Chicago Tribune's Scores

Select another publication »
For 7,599 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: 5,104 out of 7599
  2. Mixed: 1,473 out of 7599
  3. Negative: 1,022 out of 7599
7599 movie reviews
view
per page
  1. Strays
    So what’s missing? The usual scarcities in modern screen comedy: visual finesse and some wit to go with the gross-out stuff. Little things start adding up against Strays.
  2. Blue Beetle
    While Blue Beetle isn’t the same representation achievement the first “Black Panther” was for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the movie works on a canvas broad enough to include some wrenching emotional sequences along with the usual superhero selling points.
  3. Heart of Stone
    To become a true screen action hero outside the “Wonder Woman” realm, Gadot needs better material than this, and only when she gets to square off with Bhatt’s increasingly conflicted superhacker does Heart of Stone suggest a human pulse.
  4. A Compassionate Spy
    What’s effective and touching in A Compassionate Spy relates directly to the satisfaction of getting to know Joan Hall, a terrifically vital and reflective presence. We get, among other things, a glimpse of a long-lived marriage hounded by secrets and surveillance, but an abiding mutual trust.
  5. Talk to Me
    Even if Talk to Me feels at times as if some crucial, characters-just-hanging-out material failed to make the final cut, the movie gets under your skin.
  6. Oppenheimer
    The results are pretty gripping and occasionally brilliant; its peaks, particularly when Nolan suddenly changes gears, cuts out the sound and reveals the full weight of Oppenheimer’s tormented psyche, reach higher than anything this filmmaker has scaled to date.
  7. Barbie
    I admit it: I went into “Barbie” with no firsthand usage or any practical knowledge, even, of Barbie, or Ken, let alone Allan or Midge. “Barbie” is my first Barbie. So. It’s kind of a big deal.
  8. Theater Camp
    The movie doesn’t need higher stakes, really, or more conflict; what’s there is fine, but the flights of deadpan insanity only fly so high.
  9. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning
    Whether Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One turns out to be a massive hit or merely a hit, it’s certainly the franchise action picture of the year, the one that truly knows what it’s doing, front to back.
  10. Revoir Paris
    While many will find Revoir Paris moving, for me it’s because the performances do the heavy lifting, effortlessly, while the material lays everything out too neatly. The mess of life, the anguish of what Mia is going through, deserves a clear-eyed exploration and a little less gloss.
  11. Joy Ride
    The on-screen talents, savvy and fine company all, have been ready for something like this far longer than the opportunity has been available.
  12. Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed
    The film struggles to capture what Hudson’s personality was like in private. Nor does it talk about his drinking, which reportedly became an issue later in life. But it’s a terrific portrait of how Hollywood once functioned — and the artifice of it all.
  13. Every Body
    The three people we meet here have worked every side of every street, by necessity: They’re artists of self-invention, activists of serious intent and just plain good company on screen.
  14. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
    At this point in the life of this ol’ archaeologist, Indy’s theme song has become not just a sound, but practically a sight to behold — even in a movie that isn’t.
  15. No Hard Feelings
    This relaxed, agreeable comedy, filmed near but not in Montauk, works because the stars make it work, and the premise — a little hoary — doesn’t sweat the logic part. Lawrence has fantastic timing and a kind of take-it-or-leave-it confidence that energizes a formulaic comedy.
  16. Asteroid City
    Anderson keeps inventing and detailing new unrealities to explore. They don’t all satisfy, certainly not the same way, but they’re his, and nobody else’s. And this is his best movie since “The Grand Budapest Hotel.”
  17. Extraction 2
    Though based on a graphic novel, both movies have the feel of a first person shooter video game. Hemsworth’s physical stature does a lot of the heavy lifting, literally and otherwise, but Tyler is not a character so much as an avatar.
  18. The Flash
    Keaton is the one who brings both effortless gravity and subtle levity to a film that, without him, wouldn’t have much of either.
  19. Elemental
    She’s spunky and hot-headed, he’s sweet and adorable — if they touch, it could be a disaster, but somehow, their chemistry just works, bringing the charming “Elemental” to a lively roiling boil.
  20. The Blackening
    It’s a comedy with a lot of very big laughs.
  21. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts
    You know what’s not bad? Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. Dumber than a box of lugnuts, but superior to the Michael Bay-directed schlocktaculars that ran as long as 165 minutes. The new “Transformers” movie clocks in at 117 minutes, a lot of them pretty zippy.
  22. Past Lives
    It’s a rare movie that settles, quietly, into some part of your own experiences and memories without a speck of narrative contrivance gumming up your response to the story on the screen. Past Lives is that rarity.
  23. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
    If Across the Spider-Verse falls an inch or two short of the earlier film, it’s because screenwriters/producers Phil Lord, Christopher Miller and David Callaham pack the second half of a pretty long movie (24 minutes longer than “Into the Spider-Verse”) with an increasingly dark and heavy threat level.
  24. The Little Mermaid
    The changes really help. The fleshed-out central romance, the performances of Halle Bailey (Ariel, the mermaid, with songs belted like nobody’s business) and, as her Above World love Prince Eric, Jonah Hauer-King — it all basically works.
  25. It Ain't Over
    The movie itself is more of a square than a circle — straightforward and honorific, peppered with old and newer archival footage.
  26. Master Gardener
    Even when it falters, Master Gardener speaks from a place the filmmaker has always worked, with one foot in the character-building of “slow cinema,” and the other in spasms of violence. It may be hard to buy where this movie lands. But even an unstuck landing isn’t enough to un-recommend it.
  27. Fast X
    My affection for a lot of the earlier F&F movies has everything to do with the people on the screen, and the squealing of the tires. Not so much the world destruction. Outlandish mayhem needs better visual stylists than Leterrier.
  28. The Mother
    The second half of The Mother settles for the usual. But getting there makes for a fairly diverting series of melees in the name of child protection, with services rendered by a tough-love mom who does it all.
  29. The Eight Mountains
    The love story that is The Eight Mountains expresses this ineffable relationship between those who know us best and the places in which we find ourselves with a rough-hewed grace and profound knowingness.
  30. BlackBerry
    BlackBerry doesn’t sermonize or push the comedy or falsify the dramatic dynamics of wildly contrasting personalities. It’s a small but quite beautiful achievement, which you could also say about the smartphone that could, and did. For a while.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »