Chicago Tribune's Scores

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For 7,613 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 1.4 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: 5,116 out of 7613
  2. Mixed: 1,475 out of 7613
  3. Negative: 1,022 out of 7613
7613 movie reviews
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  1. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
    Yet it's worth seeing because the sights are truly something. Claudio Miranda's pearly cinematography, Donald Graham Burt's luscious production design, the visual effects supervised by Eric Barba--everything blends, and none of the seams show.
  2. Bedtime Stories
    Clean enough to fly the Walt Disney Pictures flag, yet it's full of bimbos and cleavage and shots of Adam Sandler getting kicked in the shins by a dwarf.
  3. Last Chance Harvey
    Last Chance Harvey is what it is: a pleasant put-up job, held up by world-class pros.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Marley & Me
    And then there's Alan Arkin, who, as John's editor, is hilarious and dry--it's frankly a shame he's not onscreen for every single scene.
  5. Valkyrie
    It's a procedural, often absorbing, rarely surprising, about a briefcase bomb and a near-miss. Yet there's no question the film feels dodgy and vague when it comes to the personalities and ideology of the men onscreen.
  6. Waltz with Bashir
    It is personal filmmaking of the highest order, recognized with an Academy Award nomination for best foreign film.
  7. The Secret of the Grain
    For me, it's a sign that a filmmaker is on to something if you love hanging out with the characters as they eat and drink and talk and reveal little bits of themselves through everyday action.
  8. The Tale of Despereaux
    I admired the craft more than I loved the results. But The Tales of Despereaux is still better-than-average animation.
  9. Yes Man
    Starts out wobbly but ends up quite nicely, primarily because Carrey has a wonderful acting partner in Zooey Deschanel.
  10. The Class
    This is one of the screen's most rewarding explorations of the teacher/student relationship in any language.
  11. Seven Pounds
    Seven Pounds has a heart as big as all outdoors. Unfortunately it's made out of high-fructose bull.
  12. The Wrestler
    The Wrestler works for the same reason "Rachel Getting Married" works. The way they're acted, shot, edited and scored, both films deploy a loose, rough-hewn documentary style to great dramatic advantage. The corn isn't hyped. The performances click without going for the jugular.
  13. Timecrimes
    Timecrimes doesn't end as well as it begins. Then again, writer-director Nacho Vigalondo deliberately fudges the beginning and endpoints of his premise, which involves one of those nutty causal loops so dear to writers and consumers of science fiction.
  14. The Day the Earth Stood Still
    Keanu Reeves plays Klaatu, confining his usual two-and-a-half-note vocal range to half that.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Dark Streets
    Dark Streets lost me early, real early, like still-adjusting-my-eyes-in-a-dark-theater early.
  16. Doubt
    While Streep has a tiny bit too much fun with some of her character's excesses, she's awfully good. So is Hoffman, who walks a fine line between obvious guilt and possible innocence.
  17. Gran Torino
    Eastwood's foursquare directorial aesthetic tends to heighten, rather than camouflage, a screenplay's shortcomings.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Nothing Like the Holidays
    It's what we need at the holidays, and it's the modest goal of a modest little picture like this--to capture something heartfelt and real.
  19. Che
    Che is Soderbergh's most interesting film in years, defiantly eccentric and absorbing at its best.
  20. The Reader
    Can a formidable actress redeem a pile of solemn erotic kitsch? Kate Winslet answers that one as honestly as she can in the film version of Bernhard Schlink's 1995 novel "The Reader."
  21. Wendy and Lucy
    If a Warner Bros. social-protest film from the early 1930s somehow got into bed with an American indie from the 1970s, how would the love-child turn out? Like this.
  22. Frost/Nixon
    Frost/Nixon is wholly absorbing.
  23. The Black Balloon
    At its sharpest Elissa Down's feature directorial debut is guided by intense, rough-edged emotional swings that feel authentically alive, even when the script settles for tidiness.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Cadillac Records
    Mos Def makes a terrific Berry, all flash and confidence, and Wright offers a memorably soulful take on Waters, whether he's strutting, singing, suffering or all three. Walker's Howlin' Wolf is a deep-throated, pride-filled bear of a man who dominates the screen.
  25. Hunger
    It's a strength of this carefully composed, almost obsessively controlled picture that it has no interest in the conventional biographical focus on a subject.
  26. Nobel Son
    I enjoyed Eliza Dushku's mad poetess, probably for the wrong reasons, but with a project this meager, you take your artful sneers and scenic diversions where you can get them.
  27. Punisher: War Zone
    The film works a bit better than the 2004 "Punisher" installment, the one starring surly, dislikable Thomas Jane as Frank Castle.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Transporter 3
    The best sequences involve Frank's inventive ability to stay within 75 feet of his car, but otherwise, it's the charismatic unruffled dexterity in the face of impossible odds that rivets.
  29. Four Christmases
    As Vaughn's therapist mother, Sissy Spacek comes off best. But she's a rare bird of whom it truly can be said: She's always good. No matter how grim the material.
  30. Milk
    The story of Harvey Milk is a tragedy, but not since Jeff Spicoli in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" has Sean Penn played such a serenely happy individual.
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