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. By the end we are left with a mildly amusing comedy and the lingering memory of a sterling cast that deserved better material.
    • Chicago Tribune
  2. Plays more like a gritty, episodic British independent film powered by a soundtrack of Who songs that illuminate the main character's turbulent emotions.
  3. Stockwell deserves kudos for working mental illness into a teen story without making it the explicit focus, as in simplistic exercises like "Girl, Interrupted."
    • Chicago Tribune
  4. Pure magic, a three-act movie fantasy that transports us -- as the best films do -- to a world of its own, a place of ambiguous joy and delirious terror.
    • Chicago Tribune
  5. Turns increasingly interior and emotionally complex. It refuses to connect, putting the pressure entirely on its viewers to reach their own conclusions.
  6. A confusing and not entirely believable ending clouds the issue, though, burying some fine performances and cinematography under an avalanche of gore and plot twists.
    • Chicago Tribune
  7. Slow and dragging, Pootie Tang is worse than a below-average sketch-to-screen Saturday Night Live film.
    • Chicago Tribune
  8. The film does succeed in making the story universal, giving us the drama as well as the history, the fire as well as cool examination. It's a movie that haunts you afterward.
    • Chicago Tribune
  9. A movie that will act like a smack in the face to some audiences, while others may simply laugh in recognition.
  10. I liked the idea of the movie more than the movie itself -- though sections of it are mind-blowing.
    • Chicago Tribune
  11. Absorbing in places, but considering the large and diverse pool the filmmakers had to draw from, it's a surprisingly repetitive and predictable collection of big-city sagas.
  12. There's some undeniable appeal to watching a well-oiled, built-for-speed machine operating with its pedal to the metal -- even if it's destined to wind up in flames before the finish line.
  13. There's barely a scene in this movie that taps his (Murphy) special brilliance.
  14. An unpredictable, mythic tale about haunted outcasts that is both dazzling and disquieting.
    • Chicago Tribune
  15. Completely successful or not, films like Saudade do Futuro are needed. And we need people like the Nordestinos.
  16. By bringing Newton alive, Smith opens the door for further exploration of this colorful, insightful figure.
  17. A searing documentary with an agenda.
    • Chicago Tribune
  18. A delightful concert documentary that proves once more what a neglected masterpiece the Coen Brothers gave us last year in their Depression chain-gang odyssey, "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"
    • Chicago Tribune
  19. A staggeringly bad picture: a shallow, cliche-ridden mess that keeps blowing up on screen.
  20. Any film about the folk tradition is required to have a stellar soundtrack, and Songcatcher does not disappoint.
  21. A noir masterpiece with Oscar-caliber performances, Sexy Beast slowly turns up the heat until we squirm.
  22. So fast, sleek and riveting it almost makes you expect miracles -- which never materialize.
  23. Ultimately a disappointment because it refuses to take any aspect of itself seriously.
  24. This is "Ghostbusters" meets "Men in Black" meets a whole lot of butt humor.
    • Chicago Tribune
  25. A well-told, vividly imagined movie that doesn't pretend to be more than it is and doesn't lean on pop-culture references to win over its viewers.
  26. It's a movie of elegant surfaces, great background music (by both the Mahlers), gossipy underpinnings and pretensions to romantic grandeur.
    • Chicago Tribune
  27. Has the literary richness, depth of character and tone that such a morally difficult, powerful narrative requires.
    • Chicago Tribune
  28. Packed with gratuitous dumb moments -- which is too bad, given that the premise has promise.
    • Chicago Tribune
  29. This is a big-hearted film with admirable ambitions, and the ending is appropriately bittersweet, with victory and comeuppance occupying the same time and frame.
  30. Breillat has long been fascinated with the idea that women are not allowed to go through puberty in private but instead seem to be on display for all to watch, a situation that has no parallel with boys. A Real Young Girl seems acutely aware of this paradox.

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