The Globe and Mail (Toronto)'s Scores

Select another publication »
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 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
view
per page
    • 43 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Medicine Man
    Director John McTiernan (Predator, Die Hard, The Hunt for Red October) is a dab hand at combining stunning scenery, fast-paced action and sharp dialogue and the film easily transcends the weaknesses of its plot. [07 Feb 1992]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  2. Thor: Ragnarok
    Thor films have traditionally landed with a heavy foot. Thank goodness Waititi taught the big guy how to dance.
  3. The Notebook
    The challenge for a filmmaker attempting to adapt the Agota Kristof novella The Notebook is how much of its startlingly amoral world can actually be shown.
  4. Before We Vanish
    The cast of aliens, led by Matsuda, has great fun playing the humans-in-training, but it's Nagasawa's defeated young wife who really stands out as the performance that elevates the film.
  5. Eddie the Eagle
    It is a rare biopic of any kind, let alone a sports bio, that merely celebrates participation. It’s that novelty that makes this simple comedy shine.
  6. Fourteen
    Sallitt is grasping for something profound here – a portrait of friendship seen both up-close and from a distance. Fourteen may ultimately be just that – a grasp – but it is worth reaching out for all the same.
  7. A Midsummer Night's Dream
    The well chosen cast helps -- no one strikes a false note.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Club
    Even with Pablo Larrain’s signature insights hidden in quiet and seemingly simple dialogue, and even with hints of his trademark dark humour, The Club may be one of the Chilean director’s most disturbing films.
  9. Kingsman: The Secret Service
    A lively, dashing and amusing motion picture that smartly spoofs and slyly celebrates the James Bond spy-film franchise.
  10. Lorna's Silence
    Upbeat it ain't, but when the light fades from the final frame, there remains something unusual in the Dardennes canon – the possibility of an escape from futility's clutches, and a reason for hope that might, just might, be more than an illusion.
  11. Patti Cake$
    Patti Cake$ for the most part avoids feeling like a song you've heard before. It's too big-hearted and genuine not to love.
  12. Thief
    Realism by nature offends the dogmatic, and Michael Mann, in a writing-directing debut that makes one want to see his next movie instantly, is a devotee of the realistic in factual essentials, if not in esthetics. [27 Mar 1981]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  13. Human Flow
    Human Flow ventures further into pure documentary than Ai's previous work in that field but it's still an art film, with a circular rhythm to its scenes, lingering imagery and a prolonged running time of 140 minutes.
  14. Puss in Boots
    Puss in Boots is essentially non-stop dazzling action scenes loosely connected by a thin, predictable story of greed versus good.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    In Between
    While the #MeToo movement is doing much to expose systemic sexism and harassment against women, In Between highlights how difficult it will be to make substantive change in the world's most patriarchal societies.
  16. Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
    An amused and affectionate look at the writer who formed a crucial link between the New Journalism of the 1960s and today's blogosphere.
  17. What We Do in the Shadows
    Like a Christopher Guest movie with a widow’s peak, What We Do in the Shadows depicts a supposed “New Zealand Documentary Board” film gone gruesomely, hilariously awry.
  18. The Queen of Spain
    Trueba, 62, has reassembled a lot of the old cast, most of whom play characters trying to recapture old magic. Make of that what you will. It's fun.
  19. The Grand
    What makes The Grand a memorable comedy is that the main stories are really about families – how they screw you up and how they save you. And you don't have to understand poker to know the rules of that game.
  20. Pushing Tin
    An entertaining takeoff and a high-altitude ride eventually runs into some bumpy weather and a clumsy landing in Mike Newell's new comedy.
  21. Assault on Precinct 13
    One of this enlightened B-movie's many pleasures is French director Jean-François Richet's handling of atmosphere and setting. Shot almost entirely at night in a blinding snowstorm, the crime drama is an intriguing remodelling of a classic film noir.
  22. How to Change the World
    Whatever you think of Greenpeace’s less well-considered antics over the years, How to Change the World is a compelling story of one environmentalist’s remarkable combination of prescience, grit and timing.
  23. Wind
    Wind is a rapturous experience. It's a sporting movie about the spirit of sport that never steps over the line into a win-at-all-costs ethos, or into the hypocrisy of it's-the-way-you-play-the-game-that-counts. [14 Sep 1992]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  24. Happy Together
    Wong returns once more to what he seems to know best - the visual poetry of the urban Asian night, a world of characters on the move, coming and going, never really getting anywhere. [5 Dec 1997]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  25. The Frighteners
    Cluttered, improbable, brash, silly and over the top, the film is far more fun than it should be. [19 July 1996, p.D1]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Fast & Furious 6
    The post-end-credits introduction of another bullet-headed genre-flick icon as the possible villain for the next instalment (already slated for production) means that Johnson may finally get a worthy foil. So: Same time next year, then?
