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. Only God Forgives
    Refn’s expectation-defying choice is laudable in theory, but Only God Forgives is a pretty awful drama.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Syrup
    It’s tempting to say that Aram Rappaport’s Syrup sticks, but it’s also true.
  3. Pandora's Promise
    Pandora’s Promise is less an exploration of the subject than a well-constructed sales pitch.
    • 19 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Grown Ups 2
    Like its predecessor, Grown Ups 2 is proudly retrograde, both in its relentless deluge of toilet humour and the way it bear-hugs some good old-fashioned conservative values.
  5. Pacific Rim
    Of all this year’s loud, over-long summer action movies that, in various ways, simulate the experience of having a tin bucket placed over your head and being struck repeatedly with a stick, it must be said that Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim is by far the most entertaining.
  6. Sweetgrass
    An anthropological marvel and an animal-drive movie that belongs beside the classics of the genre - Red River and Lonesome Dove.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Still Mine
    Still Mine is a measured but considerably moving celebration of things hand-crafted, traditional and built to last.
  8. The Way, Way Back
    Like "Little Miss Sunshine," the movie stars Toni Collette and Steve Carell in a story about a dysfunctional family trip, though like "Adventureland," it’s really about a teenager finding acceptance at a local theme park.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me
    In the end, it’s the songs that provide the most eloquent and lasting testimony.
  10. 20 Feet from Stardom
    At times, these singers’ versatility has kept them both regularly employed and deliberately anonymous.
  11. I'm So Excited
    Exuberantly campy.
  12. Museum Hours
    It’s a hybrid drama/art-history essay about how looking at art recasts our experience of looking at the world.
  13. The Lone Ranger
    Eccentric and misguided enough to be almost perversely fascinating, the film doesn’t lack nerve; it’s just not very good.
  14. Despicable Me 2
    An animated sequel that, despite not achieving the inspired lunacy of the first movie where Gru literally steals the moon, is smartly calculated to deliver squeals to kids and amusement to accompanying adults.
  15. White House Down
    Formula action films don’t come much more formulaic that this.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    How to Make Money Selling Drugs
    As it turns out, making money selling drugs is pretty win-win as far as it goes, but keeping it is another matter. So the title isn’t so much a joke as a bleak comment on a desperately cynical economy: In the drug trade, as well as the dubious “war” declared against it, everybody ultimately loses.
  17. Unfinished Song
    In the end, then, just Vanessa Redgrave and Terence Stamp and those voices – their solos contain this picture like carved book-ends, vintage and lovely and still so profoundly of use.
  18. Storm Surfers 3D
    A bit thin on plot, but an unequivocal technical tour de force.
  19. The Heat
    If this were funny, The Heat would add up to your average buddy-cop comedy. Except that it’s not funny, at least not very and not often.
  20. The Bling Ring
    How do you make a movie about shallow people in a shallow culture and not end up with a shallow movie? For writer-director Sofia Coppola, the answer is to dramatize a story “based on actual events,” then to step back and present it as a case study in pure anthropology.
  21. Monsters University
    The background designs are beautiful and there are plenty of lively sight gags, but magic isn’t in the cards.
  22. World War Z
    Leave it to Brad Pitt, producer and star of World War Z, to try to put the zip back in zombie.
  23. Dirty Wars
    A remarkable documentary as important as it is compelling.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Much Ado About Nothing
    It’s a pleasant surprise, therefore, to see what Whedon has done with the Bard’s timeless comedy Much Ado About Nothing.
  25. Man of Steel
    Here are a few adjectives that do not apply to the new Superman movie: Beguiling. Frisky. Nuanced. Quiet. Even the title, Man of Steel, sounds too flighty for this film. Man of Lead, or Man of Plutonium, maybe.
  26. This Is the End
    There are a few laughs at the start of This Is the End, and a couple more at the end of This is the End. As for the endless middle, it’s middling.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    What Maisie Knew
    For those who have read the book, this contemporary adaptation of a once avant-garde story feels exactly right.
  28. Ain't in It for My Health: A Film About Levon Helm
    The portrait of the ailing artist is bittersweet, but when Helms sings or plays, the look on his face is pure joy.
