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. Black Hawk Down
    Perhaps they truly believe war is an inescapable aspect of human life. If so, why make movies that rub our faces in its horror? If artists have no antidote to war's evil or insight into the suffering it brings, their motive in depicting it must be merely to sensationalize its terrors and make money from the morbid fascination it holds for audiences. We deserve better.
  2. Divine Intervention
    Divine Intervention is the "Dr. Strangelove" of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, bringing barely acknowledged fears to the surface so they can be understood.
  3. Wild
    Too much of Wild is broken up by flashbacks that tend to dissipate rather than enhance Strayed’s trek. At times she is swallowed up almost to the point of vanishing by the immensity of the vistas.
  4. Iron Island
    All in all, a harrowing, one-of-a-kind movie.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Raya and the Last Dragon
    As I watched Raya, Namaari, and Sisu grapple with anger, fear, and self-doubt, I realized “Raya” had done something few films even try – it allowed three well-developed female characters to drive the story.
  6. Shakespeare Behind Bars
    Director Hank Rogerson casts a sympathetic eye on the proceedings.
  7. My Mother's Smile
    This superbly filmed Italian drama stands with Bellocchio's best work. Originally titled "Ora di religione."
  8. Polisse
    I wish the entirety of Polisse were as good as its parts, but perhaps its free-form, mood-swing approach was unavoidable, given the subject. The audience is put through the same wringer as the cops.
  9. The Sea Inside
    Bardem is brilliant.
  10. The Others
    This is a subdued and sometimes subtle exercise in ghostly doings, going against the horror-movie grain by relying on quietude and understatement.
  11. Flushed Away
    This computer-animated feature is consistently inventive, if a bit busy and overlong.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Awakenings
    Awakenings falls into the of traps of sentimentality and audience-pandering. It makes you laugh, cry, and marvel. But it also simplifies and falsifies all kinds of issues, from the intricacies of medical care to the realities of inner-city hospital funding. [7 Feb 1991]
    • Christian Science Monitor
  13. Where Are You Taking Me?
    By holding the shot, as she so often does in this film, Takesue is encouraging audiences to take a deep, long look at things they might otherwise miss.
  14. Duck Season
    The Mexican writer-director Fernando Eimbcke attempts to give this story a melancholy overlay, but its main interest is in its confirmation that teenagers are pretty much the same everywhere.
  15. Inception
    For movie buffs, the only real fun to be had at Inception could be toting up the lifts from other movies, including Cocteau’s “Blood of a Poet” and “The Matrix” series and just about anything by Kubrick.
  16. The Last King of Scotland
    Whitaker is terrifying in a way that we recognize not from old movies but from life.
  17. Cast Away
    Hanks's extraordinary acting keeps the adventure involving even though the beginning is predictable, the middle is uneven, and the finale slips into Zemeckis's patented brand of "Forrest Gump" fuzziness.
  18. Tomboy
    Once summer ends and the kids enroll in school, the jig will be up. The film ends with that eventuality. It would have been richer if it had opened with it.
  19. The Orphanage
    Delivers more goose bumps than anything Hollywood has served up in years – which I hope does not mean that Bayona, a first-time feature director and music video whiz, will be enlisted to direct "Saw V."
  20. Dune: Part One
    From a purely pictorial standpoint, this new Dune is indeed often overwhelming. The sheer monumentality of it all is impressive. Alas, the film’s emotional power underwhelms.
  21. A Woman's Life
    Chemla has an expressive face and she’s photographed lovingly, in a way that would probably have caught the attentions of the great French Impressionists, but ultimately she is more of a sculptural presence than a fully fleshed-out protagonist.
  22. Scottsboro: An American Tragedy
    All emerge as vivid historical figures in this lucid account.
  23. Human Weapon
    Chilling and instructive.
  24. Ocean's Eleven
    A caper that rarely goes wrong.
  25. Raja
    Subtle filmmaking and true-as-life acting make this an acute psychological drama with an engrossing sociological subtext. It stands with Doillon's best work.
  26. End of the Century
    While serving up music so free of thought that the best of it seems to crystallize our thoughtless, tightly wound era.
  27. Red Lights
    Strange, scary, and atmospheric, with a delicious Claude Debussy score.
  28. Wonder Boys
    While the story takes some clever turns, its psychology is far from convincing and its momentum flags long before the finale.
  29. Mysterious Skin
    This thoughtful, troubling drama is leagues above the sensationalistic stuff Araki peddled in earlier films.
  30. Rush
    Rush isn’t bad, exactly, but it’s like a standard-issue male action programmer that somehow crept in from an earlier era.
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