Chicago Tribune's Scores

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For 7,614 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: 5,117 out of 7614
  2. Mixed: 1,475 out of 7614
  3. Negative: 1,022 out of 7614
7614 movie reviews
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  1. Lucy
    When everything and anything is possible, nothing feels urgent or truly dramatic. The movie devolves into a melange of digital effects and sequences of glamorous slaughter, as Lucy swaggers around, with that big brain, and slouches toward becoming a full-lipped deity.
  2. Happy Christmas
    Swanberg may be one of the few American filmmakers who'd benefit from reading one of those "10 Rules for Mediocre Hollywood Screenwriting" how-to books. Many find a kind of truth and life and rough domestic magic in his films. Here and there, now and then, I see what they're talking about.
  3. A Most Wanted Man
    The events are complicated, though not complicated by cheap thrills or easy politics. It's a film of interest rather than throttling suspense. By the end, however, when Bachmann's future depends on a very simple nonviolent series of events, Corbijn's methodical approach pays off. And we care. We care about the protagonist's outcome.
  4. Magic in the Moonlight
    With this script, Allen isn't working in farce mode. It's more an easygoing nod to W. Somerset Maugham or, in the plot's "Pygmalion"-like relationship between a cynical older man and his desired younger female charge, George Bernard Shaw.
  5. Boyhood
    In completing this simple, beautiful project Linklater took his time. And he rewards ours.
  6. Sex Tape
    Sex Tape settles for violence when violent slapstick, a lot harder to finesse, was the implicit goal of the picture.
  7. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
    Whatever audiences think of it, I'd say the latest "Apes" picture is just that: a solid success, sharing many of its predecessor's swift, exciting storytelling and motion-capture technology virtues.
  8. Cinemanovels
    The actors make up for the relative thinness of the material. Smith navigates the emotional terrain with great skill. The script is often funny but just as often cutesy.
  9. Deliver Us From Evil
    Half the time, Deliver Us From Evil is genuinely interested in Sarchie's all-too-human demons, and half the time we're marking time until the big exorcism and an ending that keeps the door open for a sequel, should the market demand it.
  10. Tammy
    The movie shoves McCarthy and Sarandon in a car together quickly, without much in the way of expository set-up.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    Transformers: Age Of Extinction
    It is scattered, weightless, impossible to get hold of, and somehow, after seven years and more than 10 hours of screen time, I could not tell you what these films are about.
  12. Third Person
    How much of what we see in Third Person is the novelist's invention is part of the guessing game that goes on and on. And. On.
  13. They Came Together
    Occasionally very funny, and moderately funny the rest of the time. In mathematical terms that adds up to pretty funny or "funny enough."
  14. The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz
    See the movie, flaws and all, simply to see where you stand in this digital river that runs through all our lives, connecting and isolating us in ways we're barely able to comprehend.
  15. A Coffee In Berlin
    The film's surprising, enveloping jazz score is often deliberately at odds with Niko's moody outlook.
  16. Think Like a Man Too
    The sequel is a disappointing step down, and backward.
  17. Jersey Boys
    Jersey Boys the movie is a different, more sedate animal than "Jersey Boys" the Broadway musical.
  18. 22 Jump Street
    Be sure to hang around for the closing credits, which imagine all sorts of "Jump Street" sequels to come.
  19. How to Train Your Dragon 2
    Looks, feels and flows like a real movie. It's better than the last few Pixar features, among other things, and from where I sit that includes "Toy Story 3."
  20. Edge of Tomorrow
    I'm not sure Edge of Tomorrow holds much repeat viewing potential among teenage movie consumers, since the movie's a self-repeating entity to begin with. But once is fun.
  21. The Fault in Our Stars
    Woodley is an ace at handling laughter through tears — "my favorite emotion," as a character in "Steel Magnolias" once said. She improves with each new film, even when the films themselves aren't much.
  22. Maleficent
    This is almost entirely Angelina Jolie's show...this is a performance that goes from point A to point B without seeming rote, or ho-hum.
  23. A Million Ways to Die in the West
    Plenty of comedies aren't funny, but this one is more than that. It's wholeheartedly narcissistic in its portrait of male petulance and self-pity.
  24. Ida
    One of the year's gems.
  25. Million Dollar Arm
    McCarthy is following well-established story grooves here, but scene to scene, he allows the dialogue to breathe and reveal bits of character along with the more expedient bits of plot advancement.
  26. Chef
    Favreau's masterly light touch as an actor hasn't yet translated to a similarly deft offhandedness behind the camera. The movie, slick and shallow, is fairly entertaining anyway.
  27. Godzilla
    The director thinks visually, which sounds redundant until you realize how many monster movies are flat, effects-dependent factory jobs. Edwards knows how to use great heights for great effect.
  28. Neighbors
    One part smart, one part stupid and three parts jokes about body parts, the extremely raunchy Neighbors is a strange success story.
  29. Locke
    Twenty minutes in, Hardy notwithstanding, you might be tempted to bail on Locke. Don't.
  30. The Amazing Spider-Man 2
    Folks, I confess: I'm coping with a mild case of arachno-apatha-phobia, defined as the fear of another so-so "Spider-Man" sequel.
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