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. The Matador
    The film rapidly devolves into a lame buddy picture, part thriller, mostly goof.
  2. Maudie
    The odd-couple pairing does yield its occasional rewards, though. The collision between Everett’s monosyllabic gruffness and Maud’s chatty ditherings is inherently funny, and so is her insistence on marriage before sex, which he finds confounding.
  3. Pola X
    Carax's cinematic imagination makes it worth viewing by movie buffs with a sense of adventure and a tolerance for explicit sex.
  4. Panic Room
    Foster is fine, but the story's outcome would seem a tad more uncertain if another actress had the part. How scary are three New York tough guys when you've handled Hannibal Lecter in your time?
  5. Bad News Bears
    The coach is certainly an offensive goofball, and the Bears are certainly a pack of hard-to-handle whippersnappers. But the picture's point is that surfaces don't tell the whole story about people, about teams, or about anything.
  6. Young Sherlock Holmes
    Many episodes have an appealingly old-fashioned air, but the classic mood is disrupted by some violent hallucination scenes with jarringly modern special effects. [27 Dec, 1985 p.19]
    • Christian Science Monitor
  7. Timecode
    It would be even more impressive if the story and characters lived up to the inventive techniques, though.
  8. Mortal Thoughts
    Mortal Thoughts has strong moments, but fails to keep you riveted to the end.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Dan in Real Life
    Bad movies invariably stem from bad ideas, and the worst of the several rancid ideas packed inside of Dan in Real Life is that Steve Carell could be the new Alan Alda.
  10. Get Him to the Greek
    Brand can seem simultaneously randy and strung-out and is often very funny. Hill is surprisingly touching.
  11. Saving Face
    Nicely acted.
  12. Cadillac Records
    The film suffers at times from biopic-itis – the narrative unfolds with the requisite heartbreak carefully apportioned – but it's always eye-catching.
  13. Ali
    What keeps the movie from championship status is a sense that the filmmakers see Ali's social and political contributions as extra added attractions, ultimately less important than his greatness in the ring.
  14. Twelve and Holding
    Most of the time, however, we are watching pathology without benefit of insight.
  15. Crooklyn
    On its own intimate terms, it's one of the most winning films on family life to reach the screen in ages.
  16. We Women Warriors
    Karsin doesn't adequately detail the political complexities of the struggle, but how can one not respond to someone like tribal leader Flor Ilva, who declares, "We women are warriors, not with weapons, but with our thoughts and through raising our children."
  17. Samsara
    What does it all mean? I'm not convinced that Fricke's movies are much more than exalted travelogues, but you certainly feel as if you've been somewhere after you've seen one of them.
  18. Troublemakers: The Story of Land Art
    I call it art. And as long as I’m on the subject, I think the Grand Canyon is the greatest sculpture I have ever seen.
  19. Tetro
    An inchoate mass of half-baked (and sometimes blackened) Oedipal dramaturgy. Coppola has made some of the greatest films ever made in traditional narrative mode, but whenever he goes into his indie-outsider dance, he stumbles badly.
  20. Unknown White Male
    While I don't entirely rule out the possibility that Bruce is a hoaxster, it seems more likely that his story is one of those weird scientific anomalies that more frequently turn up as an Oliver Sacks case history.
  21. Coco Before Chanel
    I wish Fontaine would follow up with a sequel: "Coco After Chanel." Tautou's performance cries out for a second act.
  22. Washington Heights
    De Villa's debut film is persuasively written and acted, if a tad rougher around the edges than one might wish.
  23. Find Me Guilty
    Most Mafia movies are unduly sympathetic, but this one takes the cake. Peter Dinklage is excellent as the mob's chief lawyer.
  24. Telling Lies in America
    Joe Eszterhas's screenplay is vastly more thoughtful than his scripts for "Basic Instinct" and its ilk, but the storytelling is too spotty for the movie to become the effective moral tale it might have been.
  25. Walk on Water
    Compassionate and marvelously acted, although a subplot about the gay grandson slows the story down for a while.
  26. Tyrannosaur
    A jagged, uneven, often unfulfilling experience, but there are a few first-rate scenes between Joseph and Hannah that convincingly put forward the capacity for redemption in even the most ravaged of souls.
  27. Sleepy Hollow
    Lots of brilliant filmmaking and high-spirited acting, at least until the story turns repetitious and formulaic in the last 30 minutes.
  28. Daughters of the Sun
    Acted as a drama, paced like a ritual, filmed as a slice of rural Iranian life.
  29. A Brilliant Young Mind
    The film, refreshingly, is less concerned with how Nathan performs in the competition than in how he navigates his way through the bramble of human interactions leading up to it.
  30. Vincent & Theo
    It has sharp performances in the title roles, by British actors Tim Roth and Paul Rhys, and its color scheme is so pungent I'm sure the real Van Gogh would applaud it. But it doesn't have the wide-ranging visual imagination of Mr. Altman's best work. [28 Nov 1990, p.14]
    • Christian Science Monitor
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