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
  1. Oceans
    Dive into a masterpiece.
  2. Kick-Ass
    Kick-Ass is some kind of twisted fun.
  3. Death at a Funeral
    Middling gets downgraded to muddling. Of course, on such slippery slopes, reputations are made. Damned if the original isn’t looking like a comparative gem.
  4. The Perfect Game
    As the title loudly hints, ultimate victory assumes the flawless shape of the star pitcher’s perfect game, a rarity anywhere yet especially at the Little League level. In getting to that climax, the recreated game action is a bit tepid and the child actors too precociously cute, but the true tale in the midst of the fabrication remains a guaranteed heart-warmer.
  5. The Secret in Their Eyes
    The wonder is that the film balances its many genres, from the thorns of murder to the bloom of romance to the thickets of politics, with such easy grace.
  6. Date Night
    All that starring talent isn’t exactly wasted here; it’s just diluted, watered down enough to demote “really funny” to sort of funny, now and then, here and there, some of the time. Hey, it’s the movie biz.
  7. Women Without Men
    Although the entire film is beautifully framed and shot, especially the surreal sequences, precious little coheres into anything resembling a compelling narrative.
  8. Clash of the Titans
    There’s little here to improve upon the stilted quality of the original, and it’s even more cumbersomely plotted.
  9. The Last Song
    Most of this is blandly palatable, at least for the first half. Cyrus, though she seldom strays from her two primary modes, pouting rebel or toothy girlfriend, has a winning on-screen presence, if only for her enjoyably abrasive edge in this deep well of pathos.
  10. Hot Tub Time Machine
    Funnier than any movie called Hot Tub Time Machine has a right to be. And how funny is that? Not very, but a little, occasionally – just enough.
  11. Chloe
    Chloe is director Atom Egoyan’s foray into the realm of what might be called artful trash. This is a high-toned erotic thriller, handled with style and some emotionally raw scenes, aiming for an effect that’s pleasingly unnerving, if not outright arousing.
  12. How to Train Your Dragon
    It’s a corny, old fashioned boy-dog love story, as adorable as anything Walt Disney ever signed off on.
  13. The Bounty Hunter
    A painfully contrived romantic comedy/thriller that may (or may not) have brought Gerard Butler and Jennifer Aniston together as a real-life couple.
  14. Repo Men
    The obvious question about Repo Men: Why bother?
  15. City Island
    Yes, it’s really complicated, life with the Rizzos. City Island probably has too many moving parts. Still, writer-director Raymond de Felitta (Two Family House) understands that a proper farce, like a good campfire, needs plenty of friction to get started.
  16. Diary of a Wimpy Kid
    Too much diary, not enough movie.
  17. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
    A chilling film best experienced bundled up in a sweater and scarf.
  18. Greenberg
    What saves it, however, is Gerwig. The love story ain’t credible, but her performance is, perfectly capturing a young woman who doesn’t lack confidence so much as a sense of self.
  19. Neil Young Trunk Show
    An impressionistic work that is perfectly in tune with its subject’s hallucinatory music.
  20. The Runaways
    The Runaways captures the sleaze and innocence of the era and has some still-relevant things to say about the conflict between girl-rocker empowerment and exploitation.
  21. Mid-August Lunch
    Everything about Mid-August Lunch is simple and unpretentious, from the black-out scene transitions to the folk-dance score, as the four isolated, elderly women, over a couple of days and meals, become a circle of companions.
  22. Mother
    Mother symbolically doubles as Mother Korea, devoted to her land. But is she blindly and uncritically devoted, too quick to forgive and forget sins that should be redressed, to treat any flaws in the national character as simply intrinsic to the country's nature?
  23. Green Zone
    Screenwriter Brian Helgeland (L.A. Confidential, Mystic River) is the real culprit here, creating a crude paint-by-numbers fiction that keeps yelling about the importance of the truth while hurtling in the opposite direction.
  24. She's Out of My League
    You don’t need to root for the best movies and you don’t want to root for the worst. But, occasionally, along comes a picture so nearly good that you dearly wish it were better. Welcome to She’s Out of My League, where the rooting interest is strong but so is the frustration.
  25. Our Family Wedding
    We know to a certainty what will happen. More to the point, the writers know that we know. But here’s the intriguing bit: They don’t care. Rather, their job as diligent Tinseltown hacks is simply to devise ways of filling up the remaining 90 minutes.
  26. Remember Me
    Remember Me could have been a decent family drama, especially considering its setting, but that was not to be. Too bad, because the romance is highly forgettable.
  27. Alice in Wonderland
    This is still her (Wasikowska’s) picture. She’s its 10-foot tower, mysterious and brave and excited and withdrawn. Alice is the true magic in a Wonderland that’s mere movie magic – the happy surprise amidst everything we’ve come to expect.
  28. Brooklyn's Finest
    Each of the actors has strong moments but the relentless intensity becomes monotonous.
  29. Cop Out
    Fails as a comedy-drama because it’s neither funny nor involving. But it fails as a buddy movie because Willis and Morgan make for a dull couple.
  30. The Crazies
    It’s been not so much remade as restrained – tamed and dumbed-down and with any sharp political edges safely filed off.
  31. A Prophet
    One caveat: At the risk of sounding sexist, let me say A Prophet is an unreservedly male film. Female characters are few and far between, and when they do appear, they pretty much fall into either one of two categories – les mamans ou les putains.
  32. Prodigal Sons
    Kimberly Reed’s debut documentary, Prodigal Sons, would make a terribly contrived novel, but is a compelling and sensational real-life story.
  33. Shutter Island
    Was it worth slogging through the nearly two hours of damned muddle to get to those last affecting moments? Not often in movies is the destination so much better than the journey.
  34. The Ghost Writer
    The result is a political thriller refreshingly long on grown-up dialogue yet lamentably shy on, well, thrills. This chatty thing does go on.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Celine: Through the Eyes of the World
    It’s probably accurate in its portrayal of her general good humour. Detractors would be surprised at how genuinely funny she can be.
  36. The Wolfman
    An ill-considered, utterly unnecessary remake of the 1941 pulp classic "The Wolf Man" starring Lon Chaney Jr.
  37. Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief
    All dull thunder without a spark of illumination.
  38. Valentine's Day
    In your typical subpar Hollywood romcom, there’s only one tedious love story to put up with. Well, Valentine’s Day (such a clever title) does a whole lot better than that: It offers 10 tedious love stories to put up with.
  39. Dear John
    Sappy and predictable.
  40. From Paris with Love
    The one thing that’s briefly enjoyable about From Paris with Love is John Travolta’s appearance. In a black leather jacket, with a shaved bald head and a goatee and a perpetual scarf to hide his jowls, he looks like a well-fed pimp or a gay bear.
  41. Frozen
    Frozen would get props for a novel plot, except that its storyline appears to be ski-lifted from the "Curb Your Enthusiasm" episode where Larry is stuck on a chairlift with an Orthodox Jewish woman who is terrified of being seen with a man after sunset.
  42. Ajami
    The stylings of Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino come to the Mideast, but more credibly grounded in a complex setting fraught with raw contemporary politics and ancient class tensions. It makes for a compelling movie but hardly a pretty picture.
  43. Edge of Darkness
    The larger shell game here is that Edge of Darkness is offered as a political thriller, but with real-world politics removed. What we’re left with is a familiar mechanism for delivering a vicarious, violent, wish-fulfilment fantasy, with Mel in a familiar position, in the driver’s seat, pedal to the metal.
  44. When in Rome
    In the case of When in Rome, oh to do what the Romans used to do: Toss the bloody thing to the lions.
  45. Saint John of Las Vegas
    A funereally unfunny comedy.
  46. Creation
    As angst-filled as if it were "Amadeus" and "Lust for Life" rolled into one.
  47. Extraordinary Measures
    Best when Fraser is on screen. Ian McKellen, who starred with Fraser in "Gods and Monsters," called him the most natural actor he'd worked with, marvelling at Fraser's ability to disappear into roles.
  48. Tooth Fairy
    Sorry to disappoint anyone who saw the cast list of this film and presumed Julie Andrews was going to play the horrific serial killer Tooth Fairy from the Hannibal Lecter movies.
  49. The Book of Eli
    So we're back on "The Road ," but this time Eli's coming – better hide your heart and, while you're at it, put your brain on hold, the easier to enjoy the action-filled sermon to come.
  50. The Spy Next Door
    Chan's comedic gifts and still-nimble moves are wasted in a string of unimaginative household calamities and practical jokes.
  51. Fish Tank
    A half-century ago, "kitchen sink realism" began its harsh existence on the British stage and then migrated to the screen where, over the years, the genre has taken up permanent residence, maturing into a gritty art...Now add Andrea Arnold to the directors' list and Fish Tank to the kitchen. It's classic low-rent realism – you can almost smell the grease on the unwashed dishes.
  52. Daybreakers
    The symbolism is about as subtle as a fang to the neck. Really, Daybreakers is more fun than foreboding; it's fright-lite, yet that's par for the bloody course in these busy apocalyptic days.
  53. Leap Year
    At least Adams and Goode are always watchable, even when you occasionally feel embarrassed for them.
  54. Youth in Revolt
    In Youth in Revolt , Cera bellies up to the same table once too often. His fresh-faced act is starting to look really stale.
  55. The White Ribbon
    Smarting like hell, the artist and his art are at it again. Consequently, like most of Michael Haneke's films, The White Ribbon is profoundly disturbing, impeccably shot, superbly cast, allegorically ambitious and, yet, slightly disappointing – just enough to make you wonder if that salt-in-the-wounds theory is as dogmatic as the dogma he likes to condemn.
  56. Sherlock Holmes
    Guy Ritchie's Holmes reboot feels both too complicated and too elementary, dear Watson.
  57. It's Complicated
    This is wish-fulfilment fantasy, where the laughs lie in sorting out an embarrassment of riches.
  58. The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
    The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus takes us deep into the imagination of Terry Gilliam, which once was a splendid place to visit. And might prove so again. But not here, because this film is less a coherent exercise of imagination than a haphazard lecture on its importance, a lecture that eventually dwindles into self-indulgence.
  59. Police, Adjective
    A simultaneously realistic and absurdist examination of police work.
  60. Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel
    As shrill, partly-animated musicals about singing vermin go, Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel really isn't all that bad.
  61. Did You Hear About the Morgans?
    If you are expecting a pleasant evening of escapism, you will be cruelly fooled. The editor responsible for the trailer is clearly a genius.
  62. Avatar
    Avatar is a king's ransom fairly well spent, not least because Cameron's invitation into his superbly crafted universe comes with an unexpected price: He makes it easy to gaze fondly on all this movie magic, but only in exchange for a hard look at ourselves.
  63. Nine
    Unassuming only in its title.
  64. The Young Victoria
    Really, Young Victoria is just a lot of costumes in fond search of some drama. And finding precious little.
  65. A Town Called Panic
    Surreal and hilarious.
  66. Crazy Heart
    Bridges's big performance takes place in the context of a relatively minor movie.
  67. The Lovely Bones
    The book floats sublimely above its dark theme; the movie sinks into the ridiculous.
  68. Invictus
    The focus of Invictus is less on Mandela's psychology than his willpower and political astuteness.
  69. A Single Man
    Then again, Colin Firth is enough. Every movie is a performance, but very seldom is a performance a movie.
  70. Brothers
    It tries too hard too early.
  71. Up in the Air
    As for the implicit tragedy amidst the funny business, the swelling ranks of the unemployed, the movie has no solution but instead offers itself as implicit solace: Escape, ye wretches, into my clever humour and my nifty dialogue and my star's considerable charm.
  72. Until the Light Takes Us
    Contains fascinating footage – material from the 1980s that looks to be the work of angry, ancient Norse warriors. There is, however, almost no perspective here. Perhaps the filmmakers succumbed to a condition associated with a city east of Oslo – the Stockholm Syndrome.
  73. Everybody's Fine
    If nothing else (and there ain't much else), Everybody's Fine does prove one thing: Even an actor with the gifts of Robert De Niro can't make bland interesting.
