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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    • 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.
  2. The Master
    Like Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut," Anderson's latest is enigmatic. But if you have eyes and can see, The Master it is unmistakably some kind of wonder. At least, it's an exhilarating demonstration of big-screen moviemaking in dreamlike colours and a sense-heightening 70-mm format.
  3. Trouble with the Curve
    Clint has a script. Actually, Clint has too much script, one of those schematic by-the-number jobs that telegraphs its every pitch.
  4. House at the End of the Street
    I doubt that Lawrence is conscious of this process. Nevertheless, stuck in a dull commercial feature, a very good actor happens upon a new solution to an age-old problem: She improves the script by transcending it, and steals the picture by abandoning it.
  5. End of Watch
    No doubt, these twin saviours are a likeable tandem, and they bear their cross lightly. Still, End of Watch suffers from no end of sanctimony. Sainthood is all well and fine but it ain't drama and, on screen at least, the question cries out: Where's a corrupt cop when you need him?
  6. Anna Karenina
    The results are generally refreshing. Much of the film takes place inside a theatre, as if to suggest the shenanigans of the Saint Petersburg aristocracy were a form of public entertainment.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Silver Linings Playbook
    Lawrence and Cooper have electric chemistry, and the director pulls off one of the most satisfying romantic Hollywood endings seen in years.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    Resident Evil: Retribution
    A few striking images keep our attention – like evil warrior Rain (Michelle Rodriguez) seated menacingly with an assault rifle on a playground swing in the 'burbs. But the film's title promises payback, without offering ample compensation.
  9. The Impossible
    The Impossible looks back at a natural calamity with unflinching honesty. It sees fear and pain, it sees fortitude and bravery, but mainly it sees this: In that raging instant when the sea becomes its own monster, there's precious little to separate the devoured from the spared – nothing but the thin wedge of luck.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Words
    The Words suggests that a story, whether true or not, can help get us through, if we believe it enough. Though this film can't quite pull it off, a good enough thief can get away with it.
  11. The Eye of the Storm
    For all the talent involved, The Eye of the Storm is an incident-stuffed but lacklustre affair – a case of lots of sturm, but not enough drang – that reaches for a satiric sting and emotional depth it never achieves.
  12. Girl Model
    It is hard to know whether to applaud directors David Redmon and Ashley Sabin for exposing the underside of the fashion business – or demand they abandon their documentarian stance and rescue young Nadya on the spot.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    For a Good Time, Call...
    Easily the daffiest movie you've ever seen that also references incestuous role-playing games.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    The Possession
    The film is basically a compendium of possessed-child clichés.
  15. Lawless
    It attempts to take local history of the illegal whisky trade and raise it to the level of myth.
  16. Robot and Frank
    Very charming but very slight.
  17. Hit and Run
    It's a rom-com, it's a road movie, it's "Cars" without the animation, it's "A History of Violence" played for yuks. It's all that and less because, really, Hit & Run is awfully hit & miss.
  18. Easy Money
    What really distinguishes it from any number of drug-escapade stories is the unusual and welcome sense of Dostoyevskian moral gravity of the narrative.
  19. Premium Rush
    On the byways of any bustling metropolis, here is what the combination of bicycles + cars + pedestrians is certain to produce: (1) nasty accidents and (2) ferocious debates. More surprisingly, on the silver screen in Premium Rush, here is what the same combination fails to produce: a good action movie.
  20. Little White Lies
    In what's meant to be a French take on "The Big Chill" - comedy meets pathos as friends gather at a country house in the wake of a tragedy - writer-director Guillaume Canet has wrought a meandering script that exercises everything except restraint.
    • 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.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Awakening
    There is a rich movie to be made about this culture of fake seers and gullible marks, but it isn't The Awakening, a dull British import that never lives up to the pretensions of its period setting.
  23. The Odd Life of Timothy Green
    As anodyne as it is, Timothy Green may represent the last gasp of a genre, the live-action family fable, that has been an entertainment staple for a couple of generations of moviegoers.
  24. The Expendables 2
    Of course, the result is forgettable, but at least it's efficiently and breezily forgettable. What's more, there are laughs too and here's the best part – one or two of them are actually intentional.