  27. Jane Eyre
    There are many good reasons why the world doesn't need yet another adaptation of the Charlotte Bronte classic. Yet they all pale before the one great reason why it does – the chance to marvel at Wasikowska's performance.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Bill W.
    All you needed was to accept your imperfection and reach out to others who'd done the same. Surely the man who said that must be perfect.
  29. Dirty Pretty Things
    By its third act, Okwe has found his solution and Dirty Pretty Things comes across as both clever but a little pat, another British drama about the misfits who pool their resources to defy the oppressive system, though it does not precisely leave a warm glow.
  30. Bird
    At two hours and 43 minutes, Eastwood's Bird is a hypnotic, darkly photographed, loosely constructed marvel that avoids every cliche of the self-destructive-celebrity biography, a particularly remarkable achievement in that Parker played out every cliche of the self- destructive-celebrity life. [14 Oct 1988, p. C1]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Burma VJ: Reporter i et lukket land
    It's a very sad film to watch.
  32. Black Conflux
    Tension is built deftly. A dreamy dance scene uses Gowan’s hit song Moonlight Desires to magical effect. Filmmaker Dorsey keeps viewers guessing with her promising debut.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    An Unmarried Woman
    Clayburgh is in every frame of the film and you never tire of her even when you occasionally weary of writer-producer-director Paul Mazursky's cuteness. [21 Mar 1978]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  34. Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry
    The older John Kerry, today's candidate, is conspicuous both by his absence (he's not interviewed here) and by the contrast between then and now, between the hero he was and the politician he's become. That contrast gives the film a nostalgic yet palpable sadness.
  35. Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked The World
    This film is about giving credit where previously neglected credit is due. “You wouldn’t let us talk about it before,” Robertson says at the end of the doc. “But now I’m going to talk about it real loud.” No volume is too much at this point.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    A Borrowed Identity
    Riklis, working from an adaptation of a popular novel by the Arab-Israeli writer Sayed Kashua, is wryly perceptive of the ways each side exoticizes and demonizes the other.
  37. Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda
    It is a heartfelt mediation on the creative process, with elegantly presented ideas on nature, music, mortality and things out of tune.
  38. Run Lola Run
    Fun, fun, fun. Take the title at its word, because this movie is nothing less than a flat-out, lung-pumping, 76-minute sprint.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Tuya's Marriage
    When it comes to exploring with dignity and humour the choices a woman must make for her family, Tuya's Marriage is the clear winner.
  40. Fair Game
    The more compelling performance comes from Watts as Valerie.
  41. Funny Games (2008)
    Is Funny Games an unqualified success? No, and for this reason: In order to analyze the devolution of violence into entertainment, the premise obliges the film to superimpose a complicated game atop the genre's simple one – in other words, it makes a game out of the game it condemns.
  42. Shaun of the Dead
    Plays perfectly on two levels — it's a clever comedy, but disguised as a fun, dumb horror flick. A movie made to delight, and even accidentally enlighten, both the living and the dead.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
    The important thing about Star Trek VI is that it is a good production of a better-than-average script. There are countless chuckle-lines, and the story takes several interesting twists and turns.
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  44. Million Dollar Baby
    With his trademark spare, unfussy direction and jumping into the story approach, Eastwood subtly establishes the themes of faith, loss and love and then he raises the drama to a different level.
  45. The Woodsman
    The film manages the extraordinary feat of forcing us to empathize simultaneously with both the potential victim and the potential villain.
  46. Love Is All You Need
    As the title more than hints, Love Is All You Need is no stranger to formulaic clichés, but it’s still a Bier film. There’s a sprinkling of vinegar in the treacle, a bit of ballast in fancy’s lightweight flight, and, of course, the triumph of optimism that can seem unearned in her dramas is made to measure in a comedy.
  47. Crazy, Stupid, Love
    Crazy, Stupid, Love seems at times like a bunch of movies searching for an identity. Happily, some of them are actually worth watching.
  48. My Favorite Year
    O'Toole's performance transforms a mundane movie into one of the most scintillating, enjoyable comedies of the year. [01 Oct 1982]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  49. I'm No Longer Here
    There is a semi-frustrating sense that Frias hasn’t quite made the movie that he wanted to – that either time was not on his side or that he fussed too much in the editing booth.
  50. Star Trek
    Smart and youthful, with a well-balanced package of humour, romance, crisp action and character-based drama, Star Trek gives popcorn movies a good name.
