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. A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors
    This is the third in a hyper-violent and rather stupid series of thrillers about an adult child killer--with knives for fingers--who is burnt to death but now has returned to haunt more teenagers in their sleep. The kids are all patients at a clinic where group therapy fails to stop their nightmares. What you get for your money are scenes with a severed head, the simultaneous injection of 10 hypodermic needles presumably filled with heroin and four long tongues that turn into arm and ankle straps for a sex scene. Whoopee! The film's only blessing? It just may be bad enough to kill off the series.
    • Chicago Tribune
  2. Working Girls
    Director Lizzie Borden sticks to the business of trying to elicit natural performances from a cast that includes Off-off Broadway actors, actors with almost no credits and, among the men, some who are not actors at all. To a remarkable degree she has succeeded, particularly in the case of Louise Smith, who plays Molly. [13 Mar 1987, p.D]
    • Chicago Tribune
  3. Mannequin
    There's some solid talent here, but Gottlieb's overemphatic direction reduces them all to broad caricature--the kind of crazed mugging that isn't often seen outside the boundaries of Saturday morning kiddie shows. [13 Feb 1987, p.A]
    • Chicago Tribune
  4. Over the Top
    Over the Top is pretty much like all of the other successful Stallone films, which probably means that it will be a success, too. In fact, it`s considerably better than the ragged, recycled Rocky IV, though it lacks the wild excesses that made Rambo and Cobra campily entertaining.
  5. Black Widow
    Director Bob Rafelson, one of the leading lights of the 1970s ("Five Easy Pieces"), makes a terrific comeback in a stylish piece that is as beguiling and lush as its central character. [6 Feb 1987, p.AC]
    • Chicago Tribune
  6. Dead of Winter
    Director Arthur Penn (Bonnnie and Clyde) may have intended this to be a campy homage to Hitchcock, but instead he gives us a boring, frustrating and stupid story. [06 Feb 1987, p.A]
    • Chicago Tribune
  7. Radio Days
    The brilliance of the film is the way in which Allen pays tribute to radio while subtly condemning television, which, he seems to be arguing, has partially robbed us of our imaginations.
  8. Outrageous Fortune
    It's a dim, thoroughly synthetic film, so far removed from its source--much less from any original creative impulse--that it barely seems to exist. [30 Jan 1987, p.A]
    • Chicago Tribune
  9. Crimes of the Heart
    Crimes of the Heart feels random, vague and sluggish. The incidents don't build upon one another, but merely collapse into an undifferentiated heap. [12 Dec 1986, p.A]
    • Chicago Tribune
  10. The Bedroom Window
    The Bedroom Window is not at all an unskillful film, but that, in some ways, is what is most discouraging about it: Hanson is more than good enough to do something of his own. In its drive to imitate the past, Hollywood is leaving itself without a present. [16 Jan 1987, p.L]
    • Chicago Tribune
  11. Wisdom
    A dim-witted remake of the great "Bonnie and Clyde," with Estevez playing a decent young man saddled with an unfair criminal record that prevents him from getting a job. [9 Jan 1987, p.AC]
    • Chicago Tribune
  12. Dogs in Space
    This film, which tries to use chaos creatively-by shaping it and sculpting it-finally seems little more than a well-filmed mess. [4 Dec 1987, p.B]
    • Chicago Tribune
  13. Brighton Beach Memoirs
    Brighton Beah, curiously, still doesn`t work on film, perhaps because movies have no use for stagecraft, no matter how brilliant it may be. Once there`s no practical reason to keep the action restricted to a single set --movies, of course, can go anywhere--Simon`s strategic skills come to seem superfluous, if not an actual liability.
  14. Little Shop of Horrors
    The songs are joyful, and the plant is a foul-mouthed wonder when it begins to talk. Director Frank Oz deserves credit for staging a musical in classic form, creating nothing less than one of the year's most entertaining films. [19 Dec 1986, p.A]
    • Chicago Tribune
  15. Platoon
    Platoon is filled with one fine performance after another, and one can only wish that every person who saw the cartoonish war fantasy that was Rambo would buy a ticket to Platoon and bear witness to something closer to the truth.