  25. ParaNorman
    Norman is the "freak" bullied and ostracized and otherwise degraded by the alive-and-well crowd. Such is the outcast fate of most heroes in the best children's tales. And ParaNorman, a ghoulishly delightful exercise in stop-motion animation, is a very good children's tale indeed.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    Sparkle
    Anyone who has seen "Dream Girls," "What's Love Got To Do With It?" or even "The Doors" will find themselves in familiar (if inferior) territory here.
  27. 2 Days in New York
    2 Days in New York plays like 2 years in Attica. You don't watch this movie so much as serve it out, a light comedy doled out as a heavy sentence.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Red Lights
    It works best when it doesn't take itself seriously, and some of the ways in which ESP is faked are briefly engaging, like short con games or magic tricks revealed. But, finally, the film doesn't offer the sense of release, or of surprise, that it seems to take for granted.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Oslo, August 31st
    Trier's all in a calendar-day conceit gives Oslo, August 31a clean, clear structure, and yet it doesn't hem it in.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    The Campaign
    A political parody that is almost as ridiculous as actual American politics.
  31. The Bourne Legacy
    Bourne fans will find much to enjoy about The Bourne Legacy, even if they are forced to do without the title character.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Killer Joe
    Credit goes to the actors (especially Gershon) for giving almost as good as they get in seriously demanding roles, and to Friedkin for having what it takes – guts, chops and a refreshing lack of artistic caution – to bring things thundering home.
  33. Hope Springs
    Yes, this is the fascinating stuff, a rare (in pop culture) look at the complex nature of the love-sex equation – when it's too direct, when it's too vague, when it breaks down completely.
  34. Cosmopolis
    The trouble with Cosmopolis, David Cronenberg's faithful-to-a-fault adaptation from Don DeLillo's 2003 novel, is that it's more metaphor than meat.
  35. The Queen of Versailles
    Everything about The Queen of Versailles, a documentary both sharply observant and deliciously funny, is jumbo-sized – the riches, the rags, his ego, her breasts, their steroidal pursuit of happiness.
  36. 360
    To their credit, both Meirelles and his cast infuse as much realism into the artifice as they can muster, but it's not nearly enough. The too-neat script boxes them in, and leave us out. In that sense, 360 doesn't so much connect our shrunken world as strangle the life from it – the circle feels like a noose.
  37. Searching for Sugar Man
    A pleasing fix, Searching for Sugar Man is a lost-and-found film about pursuits – one of them abandoned, and one not.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Compliance
    Compliance develops an intriguing premise intelligently, inquisitively and uncomfortably.
  39. Ruby Sparks
    The meta-fiction concept of characters interacting with their creator is hardly original, but it's neatly packaged here by Kazan herself, who wrote the script for this clever little charmer.
  40. Celeste and Jesse Forever
    So why are they divorcing, you ask. Who knows? Certainly not the creators of the very confused Celeste and Jesse Forever.
  41. Total Recall (2012)
    Today's Total Recall does nothing to tarnish the image of yesterday's – 22 years from now, I expect it to be hailed as a classic.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry
    Yet the most startling scene in the film is when he returns home after confinement. He politely tells the journalists waiting outside his home studio that he is on bail and can not talk. He smiles and repeatedly declines to comment. It is utterly contrary to his true character.
  43. The Watch
    It's a dumb-ass comedy done strictly for a seriously large paycheque.
  44. Step Up Revolution
    Dance gets political in Step Up Revolution, the fourth installation of the popular movie franchise, which delivers plenty of spectacular fancy footwork in what is otherwise a flat-footed fantasy.
  45. Trishna
    Trishna, in short, seems to occur at too much of a remove; it's too fate-filled.
  46. The Dark Knight Rises
    It's not only packed with high-toned classical and contemporary cultural allusions, but manages to wear its popcorn inspirations on its sleeve.
  47. Union Square
    Union Square's biggest flaw is its predictability.
  48. Neil Young Journeys
    Over all, Neil Young Journeys is a pretty solemn affair, kinda like the man himself.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Collaborator
    Morse and Donovan hold us rapt in this clearly told tale about identity confusion.
  50. Beasts of the Southern Wild
    Shot in Louisiana, with non-professional actors and apparently set-designed from a junkyard, Beasts of the Southern Wild marks one of the most auspicious American directorial debuts in years.
