Materialists
    It may make true love look all too Hollywood-easy in the end, but en route it’s still a Celine Song film.
  3. Fearless
    One of those corny, lusciously mounted, almost predictably thrill-packed action movies you can't help but like.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    I.O.U.S.A.
    Packed with facts, figures and the testimony of policy experts, the film is no wallow in wonkiness, though, but a surprisingly sprightly tough-love lesson in fiscal responsibility.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Big Trouble
    These isolated pockets of comic invention are balanced by long stretches of general choppiness in editing and pacing. Shot by shot, the movie is crisply staged and photographed, but the gags don`t work and the timing`s off in much of the aborted fun.
  6. The Phoenician Scheme
    A beautiful mixed bag, let’s say, all told. But I’ll see The Phoenician Scheme a second time sometime for Cera, who will surely return to the Anderson fold.
  7. Louder Than Bombs
    Louder Than Bombs never quite comes together. You keep waiting for it to gel, but it just drifts along until it drifts away.
  8. Cedar Rapids
    Modest in every way, the screenplay by Phil Johnston is enjoyable in the telling even when the details smack of contrivance.
  9. Operation Varsity Blues: The College Admissions Scandal
    I’m not saying the film needed to be formally experimental. But as it is, the documentary feels deeply pointless.
  10. Who Gets to Call It Art?
    Shot with a Peter Greenaway-like austere impudence and edited brilliantly (by Jed Parker), this is an entertaining movie, and a moving one--even if, like me, you're not especially fond of these paintings or that scene.
  11. Happy Christmas
    Swanberg may be one of the few American filmmakers who'd benefit from reading one of those "10 Rules for Mediocre Hollywood Screenwriting" how-to books. Many find a kind of truth and life and rough domestic magic in his films. Here and there, now and then, I see what they're talking about.
  12. Strayed
    Techine's terrifying setup quickly gives way to a slower and less explicit suspense, in which every step and spoken word is heavy with intrigue.
  13. Chalk
    The problem with the movie is that all this improvisational verisimilitude never finds its way into fully developed stories.
  14. Warm Water Under a Red Bridge
    A movie about love, friendship and finding oneself, and it takes all its subjects very seriously while seeming to treat them with the lightest and most piquant of touches. Like its bizarre heroine, it irrigates our souls.
  15. Lars and the Real Girl
    I find Lars and the Real Girl adorable in the worst way, bailed out only by most every member of its excellent cast.
  16. Tears of the Black Tiger
    The result is something so old it's new, so corny it's funny. And while Tears of the Black Tiger is nothing more than entertaining, at least it's that.
  17. 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.
  18. The Cruise
    Even if you have no interest in documentaries or the facade that is New York City, The Cruise transcends its artistic boundaries to becomes something strange and unique.
  19. Inglourious Basterds
    The result is a Jewish “Death Wish,” to borrow Pauline Kael’s description of “Marathon Man,” amped up to epoch-changing proportions, made by a gentile writer-director with an unlimited appetite for celluloid, right down to its highly flammable properties.
  20. Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story
    "Dragon" has an appeal beyond the buffs. Beyond the particulars of biography, it's a timeless human story told with heart and verve.
  21. Never Let Me Go
    The film is a success. It works. Greatness eludes it, yes. But greatness eludes almost every film adaptation of a major novel, which we must remember when confronted by a good one.
  22. Batman
    Burton's direction rises to a Wagnerian hysteria (an impression backed by Danny Elfman`s roaring orchestral score) as the two mortal enemies fight it out on the brink of a zillion-foot drop. Burton achieves a genuine majesty at that moment-though he would need one or two more like it to make Batman a genuinely memorable film.
  23. Babel
    It's a powerhouse, demanding film that sometimes stretches the limits of credibility. But it's done with such consistent technical brilliance--and with such a first-rate cast and company.
  24. The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans
    A true feat of daring and one of the craziest films of the year.
  25. Unstoppable
    The runaway train thriller Unstoppable is one of Tony Scott's better films.
  26. Brave
    At this point in Pixar's history, the studio contends with nearly impossible expectations itself. This is what happens when you turn out some bona fide masterworks. Brave isn't that; it's simply a bona fide eyeful.
  27. Undercover Brother
    Has such a cheerfully zingy energy that you keep rooting for it even when its jokes turn flatter than a jump shot at a YMCA pickup game.
  28. Dung che sai duk
    Ashes of Time Redux remains a hermetic and rather frustrating work, dotted by lonely, windblown figures dwarfed by the sand dunes of western China.
  29. Enter the Void
    As pure, outlandish outlaw cinema it's undeniable.
  30. Revolutionary Road
    However sterling the craftsmanship, the film adaptation inflates the meaning and buffs the atmospheric surfaces of Yates' story, rather than digging into its guts.
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