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. Ladies in Lavender.
    May be a slight film, but watching the Dames work in harmony in beautiful nuanced performances is a rich and fully satisfying reward.
  2. The Interpreter
    The ideal: It hopes to be a suspenseful political yarn carrying a lofty message of peace and understanding. The reality: It's just a flabby thriller that gets completely lost in translation.
  3. A Lot Like Love
    Too often, the script collapses into what feels like improvisation, in which the characters find a kind of common ground: Infantilism.
  4. Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
    Surely the real story of Enron is that so many accountants, lawyers, bankers and politicians were willing to call a dog a duck in order to remain happy insiders in the world's biggest pyramid scheme.
  5. Save the Green Planet!
    Certainly a bizarre kind of virtuoso filmmaking, but it does not feel precocious or burdened with too many ideas.
  6. The Amityville Horror
    A sustained if wildly uncoordinated assault on our senses, complementing those feverish jump cuts with a cliché of equally stunning proportions
  7. House of D
    A bunch of scenes in need of a tighter narrative and, more importantly, a raison d'être.
  8. It's All Gone Pete Tong
    An acquired taste that you may not acquire. I did, but it took me a while.
  9. The Year of the Yao
    Co-directed by James D. Stern (who made another NBA promotional documentary, "Michael Jordan to the Max") and Adam Del Deo, the story of the Americanization of Yao is determinedly upbeat.
  10. Palindromes
    Palindromes is a cracked American picaresque.
  11. Sahara
    Most of the personality work in the film is left to Steve Zahn.
  12. Fever Pitch
    As a motion picture, Fever Pitch is merely competent.
  13. Kung Fu Hustle
    A celebration of Hong Kong action cinema that mocks gravity, both emotional and physical.
  14. Winter Solstice
    The movie never actually gets to winter: The title is just a clumsy play on the family's surname.
  15. Sin City
    Sin City gives sin a great name -- it's never been more plentiful or looked so gorgeous.
  16. Look at Me
    In lesser hands, all this might border on misanthropy. But Jaoui's direction, plus the note-perfect cast, manage two redeeming feats:
  17. Beauty Shop
    The results are so listless, dated and characterless.
  18. Guess Who
    Guess who sings tired old tune.
  19. The Ballad of Jack and Rose
    We leave this movie hoping to see Miller and Lewis together again soon.
  20. D.E.B.S.
    The most endearing aspect of D.E.B.S., a sweet-spirited spoof, is that the lesbian romance is played for real, with no nudge-nudge wink-wink irony.
  21. Lipstick & Dynamite, Piss & Vinegar: The First Ladies of Wrestling
    The best gal wrestlers had their signature moves: Ida May Martinez, with her flying drop kick; Ella Waldek, with the "short-arm scissor lift." Filmmaker Leitman, for all her good work, is in need of a close-out manoeuvre of her own.
  22. Oldboy
    This is a movie about draining, tenderizing and chopping up the audience emotionally.
  23. Miss Congeniality 2: Armed & Fabulous
    Formula sequel right down to its zany subtitle -- Armed and Fabulous. Bullock deserves better. We deserve better. Rev up that '57 Chevy.
  24. Mondovino
    A sprawling personal journey, filled with an array of fascinating characters, through the world of wine.
  25. Ice Princess
    Trachtenberg gives a sweetly compelling performance as Casey, as does the wonderfully kooky Cusack as her mother, but their charms are not enough to save this painfully unoriginal movie from coming out of a triple toe loop and landing flat on its bottom.
  26. The Ring Two
    Watts evokes a classic Hitchcockian virgin-whore duality.
  27. Melinda and Melinda
    Allen's best effort since 1999's "Sweet and Lowdown," but that's not saying a lot.
  28. Steamboy
    The narrative here may be strictly nuts and bolts, but as an achievement in graphic design, Steamboy is first class.
  29. Hostage
    On the plus side, bloated narratives make for a busy action star, and Bruce is quite the workaholic on this outing, clearly eager to rekindle memories of his "Die Hard" glory days.
  30. Robots
    Sure, it's a bit mechanical, but what did you expect? The important thing is that the characters and jokes don't prevent you from grooving on the pleasures of the moving parts.
  31. The Upside of Anger
    Meant to explore anger, all this picture does is manufacture it.
  32. Millions
    The film is small-scale, cleverly crafted and feels like a more expensive version of the sort of "dramedy" they produce by the truckload at the BBC.
  33. In My Country
    Although In My Country is charged with moments of grace and feeling, the film is ultimately betrayed by the clunky Jackson-Binoche romance.
  34. The Boys & Girl from County Clare
    There will be occasional tears, there must be frequent laughs and the whole contrived structure has the calculated quaintness of Ye Olde Pub at a EuroDisney theme park.
