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. Ruben Brandt, Collector
    A satisfying heist movie, animated or live-action, requires more selectivity and less clutter than this one. The movie dashes by door after door, but it lacks the key.
  2. Captain Marvel
    It’s fun. In various ways, some better than others, you can tell the film was made by people who weren’t mapping out their entire careers to lead to the big moment when they tackle a Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise.
  3. Greta
    The script by Jordan and Ray Wright, from Wright’s story, wastes little time in getting to what “Fatal Attraction” enthusiasts might call the bunny-boiling bits. But the movie frustrates. And it squanders Huppert, which really is a waste.
  4. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
    For all these self-effacing but highly valuable reasons, when the triumphs of the human, agricultural and engineering spirits arrive, they work. It’s moving, and it’s earned. Ejiofor is off and running as a director.
  5. The Wild Pear Tree
    The Wild Pear Tree may be the one film out there with the uncanny, gorgeously ruminative ability to take you away from everything cluttering a Chicagoan’s head space right now.
  6. Paddleton
    It's amusing but not a comedy, never losing its heart to irony or sarcasm. While Paddleton takes its time to get there, it ultimately reaches a deeply poignant conclusion. If you're patient enough, that alone could be worth the trip.
  7. Fighting with My Family
    In other words, nothing much held me back from enjoying writer-director Stephen Merchant’s engaging, charismatically acted underdog fable.
  8. How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
    From the beginning, the animators got something very, very right with Toothless, who works with an artificial tail just as his human friend works with a prosthetic hand. He’s adorable, yes, of course. But he’s not conventionally flawless, and he’s all the better for that.
  9. Everybody Knows
    Everybody Knows finds Farhadi (working with longtime editor Hayedeh Safiyari) consciously going for quicker-than-usual cutting, rarely lingering over anything, always setting up the next part of the mystery. The acting’s uniformly strong, always at the service of a knotty story.
  10. Alita: Battle Angel
    With tonal inconsistencies and poorly written characters, any awe inspired by Alita: Battle Angel is replaced with a profound sense of confusion.
  11. Isn't It Romantic
    There’s not much kick to Isn’t It Romantic, even after it goes over the rainbow. It gets by, and commercially it may well be a modest hit — but has more to do with Valentine’s Day timing than the film itself.
  12. The Image Book
    If The Image Book is just a great whatsit, like the thing everyone’s trying to find in the Mike Hammer picture, why is it bracing and finally very moving?
  13. What Men Want
    The story is a lot harder on its female protagonist than the 2000 film was on its male equivalent. This makes a depressing amount of sense, given what women are up against in most workplaces. Henson’s Ali plays both the dramatic encounters and the slapstick opportunities for higher stakes than Gibson ever did.
  14. The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part
    Lord and Miller are two of a small handful of Hollywood screenwriters whose style is instantly identifiable. They’re adept at flicking a dozen jokes in different directions in the same minute of screen time. If “Lego Movie 2” tries too much, and gets lost in its own messages about familial cooperation, that’s the price of their brand of invention.
  15. They Shall Not Grow Old
    The film works best in its most acutely observed details of daily life in the trenches.
  16. Miss Bala
    Hardwicke is a talented director who brings an addictive verve and visual dynamism to this bombastic take, and Rodriguez has a charm so appealing it could be weaponized.
  17. Arctic
    The film is a fine reminder of how cinematic language can and should transcend the spoken word.
  18. Piercing
    What a deliciously demented and disturbing drama Nicolas Pesce's Piercing is, dripping with gore and laden with forbidden innuendo.
  19. Cold Pursuit
    The movie delivers, in its chosen way. But it’s a soulless way. The violence may be for laughs, and many Neeson fans will likely respond to the larky brutality of Cold Pursuit, which is very different from the star’s previous mid-winter vehicles (“The Grey” is my favorite). But I don’t get much psychic recreation from this sort of action movie.
  20. Stan & Ollie
    It’s a modest film, but a very good one, and by the end I was quite moved by its valiant belief in decency and in the duo’s eternal appeal.
  21. Serenity
    The atmosphere in Serenity, by design, imparts a slightly uneasy and hermetic feeling. In Baker Dill, who sounds like a line of gourmet pickles, Knight has the makings of a compellingly messed-up antihero. That’s a start. If movies were all start, then this one might’ve worked.
  22. Canal Street
    It’s a choppy, frustrating affair, periodically bailed out by some very good actors.
  23. Cold War
    Kulig comes with everything the role of this sullen, reckless siren demands, and then some.
  24. Life and Nothing More
    It’s full of life, guided by first-time screen performers portraying versions of themselves. And because Esparza’s a dramatist, not a melodramatist, the experience of watching Life and Nothing More becomes truth, and nothing less.
  25. Glass
    Way back in “Unbreakable,” Jackson’s Mr. Glass bemoaned how comics superheroes “got chewed up in the commercial machine.” Glass proves it.
  26. A Dog's Way Home
    Even the cute factor of A Dog's Way Home can't obscure its narrative weaknesses.
  27. The House That Jack Built
    A tedious picture about a remorseless serial killer, played by Matt Dillon.
  28. El Angel
    A sleekly fashioned true-crime story without much on its mind.
  29. 13th
    It's a crazy amount of ground to cover, but only rarely does 13th sacrifice clarity for cinematic energy.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Bathtubs Over Broadway
    Bathtubs Over Broadway offers plenty of evidence that these shows contained material from songwriting greats.
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