The Globe and Mail (Toronto)'s Scores

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For 7,291 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 48% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 49% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 3.1 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 62
Highest review score: 100 The Red Turtle
Lowest review score: 0 The Mod Squad
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 4,349 out of 7291
  2. Mixed: 1,826 out of 7291
  3. Negative: 1,116 out of 7291
7291 movie reviews
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  1. First Love
    First Love is neither a return to form for Miike nor is it a groundbreaking new leap into the unknown. The film rests instead in the mushy, bloody Miike middle – a pleasant diversion for the director’s faithful fans and an easy-ish entry for those eager to jump on the man’s over-the-top-is-not-good-enough wavelength. Your Miike mileage may vary – but rest assured, there’s no barf bag required.
  2. Where's My Roy Cohn?
    Where’s My Roy Cohn? is brash and relentless, much like the man himself. We won’t need to wait for a sequel. Because of the ascension of Cohn’s most eagerly unscrupulous student, we’re watching Part II unfold as we speak.
  3. Joker
    Joker reveals itself as very expensive cosplay: effective at first glance, but at its seams superficial, disposable and dishonest.
  4. Anthropocene: The Human Epoch
    Both shocking and beautiful, the film impresses itself on the viewer with the awesome scale of the imagery – and with the urgency behind it. We have entered an epoch in which human activity is shaping the planet more than any natural force. Anthropocene bears witness that something’s got to give.
  5. Monos
    Monos sinks you into its mud until the dirt stuffs your mouth. You won’t be able to breathe – but you’ll be thanking Landes for the cinematic suffocation all the same.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Zeroville
    Zeroville features a lot of fancy cuts, freeze frames and buried imagery because it is, well, about a film editor. It will either make you feel like you’re having an anxiety attack after overindulging at our country’s legalized cannabis buffet or you can roll with it. Either way, please hydrate.
  7. Riot Girls
    Thanks to Iseman and Kwiatkowski’s heartwarming chemistry, Collins’ sharp dialogue and Vuckovic’s pointed direction, you find yourself running in step with two young women who are smart, interesting, brave and brilliantly capable. And that makes confronting the realities of their mission a little less terrifying.
  8. Before You Know It
    Are the creators and lead actors of the quirky indie comedy Before You Know It all women? Three words: lighthearted menstruation humour.
  9. Downton Abbey
    With a plot focus on the exotic, ever-more anachronistic Edwardian manners and mores occasioned by royal protocol, it’s like a crossover episode with "The Crown."
  10. Ad Astra
    The new film is easily’s Gray’s most ambitious, bare-your-soul work, and one of the finest films of the year, too.
  11. Red Penguins
    The latest film from sports documentarian Gabe Polsky (In Search of Greatness, Red Army) is a doozy.
  12. The Moneychanger
    The Moneychanger has fun on its road to a predictable ending. You won’t feel cheated, but you might think you overpaid.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    White Lie
    As much about deception as it is the fear of being forsaken, White Lie unfurls to become an unexpected empathy inquest.
  14. Freaks
    This is clearly a film that favours concept over narrative expansion, and it suffers for this.
  15. Varda by Agnès
    This is a fascinating, informative, and reflective swan song that gives Varda the final word, and some of the due she’s been owed her entire career, as one of the most influential feminist filmmakers.
  16. Pain and Glory
    Perhaps the bravest thing here is Banderas’ reserved performance: Selfish, hypochondriacal and sadly cocooned, his fictional film director is not a flattering portrait of an aging auteur.
  17. Vitalina Varela
    The culminative effect of the cinematography is inconclusive as the character remains trapped in grief.
  18. The Climb
    Cleverly structured and popping with realistic dialogue, The Climb is a bromance comedy of uncommonly high aspirations.
  19. Parasite
    An exhilarating and furious indictment of class struggle, Parasite might be the masterpiece South Korea's Bong Joon-ho has been working toward his entire career.
  20. Portrait of a Lady on Fire
    Sharply subverting the male gaze at every turn, Sciamma has created an unforgettable treatise on thwarted desire. It is so very easy to label a film incendiary, but Portrait of a Lady on Fire deserves the scalding honour. It will ignite every flame you might have.