  29. Before Midnight
    It plays like documented fact, a kind of "7 Up" primer on life’s romantic vicissitudes.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    The Kings of Summer
    The foundation of a much better movie is buried somewhere beneath the debris that’s too quickly piled on to The Kings of Summer, but there’s something at least strangely organic in its abandonment of a sturdier architectural project.
  31. The East
    Unfortunately, The East is not a very good movie, hobbled by an excess of plot, a lack of believability and big gaps of logic.
  32. The Internship
    Though by no means a good movie, The Internship floats along for fairly well for about half its length, thanks to the easy interplay between the two stars and a certain melancholic topicality.
  33. The Purge
    So, fans, gear up for rock-em-sock-em action, yet don’t be disappointed if much of the goonery seems a bit tepid and, dare I say, staged.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Lesser Blessed
    At once a departure from and a follower of teen-movie form, and the fact of the former almost forgives the fate of the latter.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    Erased
    Erased, I predict, is a word that will be used to describe what happens to your memory of this cloned facsimile of a movie immediately after watching it.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The English Teacher
    A potentially incisive character study is buried under layers of fluff in The English Teacher.
  37. Blancanieves
    While the story, shorn of its supernatural elements, is mired in abuse and tragedy, its effect is sensual and superficial.
  38. Now You See Me
    There’s a fine line sometimes, as "This is Spinal Tap" reminded us, between stupid and clever. Now You See Me wobbles along that tightrope for much of its running time.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    After Earth
    That there are no surprises (jumps, yes, surprises, no) should surprise no one – Will Smith movies must uplift the human spirit and reaffirm our best instincts while reassuring us that our ticket money has been well invested.
  40. Something in the Air
    An overdose of sympathy makes for a wispy picture, likeable certainly but lacking in crispness and clarity.
  41. 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.
  42. Epic
    There’s a worrisome failure of imagination at work in the title of this movie. It’s actually hard to imagine a more generic title. But at least it’s succinct. It rolls off the tongue much better than Movie That Feels Not So Much Inspired As Engineered According to Conventional Animated Kids’ Genre Requirements.
    • 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?
  44. The Hangover Part III
    Not just bad, but weirdly, fascinatingly bad.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Mud
    So yes, Mud is messy, but it’s also rich and earthy in a way that suggests a filmmaker who is deeply immersed in his story, his characters and his surroundings.
  46. The We and the I
    Still, credit Gondry, like Tocqueville before him, with at least re-examining tired clichés and scraping the rust off stereotypes.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Iceman
    Michael Shannon is an overpowering actor, and in The Iceman, the best that he can do is wrestle the movie around him to a stalemate.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Reluctant Fundamentalist
    It’s a timely narrative subject, but its treatment in The Reluctant Fundamentalist is fundamentally flawed.
  49. Greetings from Tim Buckley
    Director Dan Algrant’s conceit here is to take an actual event – a tribute concert for Tim held at a Brooklyn church in 1991, the concert that sparked Jeff’s own career – and wrap a fictionalized drama around it.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Angels' Share
    There might be a pretty good film lurking in this latest dramedy from the veteran Scottish directing-writing team of Ken Loach and Paul Laverty. I use the conditional because at least half the dialogue is delivered in a Glaswegian Scots so thick, it might as well have been Urdu.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf's
    Do you need to see this film? No. But if you want to see it, you’re in for a treat.
  52. Star Trek Into Darkness
    For those who enjoyed J.J. Abrams’s frisky relaunch of Star Trek back in 2009, the good news is that the new Star Trek Into Darkness is more of the same. The bad news is that Star Trek Into Darkness is, well, a bit too familiar.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Byzantium
    Female-forward and class-conscious, allegorical and adventurous, Byzantium is almost the anti-Batman.
  54. Hannah Arendt
    En route, despite some clumsy exposition and the reduction of heavyweights like Mary McCarthy and William Shawn to fifth-business caricatures, the film does manage one impressive intellectual achievement of its own: rescuing that “banality of evil” phrase from the banal cliché it’s become and, by providing the full and daring context, giving it real meaning again.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Berberian Sound Studio
    Director Peter Strickland brilliantly ratchets up the tension without showing a single frame of the grisly film.