  51. The Lincoln Lawyer
    What began as quick and engaging, Hollywood craft at its most proficient, ends as dull and predictable, Hollywood product back in formulaic mode.
  52. The Changeling
    The Changeling is a breathless, enjoyably scary amusement-park ride through an aged genre that comes back more often than Frank Sinatra; and that appears to be as pleased with itself, and as well-preserved. [28 Mar 1980]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  53. Baby Doll
    It still stands up as astonishingly sleazy entertainment. [15 Jun 2002, p.R1]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  54. Attack the Block
    Stacked against this summer's CGI-driven blockbusters, Attack the Block is definitely the fastest action ride (clocking under 90 minutes), and quite possibly the most fun.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
    Very much a superhero film – "X-Men" as imagined by Edward Gorey. But it’s not populated with the sorts of characters we’ve come to expect – tormented anti-heroes or wisecrackin’ daredevils or noble demi-gods. Rather, it’s a film about a group of broken children, not off saving the world but being saved from the world.
  56. An Inconvenient Truth
    Even a politically naive film critic can see that An Inconvenient Truth isn't only about science or economics; it's also about ideology.
  57. Contagion
    Contagion isn't meant to provide delicious roller-coaster chills. Released two days before the 10th anniversary of 9/11, it's a film meant to scare the bejesus out of us.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    God's Own Country
    God's Own Country is writer-director Francis Lee's debut and comparisons to Ang Lee's "Brokeback Mountain" are inevitable. But where Brokeback was sweeping Wyoming vistas and homophobic backlash, this enigmatic little film says it all in razor-sharp closeups and minimal words.
  59. Split
    The problem with Shyamalan’s spin on dissociative identity disorder is that for all the dissociation, why are all 23 identities cool with locking terrified girls in a basement?
  60. Gloria
    Whether you appreciate Gloria as a portrait of a vital woman, muddling through life’s middle chapters, or as an allegory of Chilean resilience, the message is the same: Let’s face the music and dance.
  61. Broken Embraces
    At 128 minutes – Almodovar's longest film to date – Broken Embraces is an easy film to bid farewell to.
  62. Affliction
    A tormented and tormenting man uses violence to break the historic chain of violence, then bequeaths to his loved ones the most precious gift he can give -- his total silence and perpetual absence.
  63. Warrior
    Warrior is a weirdly affecting hybrid, a 100-proof melodrama that's two-thirds Sylvester Stallone and one-third Eugene O'Neill. Think Rocky's "Long Day's Journey into Night."
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Trekkies
    By the end of Trekkies,you almost feel the best way to bring peace to the Middle East would be to hold a Star Trek convention there.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Ghost Town Anthology
    Côté has a reputation of being something of a punk filmmaker. But if there is anything transgressive about Ghost Town Anthology it is its optimistic vision, where instead of having characters remain alienated and separated, they come together, find themselves and form a community.
  66. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
    The result isn't meant to be an historical document transmuted into fiction; instead, it's fiction turned into a fable, a dark fable.
  67. Tickled
    If you have ever heard of the term “catfishing” – and if you haven’t, I’m impressed and envious – then you’re already one step ahead.
  68. Brigsby Bear
    An oddball charmer of a motion picture about nostalgia, the pursuit of artistic passion and a coming of age bizarrely delayed and uniquely fulfilled. The bear itself is but a bit player.
  69. Brick
    Mainly, it's a clever gimmick, cleverly wrought, offering further evidence that you can dress up the student body in all manner of garb for all types of genres.
  70. Deepwater Horizon
    The overall product is so tightly assembled, and so emotionally satisfying, that any complaints end up being inconsequential.
  71. 1917
    In the case of Sam Mendes’s First World War thriller 1917, I am willing to concede that this is indeed a cinematic experience that demands the largest canvas possible.
  72. The Valet
    When Veber is on form there's no one better. And when he's not, well, give The Valet a look anyway -- there's still much to admire.
  73. Spellbound
    Loses its momentum just when you'd expect the suspense to mount -- at the competition itself.
  74. Hamilton
    This is a tremendously entertaining trip through the births of both America and the musical form, with each institution given a lightly revisionist torque by Miranda, who approaches the material with a scholar’s dedication to detail and a showman’s slick wit.
  75. Landline
    Dad’s suspected infidelity is the tension in a film that hammers its nineties setting so relentlessly it could be called Sex, Lies and Videotape (and Floppy Disks and Payphones).
  76. Another Earth
    It's refreshing to see a movie tackling difficult ideas, even if, like the new Earth, it sometimes feels like the filmmakers have their heads up in the clouds.