  21. The Lighthouse
    While not a remotely pleasant viewing experience, the sensation of watching Pattinson and Dafoe drive each other to the brink is difficult to shake off.
  22. The Whistlers
    The whistling was originally developed to more conveniently communicate across great distances and that gives Porumboiu the perfect excuse to repeatedly frame the assorted players dwarfed by vast cityscapes and spectacular nature vistas.
  23. Anne at 13,000 ft
    Anne is such a startling and overwhelming work that the act of discussing it can feel unapproachable and crippling.
  24. Guest of Honour
    The restaurant story is wonderfully taut, with Egoyan in full control of his always extravagant imagery.
  25. Judy
    This is one of those solo turns where the star performance matters more than the story, and Renee Zellweger, playing the legendary singer Judy Garland in her sad last months – broke, anxious, drunk, rueful, but still in it – gives it everything she’s got.
  26. Disappearance at Clifton Hill
    Clifton Hill becomes just as thrilling and disturbing as its titular strip of haunted houses and fading-fast motels.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Our Lady of the Nile
    They’re coming of age amidst violence and imperialism, but the film’s heart lies in the wide-eyed wonder of adolescence, so compellingly depicted by the first-time actors.
  28. Bacurau
    Part siege movie, part rural drama, part gore-soaked freak-out, Bacurau is the one instance where it’s the destination, not the journey, that matters.
  29. Marriage Story
    This is hilarious, heartbreaking cinema – a work that will make you burst out laughing one moment, and leave you tearing your hair out the next.
  30. The Goldfinch
    Crowley knows his way from adaptations thanks to 2015′s Brooklyn, but as this 149-minute mess proves, The Goldfinch should have never flown away from its literary perch.
  31. Hustlers
    It’s a blockbuster movie with a shiny veneer for sure, but it also gives its story the benefit of the doubt with care in its development that seems to be missing from several recently released women-led movies looking to cash in on vague overtures to female solidarity.
  32. Synchronic
    Once the big twist kicks in, there’s plenty of gritty fun to be had, but patience is a hard-won virtue in genre filmmaking.
  33. Jallikattu
    When Jallikattu lets it rip, it’s as exciting and unusual an experience as you’re likely to get this year. Grab it by its horns and don’t dare let go.
  34. Jojo Rabbit
    Jojo Rabbit excels with at least a sincerely attempted – if not exactly precise – balance of humour and horror, absurdity and tragedy.
  35. Knives Out
    What follows is a dizzy, politically astute murder-mystery comedy that, while not reinventing the genre, certainly hits all the expected beats with flair.
  36. Dolemite Is My Name
    Essential to the film’s success is Murphy, clearly having his best time in a long time as Moore, who adopted a flashy pimp-esque persona that would eventually take the blaxploitation landscape by storm.
  37. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
    Hanks is, not surprisingly, excellently cast, but it’s Heller’s direction and inventive aesthetic instinct – everything is washed out browns, with the exception of a moving blue-lit finale – that sell the work so well.
  38. The Two Popes
    It is extremely difficult to make something as invisible and ineffable as religious faith seem real, let alone touching, on film; doing that is only one of the achievements of Fernando Meirelles’ unusual look inside the papacy.
  39. How to Build a Girl
    The nerd’s coming-of-age is a well-established genre, as is humiliation comedy, yet Coky Giedroyc’s How to Build a Girl is different enough to stand out.
  40. Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band
    The Robertson-authorized Once Were Brothers is an account of The Band’s rise and fall, as remembered by the titular guitarist, chief songwriter and excellent raconteur.
  41. Abominable
    Abominable has charms to soothe the savage child.
  42. Just Mercy
    Jordan and Foxx take the little material they’re given and play it as deep as possible, turning in memorable, eventually gut-punching performances.
  43. Waves
    Waves is unmistakably and defiantly its own thing – and when its ideas and aesthetics coalesce, it is a wonder to behold.