  56. At Any Price
    What remains “indie” about At Any Price is that this is an unabashed social-message film – one that plays out like a cross between the agribusiness exposé "Food, Inc." and Arthur Miller’s "Death of a Salesman."
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Graceland
    The overwhelming sense of physical and moral decay could be taken for social commentary, and if Graceland has a flaw, it’s that Morales gradually starts to overstate his case as the movie goes on.
  58. Room 237
    Are these enlightened critics or dark nutcases themselves?
  59. Peeples
    It’s a shame that two gifted comedians weren’t given better material to work with.
  60. The Great Gatsby
    It’s a terrific adaptation that succeeds not only as a work of cinema but also, wonderfully, as proof of the novel’s greatness. In short, the picture rebukes the revisionists even while entertaining them.
  61. The World Before Her
    A thought-provoking film that examines women’s limited choices in a patriarchal country reeling from the contradictions of rapid modernization.
  62. Kon-Tiki
    In a kind of perverse alchemy, this film manages to turn that narrative gold into dross, and reduce the daunting perils of a 4,300-mile voyage to a ho-hum checklist. Welcome to the reverse magic of the movies.
  63. Iron Man 3
    The real question for audiences isn’t whether Tony Stark/Iron Man defeats the latest supervillain (of course he does), but whether the movie itself rises above the dreaded third-in-a-sequel torpor of "Spider-Man" and "The Dark Knight." Spoiler alert: Yes, mostly, it does.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Tai Chi Hero
    As the middle part of a proposed trilogy, Tai Chi Hero may ultimately look better in light of its own sequel (which, based on the evidence here, will double-down on the steampunk stuff), but now, its pitched battle between silliness and solemnity feels like a split decision.
  65. The Company You Keep
    In The Company You Keep, old radicals never die – they just turn into old actors.
  66. Upside Down
    Upside Down is no more than one big-budget, gussied-up fairy tale – a topsy-turvy Romeo and Juliet.
  67. Pain & Gain
    The script’s occasional gestures toward making this an allegory of the failed American dream are extremely unconvincing in the context of a movie that revels in the excesses of macho culture while laughing at the hapless and stupid who can’t get it right.
  68. The Big Wedding
    It’s just such a shining example of a dull studio comedy.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    To the Wonder
    Apparently, whole layers of the projected storyline did not survive the editing suite. Actors Rachel Weisz, Michael Sheen, Barry Pepper and Amanda Peet were all part of the original script. Their footage ended on the cutting-room floor. Lucky them.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Wrong
    Truth be told, Wrong isn’t as funny as "Rubber," which played kamikaze games with horror-movie tropes. The tone here is flatter and more meandering, and more than a few of Dupieux’s digressions feel like dead ends. At the same time, there’s a winning confidence to the filmmaking, which is deceptively stylish.
  71. It's a Disaster
    The humour may not be wickedly black, but once in a while it’s amusingly beige.
  72. Oblivion
    Oblivion is an okay blockbuster, a multimillion-dollar exercise in competence.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Herman's House
    Herman's House is conventionally produced, but it does right by its two uncommon subjects.
  74. Laurence Anyways
    In a contest between passion and pretension, Laurence Anyways reaches a kind of draw. What holds up here isn’t Dolan’s overly decorative filmmaking, but what he gets from his performers.
  75. The Place Beyond the Pines
    Once again, Cianfrance handles the individual scenes with menacing aplomb but, once again, the whole is much less than the sum of its parts.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Like Someone in Love
    A delicate pearl of a movie, Like Someone in Love is thus a meditative dance along the ambiguous borders of truth and illusion. What, Kiarostami seems to be asking, can we actually see? What can we definitively know? Far less than we think.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Upstream Color
    Shane Carruth’s Upstream Color is a deliberate exercise in swooning obscurity. You either go with its considerable sensory powers or you scratch a groove on your head.
  78. Paris-Manhattan
    The premise of Paris-Manhattan is simple enough; unfortunately, so is everything else about writer-director Sophie Lellouche’s debut feature film.
  79. Trance
    Individually, Dawson and Cassel each generate plenty of screen heat, but, together in that one bedroom scene, their chemistry is downright explosive, so much so that it seems we have strayed into a whole different movie, and dearly want to stay there.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Renoir
    Gilles Bourdos’s film is more conventional than its mould-breaking subjects deserve.
