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. Project Nim
    The big news here is not simply that Nim was traumatized, it's that Nim was signing that he was traumatized.
  2. Terri
    From a psychological standpoint, this is murky territory but Jacobs presents it as the height of enlightenment – a confluence of two damaged souls. At least "Good Will Hunting," another movie that played this game, wasn't blah.
  3. Page One: A Year Inside the New York Times
    With all the talk in Page One about the demise of print journalism and the rise of new media, this shiny spacious emporium seems like both a beacon and a staggering folly.
  4. Larry Crowne
    It's enough that these two castaways are friends, but I guess friendship doesn't cut it when you're trying to create a star-driven hit. It should, though. Better a believable friendship than an unbelievable love affair.
  5. Transformers: Dark of the Moon
    The only saving grace is that this time around, the script (yes, there is one, and it was concocted by Ehren Kruger) has occasional wisps of lucidity, and Bay delivers – overdelivers – on the mayhem.
  6. A Better Life
    Eric Eason's script is sometimes unduly contrived and derivative, but we are always aware that something larger is being played out.
  7. The Names of Love
    Too much of The Names of Love is a joke book posing as a movie.
  8. Cars 2
    Marginally better than its predecessor, but the same problem still remains: Cars just aren't very interesting as anthropomorphic animation vehicles (pun intended).
  9. Bad Teacher
    Has its lewd funniness, though not often enough to make it worthy of not only "Bad Santa" but, more to the point, "School of Rock."
  10. City of Life and Death
    Despite its blunt characterizations and simplifications, City of Life and Death, through the inexorable pileup of gruesome detail, achieves an epic vision of horror.
  11. Buck
    The riders who appear in Buck seem almost uniformly exalted by their contact with Brannaman and his methods.
  12. Mr. Popper's Penguins
    The good news is that, even though one must pace oneself through the dull parts, usually involving Mr. Popper's dullish family, he's in pretty good form whenever he's getting physical.
  13. Green Lantern
    It's not only light, it's thin. It's self-deprecating to a fault. Reynolds is required to practically wink at the audience, as if to say,"I know this looks silly."
  14. Rejoice and Shout
    Says Lauro: "This is about as close as you can get to the way it sounded during slavery days." Lauro and McGlynn understand, too, that these clips must be experienced whole. They let the music unfold in real time, not snippets.
  15. Bride Flight
    Switching between the 1950s, the '60s, and the present, it's compelling in a middling miniseries kind of way – expansive but not terribly deep.
  16. The Trip
    The odyssey goes on a bit too long, and I suppose a taste for extra dry British comedy is a requirement, but this "Trip" is well worth one.
  17. Super 8
    If Abrams had stuck with the kids and cut way back on all the sci-fi hoo-ha, his film might have stood a fighting chance of being charming. Big is not always better, even when it comes to fantasies.
  18. Beautiful Boy
    In Beautiful Boy, Ku manages to take a new-to-movie subject and flatten it into something that, despite its harrowing contours, is often grindingly familiar.
  19. Submarine
    It's also a mistake, I think, to have Oliver and Jordana be so emotionally flat. No doubt Ayoade was reaching for a hipper-than-thou vibe here, but their inexpressiveness is more annoying than cool.
  20. Beginners
    All of this has its value, but Plummer, in rollicking good form, without a shred of sentimentality, is primed for greatness, and Mills keeps cutting away from him just when things are getting interesting.
  21. X-Men: First Class
    At least Erik/Magneto, as played by Michael Fassbender, is, well, magnetic.
  22. The Tree of Life
    If I had to give a two-word review of Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, it would be: "Wow! Huh??"
  23. Puzzle
    It's the kind of movie that creeps up on you, and this is due almost entirely to its lead actress, María Onetto, who looks as though she actually could solve one of those 8,000-piece puzzles.
  24. The Hangover Part II
    It's as if the filmmakers were hungover from the first film and wanted to make a violent action movie instead.
  25. Kung Fu Panda 2
    For a movie touting "inner peace," this 3-D sequel sure goes in for its share of battle scenes, but for the most part they are excitingly conceived.
  26. Hey, Boo: Harper Lee and 'To Kill a Mockingbird'
    It would have been wonderful if Lee had consented to an interview for this documentary, but at least we have, among many others, her 99-year-old sister Alice, until recently a practicing lawyer in their hometown of Monroeville, Ala.
  27. Midnight in Paris
    A sweet, not altogether satisfying variation on the fantasy-becomes-reality conceit he (Allen) used in his Depression-era "The Purple Rose of Cairo."
  28. L'amour fou
    An oddly discursive documentary that is, ultimately, more about Pierre Bergé, his companion and business partner of 50 years.
  29. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
    Even the "surprise" appearance of Keith Richards, as the scurvy father of Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow, has already been hyped to death in the advance press.
  30. Everything Must Go
    If there is a single image that we take away from Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman," it is of Willy Loman weighted down to his very soul by his suitcases. The image that holds in this modern-day salesman's serenade is Nick the salesman reduced to selling off his own life.
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