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. I'm Your Woman
    Hart and Horowitz map this hero’s journey onto her growth as a mother, her empowerment proving to be a source not just of strength, but love — a rare commodity in a crime flick.
  2. 76 Days
    The result is a narrow slice of a much, much larger story, somewhat akin to the hands-off, eyes-wide-open documentary approach of Frederick Wiseman — if Wiseman were a war correspondent. Rarely has recent global history seemed so far away, yet so present. It’s one of the year’s essential documents.
  3. Happiest Season
    Happiest Season” isn’t full-on farce; it’s lower-key, and runs into trouble only when the script contends with confessional monologues right up against hiding-in-a-literal-closet routines or routine slapstick, as it does in the climax. But you know? It works.
  4. The Croods: A New Age
    Because the movie starts at an 11 and doesn’t let up, the runtime feels overly long. However, the voice performances are excellent, especially Cage, who brings his signature sense of yearning pathos to Grug the Neanderthal.
  5. Belushi
    Cutler’s documentary skip-walks a fine line between a great, unstable talent’s rise and fall, and between the un-tender trap of addiction and the joyous energy of a Chicago-bred giant.
  6. Zappa
    In Zappa, this legendary artist’s uncompromising nature is bracing, bold and utterly refreshing.
  7. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
    Seeing these actors, the late Boseman chief among them, relish the opportunity to try to get a daunting stage-to-screen adaptation right: That’s a privilege to behold.
  8. Collective
    Gripping, incisive and shockingly powerful, Collective is easily the documentary of the year.
  9. Run
    It’s a familiar but enjoyably vindictive PG-13 thriller about mother/daughter trust issues. Plus a little psychopathology.
  10. The Last Vermeer
    The film capably, if expectedly, proceeds down this standard procedural path, progressing from investigation to trial, with flourishes of genius every now and again from Pearce, having some campy fun as van Meegeren. But even with a few courtroom theatrics and some profound ethical issues to chew on, The Last Vermeer is ultimately a dreadfully milquetoast outing.
  11. Ammonite
    What’s missing is the vital emotional turbulence of Sciamma’s modern classic, or of any three-dimensional story of passion and feeling. The compensations here are smaller, but they’re welcome, too; they’re more about two fine actresses digging for what’s underneath the obvious contours.
  12. Freaky
    The revelation here is Vaughn, who in his 6-foot-5-inch frame, physically channels the body language and gestures of an otherwise petite, cowering teen.
  13. Mank
    It’s best taken, I think, as a romantic gesture to a writer who loved movies. Well, two, really: Herman J. Mankiewicz, and Jack Fincher.
  14. Let Him Go
    A 1960s-set Western laden with big skies, steady gazes and slow-roasted narrative corn, Let Him Go gets by on the strength of its female leads, Diane Lane and Lesley Manville. Kevin Costner’s effective, too, and he’s right in his taciturn sweet spot, muttering about this and that.
  15. Come Play
    A pre-teen on the autism spectrum, lonely and isolated, becomes the online prey of an unwanted stranger, a monster from another realm. That’s Come Play in one sentence. The results unfold more like a collection of reference points to previous film than a film unto itself.
  16. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
    I laughed at a good deal of the movie, but a good deal more of it left me with (Cohen’s intention, probably) the taste of ashes in the mouth.
  17. Synchronic
    What makes Synchronic sing is the two together, zinging each other with sardonic one-liners, their conversations meandering to the cosmic and the macabre after a few whiskeys.
  18. Bad Hair
    While Bad Hair is more humorously incisive than truly terrifying, Lorraine, in the leading role, sells it, while Simien creates space to discuss the ways in which women enforce unfair standards of beauty on each other in a white patriarchal society, using the horror genre as a blunt but effective tool to clear the path.
  19. The Devil Has a Name
    The Devil Has a Name has an important message if you can get past the unwieldy melodrama of the film, but the second coming of “Erin Brockovich” this is not.
  20. Rebecca
    The pretty, empty, emotionally frictionless and touch-free new Rebecca adaptation may suit the pandemic dictates for social distancing, but the drama fails to spark.
  21. Martin Eden
    Pietro Marcello’s sweeping historical Italian epic Martin Eden is a whole lot of movie. It possesses a weight and heft, both cinematically and philosophically, that make it a rare treat. And at the center of the film is a whole lot of movie star: Luca Marinelli’s performance in the title role is an outstanding star turn for the Italian actor.
  22. Honest Thief
    It’s a movie about a movie star taking out the trash, leaving behind a lower body count than usual, but executing his duties faithfully, and with a predictable dash — the right kind of predictable — of world-weary charisma.
  23. Spontaneous
    Spontaneous allows Langford’s Mara, blasé swagger incarnate, and Plummer’s stealth charmer enough unaffected sincerity to make it stick. Onto that sticky stuff, the script applies comforting reminders: Stuff happens. We don’t know how long we have. Seize the day.
  24. Time
    Bradley’s film is a lyrical documentary, a piece that feels like a poem or a prayer, an almost meditative experience, set to a plaintive piano score.
  25. Yellow Rose
    Yellow Rose is an emotional blunt instrument. It’s not exactly subtle, but then again, the best country songs, and the best coming-of-age tales, rarely are.
  26. Possessor Uncut
    The final third of this grim, accomplished film felt sluggish to me; just when he might’ve profitably gone crazier with the scenario, and the storytelling rhythm, Cronenberg putters and lets the audience get out ahead of the developments.
  27. The Forty-Year-Old Version
    The Forty-Year-Old-Version is that rarest of films: funny, wry, incisive, sexy and sincere.
  28. On the Rocks
    Seeing what may be Coppola’s least compelling film has a way of reminding you of all her better ones, especially in the seriocomic vein. Those include the aforementioned “Lost in Translation,” along with “The Bling Ring,” “Somewhere,” even the playfully anachronistic “Marie Antoinette.” If they’re new to you, have at them.
  29. The Boys in the Band
    Parsons has some sharp, truthful moments, but his demeanor lacks the world-weary authority as written. (His zingers have lost a lot of their zing, it must be said.) Everyone else is wonderful, and the limitations of Parsons and Quinto, in the end, are just that — limitations of often effective work.
  30. Save Yourselves!
    How does it all end? Don’t go looking to Save Yourselves! for answers. It lands in an ambiguous middle that’s not too bleak or too hopeful and just falls flat; an exaggerated shrug.
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