Chicago Tribune's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. Bee Movie
    Much of this wordplay is clever, though there’s something off with the plotting.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Darfur Now
    This is the kind of film that doesn’t end after the credits roll, and it’s a gold-star example for what a documentary should do: inspire.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten
    Its moving narrative requires little in the way of embellishment, but Temple’s documentary sometimes becomes too clever for its own good.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Martian Child
    The film plot about the needy kid who redeems a male loner has been done to death, and on the surface, Martian Child just looks like another entry in the genre, a close follower to “About A Boy.”
    • 59 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Sharkwater
    Probably ranks as one of the most frightening shark movies ever---but sharks are the victims.
  6. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
    What you’re left with, finally, is the pleasure of a wily director’s company. In much the same way John Huston defied convention and predictability in the third act of his directorial career, with films as odd and fresh as “Wise Blood” and “Prizzi’s Honor,” Lumet is doing the same, right now.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Bella
    The melodrama and cheap theatrics of the story’s off-center segments drag the whole thing down.
  8. Dan in Real Life
    As a director Hedges is smart enough to allow his actors to share the frame and interact and let the material breathe.
  9. Jimmy Carter Man from Plains
    Carter comes off as compassionate and intelligent. But the complex issues brought up in his book don’t get much more than a superficial debate.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Music Within
    Starts strong but eventually collapses under its weighty sense of responsibility.
  11. Rails & Ties
    All the astute acting in the world can’t bring such a preposterous story into the station on time and intact.
  12. Mr. Untouchable
    As interesting, certainly, as “American Gangster,” and operating with a truer street sense of the characters involved.
  13. Slipstream
    Bold, experimental, off-the-wall kicky and utterly exasperating.
  14. 30 Days of Night
    Nearly two hours long, 30 Days of Night makes you feel the cold (though it was shot in New Zealand) and feel the fangs, but it also makes you feel like 30 days is a pretty long time.
  15. Gone Baby Gone
    The film is reasonably effective all the same, though Affleck has yet to learn how to conduct each scene like a musical score, paying attention to matters of tempo and dynamics.
  16. Rendition
    In Rendition Gyllenhaal is supposed to be the smartest one in the room, yet he’s essentially just a good-looking plodder. And despite its whirligig story machinations, so is Rendition.
  17. Reservation Road
    The best efforts of the performers cannot authenticate a plot that no longer feels inevitable. It feels contrived. And the audience stays at a remove instead of entering someone else’s nightmare.
  18. Things We Lost in the Fire
    Things We Lost in the Fire finds Bier at an interesting juncture, half-Dogmatic, half traditionalist.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Wristcutters: A Love Story
    Quite a bit darker than most mainstream romantic comedies. As you might not expect, it’s also quite a bit more inventive and far wittier than most mainstream romantic comedies.
  20. Meeting Resistance
    While no doubt a contribution in terms of historical record, the 2003-2004 timeline of the movie makes it feel out of date. This offers perspective on the insurgents then, but leaves the viewer wondering what they would be thinking and saying four years later.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Ten Commandments
    For those who recall those old Classics Illustrated comics of the 1940s and ’50s--and even for those who don’t--there’s an endearing, earnest quality to The Ten Commandments that transcends its star-studded cast and computer-generated animation.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    O Jerusalem
    As a pocket history of the battles over Jerusalem in the ’40s, O Jerusalem is serviceable enough. But all the melodrama cheapens the real drama, and turns a war-torn region into a soap-opera stage.
  23. Canvas
    Canvas is a thoughtful, sweet film that handles its difficult topic--schizophrenia--with tact and tenderness.
  24. Elizabeth: The Golden Age
    It is a silly film about serious matters.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    The Final Season
    Viewers who don’t flee the intrusively uplifting soundtrack and choking sentiment get just what that opening promised: a by-the-numbers, based-in-reality inspirational sports movie, thick with overwhelming pride and nostalgia for small-town farmland America.
  26. Khadak
    It’s slow--make that very slow--and the final half hour or so is mystifying and tedious. But it gorgeously recalls Fellini and “Koyaanisqatsi” and hauntingly pits ancient tradition against science, oppression and industrial rot.
  27. Lars and the Real Girl
    I find Lars and the Real Girl adorable in the worst way, bailed out only by most every member of its excellent cast.
  28. Sleuth
    Caine and Law may not be playing human beings, but Pinter’s sense of humor is at least more interesting than Shaffer’s. Caine in particular appears to enjoy honing his cold-eyed stare.
  29. We Own the Night
    Gray’s writing lacks the punch and zing that might take your mind off such rickety plotting.
  30. King Corn
    A breezy diary from a pair of first-time farmers, as well as a wry rebuke to a nation devoted to eating cheaply but not necessarily well, King Corn makes its points without much finger-wagging.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »