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 3.1 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
view
per page
  1. 13 Tzameti
    Take 13 Tzameti for what it is: a tightly screwed shocker, a suspense tour de force that proceeds through a harrowing chain of events with alarming confidence.
  2. Brothers of the Head
    What is missing from Brothers of the Head is an equally sturdy connection between form and content.
  3. Little Miss Sunshine
    Though Little Miss Sunshine is consistently contrived in its characters' too-cute misery, the conclusion, which is genuinely outrageous and uplifting, is almost worth the hype.
  4. Clerks II
    Feels a little like the new "Pirates of the Caribbean" -- a similar wet fizzle of a sequel for sequel's sake -- but what do we know?
  5. Lady in the Water
    Crazy as this might sound, it turns out that self-indulgent ramblings designed to put your children to sleep are pretty much the opposite of art.
  6. Monster House
    A serviceable story served up as a large animation experience for kids.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    My Super Ex-Girlfriend
    Funnier than "Nacho Libre," more fashionable than "The Devil Wears Prada," able to deliver more revengeful thrills than "X-Men: The Last Stand" in a single scene, My Super Ex-Girlfriend may sound like a midsummer mash of "The Break-Up" and "Superman," but it's more clever and emotionally resonant than that.
  8. Little Man
    Little Man will probably satisfy fans of the Wayans.
  9. You, Me and Dupree
    The resolution includes an overlong and underfunny chase scene.
  10. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
    Again, as with "Star Wars," the interest lies at least as much in the set design and costumes as the narrative.
  11. A Scanner Darkly
    Smartly cast, in the sense that Reeves, gloomy and pained, and Harrelson, confused and explosive, both seem befuddled while Downey, as the devious, intellectual Barris, is befuddling.
  12. Beowulf & Grendel
    To be very generous toward the filmmakers' intentions, Beowulf & Grendel might be seen as a misguided attempt to lend some modern nuance to a traditional tale of good and emphatic evil. But why pussyfoot? The movie is a lumbering and ludicrous mess.
  13. The Devil Wears Prada
    The devil may wear Prada, but Meryl wears the crown.
  14. Superman Returns
    Superman returns, and he's far from inconsequential yet considerably less than super - just a demi-god content to forfeit our love for our like.
  15. Strangers with Candy
    When it comes to rude comedy, one person's caviar is another's smelly fish gunk. A case in point is Strangers With Candy.
  16. Who Killed the Electric Car?
    Paine does offer something of a heroine in Chelsea Sexton; the attractive EV1 sales specialist was laid off in 2001, became an EV1 activist and is now executive director of Plug In America.
  17. Click
    The only effect is to produce that most commonplace of Hollywood paradoxes -- a mood simultaneously frantic and listless.
  18. The Road to Guantanamo
    As provocative as it is timely.
  19. Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man
    The documentary seeks only to make a joyful noise, and is sometimes laboured in the love it so keenly wants to express. Then again, as Leonard would be the first to concede, there are worse sins than flawed worship.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift
    The director also makes a nod to Japan's rich history of genre filmmaking by casting action legend J. J. Sonny Chiba as a cigar-smoking yakuza. Chiba's presence momentarily classes up a passable youths-ploitation flick into a transcendent piece of movie trash.
  21. Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties
    The stellar array of British talent (voicing the various farm animals) and Murray (whom one suspects has rewritten Garfield's lines to be Murray-esque) give Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties all its energy and make the human actors -- even comedian Connolly -- look and sound like square panels in a two-dimensional comic strip.
  22. The Lake House
    We also know the last time Keanu and Sandra shared the screen together. That was yesterday and Speed. This is today and Snail. I'm not betting on a tomorrow.
  23. Nacho Libre
    This is a comedy at cross-purposes -- by turns low-key, bombastic, mildly amusing, manically slapstick. At least there are the fart jokes as a connecting thread.
  24. Wordplay
    It's light, it's bright and it succeeds precisely where the lesser doc fails -- by setting modest targets and hitting them square on.
  25. Cars
    Warning: Cars comes unequipped with two essential options -- charm and a good muffler.
  26. A Prairie Home Companion
    A meditation on death that has you humming to the melody and laughing at the joke -- it's an elegiac picture that refuses to eulogize.
  27. The Heart of the Game
    The pat inspirational formula is followed to a sweaty T, although it comes here with an inadvertent side effect -- more than a few nagging questions never get answered.
  28. The Omen
    Compared to Al Gore's new global-warming documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," The Omen makes the Apocalypse look comforting and child-friendly.
  29. The Break-Up
    Although possessed of a laudable desire not to be yet another run-of-the-mill, wacky-impediment, I'm-nobody-and-you're-the-Prez's-daughter romance comedy, damned if the picture can figure out how to be an anti-romance comedy.
  30. District B13
    Flashy camera work, a clattering techno soundtrack and impressive synchronized stunt work fill where the plot goes AWOL.
  31. Peaceful Warrior
    The intriguing thing about The Peaceful Warrior is that nothing else in the movie feels haphazard.
  32. The War Tapes
    The documentary camera has made repeated trips to occupied Iraq, but never to such raw and honest effect as in The War Tapes. The reason is surprisingly simple: This time, the lens is being pointed not by embedded journalists, but by the American soldiers themselves.
  33. The Puffy Chair
    It's a slacker flick, it's a relationship pic, it's a road movie all under the same hood.
  34. Typhoon
    Eventually, Typhoon succumbs to the usual special-effects bombast and plot overkill.
  35. X-Men: The Last Stand
    With more superheroes, more action and more stuff blowing up than ever before, X-Men: The Last Stand has the climactic oomph that suggests a finale, though not the gravitas to suggest a resolution.
  36. 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.
  37. The Da Vinci Code
    Like a two-bit philosopher working the wrong side of the stone, Howard has managed to turn gold into lead.
  38. Over the Hedge
    Though the animation is solid and the writing reasonably clever, Over the Hedge is clearly more about packaging than freshness or substance.
  39. The King
    Along with its allegorical elements, The King is also impressively specific in naturalistic detail.
  40. Twelve and Holding
    Begins audaciously but goes to extremes to assert conventional wisdom about grownup life, that what is called "normal" is about just holding on.
  41. Poseidon
    By stripping the genre down to its essentials, long on the serial disasters but thankfully light on the stupid dialogue, [Petersen] not only maintains an acceptable modicum of suspense but -- here's the major bonus -- also manages to set a blissful speed record in the process, bringing his pricey blockbuster home to port in under 100 minutes.
  42. Just My Luck
    Just my luck that I saw the trailer for the film several times and already knew all of this, which made the long-form version of the movie redundant.
  43. Wah-Wah
    About as gripping as its title.
  44. Sketches of Frank Gehry
    What benefits the picture early on, giving it a casual air, becomes cloying in the later going, making it feel like a smug exercise in mutual admiration.
  45. Mission: Impossible III
    Though Abrams doesn't possess a fraction of the visual pizzazz of the two previous MI directors, Brian De Palma or John Woo, his incarnation is, from a narrative perspective, better made.
  46. Art School Confidential
    Like a smart-ass student clever enough to see through everyone but himself, Art School Confidential falls victim to the very clichés it wants to puncture.
  47. Hoot
    The goal is apparently a double exercise in heartfelt lessons and deep hilarity, but it's hard to tell because the pace feels so lethargic. Director and screenwriter Wil Shriner is a TV-sitcom veteran (Frasier, Everybody Loves Raymond) whose idea of directing a movie is to make another sitcom, only four times as long.
  48. Down in the Valley
    Down in the Valley is one of those pictures you root for even when it goes badly wrong.
  49. The Proposition
    Huston's performance has a keen edge to it, as do those of the other actors, yet everyone suffers from the same problem -- they're not playing knowable characters so much as thematic points on the broad spectrum of violence.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Stick It
    Even though William Safire doesn't fit in the target demographic, Stick It is more valuable as a survey of modern American teen argot than as a movie.
  51. United 93
    Greengrass's reluctance to unduly demonize the villains or overly sentimentalize the victims is commendable on the surface, but it tends to blur the two sides and to mask the gulf that separates them.
  52. Akeelah and the Bee
    Normally, such saccharine inspiration only manages to clog the heart, not warm it. But there's a true original in this den of clichés and her name is Keke Palmer.
  53. RV
    Yes, Virginia, there is a poop fairy, which is why studio heads persist in tucking the likes of RV under their pillows, confident they'll awaken Monday morning to find all that brown turned straight to green.
  54. The Lost City
    The lower orders seem to have been left out of The Lost City -- there just aren't any poor characters -- which for a movie about a workers' revolution seems downright slipshod.
  55. Lady Vengeance
    Lady Vengeance is more than half over before we discover the object of Geum-Ja's hatred: a kindergarten teacher named Mr. Baek. He's played by Choi Min-sik, the prisoner in "Old Boy," and here he's as tepid as he was heated in that film.
  56. American Dreamz
    Hugh Grant's Martin Tweed is nowhere as menacing (or interesting) as the callous bruiser who makes every episode of American Idol a chilling psychotic adventure.
  57. The Sentinel
    A contrived and tepid thriller that insists on wanting to interest us in its main plot -- the usual nefarious plan to assassinate the leader of the free world.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    Silent Hill
    Though Silent Hill's shoddy dialogue and incoherent story constantly irritate, several sights and scenes possess a certain surreal grandeur...Sadly, that's not enough to compensate for Silent Hill's utter lack of tension, intrigue, character development or satisfactory explanations for what the hell's happening on the screen.
  59. Scary Movie 4
    Writing, casting and pacing are vital. Scary Movie 4 doesn't let any gag get stale. It's rapid-fire, hit-and-miss and hit-and-strike comedy.
  60. The Wild
    As far as story is concerned, the whole thing feels like a rerun of a raucous Saturday-morning television show aimed at hell-raising five-year-olds.
  61. Kinky Boots
    Don't think for a second that Hollywood has cornered the market on formula flicks. Ever since the prototypical success of "The Full Monty," those crafty Brits have been running their own mimeograph machine.
  62. Hard Candy
    Hard Candy not only trips along a tightrope line between exploitation and art; in some ways, that line is its subject.
  63. The Notorious Bettie Page
    Anyone expecting another dark satiric film in the same vein of Harron's earlier movies will be disappointed. Perhaps as befits a bondage-themed picture, The Notorious Bettie Page is very restrained, even a little starchy.
  64. Nathalie...
    A stylish, sharply observed erotic mystery.
  65. Blackballed: The Bobby Dukes Story
    Fails to ever come alive as a human comedy in the manner of the best mockumentaries.
  66. Lucky Number Slevin
    The proverbial seems awfully pale here. Fans of Q.T. will find it patently derivative. Fans of Elmore will find it, well, El-less.
  67. The Benchwarmers
    An underdog's breakfast of a movie, with some quite funny characters and set pieces mixed with some excruciating "moral lessons," but at least it moves along at a brisk pace.
  68. Phat Girlz
    If it weren't for Mo'Nique's fresh, appealing screen presence, Phat Girlz would fall flat.
  69. Take the Lead
    The whole thing has all the spontaneity of high-school morning announcements.
  70. Friends with Money
    Holofcener's work is character and dialogue-driven, with a keen sense of prickly female competitiveness and intimacy that a man couldn't, and probably wouldn't, dare portray.
  71. On a Clear Day
    Didn't we just see this movie? Over in Britain, big bad governments may be outsourcing his job and rendering him redundant, but never fear -- the plucky working-class hero has definitely found a steady gig on the silver screen.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    When Do We Eat?
    Sure, the food looks good and the prayers are worth hearing, but there just isn't enough wine in the world to tempt the prophet Elijah into dropping by this household when this is the company he'll get.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Sir! No Sir!
    Informative and swiftly paced documentary.
  74. Basic Instinct 2
    Basic Instinct 2 is double trouble -- the femme is to die for, the film is to die from.
  75. Ice Age: The Meltdown
    Essentially a journey from point A to point B, a simple classic plotline on which to hang a collection of set pieces -- some delightful, some wacky, some tediously hackneyed.
  76. Slither
    This is well-crafted retro horror, too familiar to be really scary but smart enough to be fun. And funny too, with the kind of pure laughs that grow organically from the script, untainted by the chemical spray of irony.
  77. 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.
  78. The Devil and Daniel Johnston
    An uncomfortably fascinating document of a man whose bipolar disorder and artistic ambitions are inextricably connected.
  79. Inside Man
    As the end credits are rolling: What happened? Suddenly, the film stalls, and everything that looked great -- the mechanics of the caper, the grafted-on wit and wisdom -- starts to feel repetitious and a tad gimmicky.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    Stay Alive
    Here's a movie that tries to be a video game but is less entertaining than a vending machine.
  81. Lonesome Jim
    The narrative of Lonesome Jim pokes about aimlessly, trying to mine nuggets of amusement.
  82. L'Enfant (The Child)
    Few directors working today make films with the grace and magisterial power of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's best work.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    She's the Man
    Nothing classes up a teen movie better than the classics.
  84. V for Vendetta
    V for very, very ordinary.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Thank You for Smoking
    A slick and star-studded comedy trumpeting a glib libertarianism that talks a good game but is as woolly headed as the liberalism fixed in its sights.
  86. Don't Come Knocking
    Only Lange is a powerful enough presence to raise a flicker of realistic emotion from this kind of stuff.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    Failure to Launch
    What's amazing is how far McConaughey carries this nonsense despite his total lack of chemistry with Parker and almost Zen-like indifference to his circumstances.
  88. The Hills Have Eyes
    There are scenes that may make your stomach feel uncomfortable for a moment but rarely stories that will upset your equilibrium.
  89. The Shaggy Dog
    The unruly pack of subplots make The Shaggy Dog much more convoluted than it needs to be. But Allen's physical comedy as man-becoming-dog, and his non-stop monologue as man-dog, are definitely worth a trip to the matinee.
  90. Ask the Dust
    This story, like many of Towne's own, does not come with a happy ending. Or beginning, for that matter, because it's almost immediately clear that Ask the Dust bites the dust -- his dream movie is stillborn.
  91. 16 Blocks
    No one can dismiss 16 Blocks as a mere formula flick -- it's a mere two or three formula flicks all fighting for top billing.
  92. Aquamarine
    Simultaneously salacious and sugary.
  93. Dave Chappelle's Block Party
    The freestyle approach is an apt fit with the freestyle, spontaneous comedy, as both the playful director and affable star capture moments on the fly.
  94. Merry Christmas
    For a few fleeting hours, they unlearned those lessons of childhood, laying down their arms to pick up their common humanity.
  95. Tsotsi
    The result is the kind of feel-bad/feel-good movie that brazenly manipulates our response and leaves us grateful for it -- so relentlessly dark is the premise that, by the end, we just need to believe in the prospect of light.
    • 23 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Doogal
    The slapdash dialogue and smug vocal talent -- even the presence of the much-loved host of "The Daily Show" is wearying -- detract from the visual appeal of the most energetic sequences (like a raucous train chase) and what's left of Danot's designs.
  97. Madea's Family Reunion
    What ends up on screen is confused storytelling that tries to solve too many social and family problems, sends mixed messages and, even worse, makes you laugh during parts when it's trying to be dead serious.
  98. Running Scared
    Running Scared's relationship to "The Cooler" is roughly that of industrial metal to a quaint torch song.
  99. Little Fish
    Little Fish is a small film about one family and drugs, but it succeeds in standing for a larger social catastrophe.
  100. Date Movie
    Date Movie is a good date movie in one sense: If you're still speaking to the person who brought you to see this, you just might have a future together.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »