Chicago Tribune's Scores

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For 7,601 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: 5,106 out of 7601
  2. Mixed: 1,473 out of 7601
  3. Negative: 1,022 out of 7601
7601 movie reviews
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  1. Farewell
    This complicated but absorbing tale is not told through primarily American eyes ( Willem Dafoe plays a CIA. figurehead); primarily it's about French and Soviet brinksmanship, and those who succeeded at it, or failed, and one man who died for the risks he took.
  2. Countdown to Zero
    Like Charles Ferguson's excellent Iraq documentary "No End in Sight," "Countdown to Zero" has an agenda but has the cogent, reasoned rhetoric to support it.
  3. Inception
    The film is Nolan's labyrinth all the way, and it's gratifying to experience a summer movie with large visual ambitions and with nothing more or less on its mind than (as Shakespeare said) a dream that hath no bottom.
  4. The Sorcerer's Apprentice
    The CGI is relentless and what you might call reverse-magical: The more we're hit with stuff, the less wondrous it becomes.
  5. Despicable Me
    Is the movie itself good? Half-good, I'd say - the second, more openly sentimental half.
  6. Predators
    Predators, plural, starts well and ends poorly, and in the middle it's in the middle.
  7. The Kids Are All Right
    "All right" doesn't begin to describe it. The Kids Are All Right is wonderful. Here is a film that respects and enjoys all of its characters, the give-and-take and recklessness and wisdom of any functioning family unit, conventional or un-.
  8. The Girl Who Played with Fire
    The second film lingers less determinedly on the degradation of Lisbeth and concentrates more on moving the narrative furniture around. The relationship between the main characters is the glue holding the balsa wood together.
  9. The Last Airbender
    The Last Airbender (they couldn't use the series' "Avatar" title because another film got there first, without all the bending) is more about marshaling extras and interpolating tons of computer-generated effects and keeping the factions straight. It's a tough sit.
  10. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse
    More happens in Eclipse than in the previous "Twilight" zone, "New Moon," and yet it's duller
  11. Love Ranch
    What could have been a juicy, pulpy noir, based loosely on the real-life 1976 Mustang Ranch love triangle involving Joe and Sally Conforte and Sally's boxer paramour, instead has the dramatic consistency of rice milk.
  12. Grown Ups
    The only people humiliated, really, are older people and heavy people and nerds and vegans and black people and mothers who breast-feed their 4-year-olds. Everybody else gets a pass.
  13. Restrepo
    The film is unusually free of cant and the usual trappings of war docs. There is no voice-over narration and very little dramatic underscoring. Right or wrong, the filmmakers shave matters of political policy and contextual analysis clean off the finished product, which runs a tight 94 minutes.
  14. Wild Grass
    It is craftsmanship incarnate and the embodiment of tonal unpredictability.
  15. Knight and Day
    Knight and Day may well suffice for audiences desperate for the bankable paradox known as the predictable surprise, and willing to overlook a galumphing mediocrity in order to concentrate on matters of dentistry.
  16. Toy Story 3
    Though uneven and less witty than the first two, Toy Story 3 delivers quite enough in two dimensions.
  17. Jonah Hex
    Here's how you know Josh Brolin has become a movie star: Jonah Hex may not be much with him, but without him? Perish the thought. Perish it, throw an ax in its heart, then burn it to a crisp.
  18. Cyrus
    Amuses and unnerves in equal measure.
  19. I Am Love
    I Am Love makes no apologies for its style. None needed: The film, a two-hour swoon, is a cry for romantic freedom, perched on the edge of self-parody, as all good melodramas are.
  20. Let It Rain
    The interview sessions are all disastrous in one way or another; Let It Rain is at its wittiest when Michel flails around, grousing about his own divorce and child custody troubles without ever quite asking his interview subject an actual question
  21. The Karate Kid
    Jackie Chan co-stars in Morita's old role of the humble maintenance man who coaches the Bullied One. The older Chan gets, the simpler and truer he becomes as a performer.
  22. The A-Team
    Until a leaden third act, it IS reasonably entertaining.
  23. Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work
    A gripping documentary.
  24. Winter's Bone
    The way Lawrence captures a young woman's fear and resolve, often non-verbally, well … this is a considerable talent well on her way to a great career. It's for performances like this that moviegoers find themselves taking a chance on a title that doesn't have a fast-food tie-in.
  25. Splice
    The sexual component to Splice pushes the story in provocatively eerie directions.
  26. Get Him to the Greek
    Extremely raunchy, Get Him to the Greek is also very funny
  27. Killers
    Haven't we seen the oh-my-gosh-my-spouse-is-secretly-an-assassin-but-you-know-a-nice-one routine once too often?
  28. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
    It's sort of fun, certainly more so than the "National Treasure" pictures, as well as less manic (a little less) than the recent "Mummy" films.
  29. Micmacs
    For me, the mechanics or even the (excellent) designs are not enough. Jeunet's archness keeps conventional empathy or engagement at bay, and by design maintains a tone of artificiality.
  30. Agora
    Agora has everything except real drama.
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