  51. Family Portrait in Black and White
    Though only 85 minutes, the film captures an entire, bewilderingly extended family and way of life inside a sturdy frame.
  52. Alps
    Alps, in spite of its title, is a very flat film, from the shallow focus photography, to the actors' monotone delivery.
  53. To Rome with Love
    The current postcard from abroad is not great, but not grating.
  54. Savages
    So why does Savages feel so calculated, cutesy, free of suspense and trashy only in the uninteresting sense? No doubt, Stone is trying... but it all feels more like flexing atrophied muscles rather than creating a believable experience.
  55. The Amazing Spider-Man
    More honourable than "amazing," the latest reboot of the Spider-man franchise brings Marvel Comics web-slinging super-hero down to earth, in a mostly satisfactory way.
  56. China Heavyweight
    As with his previous film, director Chang nurses a compelling drama from a multilayered cultural reality, at once intimate and unfathomably large in implications.
  57. Take This Waltz
    At best, it shows how intense sexual attraction can be a form of temporary insanity.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Ted
    As unabashedly idiotic movie comedies go, Ted goes fairly well.
  59. Dark Horse
    The plot's problem is insoluble: There is no honest ending for Abe other than a completely undramatic continuation of the trapped life he has lived so far. So we get narrative disjunction and a limp conclusion instead of the brilliant reversal of formula that was promised.
  60. People Like Us
    This is the sort of movie that ends up awash in sincere revelations, and not a moment of it feels remotely believable.
  61. Magic Mike
    Two things do redeem the film somewhat. One is the near-uniform excellence of the cast, led by Tatum, who has a compelling, eminently watchable aw-shucks charisma, and newcomer Horn as the cute, concerned sister. The other is the easy, naturalistic flow and ebb of Reid Carolin's dialogue, which gives none of his characters a vocabulary or insights above his or her station.
  62. 5 Broken Cameras
    Both a moving first-person essay and an artful exercise in political advocacy, 5 Broken Cameras is about the experience of West Bank protests from the inside.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Kite
    The film is just shy of being overstylized by Bhargava's habit of deftly bringing our attention back to the family and their subtle mannerisms amid the chaotic activity around them. The always wonderful Seema Biswas co-stars as the business man's calm sister-in-law.
  64. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
    The biggest high comes from the images evoked by the title alone, or the title in tandem with the movie poster, doesn't it?
  65. Seeking a Friend for the End of the World
    In Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, the times may be hard but the apocalypse is soft. Welcome to the anti-"Melancholia."
  66. Brave
    Brave feels like a merely good-enough children's movie.
  67. Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present
    Abramovic is a sensationally attractive narcissist and the filmmakers are clearly smitten with her, but the film goes a long way to establish the intellectual seriousness and dedication involved in her ambitious series of art stunts.
  68. Safety Not Guaranteed
    Call me biased, but I'm quick to put out the welcome mat for any movie – good, bad or indifferent – that resists easy categorizing. That's certainly the charm of Safety NotGuaranteed, which flirts with two very different genres yet never goes steady with either.
  69. Lola Versus
    Lola Versus is all Greta all the time, a bonanza for fans and proof that Gerwig's easy offbeat charm, obvious smarts and physical comedy gifts can carry a film.
  70. The Woman in the Fifth
    The Woman in the Fifth is an interesting chameleon until it runs out of disguises, and all that was transitory just looks transparent.
  71. That's My Boy
    Will be construed by the faithful as an embarrassment of riches and by the rest of us as cruel and unusual punishment.
  72. Rock of Ages
    Where this PG-rated adaptation of a hit Broadway show, adapted by Adam Shankman falls down is by being far too mild for its supposedly outrageous subject.
  73. Prometheus
    There's definite mastery here, but it's hardly a masterpiece.
  74. Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted
    The clever lines and themes of friendship and finding home are almost completely overwhelmed here by the breathless pace and sensory overload.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Crooked Arrows
    Crooked Arrows is no "Rocky." It lacks the emotional momentum required for that. But if it's just light, family-friendly entertainment you want, Crooked Arrows fits the bill.
