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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    • 24 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    One Missed Call
    While director Eric Valette provides the occasional chill, the disturbing spooks aren't enough to make this boat float. Burns sleepwalks through One Missed Call totally devoid of charisma, and Sossamon muddles along, going through the motions.
  2. Honeydripper
    Typical of a pretty good Sayles movie. There are few, if any, heroes and villains.
  3. The Orphanage
    As in “Pan’s Labyrinth,” The Orphanage relies on a risky blend of clinically realistic horrors and poetic suggestions of an alternate world, one that can be visited, but at a price.
  4. There Will Be Blood
    Day-Lewis... the role of a lifetime.
  5. The Bucket List
    A manipulative look at dying with dignity and a lame yarn about as realistic as the fantasy in “The Princess Bride.”
  6. The Great Debaters
    Good story, well told. Interesting concept. I wonder if people will go for it.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Persepolis
    Without significantly changing the books’ content, they bring in a wealth of emotional tones--particularly a playful, wry humor.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    The Water Horse
    First, a few things The Water Horse is not: revolutionary, controversial or challenging. What it is: a sweet, familiar story, beautifully filmed and lovingly told.
  9. Charlie Wilson's War
    It is well made as far as it goes. I wish it went beyond its own carefully prescribed limits of the commercially acceptable.
  10. National Treasure: Book of Secrets
    All you want from a movie like this, really, is a little brainless fun, and it keeps holding out on you. Everyone looks fatigued. Even Cage’s toupee seems ambivalent about having signed on for a sequel.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    P.S. I Love You
    One of the most gifted dramatic actors working in movies today, Swank is stunningly ill suited for romantic comedy (or this one, anyway).
  12. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
    Sweeney Todd may haunt you in ways you’re not used to with a movie musical. At least not since “Mame.”
  13. Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
    The tunes are so good, you can’t believe the film itself doesn’t amount to more, especially with the rightness of the casting. Still, a few laughs are better than none.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Steep
    Steep is one of those rare endeavors able to touch on the human condition without neglecting the film’s true star: big-mountain skiing.
  15. Alvin and the Chipmunks
    So it’s one of those Hip, Now updates, albeit with jokes riffing on pop-cult artifacts that are already Then. I mean: “Jerry Maguire”? Moratorium!
  16. I Am Legend
    Smith carries it, even after the story loses its nerve. This film is the opposite of “Transformers”: It’s all about the unsettling silence, not the noise.
  17. The Kite Runner
    While not autobiographical, The Kite Runner feels authentic in its ethnic tensions, even when the narrative itself, with its handily reappearing and easily avenged villain, undermines that authenticity.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Look
    The performances feel natural, improvised, and it’s easy to believe this is the world we inhabit. But if Rifkin’s message is pro-privacy, his script, laced throughout with menace, argues against it.
  19. Youth Without Youth
    Too much of the film is a muddle, and it feels like work, not play.
  20. The Perfect Holiday
    Strives to be nothing more than easygoing and heartwarming.
  21. Nanking
    Whatever the numbers, testimony cited in Nanking portrays the episode as a horrifying chapter in man’s renowned inhumanity to man.
  22. Atonement
    Hampton and Wright have been more than sensible when it comes to Atonement. They’ve responded intuitively to a tale that is half art and half potboiler, like so many stories worth telling.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Golden Compass
    It’s pure introductory adventure, meant to immerse readers in Pullman’s richly complicated fantasy universe.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Man in the Chair
    By salvaging a troubled script with deep, committed, touching portrayals, Plummer and Walsh help prove Schroeder’s points about how Hollywood isn’t just the province of the rich, young and pretty.
  25. Grace Is Gone
    It’s a close call, but Grace is Gone is worth seeing for the way John Cusack works with Shelan O’Keefe and Gracie Bednarczyk, two of the least affected and most affecting young actors to hit the screen this year.
  26. Revolver
    Part gambling heist, part graphic novel, part metaphysical mumbo jumbo, Revolver is a mess of many colors, few of them satisfying.
  27. Juno
    Ellen Page is key to its success, as much as Cody, or director Jason Reitman.
  28. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
    It is wonderful: a rhapsodic adaptation of a memoir, a visual marvel that wraps its subject in screen romanticism without romanticizing his affliction. It left me feeling euphoric.
  29. Protagonist
    All four stories are worthwhile, though together they’re an awful lot for one modest doc to cover. Yu’s integration of cinematic and theatrical elements is uneven, and a bit stiff.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    The Savages
    A bracingly honest, funny movie about death and family that skillfully sidesteps the usual pitfalls of sentimentality and mawkishness. It’s what you might call an awards season miracle.
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