  35. Don't Move
    Don't Move comes to seem as static as its title -- we just don't learn enough to compensate for feeling so little.
  36. Be Cool
    To reduce Leonard to shtick makes about as much sense as using a scalpel for a butter knife — even when the job gets done, it's just such a dull waste of a sharp implement.
  37. The Jacket
    Memo to screenwriters cranking out murky existential thrillers: Do not have various characters repeat on several occasions: "I know this doesn't make any sense."
  38. The Pacifier
    Director Adam Shankman pushes together scenes with little rhythm or flow. Writers Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant ignore credibility, throw in pointless sight gags, treat humiliation as comedy and use tiresome ethnic stereotypes. In short, Diesel doesn't get the help he needs.
  39. Dear Frankie
    Very well crafted and superbly acted. Whatever you may think of the idea, its execution is admirable.
  40. Gunner Palace
    Sorry, but this level of insight is readily available from daily news reports.
  41. Walk on Water
    The Israeli film works best in isolated spots early on as a series of intriguing character studies. Upon reaching to become a lesson to the world, however, Walk on Water goes off the deep end.
  42. The Best of Youth
    If you've got six hours to invest watching superior television in a movie theatre, then spend the time wisely with The Best of Youth.
  43. Cursed
    The problem lies with Williamson's script, which feels as if it has been torn from different places and glued back together like a ransom note.
  44. Man of the House
    This one is headed straight for star Tommy Lee Jones's career-blooper reel.
  45. Up and Down
    Uneven and erratic and far too busy, its flashes of brilliance dimmed by overambitious meanderings.
  46. Because of Winn-Dixie
    The problem is that director Wayne Wang seems deaf to the tonal differences between coming-of-age, magic realism and children's comedy.
  47. Constantine
    Every time you think you grasp the concept, another layer of outlandish supernatural gobbledygook is laid on top, leaving the viewer feeling as spun-out as Linda Blair's head.
  48. Son of the Mask
    While not as edgy or funny as "The Mask," the popular 1994 "original" starring Jim Carrey, the movie offers eye-popping animation high-jinks and a warm-and-fuzzy story that reinforces what some would call family values.
  49. Alexandra's Project
    Actress Helen Buday is coolly persuasive in the seesaw role of an unbalanced housewife who jerks from despair to anger.
  50. Nabbeun namja
    Low, mean and depressingly plausible.
  51. Downfall
    The movie itself seems more familiar than fascinating, more innocuous than inflammatory, and, at 2½ hours, more tedious than anything else.
  52. Schultze Gets the Blues
    Like the blues, you feel it first, and think of the meaning later.
  53. Turtles Can Fly
    Not everything here is that vivid or uncluttered. Sometimes, the film betrays the circumstances of its making, shot hastily on location in Iraq after the fall of Saddam just as the extended conflict was beginning.
  54. Ong Bak
    A thinly plotted, amateurishly acted, cartoonishly violent and hugely entertaining array of jaw-dropping stunts and corny slapstick.
  55. Bride & Prejudice
    It's the small, smelly details that elevate this Indian-fusion retelling of Jane Austen's classic novel from trifle to bona-fide delight.
  56. Hitch
    The movie's last two minutes, in which they all do goofy dances and have no dialogue or script to get in their way, is easily the highlight. It's the previous 113 minutes of plot that cause problems.
  57. Inside Deep Throat
    This feeble documentary ends up perpetuating the very hypocrisy it means to probe.
  58. The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill
    A cornball charmer of a film with some beautiful birds and homespun wisdom.
  59. Pooh's Heffalump Movie
    Delivered without irony or subtext but lots of gentle humour, a kind of family fare that is rare on the big screen these days.
  60. Boogeyman
    A film willing to cheat whatever way necessary to scare you... The good news is that once you leave the theatre, you'll never think of Boogeyman again.
  61. The Wedding Date
    Imagine, if you dare, the outtakes from all those merely bad romantic comedies. Now further imagine that these discarded bits, the stuff that failed to make even the failures, found their way out of the waste bin and into a splicing machine and onto a projector. Do that and you're inching toward a full appreciation of this particular barrel, and the bottom it so brazenly scrapes.
  62. Nobody Knows
    Nothing short of mesmerizing.
  63. Rory O'Shea Was Here
    The script, despite doses of irreverent humour, feels manipulative, and the music is oblivious to nuance, with a spectacular misuse of Johnny Cash singing "Hurt."
  64. Travelers and Magicians
    With its intricate design, sly humour and timely theme, Travellers and Magicians is a lot more than just a travelogue.
  65. Alone in the Dark
    Just as the book is usually better than the film, one suspects the video game is probably more entertaining and coherent than the movie. In the case of Alone in the Dark, this is a certainty.
