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. The Cave of the Yellow Dog
    Children and animals, if they're handled right, can be among the great natural movie actors, and in The Cave of the Yellow Dog, writer-director Byambasuren Davaa handles her cast of youngsters and creatures (and a few adults) heartwarmingly well.
  2. Copying Beethoven
    Copying Beethoven, at its best, is a sort of grand cinema opera of the composer's life and music.
  3. Fuck
    The film works best when widening its focus to include the Federal Communications Commission's often baffling and hypocritical stances regarding what's OK to say, or show, on TV and radio, and what isn't.
  4. Coffee Date
    Writer-director Stewart Wade expanded his festival-circuit short film into a blobby, watery feature-length enterprise, unredeemed by its cast (though Sally Kirkland shows up as Todd's mom).
  5. Linda Linda Linda
    These girls can cook, and Yamashita captures them with an austere, unhurried visual style that has been rightly compared to rock aficionado/filmmakers Aki Kaurismaki ("Ariel") and Jim Jarmusch ("Mystery Train"). [8 Dec 2006, p.2]
    • Chicago Tribune
  6. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
    Borat is a rarity: a comedy whose middle name is danger, or as the Kazakhs say, kauwip-kater.
  7. Flushed Away
    After the fourth electrocution gag, the 10th smack in the face and the 12th assault on a wee rodent crotch, we could all use something quiet.
  8. Volver
    You always get more than one genre with this filmmaker. Volver draws upon all sorts of influences -- a little Hitchcock, a little Douglas Sirk, a little telenovela -- but from those sources Almodovar and his collaborators, both on screen and behind the camera, make an improbably organic whole.
  9. Shottas
    Shottas exists purely in the realm of rasta-music-video fakery.
  10. Unknown
    While Brand manages a couple of effectively brutal bits of violence, Matthew Waynee's gassy screenplay is all premise and no propulsion.
  11. Romántico
    The value of Romantico is that it lets us experience vicariously what Carmelo and others like him go through.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Catch a Fire
    The horrors of apartheid deserve a better treatment than this.
  13. 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.
  14. Climates
    The beauty of the Turkish film Climates, a small but indelible masterpiece, is more than skin-deep. No 2006 film meant more to me. It's as sharp and lovely as the best Chekhov short stories.
  15. Conversations with God
    Despite valiant efforts from Czerny and from the fine stage actress Vilma Silva, who plays one of Walsch's many saviors, the result would qualify as a blandly inspirational amateur hour if the running time weren't closer to two.
  16. Shut Up & Sing
    A seriously entertaining highlight of the fall season.
  17. Death of a President
    The flaw in Death of a President isn't one of morality. It's one of dramatic interest.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Cocaine Cowboys
    Cocaine Cowboys would be a great one-hour television piece. Unfortunately, it's a two-hour long documentary that recalls, in scrupulous, unnecessary detail, the rise and fall of Miami's role as the cocaine capital of America.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Absolute Wilson
    Not only does this film offer a comprehensive portrait of a fascinating and underexplored leader of the American avant-garde in the late 20th Century, it ends up making some compelling connections between his works and the rich, occasionally self-destructive trajectory of the life that forged them.
  20. The Bridge
    Despite the proficient technique, after a while you may feel you're watching a particularly scenic snuff film.
  21. The Wild Blue Yonder
    At times playful and inventive, at others simplistic and silly. Ultimately, Werner Herzog's free-form, idiosyncratic devolution of the documentary is beautiful but dull.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Marie Antoinette
    It's true that this sugarcoated romp doesn't take itself, or its source material, particularly seriously, but if you're confident your grasp of European history can withstand the assault of two hours of bubbly entertainment, Marie Antoinette guarantees you a good time.
  23. Running with Scissors
    Laughing at the freaks and then feeling bad about it is the sole reason for the existence of this pale little film.
  24. Flags of Our Fathers
    There's a tremendous amount of material here, and the script covers too much of it, often confusingly.
  25. Flicka
    A modernized version of that great sentimental horse movie, 1943's "My Friend Flicka," and it comes with the shiny trappings, high professionalism and glamorous accessories you might expect...Something is missing though.
  26. The Prestige
    Many, I suspect, will fall for The Prestige and its blend of one-upsmanship and science fiction. I prefer "The Illusionist," the movie that got here first.
  27. Requiem
    An exorcism movie for the rest of us, the gripping German drama Requiem contains not a single special effect. It doesn't need one. It has terrific actors fully invested in a casual-seeming, docudramatic brand of storytelling, notably Sandra Hueller.
  28. Masai: The Rain Warriors
    The French filmmakers lend it their special aesthetic/dramatic sense, and the Masai actors ground the story in everyday realism and humanity. Together, they create a film and a legend to remember.
  29. Sweet Land
    The film's most memorable performance is in another supporting role, by Alan Cumming as hapless Frandsen, Olaf's sympathetic neighbor and a hopelessly inept farmer.
  30. 51 Birch Street
    The film has a compelling way about it. All five of the immediate Block family members emerge in full and affecting portraits.
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