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 Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys
    The movie has no profound insights to offer, but its nimble acting and lifelike dialogue make it entertaining as well as thoughtful. Think "Stand by Me" meets "Ghost World," and you just about have it.
  2. The Bourne Identity
    Films borrow tricks from pictures made years ago -- try to watch Bourne without thinking of "The Manchurian Candidate."
  3. Virgil Bliss
    A few miscalculated scenes aside, this low-budget drama is stunningly smart and powerful, with real-as-life lead performances and a style as gripping as it is unpretentious.
  4. Bad Company
    It's fun to watch for a while. But the movie runs much too long, and a few funny bits aside, most of the comedy writing is lame.
  5. Ivansxtc
    The acting is uneven, but Huston's performance gains eerie intensity as the tale moves from sensationalistic melodrama to humanistic tragedy.
  6. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
    Khouri's new picture takes all this talent and turns it into the kind of manipulative mush that Hollywood used to market under the condescending label "woman's picture" years ago.
  7. Secret Society
    Energetic acting helps compensate for a contrived script and directing that's sometimes as heavy as its cheerfully rotund characters.
  8. Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner
    Its refusal to draw solid lines between "good" and "evil" characters is more sophisticated than the psychology of most current commercial pictures. It's well worth a trek to a theater adventurous enough to show it.
  9. CQ
    Coppola's satirical debut movie is too ambitious for its own good. The cast is good, though, and ambition isn't the worst fault a fledgling filmmaker can have.
  10. Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron
    The action is mild enough for fairly young children, and grownups may enjoy its old-fashioned spirit.
  11. Late Marriage
    The acting is superb, the filmmaking is imaginative, and the story never goes quite where you expect.
  12. About a Boy
    Was this spiritless stuff really directed by Paul and Chris Weitz of "American Pie" fame? How the rebels have mellowed!
  13. The Believer
    Stunningly smart, genuinely disturbing film.
  14. Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones
    The movie has a broader range of emotions and visual effects than any "Star Wars" installment since "The Empire Strikes Back," but the writing and acting are as stiff as R2-D2's metal torso.
  15. Standing by Yourself
    It has a degree of sociological interest, but it would be more effective if the material were shaped into a more coherent form.
  16. Cremaster 3
    Few of its loosely linked vignettes have enough visual or emotional power to be very memorable.
  17. Diamonds and Rust
    You meet some fascinating personalities during this uncomfortable voyage.
  18. Janice Beard
    Lively acting and an amiable comic atmosphere offer partial compensation for generally lackluster filmmaking.
  19. The Lady and the Duke
    Rohmer's films are renowned for their beauty, so it's surprising that he made a picture using digital video rather than film. But this was the right choice.
  20. A Man's Gotta Do
    McClelland is a joy to watch, even when the story strains too hard for lovable whimsy, which happens much too often.
  21. Home Movie
    If one's domestic environment is a kind of autobiography, then the five households visited by this entertaining documentary reveal fascinating lives indeed.
  22. 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.
  23. The Mystic Masseur
    This delicious fable reflects Merchant's great love of language, his delicate visual sense, and his ability to make you think and laugh out loud, often at the very same time.
  24. Warm Water Under a Red Bridge
    Acute sense of color and offbeat storytelling style aren't enough to make this sometimes sensual fantasy more than a whimsical trifle.
  25. Hollywood Ending
    The movie is Allen's most successful in years, even if you don't see it as a self-made commentary on his own career. Credit goes less to the comic dialogue than to the razor-sharp performances of an excellent cast.
  26. Grin Without a Cat
    It reconfirms Marker as one of the most serious-minded and artistically gifted filmmakers in France, or anywhere else.
  27. Rain
    Jeffs is an unusually gifted director, but her screenplay (based on Kirsty Gunn's novel) never quite gets a firm grip or a fresh perspective on its coming-of-age subject matter.
  28. Sade
    Auteuil is a superb actor. Still, the real-life Sade would be dismayed to see himself portrayed more as an eccentric old codger than the world-changing firebrand he worked hard to be.
  29. Life or Something Like It
    If the heroine really had seven days left, she wouldn't waste it watching stuff like this.
  30. The Salton Sea
    The more the picture reveals, the less interesting it gets, transforming its hero from an intriguing mystery man into a standard-issue screen vigilante -- and steadily upping the violence, complete with harrowing torture scenes, in a lame effort to keep our juices flowing.
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