  44. Rocks
    With exuberant naturalism from its non-professional actors, and a standout performance from Kosar Ali as Rocks’s best friend, the film covers the highs and lows of female adolescence with compelling sensitivity.
  45. The Laundromat
    In 96 minutes, Soderbergh presents a series of vignettes underlining humanity’s subservience to greed. Some of the segments work – especially one involving an African business titan who decides to teach his daughter an expensive family lesson – and some are too thin (maybe there is a downside to that brisk 96-minute runtime after all).
  46. Official Secrets
    While Rhys Ifans chews scenery as a scruff-faced foreign correspondent, Knightley plays it taut and believable, and, as we know, nobody walks on cobblestones better than she. The end result is a professionally made film that is whistle-blowingly relevant, starring an excellent actress who successfully comes in from her Pride & Prejudice past.
  47. Radioactive
    The problem is not so much Satrapi’s theatrical approach to the subject, which veers wildly from the overwrought to the dramatically compelling, as it is Jack Thorne’s abysmal script, full of clunky exposition about isolating elements, curing cancer and refusing sexism.
  48. The Personal History of David Copperfield
    The meta-fiction may be overdone, but that and the director’s feeling for tone create the expansive atmosphere in which a talented multiracial cast lead by Dev Patel can master everything from pure melodrama to high comedy.
  49. Becoming Nobody
    Using Dass’s theory that one is only free once they become nobody, the film will undoubtedly resonate with anyone who exists on the same spiritual plane or hopes to transcend to it.
  50. It: Chapter Two
    It Chapter Two is a film in need of a good ending. How badly it needs that ending is never in question, either. Hell, the movie cries out for help on the subject.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    This Changes Everything
    Ultimately, This Changes Everything is a mainline to the first-hand experience of those who work and exist outside the white male umbrella. And because of that, it’s an exercise in storytelling that evolves quickly into a valuable lesson for anyone who purports to be a feminist, an ally or a film and television lover. You’ll never watch either the same way again.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!
    Vegans and animal lovers might have a tough time stomaching parts of the film.
  53. Brittany Runs A Marathon
    Things other studios might frown upon are its greatest strengths, including a charming ensemble of actors often relegated to bit roles (Michaela Watkins, Utkarsh Ambudkar, Lil Rel Howery and Micah Stock are all fantastic), frank vérité-style cinematography and intimate storytelling.
  54. Aquarela
    Aquarela’s soundtrack shifts from ambient post-rock to gnarly speed-metal to widescreen strings. The effect is a serenely apocalyptic warning: Climate change is a killer, with water as its indiscriminately lethal weapon.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    The Peanut Butter Falcon
    In the end, whether the performances are driven by real-life trauma or by acting doesn’t matter. Life might be imitating art or vice versa, who knows? One thing is certain: The Peanut Butter Falcon is a wonderful piece of art.
  56. Angel Has Fallen
    There’s no thrill to this thriller. Nor is there nuance to the characters.
  57. Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles
    Toes will tap, a tear or two might be shed – a complex story about a deceivingly complex musical is adoringly told and ultimately simplified. “As long as humankind continues to have struggles,” asserts one talking head, “Fiddler on the Roof will be there.” File under: The more things change, the more they stay the same.
  58. Tigers Are Not Afraid
    The filmmaker has such a strong command of mood, character and performances – especially impressive given the age of her cast – that her world quickly, seductively overwhelms.
  59. Ready or Not
    Despite its sometimes overwhelming sense of familiarity – including a conceit that feels lifted from last year’s Game Night, an impossible feat given both productions’ development timelines – Ready or Not is still energetic, inventive and bloody enough to permissibly coast on its influences’ fumes.
  60. Good Boys
    The few parts of director Gene Stupnitsky’s film that feel new, then, don’t feel that new at all, from the ultra-shaggy plot to the gross-out gags that misunderstand the power that repetition might hold.
  61. The Angry Birds Movie 2
    Just like its mobile incarnation, The Angry Birds Movie 2 simply pelts you with loud, shrieking diversions. The filmmaking has levelled up, but you’re still wasting your time.
