Chicago Tribune's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. Beyond the Hills
    Of all the movies culminating in a rite of exorcism, Romanian writer-director Cristian Mungiu's remarkable Beyond the Hills stands alone.
  2. The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
    The Incredible Burt Wonderstone serves as a reminder that everything in a film has a chance to go wrong before a film begins filming. In other words: It's the script, stupid.
  3. Don't Stop Believin': Everyman's Journey
    The best material in the film is the loosest, capturing the perpetually insecure and overcompensating Pineda in his early concerts, leaping, bouncing, careening around as if every moment in every song were an audition for the next moment in the next song.
  4. Emperor
    This one's likely to vex both history buffs and those who require some drama with their drama.
  5. No
    No succeeds, wonderfully, because it knows how to sell itself. It is cool, witty, technically dazzling in a low-key and convincing way.
  6. Oz the Great and Powerful
    As a series of sights, which movies like these are, Oz the Great and Powerful is more like "Oz the Digital and Relentless." Certainly this is true in its final half-hour, which seemed to me to be all explosions.
  7. Phantom
    Robinson is undone partly by his own workmanlike touch as a writer, and partly by matters of casting. I like Harris, and he's quite moving here, but every time Duchovny reappears the overall energy level sinks to crush depth.
  8. Like Someone in Love
    It's also gorgeously acted by all, and while this may not be one of Kiarostami's finest, the craftsmanship nonetheless is so high, it makes everything else currently in theaters look slovenly.
  9. Jack the Giant Slayer
    The film is ruled by sound and fury signifying an attempt to launch a new franchise.
  10. Stoker
    Wasikowska is a fine, intriguing actress, though I'm not sure anyone could make actual psychological sense of this woman. Nobody on screen — not Kidman, not Goode, not Wasikowska, not Jacki Weaver as Auntie Gin — seems entirely at home in the chosen (or guessed-at) style.
  11. The Gatekeepers
    This is a great and necessary document in support of a two-state solution. Even those who don't believe in such a solution may find their minds changed by The Gatekeepers.
  12. Bless Me, Ultima
    The results are pretty, and sometimes beautiful. They're also a tad stiff, and the dialogue and voice-over narration sometimes has the ring of a scrupulously faithful adaptation.
  13. Snitch
    It's an entertaining picture — pulp, coming from a place of righteous indignation.
  14. A Good Day to Die Hard
    Isn't just the weakest of the "Die Hard" pictures; it's a lousy action movie on its own terms.
  15. Beautiful Creatures
    When classy, pedigreed British actors go hog-wild under the flowering dogwood trees of a Southern Gothic setting, often the results are good. Just as often they're so bad they're good. And sometimes, as is the case with Jeremy Irons and Emma Thompson in Beautiful Creatures, they're simply doing the best they can under the circumstances.
  16. Safe Haven
    I like Duhamel, and in her first straight-up dramatic role Hough does well enough, though her singing and/dancing career thus far has trained her to oversell, as opposed to sell, as opposed to act naturally.
  17. John Dies at the End
    This is a fantasy grab bag in which nearly anything can happen.
  18. Side Effects
    With Rooney Mara as the woman in question — a poised, tense Manhattanite prescribed anti-anxiety medication by her psychiatrist with newsworthy results — Side Effects finds its ideal performer.
  19. Identity Thief
    Gordon is lost, and his style of shooting - telescopic close-ups, which never give us enough space to appreciate the performers - feels wrong for comedy.
  20. Stand Up Guys
    Arkin in particular can barely hide his lack of enthusiasm for the material. Some of the looks he shoots his co-stars appear to contain a secret code of some kind, deciphered as: 'Well, at least I'm in 'Argo.'"
  21. Bullet to the Head
    It's junk, and it's excessively violent, which is a given. Approach it as a Stallone movie (which it is) or as a Hill movie (which it is), but it's more interesting as a Hill movie. If it gets this director back into the hard-driving action game, then it will have done its duty.
  22. Warm Bodies
    Levine has a strong instinct as a packager of moments, ladling on the alt-rock just so before ladling on another ladle's worth.
  23. Consuming Spirits
    Dense like a detailed graphic novel in the Chris Ware or R. Crumb vein, but a real movie in every way, Consuming Spirits is a strange and wormy accomplishment, the sort of personal epic only the most obsessive of cinematic madmen undertake, let alone complete.
  24. Quartet
    The material settles for amiably familiar observations about the difficulties of growing old and the glories of being surrounded by beautiful music.
  25. Broken City
    For an hour or so, aided by the autumnal glow of Ben Seresin's cinematography, director Hughes maintains a firm handle on the story's turnabouts. Then the script goes a little nuts with coincidence and improbability.
  26. West of Memphis
    A strong, blood-boiling documentary from director Amy Berg, who made the similarly fine "Deliver Us From Evil".
  27. LUV
    An uneven but strongly acted debut feature from co-writer and director Sheldon Candis.
  28. Amour
    Small, sure and stunningly acted, this is a picture of exacting control.
  29. Gangster Squad
    A triumph of production design but a pretty dull kill-'em-up otherwise.
  30. Zero Dark Thirty
    The key American film of 2012 ... Its stance is extremely tricky. It's not a documentary. It's not a load of revenge nonsense. It's not '24.' I'm still arguing with myself over parts of it. And that's a sign that a movie will endure.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »