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 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. Outside the Law
    A great-looking, fast-paced film and, to his credit, Bouchareb doesn't bathe the F.L.N. in a completely flattering light. But narrowing the focus to one central conflicted character and tightening the time frame might have given the audience something more to ponder than the action of a historical revenge thriller.
  2. Certified Copy
    Ultimately, Certified Copy – with its unresolved loose ends – is a puzzle box without a key.
  3. White Irish Drinkers
    From that title on down, White Irish Drinkers is a compendium of clichés struggling to upgrade its status and become a respectable archetype.
  4. Win Win
    Win Win is a paragon of truth at a slow jog, but that upbeat sprint to the finish feels like a big cheat.
  5. Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2: Rodrick Rules
    Once it becomes clear that the new Diary of a Wimpy Kid is an equal-opportunity offender, and that it is the politically correct modern family that is being picked on, rather than young Greg, the film becomes cheerfully mischievous fun for everyone.
  6. Limitless
    Add it all up, including the nifty twist at the end, and what we have here is a fun Hollywood flick with a good head on its shoulders.
  7. The Butcher, the Chef, and the Swordsman
    Yes, it's all quite mad, Max, with a shaggy-dog ending to boot. But this giddiness, its go-for-broke/what-the-hellness, also is the film's strength.
  8. Kill the Irishman
    A big, bloated, though frequently engaging gangster movie, Kill the Irishman should properly be viewed late night on TV, flipping back and forth between the film, David Letterman and a west-coast ball game.
  9. 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.
  10. I Saw the Devil
    A typical mixture of the artful and the repellent.
  11. Paul
    Some of the later scenes capture the spirit of majestic sweetness of "Close Encouners of the Third Kind" and "E.T: The Extra-Terrestrial" period, but the elevated moments don't last. They're relentlessly undermined by the f-bombs, groin kicks, and anal-probing jokes.
  12. 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.
  13. Nostalgia for the Light
    Patricio Guzmán's documentary, Nostalgia for the Light, pays equal attention to the astronomers and searchers, regarding their quest as the same – a search for life.
  14. Red Riding Hood
    With its stilted dialogue, fragments of voice-over and over-busy camera, Red Riding Hood feels off-kilter from the start.
  15. Mars Needs Moms
    It's amazing to see, but potentially unsettling. Green is now 37. And it may be more than some mothers can take, imagining themselves cleaning up after their "little boy" when he's crowding 40.
  16. Battle: Los Angeles
    Don't mean to boast, but I can suspend my disbelief as willingly as any credulous moviegoer. Yet not even an industrial crane would have helped here.
  17. The Adjustment Bureau
    Sometimes, a strong premise makes for a weak movie, which ends up drowning in its own clever conceit.
  18. Rango
    Though its level of execution is consistently high, Rango is a non-pandering comedy that takes its message of western individualism seriously: It's here for you and your children to enjoy – or not – as you please.
  19. Beastly
    There are moments of salty wit to its teen TV sensibility, and the story offers proof, once again, than there are few stories that can't be adapted to the theme of teenaged popularity politics.
  20. Lemmy
    This parade of admiration is almost as exhausting as the experience of a Motörhead concert.
  21. Four Lions
    Has a provocative, ticklish premise – five North England Muslims become suicide bombers, but can't decide who or what to take with them.
  22. Drive Angry 3D
    Strictly for the midnight-movie crowd, Drive Angry serves up a non-stop stream of female nudity, flying body parts, gun battles and smart-alecky dialogue.
  23. Of Gods and Men
    Be prepared to exercise the same patience and forbearing as the Trappists, because the pacing here is all Grecian urn – so much "silence and slow time."
  24. Hall Pass
    Wisdom lies in taking a pass on Hall Pass, but bravery demands something else, something far more instructive: Watch it, every vacuous frame, if only to measure the precise aesthetic distance from blessing to curse.
  25. Heartbeats
    A light, slight, wry look at the beautiful and besotted, which gets away with not having much to say, thanks to its charm and excessive good looks.
  26. I Am Number Four
    Say this for I Am Number Four: It's blessedly free of any original sins. Instead, they're all copied. Here a little "Superman," there a bit of "Spider-Man," now it's "Twilight" with aliens, then it's a spaghetti western with trucks – this thing borrows more heavily than an investment bank in an unregulated market.
  27. Unknown
    The art of the classic Hitchcockian thriller is about style, pace and misdirection – and though Unknown is occasionally baffling and involves running and car chases, the film rarely manages to thrill.
  28. Cedar Rapids
    This is the reliable raunch-plus-sweetness comic formula that goes back through the Farrelly brothers, Adam Sandler's comedies, "Revenge of the Nerds," "Porky's" and "Animal House."
  29. Gnomeo and Juliet
    The movie is nothing if not anxious to please. There's a big, diverse, celebrity voice cast – Maggie Smith, Hulk Hogan and Dolly Parton as well as Caine and Osbourne.
  30. The Eagle
    They're not much company, our Marcus and Esca. But there we are, mucking through crazy Scotland with them.
  31. Justin Bieber: Never Say Never
    Equal parts biopic, concert film and pep rally, the movie's 105 minutes do a good job of conveying the pleasures of pop, courtesy of the very real talents of Justin Bieber.
  32. Biutiful
    In this vast balloon of a film, Bardem is the ballast – that Manichean face is a movie onto itself.
  33. Just Go with It
    The Super Bowl MVP is awarded a trip to Disneyland. Maybe in the future, he should be awarded a part in an Adam Sandler movie. There is no bigger male fantasy land.
  34. The Time That Remains
    Living in a part of the world where politics, and the pursuit of politics by warring means, are the rule, director Elia Suleiman is the exception.
  35. Sanctum
    To wit, stick that camera down an aquatic cave, wrap a paper-thin plot around it, slap the whole thing up on an IMAX screen and call it a movie. More truth in advertising: Call it a lame movie.
  36. Casino Jack
    The facts really get in the way of the portrait here, and we are left hungry for more Spacey and more insight into a man with the hubris to wonder if he has disappointed God.
  37. Dogtooth
    Lanthumos's accomplished and fascinating Dogtooth pushes the notion of parents screwing up their kids into seriously disturbing and darkly comic terrain.
  38. The Rite
    Some of the most memorable performances from great actors are also their worst: Add to that list Anthony Hopkins's turn as a sinister old Jesuit.
  39. Blue Valentine
    Two superb actors etch an unflinching portrait of a young marriage doomed never to grow old.
  40. The Mechanic
    Has a deliberately minimalist, retro look to it as well.
  41. The Illusionist
    Though something less than a masterpiece, The Illusionist is a rare animated film of fleeting charms rather than loud noises, aimed more at wistful adults than thrill-hungry kids.
  42. The Way Back
    The movie makes for quite a hike. It's also, at times, a bit of a slog.
  43. No Strings Attached
    Not half bad for a formulaic rom-com.
  44. The Company Men
    The film itself struggles to do justice to each victim. Turns out three stories are two too many. The Company Men should have been downsized.
  45. Another Year
    Extracting big drama out of small events is Mike Leigh's forte, and with his latest little masterpiece, Another Year, the English director pushes himself to the extreme.
  46. The Green Hornet
    The high point might be the opening scene, before the stars arrive on screen.
  47. The Dilemma
    Where the hell is the movie?
  48. Somewhere
    Throughout, Dorff is doggedly credible as an obtuse actor, but the richer performance here is from Fanning, and it might have been a stronger movie told from her character's point of view.
  49. Country Strong
    Country Strong has a pleasant soundtrack of conservative country music, many of the tunes newly written for the movie, some of them performed by old pros and some of them performed by the cast.
  50. Season of the Witch
    The pretty good stuff comes early, when Nic and Ron, weary of wasting women and children, suffer an attack of conscience and desert the Crusades.
  51. Gulliver's Travels
    For a novel written nearly 300 years ago by a dour Irish cleric with a mad-on about the material world and a satiric mindset dark enough to flirt with misanthropy, it's amazing how well Gulliver's Travels travels. Even Jack Black can't ruin the thing, although not for lack of trying.
  52. Barney's Version
    A feisty domestic comedy about a curmudgeon with a heart, looking back over his misspent life.
  53. Little Fockers
    As for Keitel, he pops up in a brief cameo as a housing contractor, with a dump-truck full of sand, the one that De Niro is standing right behind. The pair engage in a heated argument, as they once did so memorably those many years ago, and then the truck dumps that load exactly where you know it must. An esteemed actor gets buried but, what-the-fock, the franchise laughs on.
  54. True Grit
    As usual, the Coens' visual elements are pristine. The contrasting colours in the fire-lit interiors are gorgeous, while cinematographer Roger Deakins keeps the camera close, resisting traditional panoramic views.
  55. Yogi Bear
    While the outdoor sequences were filmed in New Zealand's Woodhill State Forest – the movie's most stunning 3-D moments – Yogi Bear does feature notable "Canadian content" via two Ottawa-born thespians.
  56. How Do You Know
    Brooks knew how to engineer a well-crafted script. Yet on the evidence here – a stuttering two-hour outing bereft of any rhythm, a bunch of scenes in search of a movie – he's apparently forgotten.
  57. TRON: Legacy
    With a curiously stubborn kind of integrity, Tron: Legacy follows what did and didn't work the first time – another weak story with sub-B-movie dialogue, partly compensated for by intensely conceived geometric design and special effects.
  58. The Fighter
    The picture makes too many concessions to the Hollywood judges, pulls too many punches. But at least it has real punches to pull, because there's honest sweat here too, and a full complement of those archetypes that lie at the popular heart of the genre.
  59. Rabbit Hole
    Don't go down this Rabbit Hole unless you wish to see a superb film that treats a sad topic with unflinching honesty. Don't go down this Rabbit Hole unless you believe that tragedy's grief, when transmuted through art's protective lens, can feel liberating, even joyful in its painful truths.
  60. Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale
    A taut, gorgeously filmed and enjoyably wicked cinematic treat.
  61. The Tempest
    Sad news for Bard watchers: Julie Taymor's adaptation of William Shakespeare's The Tempest is not such stuff as dreams are made on.
  62. Megamind
    The plot is rich, the execution poor.
  63. Due Date
    Manic with an itch.
  64. Cool It
    Jam-packed but never disorienting, Cool It will definitely get your head spinning.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Unstoppable
    Though inspired by a real incident, the movie is an opportunistic political allegory about an economy that's out of control and industries that are weakened by layoffs, under-staffing and corporate callousness.
  66. Love and Other Drugs
    Love & Other Drugs is quite the little cocktail of mood-brighteners, a movie narcotic easy to take and, since the effects wear off quickly, even easier to forget.
  67. Faster
    Anyone interested in a no-seatbelts, out-of-control action flick will find much to enjoy in Faster; although even they may prefer seeing it in Blu-Ray at home, which would allow for trips to the fridge for fuel when the film begins to idle in the last reel.
  68. Monsters
    With Monsters, Edwards transcends the special-effects auteur label, creating a memorable sci-fi story in which the hero and heroine are true equals in the adventure. How's that for an alien concept?
  69. Waste Land
    No matter who you side with here, Waste Land – the title should come with a question mark – is a fascinating adventure, populated by memorable characters.
  70. The King's Speech
    Yes, The King's Speech is a lively burst of populist rhetoric, superbly performed and guaranteed to please even discriminating crowds.
  71. Tangled
    They really pulled out all the stops on this one.
  72. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
    Alas, in the third instalment of the C.S. Lewis odyssey, the devolution continues with the inexorability of a fairy tale thrust in reverse – the sublime first film morphed into the routine second and now this wispy banality.
  73. The Tourist
    What should have sizzled fizzles.