  81. 42
    In the hallowed frames of 42, the legend is front and centre and still inspiring. Too bad the more interesting man is nowhere to be seen.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Antiviral
    For his feature film debut, Brandon Cronenberg has taken the decidedly uneasy route in more ways than one. First of all, Antiviral is a virtual panoply of high wooziness, replete with sweating, shakes, vomiting, rot-infected food and more needles piercing skin than rush hour at a free flu clinic.
  83. A Place at the Table
    Says the actor Jeff Bridges, a long-time and articulate soldier in the campaign against hunger: “It’s a problem that our government is ashamed of acknowledging. We’re in denial.”
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Sapphires
    The group’s lead singer is Julie (Jessica Mauboy, an Australian R&B singer and runner-up on the fourth season of Australian Idol). You could drive an Abrams tank through the film’s plot holes, but you’ll likely be too busy enjoying yourself to bother.
  85. Love, Marilyn
    Remove the comma from the title and Love, Marilyn plays like the command it is.
  86. Evil Dead
    So long as you grit your teeth and keep your eyes on the screen, it’s an enjoyable, if almost academic, exercise in bad taste.
  87. Eddie: The Sleepwalking Cannibal
    The movie ends up exactly what it sounds like: a good film for filling the midnight slot at a review cinema or genre festival.
  88. Emperor
    Aside from Jones’s broadly entertaining performance as the egotistical Supreme Commander, the movie, directed by Peter Webber (The Girl with the Pearl Earring), is a dud.
  89. Beyond the Hills
    If you long for the bleak intelligence of an Ingmar Bergman film, where humankind is deeply flawed and God is indifferently silent and the landscape is cloaked in perpetual winter, then Beyond the Hills promises to be your cup of despair.
  90. Spring Breakers
    Whether the film is uniquely brilliant or dismissively dumb is not the issue here. Either choice can (and will) be offered – it’s the choosing that counts.
  91. The Host
    Ronan, youthfully elegant as always, tries hard, but the material defeats her.
  92. G.I. Joe: Retaliation
    Feels like a five-year-old with a megaphone, excitedly yelling about his latest bulldozer-soldier-dinosaur smash-kill-squash-everything game.
  93. Yossi
    Yossi is an early spring breeze of a film – too delicate to be substantial but definitely holding the promise of warmth.
  94. Olympus Has Fallen
    Korean-American actor and former model Yune (who played a similar role in "Die Another Day," the last Pierce Brosnan James Bond film) makes a colourful villain – handsome and insufferably assured, and also an unchivalrous sadist who kicks around the Secretary of Defense (Melissa Leo in a pageboy wig) as though she’s a hacky sack.
  95. The Croods
    While paying lip service to the spirit of invention and adventure, the movie doesn’t do much for the evolution of children’s animated entertainment.
  96. Admission
    The result is a picture curiously yet intriguingly at odds with itself: One moment is edgy, the next is not; the cast is terrific, the direction is not; here it’s satirically sharp, there it’s sloppily sentimental; now we’re happily engaged, then we’re cruelly dumped. Some films are electric – Admission settles for alternating current.
  97. Caesar Must Die
    Not surprisingly, prison must be the perfect incubator of sadness and anger, because every one of the “performances” is astonishingly vivid. At the extremes of the emotional spectrum, at least, these guys are brilliant.
  98. Greedy Lying Bastards
    On the downside, Rosebraugh’s own film is too self-righteous and his attempts to play a humour-challenged, lightweight version of Michael Moore in front of the camera is a misfire. The climate-change deniers are comforting, though obviously wrong. Greedy Lying Bastards is grating, even if it’s right.
  99. Reincarnated
    The film is too slapdash and self-serving to take seriously (it’s release is timed to the precede thesame-named album’s release next month), but it’s a casually entertaining trip, aimed at fans of the charismatic rapper and his recreational substance of choice.
  100. No
    Take the backroom political machinations of "Lincoln," add in the showbiz sleight of hand of "Argo," and you’ll get something like No, a cunning and richly enjoyable combination of high-stakes drama and media satire.
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