  77. Dracula
    Dracula may not be as big a success as it should be - we don't like our myths dissected, after all, and there is an uneasy (but workable) truce in the film between subtle stylization and the demands of the contemporary horror audience for gore. [14 Jul 1979]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  78. The Divine Order
    The Divine Order plays up the fun of feminist empowerment with its anthems (You Don't Own Me, Respect), and lightens the tension with a modern-woman makeover for Nora.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Head Games
    Finally, there's a sports movie for people who are caught between admiration and fear of athleticism. Neither a triumphant underdog like "Rudy" nor a total weepie like "The Pride of the Yankees," Head Games also deals with the illnesses and premature deaths of talented players.
  80. Girl with a Pearl Earring
    It isn't an exciting work of art so much as a contemplative reverie on the nature of art -- and what's wrong with a smart essay that unfolds like a sweet dream?
  81. This Is Not a Film
    Deft and ironic, mixing banal reality with poignant metaphor in a typically Iranian style.
  82. To Life
    À la vie is a gentle toast – the film sticks to its subtle tone, which is both its strength and its weakness.
  83. Beats Rhymes & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest
    A combination of timing, access, a visual aesthetic that reflects ATCQ's Afrocentric "surface philosophy" (as the crew's look is described) and, most importantly, story-conscious editing elevates the doc above the norm.
  84. The Lovers and the Despot
    It’s a fantastically bonkers story told excitedly in The Lovers and the Despot, a stranger-than-fiction yarn that would make a hell of an opera.
  85. Good Will Hunting
    Both smart and shrewd -- it wraps that same comforting message in a thoroughly entertaining package.
  86. Crazy Heart
    Bridges's big performance takes place in the context of a relatively minor movie.
  87. The Comfort of Strangers
    This picture will linger, stuck in those corners of the mind you may not care to visit, where the stranger you meet lies in the bed beside you, or stares back from the mirror before you, and where the comfort offered is nothing but cold. [14 June 1991]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  88. An American Pickle
    While Rich’s script misses a few trickier opportunities to further dig into questions of religion and history – Herschel sleeps his way through the entirety of the Second World War, yet there’s never any discussion of how the Holocaust has irrevocably changed the world he wakes up in – An American Pickle is a movie that your bubbe will love.
  89. Free State of Jones
    Instead of captivating us with swagger, McConaughey chooses to go grim and dogged. Director Ross does the same.
  90. A Tale of Love and Darkness
    The Israeli author’s melancholy work might on the surface be an odd choice for Portman, but as writer, director and star, she takes to it with a fierce sense of devotion and even protection, creating a Hebrew-language drama about the tight, complex bond between a mother (Portman) and her son (Amir Tessler).
    • 63 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Friends with Benefits
    It's a tired formula moviegoers know well, but in the case of Friends With Benefits, it works.
  92. The Bubble
    There is semi-purpose and not insignificant pleasure to be had in Apatow’s experiment. The Netflix production isn’t the comedy kingmaker’s best film by a wide margin (though it is his shortest, which still isn’t saying much), but it works in spite of itself.
  93. Pariah
    Occasionally, Rees's script seems to mimic Alike's poetry, and fall into its own slough of earnestness, as the stages of the girl's dawning enlightenment get dutifully ticked off like stations of the cross.
  94. RBG
    In RBG, a lionizing biography of the U.S. Supreme Court judge, Ginsburg emerges as a woman of remarkable intelligence and fortitude – who can get by on very little sleep.
  95. Serenity
    After witnessing the wearying parliamentary debates among good and bad senators in recent Star Wars episodes, it's a pleasure to watch a sci-fi movie where more than just the spaceships move quickly.
  96. The NeverEnding Story
    Petersen seems to be holding back, telling us about the liberating power of the imagination but never really showing us. Of course, to show us would be to spoon feed the audience, thereby blunting the message and defeating the point. [20 Jul 1984, p.E9]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  97. Elegy
    The result, Elegy, isn't a great film but it is a good one, and better for Coixet's perspective, her ability to interpret Roth's world from the other side of the gender fence.
  98. Her Majesty, Mrs. Brown
    Mrs. Brown will not overturn Queen Victoria's prim reputation, but it reminds us that there was more to the woman than that famous plump cameo that has become the symbol of a more modest era.
  99. Oldboy
    This is a movie about draining, tenderizing and chopping up the audience emotionally.
  100. Slam Dance
    Stylistically, the sleek Slamdance, a beautiful yet ominous black lacquer box of a movie, is a U.S. approximation of Diva - every chic frame is aggressive and eye-catching. But it is also what Less Than Zero wanted to be, an expose of the emotional desert at the west end of the U.S. nation. [28 Dec 1987]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »