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. The Other Woman
    Written by newcomer Melissa K. Stack, The Other Woman offers roughly equal parts wit and witlessness, casual smarts and jokes, lingering and detailed, regarding explosive bowel movements. Based on that ratio, I'd say the screenwriter's future in Hollywood looks pretty good.
  2. The Railway Man
    Even when the film's cheating, Firth refuses to tidy up the fictionalized Lomax's emotional state. The actor, so good at playing stalwart men contending with inner demons, can utter a simple line — "I don't think I can be put back together" — and break your heart, legitimately, without histrionics.
  3. The Unknown Known
    It's still worth seeing. This ambitious and powerful sphinx, a major force in a particular chunk of recent history, may not give away much. Watching and listening to how he doesn't give it away — that's the known known here.
  4. Transcendence
    After an intriguing start, Transcendence — aka "The Computer Wore Johnny Depp's Tennis Shoes" — offers roughly the same level of excitement as listening to hold music during a call to tech support.
  5. Under the Skin
    It feels fresh and unpredictable, as quietly strange as the remarkable musical score from first-time feature film composer Mica Levi.
  6. Dom Hemingway
    The material, limited payoff; the performer at the center, never less than arresting.
  7. Rio 2
    Rio 2 offers roughly the same approach to story and to story clutter as did the first movie.
  8. Draft Day
    Draft Day feels like a play, and I don't mean a football play. It feels like a play-play at its sporadic best, in the same way J.C. Chandor's 2011 "Margin Call" felt that way.
  9. Nymphomaniac: Volume II
    Vol. II turns into a battle (like most von Trier films) between the filmmaker's baser instincts and his searching ones.
  10. Finding Vivian Maier
    Vivian Maier is a great Chicago story. And what she did for, and with, the faces, neighborhoods and character of mid-20th century Chicago deserves comparison to what Robert Frank accomplished, in a wider format, with "The Americans."
  11. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
    The movie does its duty. It's a reliable commodity, delivered efficiently and well, like pizza.
  12. Jodorowsky's Dune
    Had this ambitious head trip come to pass, it might've made Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" look like "Go, Dog. Go!"
  13. Noah
    Neither fish nor fowl, neither foul nor inspiring, director and co-writer Darren Aronofsky's strange and often rich new movie Noah has enough actual filmmaking to its name to deserve better handling than a plainly nervous Paramount Pictures has given it.
  14. Sabotage
    The movie wants it both ways: bloodthirsty revenge and some finger-wagging about the tactics.
  15. Enemy
    It's not a frenzied head-trip, the way Roman Polanski's "The Tenant" was, nor does the movie have half the energy and nightmarish allure of David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive." It's best taken, I think, as a jape and a wry male-centric fable on transgression and desire.
  16. Nymphomaniac: Volume I
    A weirdly old-fashioned affair. If it weren't for the explicit sexual encounters, this could be an Ibsen or a Strindberg play, unclothed and unmoored from the late 19th or early 20th century.
  17. Muppets Most Wanted
    Part of the problem here is one of proportion: The movie throws a misjudged majority of the material to the villains and lets the unfashionably sincere and sweet-natured Muppets fend for themselves.
  18. Divergent
    The generic bulk of Divergent hits its marks and moves on.
  19. Veronica Mars
    Most of the clues in Veronica Mars pertain either to Internet sex tapes or the various surveillance uses of the latest tablets. Anybody who works in tech support will probably enjoy the film a tad more than I did.
  20. Need For Speed
    When the actors are in cars, the movie's fun. When they get out to argue, or seethe, it's uh-oh time. Happily, director Scott Waugh comes out of the stunt world himself, and there's a refreshing emphasis on actual, theoretically dangerous stunt driving over digital absurdities.
  21. The Grand Budapest Hotel
    One of Anderson's cleverest and most gorgeous movies, dipping just enough of a toe in the real world — and in the melancholy works of its acknowledged inspiration, the late Austrian writer Stefan Zweig — to prevent the whole thing from floating off into the ether of minor whimsy.
  22. Mr. Peabody & Sherman
    More than anything Minkoff's project feels like a protracted episode of "Jimmy Neutron," a show with characters for whom I don't have the same affection.
  23. Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me
    To millions, Stritch is the Emmy-winning actress who did "30 Rock," playing Alec Baldwin's mom. Those people who don't know the rest of her story should take the 82 minutes to see this.
  24. 300: Rise of an Empire
    This is digital fake-ism all the way. Audiences bought it the first time; they're likely to buy it a second time.
  25. Kids for Cash
    An impressive, often enraging feature-length debut from director Robert May, deals carefully and well with the so-called kids for cash scandal.
  26. Non-Stop
    The movie's fun. And now, thanks to our annual Neeson thriller, spring can come soon.
  27. In Secret
    Olsen is pretty good, too, though with her bald-faced, moon-eyed disdain for everyone around her, the material loses some of its tension between repressed surface and roiling underbelly.
  28. The Wind Rises
    It makes the dream of flight itself a vehicle for bittersweet enchantment.
  29. Tim's Vermeer
    It's an odd film, ultimately rewarding, because it's about an odd venture.
  30. Endless Love
    A movie just begging to go up in the flames of camp. If only somebody had brought a match.
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