  76. The Intouchables
    The Intouchables works as a crowd-pleaser not because it's true, but because it's a plausible enchantment.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    We Have a Pope
    If only Moretti had had the faith in his story and its gentle, organic comedy, and done away with the forced silliness.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    In the Family
    Despite a number of plot twists, In the Family is more about its constant blanks and dead time, its silence and inert camerawork, which require a viewer to fill in the gaps with one's own perceptions of what's happening.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Lovely Molly
    Lovely Molly is determined to remain ambiguous, but the title says it all. Good-Lookin' Joanie just wouldn't have the same ominous ring to it.
  80. Moonrise Kingdom
    Even by his stylistic standards, Anderson has cranked up the artifice.
  81. Piranha 3DD
    Piranha 3DD is overcrowded and pointlessly mean. The stunt casting of David Hasselhoff playing himself, riffing off his infamous 2007 drunken home video, gets in the way of the storyline.
  82. Snow White and the Huntsman
    Yes, there are many splendid reasons to see Snow White and the Huntsman – enough, maybe, not to care that neither Snow White nor the Huntsman rank high among them.
  83. Pink Ribbons, Inc.
    Pink Ribbons, Inc. is unabashed advocacy filmmaking. In spite of improved mortality rates and scientific advances, few women in the film will acknowledge that pink-ribbon-financed research has done any good at all.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Indie Game: The Movie
    Video-game developers: Geeks, nerds, socially adrift obsessives. Indie Game thankfully gets past such base introductions in a flash and graduates to far more engrossing levels – levels which open up into the real worlds of the best independent game developers working their craft.
  85. Jesus Henry Christ
    Try not to be in the same room as Jesus Henry Christ. At the very least run when the first fire alarm sounds.
  86. Last Call at the Oasis
    There is nothing dry about Last Call at the Oasis, Jessica Yu's engaging, informative and fast-flowing documentary exploring the global water crisis.
  87. Where Do We Go Now?
    So the interrogative title is left to hover over the ending, as it does over all those tension-filled places near and far. Speaking as a foolish man, I had high hopes for these wise women – given the historic alternative, I still do.
  88. Men in Black III
    Delight, a modest yet palpable measure of the stuff, is restored.
  89. Bernie
    Propelled by a perfectly cast trio of stars whose eccentricities shine in singular character roles, Bernie is a charmer.
  90. Hysteria
    Unfortunately, Hysteria is much closer in its effects to a more significant and much larger 19th-century invention. Like the locomotive, this costume drama proceeds noisily and methodically toward a destination that is agreed upon from the outset. Good orgasms and good movies generally offer surprises; good trains do not.
  91. Virginia
    It's all rather wacky and hard to follow or fathom, although maybe that's attributable to Virginia's schizophrenia veering off on its delusional phase.
  92. The Samaritan
    About a third of the way along, there's a shocking revelation that definitely packs a punch. Problem is, it's followed by a near-immediate return to familiar narrative convention, where the noir ante rises exponentially toward a climax that arrives too hastily and ends too neatly.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Battleship
    Battleship has its moments, like the rare occasions when it nods to its origin: There's a nice eureka when we learn that evil alien ships can be outwitted, improbably, by plotting co-ordinates on a grid, à la your granddad's board game.
  94. What to Expect When You're Expecting
    It's a sitcom-y ensemble film (complete with product placement) that feels like you're flipping around the TV dial.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Turn Me On, Dammit!
    Turn Me On, Dammit! is that rare thing: an honest coming-of-age story from the female perspective.
  96. Marley
    Marley the film wonderfully explains its subject's music. As for Macdonald's message, I'm just not sure.
  97. The Dictator
    While Baron Cohen's lanky physical slapstick and verbal manglings are funny, the movie begins to feel like one of the later, worn-out Pink Panther movies.
  98. Citizen Gangster
    Morlando's approach, influenced by interviews with the real Boyd in his old age, is cerebral and melancholic. The tone is more foreboding than suspenseful.
  99. Dark Shadows
    Dark Shadows only meaningful relationship is between Depp and his audience. He's a persona now, no longer an actor. And the kick here, as always, is watching him try on funny accents and hairdos.
  100. You Are Here
    Smart, anxious and weirdly funny, the first feature from Toronto video artist Daniel Cockburn connects a series of scenarios that gradually begin to loop into each other.
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