  62. Mine 9
    Eddie Mensore has not made a masterpiece of the genre, but there’s a poignancy to his gritty calamity tale that makes Mine 9 worth watching.
  63. Where'd You Go, Bernadette
    There is, buried deep somewhere in Linklater’s film or however many edits it may have undergone – the thing reeks of indecision – an insightful, even invigorating story about what happens to a creative genius once they stop creating. But the actual work presents a good argument that, for some artists, it might be best to quit while you’re ahead.
  64. Cold Case Hammarskjöld
    The documentary is a gas, with all the conspiracy-theory weirdness of Oliver Stone’s "JFK," but with the added attraction of Brugger’s gonzo-journalism shenanigans.
  65. After the Wedding
    What we’re instead left with are two diametrically opposed performances: Williams goes small and intimate as the distressed Isabel, while Moore opts for a more operatic, less successful tenor that results in what might be the actress’s most unhinged moment ever (and not in a good way).
  66. Blinded by the Light
    Part "Billy Elliot" and part Chadha’s own underdog hit "Bend It Like Beckham," Blinded by the Light is a feel-good coming-of-age movie that often feels way too good about itself.
  67. 47 Meters Down: Uncaged
    There are small spurts of creativity ... but everything else about the production feels more watered down than the landscape our four interchangeable leads find themselves flailing about in.
  68. Nekrotronic
    An awkward, painful mash-up of horror and comedy that induces all the wrong kind of squirms.
  69. The Kitchen
    What The Kitchen serves is a first film sorely in need of a basic primer on how to go about constructing a movie.
  70. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
    At times the film seems like a horrifying Nancy Drew story or a more sophisticated Scooby-Doo episode without the dog and with a face full of spiders.
  71. Light of My Life
    "The Road" meets "Leave No Trace" with a sprinkling of another half-dozen sharper films, Light of My Life is Casey Affleck’s ode to the power of storytelling. Namely, Casey Affleck’s brand of storytelling: glacial, meandering, but not entirely ineffective.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Mike Wallace Is Here
    Belkin floats the notion that Wallace’s sharp-tongued style paved the way for the lying loudmouths who now populate our fractured media landscape (he flicks at Bill O’Reilly, Alex Jones and the U.S. President), but it feels like a half-hearted bid for contemporary relevance. At least his prickishness had purpose.
  73. Luce
    In truth, there is not much this film does not cover; every minute of Luce is saturated with the organicism of its sharp lines of inquiry and its actors here are at their best in their handling of their given materials.
  74. The Art of Racing in the Rain
    For most of the feeble, unmoving 109 minutes of The Art of Racing in the Rain, a Kevin Costner-voiced golden retriever named Enzo longs for death. I felt the same way.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    Dora and the Lost City of Gold
    Kids certainly won’t learn anything here, but they’re not likely to mistake it for entertainment, either.
  76. Tel Aviv on Fire
    Nashef is a sombre Roberto Benigni in his role as a sincere bumbler, defusing situational bombs with hummus-based subterfuge and desperate diplomacy. This satire in Hebrew and Arabic is an answer in an allegorical and comical way, about a mad circumstance and a man in the middle of it. A tense and painful backdrop, sure, but there’s no stick up Zoabi’s butt, just an olive branch.
  77. Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw
    So for now, I’m going to go lay down, chuckle at the film’s inventive ridiculousness and try not to think too hard about anything at all. It’s what Hobbs and Shaw would want.
  78. David Crosby: Remember My Name
    Crosby, as we learn in the fascinating documentary David Crosby: Remember My Name, is no easy rider. He’s no easy anything. What he is is stunningly self-aware, relentlessly candid and highly interested in the subject at hand, which is himself.
  79. Genèse (Genesis)
    The drama is an intricately constructed and intensely felt work that transcends the easy “coming-of-age” genre label that is so tempting to slap onto it.
  80. Bethany Hamilton: Unstoppable
    Other than keeping Hamilton’s name out there and giving her brand exposure, Unstoppable stops short of making a compelling case for itself.
