Christian Science Monitor's Scores

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For 4,492 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 55% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 43% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.1 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 67
Highest review score: 100 'Round Midnight
Lowest review score: 0 Couples Retreat
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2,780 out of 4492
  2. Mixed: 1,361 out of 4492
  3. Negative: 351 out of 4492
4492 movie reviews
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  1. Poetic Justice
    Its ambitious aims are commendable in themselves, but regrettable since they overinflate what might have been a simpler and better film.
  2. First Descent
    The hardy fools - I mean, visionary pioneers - in this movie are so gravity-defying that I had to look at the press notes afterward just to make sure no computerized special effects were used.
  3. Pretty Woman
    The message is plain: Men, especially rich men, have all the power. So be sure to do what they tell you, and maybe they'll treat you nicely… It's not one I like to hear. [27 Apr 1990, Arts, p.10]
    • Christian Science Monitor
  4. Windtalkers
    This is a great subject for a movie, but Hollywood has squandered the opportunity, using it as a prop for warmed-over melodrama and the kind of choreographed mayhem that director John Woo has built his career on.
  5. Unfaithfully Yours
    The remake of Unfaithfully Yours is just a shadow of its source, using the basic plot and characters, but diluting Sturges's ideas. [23 Feb 1984, p.21]
    • Christian Science Monitor
  6. The Brothers Grimm
    Gilliam has rarely been more inventive, energetic, or just plain funny.
  7. Cesar Chavez
    Biopics about civil rights icons are usually staid affairs. Cesar Chavez, directed by Diego Luna, is no exception.
  8. The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
    If Hollywood must have franchises, we could do worse than one highlighting people who have lived a long life and are not on altogether friendly terms with technology. But imagine what this cast could do with something less tutti-frutti!
  9. Feast of Love
    Most of the love in Feast of Love is unrequited, untapped, or unfulfilled. The fine cast, which includes Jane Alexander, Selma Blair, and Radha Mitchell, is also somewhat underused.
  10. You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger
    There are enough pleasantries and good jests in this new film to make a meal.
  11. High Heels
    The story is stylishly filmed and acted with high spirits, but there's not much going on in many of its colorful shots.
  12. Due Date
    It's slobby, goony, and gross, also occasionally funny, but not occasionally enough.
  13. Girl, Interrupted
    For a movie about people with hugely complicated inner lives, this sadly unconvincing drama stays resolutely on the surface, rarely hinting at anything like an insight or idea.
  14. Six Days Seven Nights
    Labors mightily to be a frolicsome entertainment, but the results are - well, labored. The dialogue isn't snappy, the story isn't surprising, there's little chemistry between the stars.
  15. Jack the Giant Slayer
    Not awful, not wonderful, Jack the Giant Slayer is a midrange fairy tale epic that’s a lot more ho-hum than fee-fi-fo-fum.
  16. Asylum
    Patrick McGrath's novel provides a solid and suspenseful story, even if it loses much of its bite in Mackenzie's hands.
  17. Fleeing by Night
    The story is hardly original, but this well-directed Taiwanese drama paints an intermittently vivid portrait of life on the Chinese mainland in the 1930s era.
  18. Le divorce
    No masterpiece, but that shouldn't dissuade moviegoers from giving it a whirl as a flavorful alternative to the summer's more gimmicky fare.
  19. My Best Friend's Wedding
    Julia Roberts is brighter and spunkier than usual, and Rupert Everett steals the show.
  20. Mamma Mia!
    Poor Pierce Brosnan. Sport that he is, he does his level best to be a song-and-dance man but it's just not in him. He's touchingly awful. The same could probably be said for the entire movie.
  21. She's All That
    This teenage "Pygmalion" is predictable and a bit gawky, and some won't like its flashes of gross-out humor. The cast is appealing, though, and there are a few hilarious jokes tucked in around the edges of the plot. [05 Feb 1999: 14]
    • Christian Science Monitor
  22. Irreversible
    Noe's despairing view of human nature is as thoughtful as it is grim, limning the most appalling aspects of earthly experience in terms recalling Dante and Bosh, among other apocalyptic artists.
  23. Saint Ralph
    This deliciously offbeat Canadian comedy gets its charm from marvelous acting and from a screenplay bursting with ideas. Great fun.
  24. Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery
    The drawn-out, lowbrow humor is either "love it" or "hate it," so it may not be your bag, baby.
  25. The Road to El Dorado
    The package would be more enticing if it didn't fall so squarely into overused Hollywood formulas.
  26. Left Luggage
    The drama has compelling moments and touches of imagination, but it relies more on sentiment than sense in conveying its messages about faith, family, and tradition.
  27. What Lies Beneath
    A few scenes indulge in overstated hokum or thriller clichés, but Pfeiffer is first-rate and several sequences are suspenseful enough to deserve that overused adjective, Hitchcockian.
  28. Casino Jack
    Kevin Spacey gives a bravura performance as superlobbyist Jack Abramoff in George Hickenlooper's uneven but often loopily entertaining Casino Jack.
  29. Wild Things
    Contains extremely graphic sex and many twists that are unpredictable but not very compelling.
  30. Dumbo
    The latest entry in this dubious enterprise is “Dumbo,” a perfectly lovely 1941 animated movie that has been transformed by director Tim Burton into a cloddish fantasia that never soars.
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