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. Touching the Void
    Don't miss this harrowing movie if you're in the mood for adventure more thrilling than anything Hollywood has to offer these days.
  2. The Agronomist
    Watching Demme's documentary is both a crash course in the nation's tumultuous past and a provocative visit with one of its most colorful citizens.
  3. The Holdovers
    What enlarges Giamatti’s performance, and makes it ultimately more than a glorified comic turn, is how he gradually articulates Paul’s self-awareness for us.
  4. To Be Heard
    In the end, the power poetry workshops, as the teachers are first to admit, are not about creating Shakespeares. They are about survival.
  5. Embrace of the Serpent
    Not nearly as great as Herzog’s films, or as monumentally deranged as Coppola’s, it nevertheless casts a spell of its own. It’s one of those films that, at least for me, grows in the memory.
  6. Under African Skies
    The result is doubly satisfying: We get not only a trenchant political drama but a bang-up concert film as well.
  7. Side by Side
    This may sound like a dry subject, but, as presented here, it's anything but – especially if you have more than a passing interest in the art and science of what gets projected onto our movie screens these days.
  8. Days of Glory
    The battle scenes and a few of the human vignettes are powerful, but too often the film falls back on conventional plot mechanics.
  9. My Summer of Love
    Superbly acted, movingly written, and directed with a tough-minded lyricism rarely found in today's films. A summer movie to love.
  10. Isle of Dogs
    There is so much to look at in Isle of Dogs that a second viewing is almost mandatory. You can forgive its fetishism. Mania this dedicated deserves its due.
  11. Read My Lips
    The first half is a well-acted psychological drama, but the second half is standard thriller fare with more action than insight.
  12. The Return
    Enriched by allusions to biblical stories of fathers, sons, and sacrifices, subtly woven into the movie's moodily photographed fabric.
  13. Blissfully Yours
    Thai filmmaking continues its renaissance with this moody, offbeat drama.
  14. Mountain
    It’s questionable whether this film needs narration at all, or at least whether it needs the faux biblical lyricisms served up here. The panoramas are so glorious that I didn’t ache to hear any highfalutin hoo-ha on the soundtrack.
  15. My Life as a Dog
    Splendidly acted, and directed with touches of visual poetry by Lasse Hallstr"om, but a little heavy on trite sexual-awakening scenes.
  16. Frozen River
    Melissa Leo is startlingly good...You feel like you're watching a life, not a performance.
  17. Love Is Strange
    The living-apart scenario is contrived – there was no way for these men to share a space somewhere? – but the two actors are so good that it doesn’t much matter.
  18. Dream of Light
    Visually ravishing -- an exquisite movie.
  19. Late Marriage
    The acting is superb, the filmmaking is imaginative, and the story never goes quite where you expect.
  20. Captain Phillips
    Greengrass is an expert hijacker, too. He hijacks our good sense.
  21. A Hero
    Just when you think you’ve pinned down someone as good or bad, the tables are turned and the complexities thicken. Just like in real life.
  22. Three Kings
    Russell's stylish and imaginative filmmaking wages its own war against lunkheaded and sometimes offensive material.
  23. The Killer
    This violent Hong Kong thriller has more psychological depth than most of its kind, but ultimately seems like a pointless exercise in style.
  24. The Maid
    As it is, The Maid is a study of a character who rarely emerges from the opaque end of the spectrum.
  25. The Filth and the Fury
    Efficiently and imaginatively directed.
  26. Cowards Bend the Knee or The Blue Hands
    There's a new visual idea every second, each teeming with energy, pitch-dark comedy, and inspired cinematic lunacy.
  27. George Washington
    Green tells the tale through leisurely, eye-catching shots that allow the young cast members to imbue their characters with striking credibility and intensity.
  28. Stranded: I've Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains
    At just over two hours, Stranded is nonstop harrowing. It has cumulative power.
  29. Another Year
    A quintessential Mike Leigh performance. It deepens as it goes along until, in the end, in its final close-up, it overwhelms.
  30. At Berkeley
    The fierce, questing intelligence of these students and educators is a perfect match for Wiseman’s own.
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