Chicago Tribune's Scores

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:
7599 movie reviews
  1. Madden honors the play's roots; he has not made the mistake of opening it up with a lot of obvious visual expansions. But the story's genial unpretentiousness has been darkened and weighed down, and what's left is less than prime.
  2. This isn't a particularly good movie, and it's offensive in the way mid-range low-budget slasher shows usually are. But it works better than some, largely because Etheredge-Ouzts has a more original slant and a deeper sense of character than horror movies usually allow.
  3. A huge waste of talent (Witherspoon's) and time (ours), a supernatural romantic comedy that is neither romantic, comedic, super or natural.
  4. Both script and performance, however, waver between black comedy and more routine international-thriller concerns.
  5. And although Schreiber's hip, intelligent eye is a nice match for Foer's hip, intelligent pen, his movie strays from its own history, creating instead a world, as Alex would say, that is "once-removed."
  6. Like the moving 1999 American "A Walk on the Moon," with Diane Lane and Viggo Mortensen, Hard Goodbyes juxtaposes a family crisis with the excitement of the period before and during Neil Armstrong's 1969 moonwalk.
  7. 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.
  8. Felitta and Reiser mean nothing but well with this project, but too many lines sound fraudulent, and Reiser, it must be said, is a hopeless ham in the reaction shot department.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    A caveat to viewers: This brand of movie sex, as directed by 30-year-old Lionel Baier, is emphatically not for the puritanical.
  9. G
    Cherot shot G on a tight schedule, but instead of this age-old indie predicament generating a certain scrappy passion, the film just looks cheap.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Sadly, the concept of dialogue is totally lost on the makers of Venom, a laughably bad example of teen-scream movies.
  10. The writing isn't always up to the actors, who all give the kind of expert, theatrically ingenious performances that often seem director-proof.
  11. If "Nightmare" was a jazzy pop number, "Bride" is a waltz--an elegant, deadly funny bit of macabre matrimony.
  12. Nothing unexpected happens in An Unfinished Life--the title comes from the engraving on the dead son's headstone--but Canada sure looks lovely, and the acting's pretty solid.
  13. It's hard to get riled up one way or the other by a film about an exorcist who is forced, cruelly and relentlessly, to introduce one flashback after another.
  14. At every turn Cote d'Azur settles for tidy, tinny resolutions to seismic family crises--yet, with a message of tolerance and its heart on its sleeve, the film is certainly tolerable in a summer rental-by-the-sea sort of way.
  15. The first 10 minutes of Lodge Kerrigan's Keane have a raw, hurtling reality that's as painfully engrossing as anything you'll see in a recent non-fiction movie, a searing portrait of one man's hell, from inside and outside.
  16. This is "Fight Club" without the irony or the metaphysical gaming.
  17. Both Jackson and Levy are better than director Les Mayfield's ("Blue Streak") meandering comedy.
  18. Beautifully shot and filled with gorgeous music.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    One redeeming feature of this picture is that it will make great fodder for those make-fun-of-the-movie TV shows.
    • 19 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    What's remarkable is how absolutely every character in the film is a movie cliche.
  19. Stands a triumph of stunts over plot, of style over substance--of the wool we pull over our own eyes. It's brainless, high-speed, popcorn fun.
  20. A sweaty, vital masterpiece that's always one step ahead of its audience.
  21. Never calms down for a second. It's the visual equivalent of the "Sabre Dance," and its only oxygen comes from the actors, who are quite good.
  22. Michael Showalter is a funny man, but … how to put this gently … not a funny movie star.
  23. The movie itself is as slick, fast and terrifyingly violent as a top-grade American crime thriller, but a lot smarter than most.
  24. There is a good movie here--Strait actually sings the songs that stand on their own, and he's appealing, despite the rock movie cliches.
  25. Yes, Steve Carell can carry a movie. Yes, Judd Apatow can direct a movie. Yes, we'll all relate to a middle-aged virgin. And yes, when an aesthetician yells to her assistant "we're gonna need more wax," you best run.
  26. McAdams, who resembles a more compact and subtle Geena Davis, captures both the strength and the insecurity beneath her sharp-witted heroine's aim-to-please facade.

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