  74. The Last Station
    Fitfully interesting, occasionally cringe-worthy, this is the sort of stagy production that mixes ribaldry and campy overacting that evokes summer theatre productions.
  75. Big River Man
    An odd and irresistible documentary.
  76. The Private Lives of Pippa Lee
    Awkward in ways both intended and not, the fourth feature from author and director Rebecca Miller is an attempt at a comic change of pace for the usually earnest Miller.
  77. The Road
    Essentially a love story, as stripped of sentimentality as the landscape is shorn of green, yet an extraordinary love story nonetheless – powerful and poignant and, even in the midst of hope's imminent extinction, hopeful too.
  78. Ninja Assassin
    A convincing, reasonably co-ordinated action movie. Nothing special, but lovers of the genre will enjoy the workouts, especially if they bring night-vision glasses.
  79. Old Dogs
    Old Dogs is offensive mostly because it wastes time.
  80. Me and Orson Welles
    The very name Orson Welles stands for genius wasted and betrayed, and the movie offers some foreshadowing of his triumphs and failures to come.
  81. Planet 51
    Bursting with potential that never gets realized.
  82. The Twilight Saga: New Moon
    Actress Kristen Stewart – coolly intense, androgynous, and intelligent – remains the series' strongest asset, as Bela, the emotional centre of the story.
  83. The Blind Side
    A football story that deserves a penalty flag every other play for piling on the sentiment.
  84. The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans
    Surprisingly funny yarn about a drug-addled cop in the Big Easy.
  85. Broken Embraces
    At 128 minutes – Almodovar's longest film to date – Broken Embraces is an easy film to bid farewell to.
  86. Red Cliff
    As expected, it has gaping holes where back stories used to be. Still, it's a historical war movie with impressive sweep, strong characterizations and the kind of idiosyncratic flourishes that made Woo such an irresistible storyteller.
  87. 2012
    As always in Emmerich's rollicking Armageddons, the cannon speaks with an expensive bang, while the fodder gets afforded nary a whimper. Of course, that's just part of disaster's simple recipe: Blow us up, then blow us off.
  88. Fantastic Mr. Fox
    The tale may be Dahl's, but there's a whole new wag to it – this is decidedly, weirdly and, at best, wonderfully a Wes Anderson movie.
  89. The Messenger
    "The Hurt Locker" may be getting all the attention and awards but The Messenger is at least as good and perhaps, given its delicate handling of a sensitive subject, even better.
  90. Pirate Radio
    Richard Curtis, the writer of "Four Weddings and a Funeral," "Notting Hill" and "Love, Actually," goes off-shore and out of his depth with Pirate Radio .
  91. Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire
    Precious is a bit like having a piano dropped on your head: messy but memorable.
  92. The Fourth Kind
    In truth, what follows is less disturbing than intriguing – to audiences hip to the mechanics of horror flicks, it's rare fun to be fooled, and this one is pretty damned clever.
  93. A Christmas Carol
    This time, though, Zemeckis has another technical trick up his sleeve – 3-D – and for once the gimmick succeeds.
  94. The Men Who Stare at Goats
    These Stooges-like antics are more about showing what good sports his stars are than honing any real satiric edge.
  95. Collapse
    Even in a season of apocalyptic films, these facts are really, really scary.
  96. Gentlemen Broncos
    There's a lesson behind Gentlemen Broncos , the new film from director Jared Hess: Don't try to mock above your talent level.
  97. The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day
    The Boondock Saints II does, from time to time, display a vulgar charm. Or maybe it just wears you out.
  98. This Is It
    Without either the effect of a full concert spectacle, or up close and personal backstage intimacy, This Is It is neither one thing nor the other.
  99. Astro Boy
    Astro Boy definitely sets himself up for a sequel, and the overall scenario is ripe to explore many current issues. But let's hope the creators trade in the well-used parts for some fresh material.
  100. Amelia
    Amelia is the Mack truck of flight. Heavy and lumbering, it delivers the goods, but there's not an ounce of magic in the thing.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »