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. Starter for 10
    Starter for 10 is cute and smart, just like its star triangle, and it's also well-written, acted and directed.
  2. The Taste of Tea
    The most charming comedy in town, writer-director-editor Katsuhito Ishii's 2003 piece is a modern Japanese variation on "You Can't Take It With You," with some lovely fantastical flourishes.
  3. Breach
    Cooper is the reason to see the film, which was photographed by Tak Fujimoto in the dour tones he brought to a more flagrant realm of evil, and FBI detective work, in "The Silence of the Lambs."
  4. Bridge to Terabithia
    Elaborately mounted, expensively produced and filmed with style and empathy, it's an adaptation of Paterson's Newbery Medal-winning book that manages to expand the original vision, yet preserve much of its intense emotion.
  5. Avenue Montaigne
    Originally titled "Orchestra Seats," Montaigne takes a page from the "Amelie" playbook, without the fancy visuals or magical realism.
  6. Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams
    Zbanic, who lived through the Bosnian war in Sarajevo, is an unusual talent. Here, she makes us feel the hell her characters once lived through as well as the leftover, stinging pain of today.
  7. Music and Lyrics
    Grant and Barrymore are very enjoyable together onscreen. Who would've guessed that Barrymore would turn into such a deft comedian?
  8. Bamako
    Sissako has an unusual camera eye, patient and alert to the ebb and flow of both the courtroom sequences and the outside scenes. The music is wonderful as well.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Hannibal Rising
    A sort-of combination of "Lambs," "Batman Begins" and "The Joy of Cooking," Hannibal Rising ostensibly dramatizes the atrocities that turned Hannibal Lecter from loving child to serial killer. But this film is larded up with so many food references that I'm undecided whether this story belongs in a film compendium or a recipe file.
  10. Norbit
    With his brazen gifts for mimicry, Eddie Murphy may now be the Peter Sellers of blockbuster toilet comedy movies.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Last Sin Eater
    The lovely shots of Appalachian vistas are spoiled by cheesy special effects straight from the 1960s Chroma-Key era.
  12. Because I Said So
    Formulaic romantic junk.
  13. Fired!
    A pleasant, leisurely 71 minutes, frequently beguiling thanks to Gurwitch's soft-sell version of the urbane, Second City-esque female noodge.
  14. Puccini for Beginners
    Considering how good "Puccini's" middle often is, it's a shame it falls down fore and aft. But Maggenti, who loves Carole Lombard and William Powell in "My Man Godfrey," is tapping a likable vein here. She should open it up again.
  15. Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore?
    The movie, like Smith, is breezy, fun and keeps comin' at ya. [22 Dec 2006, p.5]
    • Chicago Tribune
  16. An Unreasonable Man
    Mantel and Skrovan's documentary astutely reminds us of why we need the world's Naders. It's a reasonable movie about an often admirably unreasonable man.
  17. Catch and Release
    Making her feature-film directorial debut, Grant is going for an everyday conversational texture and a sense of life's curveballs. But the results wander and you never really believe them.
  18. Smokin' Aces
    This film was not based on a video game, but that's the vibe and the aesthetic at work here: YEAH! KILL!, followed by a few muttered expressions of the horror, the horror.
  19. Seraphim Falls
    You could say that Seraphim Falls, was no better than the typical Westerns of the 1950s and '60s--which I think underrates it. But those typical Westerns were pretty darn good, and so is Seraphim Falls.
  20. Becket (re-release)
    Becket, now richly restored, is one of those '60s British theatrical spectaculars that we always imagine as a bit better than they were.
  21. The Italian
    Earns its happy ending like few other contemporary dramas concerned with the fate of a child. It puts you through hell for that ending, in fact, hell being modern-day Russia.
  22. Mafioso [re-release]
    Mafioso is shaped like a comedy, and it is one, but its intentionally jarring clashes of tone and rhythm are truly out there.
  23. Alpha Dog
    Around the midpoint Alpha Dog becomes less sociological and more personal, developing a real sense of suspense.
  24. Stomp the Yard
    The results are corny beyond measure. Yet there's something sweet about them, in part because there's something sweet about hearing the line "Congratulations! Why didn't you tell me you pledged?" outside the realm of comedy.
  25. Abduction: The Megumi Yokota Story
    In a time when American TV is full of stories of missing loved ones, Abduction keenly explores the reactions of an altogether different society and also examines the universal, excruciating pain suffered by such victims and their families everywhere.
  26. God Grew Tired of Us
    A year into their new lives, all three men experience profound isolation. How, they wonder, can Americans live such anti-social lives, so unconcerned with the idea of societal interdependence? This is the chief unexamined question raised by a worthy picture. What is there holds you all the same.
  27. 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.
  28. Comedy of Power
    It's not often that you see the craft of cinema so perfectly executed--or a group of fancy scoundrels so ruthlessly caught and skewered. Comedy of Power, like all of Chabrol's Hitchcockian films, is dark, smart and delicious.
  29. Happily N'Ever After
    Happily was begun as an old-fashioned 2-D "flat" cartoon and then switched by producer John Williams (of "Shrek") and director Paul J. Bolger to 3-D during production. The style finally is an uncomfortable amalgam of both.
  30. Freedom Writers
    Hilary Swank gives a powerhouse performance as a maverick high school teacher in Freedom Writers, an often gripping and sometimes even inspiring film drama taken from the real-life story of Erin Gruwell.
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