  16. King Kong Lives
    An amiable adventure illuminated at odd moments by some genuine inventiveness. [21 Dec 1986, p.12C]
    • Chicago Tribune
  17. No Mercy
    Technically, "No Mercy" is a smooth, assured piece of work, with a sense of movement and color far superior to Pearce's previous outings. But it is in technique that American action movies have taken their last refuge. The commitment to character is gone, the effort to create credible, vivid situations has been forgotten. What remains is empty know-how, and it is difficult to see the difference between this kind of filmmaking and the impersonal style-for-hire that goes into a typical TV commercial.
  18. The Golden Child
    A weirdly out-of-scale movie that constantly juxtaposes the trivial and the cosmic, less to comic effect than to a mounting sense of muddle and uncertainty.
  19. Heartbreak Ridge
    The movie as a movie is a letdown, because all it consists of is Eastwood's hoarse, foul-mouthed complaining about today's "softies" and then his leading into battle in Grenada a bunch of rag-tag kids that he has molded into men. This is all material recycled out of films as varied as "The Dirty Dozen" and "Police Academy." [5 Dec 1986, p.A-C]
    • Chicago Tribune
  20. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
    Nimoy directs the comedy in a loose, relaxed, almost sketch-like manner, but when the film moves into its multiple-cliffhanger climax, he's still able to generate some genuine dash and tension. The only drawback is that the Enterprise gang is starting to look a little long in the tooth for such strenuous action.
  21. Solarbabies
    Alan Johnson`s direction is so limply amateurish that the entire project quickly descends to the level of a cheesy backlot production. The action lurches along without the slightest regard for logic or pacing, and there are Dominick`s commercials with more sophisticated characterization.
  22. The Wraith
    There's some fun potential here, but Marvin's direction is plodding enough to snuff it fairly quickly. Yet Charlie Sheen, promising in his second-banana appearances in Lucas and Pretty in Pink, emerges with his promise intact. Sheen already has the reserved but powerful manner of a Wayne or an Eastwood; with a little more maturity, he could be a contender.
  23. Firewalker
    When Gosnell's script does wander into some emotionally complex territory--in the depths of the jungle, Max encounters an old army buddy from Vietnam (John Rhys-Davies)--Thompson does rouse himself momentarily to provide some sequences of unexpected sensitivity, but he quickly returns to his dull, professional indifference. [21 Nov 1986, p.L]
    • Chicago Tribune
  24. Hoosiers
    There is enough intelligence and craftsmanship in the execution of Hoosiers to make it seem, if not exactly fresh, at least respectably entertaining. [27 Feb 1987, Friday, p.A]
    • Chicago Tribune
  25. Something Wild
    It has wit, originality, color, warmth and formal intelligence. It tempers its escapist dash with a touch of darkness, and for all of its playfulness, never departs from a fundamental seriousness.... Something Wild is superbly unpredictable. [7 Nov 1986]
    • Chicago Tribune
  26. Sid and Nancy
    Sid & Nancy is a movie that features head-bashings, drug overdoses, stabbings and a more-or-less constant round of pointless, stupid violence, and yet its most prominent quality is its sweetness. This is a love story--an unlikely, perverse, disturbing love story, but a genuine one.
  27. The Sacrifice
    As he was dying, Tarkovsky fashioned this great valedictory about a family in the first stages of nuclear apocalypse and a father's ultimate sacrifice. [31 Jan 2003, p.C4]
    • Chicago Tribune
  28. The Mission
    The Mission is "The Killing Fields" without Dith Pran, a movie that simply asks the audience to share its moral smugness. It wants us to feel good about feeling bad. [14 Nov 1986, p.AC]
    • Chicago Tribune
  29. Soul Man
    Soul Man is a slick, frightening piece of work. It's not only because Ron Reagan Jr. has a bit part in it that it seems the definitive Reagan-era film.
    • Chicago Tribune
  30. Trick or Treat
    Director Charles Martin Smith, an accomplished actor, gets some very good performances from his cast, notably from Mark Price as Eddie and Lisa Orgolini as his girl. (Gene Simmons, of the rock group KISS, has a small part as a radio deejay). In his directorial debut, he shows an attractive visual style and a sure hand for both humor and horror. [27 Oct 1986, p.5C]
    • Chicago Tribune
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