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. Young Goethe in Love
    Young Goethe in Love wants only to engage an audience with a capital-R Romantic ideal of Goethe's first love. It does so very well. And it was well worth the effort.
  2. Young Adult
    Cody would likely acknowledge she's working through her own contradictory feelings toward her protagonist - and that she may have been a draft or two away from shaping those feelings into a terrific black comedy, rather than a pretty interesting one.
  3. New Year's Eve
    I always enjoy Elizondo; he has a way of elevating some pretty lame banter, and thanks to New Year's Eve he has his way all over again.
  4. The Sitter
    I hope Green one day finds a way to bridge the style and rhythm of his early pictures (the ones that didn't make money) and the bumper-car approach of The Sitter.
  5. Tyrannosaur
    The result is a picture that is baldly manipulative yet weirdly sentimental, and while Considine (a fine actor) can write, he is capable also of writing dialogue you've heard before.
  6. Shame
    There is a good movie to be made about someone like Brandon, especially with someone like Fassbender, a performer of exceptional technical facility and a fascinating sense of reserve. McQueen's isn't quite it.
  7. Arthur Christmas
    A tender and upbeat spirit informs the writing and the execution.
  8. Hugo
    Rich and stimulating even when it wanders.
  9. My Week with Marilyn
    Such stalwarts as Judi Dench, Julia Ormond, Toby Jones and Dominic Cooper spice things up as characters of various degrees of familiarity.
  10. The Muppets
    At its best, though, The Muppets cuts back on the '80s-flashback self-consciousness and believes in the dream.
  11. Happy Feet Two
    The sequel's themes of friendship and interdependency fail to generate much momentum.
  12. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1
    Reveals a flash or two of real filmmaking (mostly in a suggestively grotesque birthing sequence), enough to save it from pure lousiness.
  13. The Descendants
    It's one of the year's most pleasurable American movies.
  14. Jack and Jill
    It's not much to hijack. But playing a lovelorn version of himself, in love with Adam Sandler in a dress, a lisp and breasts, Al Pacino holds a gun to the head of the comedy Jack and Jill and says: I now pronounce you mine.
  15. Melancholia
    Much of Melancholia plays, effectively, like a slice of late 20th century Dogme-style realism, in the vein of the film "Celebration" by von Trier's fellow Dane, Thomas Vinterberg.
  16. Into the Abyss
    The film is a river of pain, weirdly funny in places, as are all of Herzog's filmic essays.
  17. J. Edgar
    I like the way DiCaprio and Hammer capture the little things - the byplay, the moments in which two men are "playing" FBI agents, partly for show, partly for real. At times, DiCaprio's macho posturing recalls a junior G-man version of Marlon Brando's self-hating homosexual in "Reflections of a Golden Eye."
  18. Le Havre
    Does Kaurismaki believe in his own fairy tale? The movie, a humble delight, suggests the answer is yes.
  19. Like Crazy
    It's entirely possible, maybe even inevitable, that Like Crazy will win over a good many moviegoers despite its bouts of semipreciousness. In the end, I was one of them.
  20. Tower Heist
    For what it is - recessionary wish-fulfillment escapism, with a lot of highly skilled familiar faces in its amply qualified cast - it's fun.
  21. A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas
    The first "H&K" caught people off-guard with its canny idiocy and zigzagging, picaresque treasure hunt premise. By now, there's no catching anyone off-guard with these two, except by way of the most off-color and off-putting means possible.
  22. In Time
    I like a lot of the film despite its drawbacks; its violence isn't rote or numbing, and there's a simplicity and elegance to the digital-countdown effect.
  23. Anonymous
    Anonymous is ridiculous, and like Oliver Stone's "JFK" it sells its political conspiracy theories by weight and by volume. But dull, it's not.
  24. The Rum Diary
    There isn't a sophisticated or "adult" perspective to be found in The Rum Diary.
  25. Martha Marcy May Marlene
    The acting in Durkin's feature is excellent. Olsen is utilized largely as an object for camera adoration, but not in the usual glamorizing way. Olsen, Hawkes and company play slippery figures with lovely assurance.
  26. The Three Musketeers
    This latest version is le pits.
  27. The Mighty Macs
    The film doesn't pretend to be anything other than what it is: a story of one woman overcoming low expectations. Gugino and Burstyn and the young performers playing the young players do likewise.
  28. The Skin I Live In
    The film is an exercise in improbable contrasts. The more extreme the actions of the characters, the more contained and fastidious the director's technique.
  29. Margin Call
    On the facile side, but it's well-crafted and smartly acted.
  30. Paranormal Activity 3
    The films are not works of genius. They are, however, wily reminders of the virtues of restraint when you're out for a scare.
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