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. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. Revolver
    Part gambling heist, part graphic novel, part metaphysical mumbo jumbo, Revolver is a mess of many colors, few of them satisfying.
  6. Juno
    Ellen Page is key to its success, as much as Cody, or director Jason Reitman.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Starting Out in the Evening
    Because the characters are richly realized and their dialogue rings true, we stick around, rooting for something like a happy ending.
  11. August Rush
    It’s an unabashed feel-good weeper, and those eager for that type of fare might as well settle for this one. But an equal number will be put off by the bad dialogue, transparent manipulation and saccharine overkill.
  12. Enchanted
    Through good scenes and derivative ones, Adams is disarming.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Hitman
    Here’s all you really need to know before the opening credits roll in Hitman: There’s going to be a lot of bloodshed. And that’s a good thing, considering there isn’t much dialogue to carry the film.
  14. I'm Not There.
    I appreciate Haynes’ craft and ambition. I love the Ledger/Gainsbourg scenes, which are sweet and sad and delicately shaded. And Blanchett’s inspired not-quite-impersonation of Dylan is reason enough to tussle with the rest of it.
  15. The Mist
    Good and creepy, The Mist comes from a Stephen King novella and is more the shape, size and quality of the recent “1408,” likewise taken from a King story, than anything in the persistently fashionable charnel house inhabited by the “Saw” and “Hostel” franchises.
  16. This Christmas
    Overstuffed, formulaic but very easy to take.
  17. Beowulf
    Beowulf is all right as far as it goes, and it goes pretty far for a PG-13 rating: Dismemberment, “300”-style blood globules comin’ atcha, and a digitally futzed and, for all practical purposes, completely naked!!!
    • 60 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    What Would Jesus Buy?
    It’s a wickedly effective indictment of America’s consumer compulsion, our mindless shopping and the multinational corporations controlling it all.
  19. Margot at the Wedding
    Baumbach’s achievement stings. It also has the sureness of tone and direction of a Chekhov story.
  20. Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium
    Twenty or 30 minutes into Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium the urge to flee may rise within you like an oceanic tide. But stick with it. The film is very sweet--in fact it represents the dawn of a new sport, Extreme Whimsy.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Redacted
    Like so many of his movies, Redacted is difficult to watch but queasily fascinating.
  22. Love in the Time of Cholera
    Newell has done some fine work in all sorts of genres, from “Four Weddings and a Funeral” to “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,” but in “Cholera” he seems to be chronicling a half-century of events, passions and desires as a tourist, not a native.
  23. Southland Tales
    To be clear: The odds are in favor of you hating it. I hated a lot of it when I saw a barely dry work-in-progress print, 163 minutes long, at the Cannes Film Festival. It’s 19 minutes shorter and better now, though “better” is relative when you’re dealing with a whatzahoozy such as this.
  24. Fred Claus
    Fred Claus seems a clever installment, not a seasonal classic, a buffet whose many nibbles you sample, move on and quickly forget.
  25. The Life of Reilly
    Director Barry Poltermann’s sweet little evocation of a show business career captures Reilly at “the twilight of an extraordinary life,” in Reilly’s words.
  26. Lions for Lambs
    This is the sort of film where a character says “Here we are, having a high-minded debate ...” and you wonder if countless moviegoers will be rolling their eyes in unison.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 12 Critic Score
    Electric Apricot
    Shot in the same style as “Spinal Tap,” Electric Apricot fails to wow in every way possible, but the music disappoints the most.
  28. No Country for Old Men
    As pure craftsmanship, No Country for Old Men is as good as we’ve ever gotten from Joel and Ethan Coen. Only “Fargo” is more satisfying (it’s also a comedy, which this one isn’t).
    • 37 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    P2
    The lighting is appropriately dim, the music is reasonably clever, and they get in a few nice scares in the beginning. But as the movie wears on and Angela’s desperation grows, any glimmer of fun seeps away. And we’re left watching the same old grim game of cat and mouse.
  30. American Gangster
    It’s a big, juicy 1970s period piece, one foot in real life, the other in the movies, the preferred stance of many Hollywood crime sagas.
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