  81. Astronaut
    I like the way McLeod handles the genre. The easiest thing to do would be for her to write Feore’s Elon Musk-y space-or-bust character as a villain, thus making it impossible not to root for her protagonist (who warns of a potential load-bearing problem with the space-plane’s runway). McLeod resists that urge though.
  82. Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood
    In its thin conception, shaggy form and muddy execution – and in its glee in coasting on a perceived aura of cool whiz-pow-bang energy – the film is as much a comic-book movie as they come.
  83. The Art of Self-Defense
    The film’s calm brutality is effective. Plot-wise, some punches are telegraphed, while others are not. The satire is a spinning wheel kick I didn’t see coming. Black belts all around.
  84. The Farewell
    Unlike "Crazy Rich Asians," which had eyes for narrative substance but shamelessly flirted with the superficial, The Farewell is a more substantive, engrossing and ultimately deeper work about the bonds that hold and strengthen us.
  85. The Lion King
    It’s an entertaining and thrilling tale, if you’ve never seen it before. But you have.
  86. Crawl
    In a Hollywood ecosystem obsessed with brands and inoffensive genericism, there is something admirable and fresh about a movie that has nothing on its mind other than delivering 87 minutes’ worth of gory gator-chomping thrills.
  87. Maiden
    This story of personal redemption tacks drama by the nautical mile. "The ocean is always trying to kill you,” says Edwards, a woman like most who knows about facing high odds and salty conditions.
  88. Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love
    Fittingly, given that the film from Broomfield (who was also a former lover of Marianne’s) is nothing if not a love letter itself. So long, Marianne. So long, Leonard.
  89. Unplanned
    Unplanned will make you writhe in agony over how such an ugly, malicious and potentially dangerous piece of religious and political propaganda could have made its way into this world.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Stuber
    The action half of the action-comedy tends to lean more towards slapstick than shoot-’em-up, even when heads are exploding, and while it’s capably handled, the movie is at its best when its two leads are bickering in the car. Stuber is probably the only ride share where talking should be strongly encouraged.
  91. The Last Black Man in San Francisco
    The drama is an endlessly inventive and devastating work, a lyrical ode to a city that has turned its back on its most devoted citizens.
  92. Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am
    The Pieces I Am is compellingly organized and like much of Morrison’s writing, forces the viewer to think carefully to keep up.
  93. Midsommar
    Aster’s considerable discipline in matters of plot, acting, and exactingly manicured mise-en-scène resulted in a film that, for all its shocks and bravura performances, felt a little too controlled, as if its borderline braggadocious style was compensating for a lack of genuine terror.
  94. Spider-Man: Far from Home
    In five years’ time, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Far from Home ranked near the bottom of everyone’s favourite MCU efforts – the film evaporates, Endgame-style, immediately after viewing.
  95. Rojo
    The detective plot is shaggy and never fully resolves itself, but the implications of the story resonate like a distant drum.
  96. Yesterday
    So, is Yesterday a one-trick Dig a Pony or did renowned British screenwriter Richard Curtis and the great British filmmaker Danny Boyle turn a cute hook into something meaningful? The answer is that the duo tries for the latter, but doesn’t quite nail it.
  97. Isabelle
    I can’t imagine that the filmmakers behind the new horror film Isabelle were thinking about anything other than cold, hard cash while producing this utterly disposable work.
  98. Annabelle Comes Home
    What follows is excellent, uncomplicated and well-wrought house-of-horrors fun, complete with a message about self-blame and the real things that haunt us. Gary Dauberman is a first-time director, but don’t worry, Mom and Dad, your kids (and everyone else) are in good hands with him.
  99. Euphoria
    It is not simply that this film is utterly unrealistic – perhaps that can be overlooked; it’s a fable of sorts, set in a scrupulously neutral pan-European setting. What is unforgiveable is that Langseth’s approach to complex emotional issues is unsubtle at best and untruthful at worst.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Buddy
    In resisting the urge to roll over into the sappy-dog genre, Buddy instead elevates the stories it tells: It’s ultimately about love, resilience and lessons we can all take in.
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