  74. Burlesque
    Falling in the pillowy cleavage between mildly awful and slightly entertaining, Burlesque is a clichéd rags-to-diva story that culminates in a series of Christina Aguilera videos.
  75. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I
    The tale is about meeting Death and comes with this moral: When The End arrives, better to embrace it with love than to try to cheat it with avarice. Hey, if nothing else, Part 1 has got some nerve, so greedily refusing to practice what it earnestly preaches.
  76. Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench
    Guy and Madeline is a decidedly modern film, whose frightened, impulsive, charming characters could walk into our lives tomorrow.
  77. Black Swan
    Audaciously whacked-out and never less than entertaining, Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan mixes a backstage dance drama with a Freudian psychological thriller that's indebted to Roman Polanski's studies of shattered feminine psyches and David Cronenberg's movies about repressed bodies in rebellion.
  78. The Nutcracker
    Anything but a seasonal treat. This special-effects-heavy, big-budget musical from expatriate Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky (Runaway Train, Tango & Cash) ranks as one of the most misguided children's films ever made.
  79. Made in Dagenham
    This time out, with a few exceptions, the inspiration feels solid and earned, not saccharine and contrived.
  80. Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer
    When Spitzer resigned, they broke out champagne on the stock exchange trading floor. Shame on them.
  81. The Next Three Days
    An okay thriller with lots of smart flourishes, The Next Three Days has us hooked early on but never quite gets us in the boat.
  82. Skyline
    So intent are the Strausses on showing off their visual chops, they leave the film's story, dialogue and acting in shambles.
  83. 127 Hours
    Shiver-making moments aside, in a important way 127 Hours suffers from the filmmaker's lack of nerve, a reluctance to let the audience taste Ralston's dread and the expectation of a slow, absurd death.
  84. Morning Glory
    Yes, it's "The Devil Wears Prada," redux.
  85. For Colored Girls
    The film is a mawkish mess, only occasionally alleviated by the performances or Shange's poetry.
  86. Fair Game
    The more compelling performance comes from Watts as Valerie.
  87. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
    Sorry, this one doesn't really work at all, but don't blame the workers.
  88. Paranormal Activity 2
    The principle suspense is wondering when the suspense is going to start, as you scan the darkly-lit screen looking for any hint of imminent horror.
  89. Carlos
    A preening terrorist for the Me generation, his primary drive was vanity and his main professional asset an absence of empathy.
  90. Conviction
    A story based on exceptional facts gets converted into an unexceptional movie.
  91. Hereafter
    Hereafter is unpredictable enough to be consistently watchable.
  92. Stone
    No, the trouble isn't with them but with a screenplay (by Angus MacLachlan) that loads their characters with too much symbolic baggage and then points them off in obscure directions.
  93. You Can Live Forever
    For all its aches and pains, the heart of You Can Live Forever doesn’t so much beat as skip, haltingly and disconcertingly, as it tries to keep its own lifeblood pumping.
  94. C.R.A.Z.Y.
    The reality measures up to the rep.
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  95. Dark River
    The rugged emotional territory (and the Yorkshire accents) prove heavy-going in an uncompromising film that elicits a lot more admiration than enjoyment.
  96. Gabriel and the Mountain
    Director Barbosa's love letter to his late friend is emotionally satisfying and cinematically splendid, with social commentary shoe-horned in for better or worse.
  97. Angels Wear White
    Qu’s symbolism, including a giant statue of Marilyn Monroe in her provocative Seven-Year-Itch pose presiding over an empty beachfront playground, is big, bold and impressively cinematic, thanks also to cinematographer Benoît Dervaux.
  98. The Death of Stalin
    There is one thing that power can’t stand, and that is to be mocked: The social importance of this topical romp should not be underestimated.
  99. The Wild Hunt
    More entertaining in concept than execution. What starts as geek comedy gradually slides into a familiar morality play about the savagery beneath the veneer of civility.
  100. RED
    The star turns are Red's raison d'être, with the winking performances filling the place of any credible dramatic tension.
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