  66. Hide and Seek
    From the base-model script to the assembly-line thrills, everything about Hide and Seek is generic except its star.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Lost Embrace
    Here's a gorgeous little film.
  68. Are We There Yet?
    Uh oh, pull over, I think I'm gonna be carsick.
  69. Head-On
    Violent and sexy and funny and sad, Head-On is a big collision that doubles as a bizarre love story.
  70. Assault on Precinct 13
    One of this enlightened B-movie's many pleasures is French director Jean-François Richet's handling of atmosphere and setting. Shot almost entirely at night in a blinding snowstorm, the crime drama is an intriguing remodelling of a classic film noir.
  71. Coach Carter
    When [Jackcson]'s not on camera, Coach Carter feels like the two-hour opus it is — too long, too banal, a bit ridiculous. But when he is, nothing else seems to matter, and how sublime is that.
  72. Elektra
    For the better part of this movie, Elektra appears to be a sensible, stylish young superhero.
  73. Racing Stripes
    The movie, which is roughly as predictable as the attraction of flies to dung, is a hackneyed mix of sentimentality and anarchic comedy.
  74. The Chorus
    This is a formula film with panache.
  75. White Noise
    But Keaton is a mistake. He's an actor with an innate sense of irony firmly grounded in the here and now. Even as Batman, skepticism was his forte; true belief falls way outside his range.
  76. In Good Company
    The comic spirit in this type of picture is wonderfully democratic, and so is the result.
  77. The Merchant of Venice
    A lean, stripped-down and unapologetically cinematic take on Shakespeare's work, an adaptation designed at each turn to diminish the mechanics of the comedy and to explore the depths of the pathos.
  78. The Assassination of Richard Nixon
    Sometimes, you'd swear he's (Penn) reprising his performance as a mentally handicapped man in "I Am Sam."
  79. Fat Albert
    The result plays like an extended Pepsi commercial without the Pepsi.
  80. Darkness
    Horror at Christmas might work, but tedium doesn't.
  81. The Woodsman
    The film manages the extraordinary feat of forcing us to empathize simultaneously with both the potential victim and the potential villain.
  82. Meet the Fockers
    Remember Pam? Lost in the Himalayas of big egos and overacting, she's the invisible character here. If they create a special Oscar for the most thankless part in an ensemble comedy, Teri Polo is a shoe-in.
  83. The Phantom of the Opera
    Phantom still an auditory lobotomy.
  84. Hotel Rwanda
    Throughout the film, Cheadle's eyes are constantly scanning his environment for opportunities or anything that may be amiss.
  85. In the Realms of the Unreal
    The film, like its subject, is more adroit with pictures than with words.
  86. The Aviator
    Running at about three hours, The Aviator is long, and the momentum occasionally flags. The depiction of Hughes's first mental breakdown feels a little obsessive-compulsive itself.
  87. Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
    Though rich in visual style, the movie is unbalanced in performances and script, ranging, from scene to scene, from go-for-baroque grandeur to strident excess.
  88. Spanglish
    There's a wonderfully subversive film buried somewhere in Spanglish, but it's never allowed to get out.
  89. Flight of the Phoenix
    The countdown begins with the first negative integer — an amped-up score that overpowers the proceedings like a bad band at a high-school dance.
  90. Beyond the Sea
    Vanity: the surest road to mediocrity.
  91. The Sea Inside
    This movie might make you cry, but it is not explicitly designed to do so.
  92. Imaginary Heroes
    Rather than invoke sympathy, the technique creates annoyance with Harris's writing: Sure, these characters may be clichés, but haven't they suffered enough?
  93. Million Dollar Baby
    With his trademark spare, unfussy direction and jumping into the story approach, Eastwood subtly establishes the themes of faith, loss and love and then he raises the drama to a different level.
  94. Ocean's Twelve
    Ocean's Twelve lacks the courage of its star-driven convictions. Next time, Steven and George and Brad and Matt should ditch the hypocrisy and just shoot themselves shooting the breeze, poking fun at each other from within the smug sanctuary of their precious celebrity.
  95. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
    A movie deeply immersed in movie lore, and the more seasoned the swimmer the richer the experience.
  96. A Tale of Two Sisters
    It may not be a pretty picture, but A Tale of Two Sisters is definitely a satisfying piece of less-is-more cinematic horror.
  97. Blade: Trinity
    Dull Blade just doesn't cut it.
  98. Born Into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids
    Rather than another oppressive film about poverty, it's a revealing experiment in perspective.
  99. Closer
    Despite Marber's sardonic wit and Nichols's intelligent direction, the film winds up in the ironic position of practising exactly what it preaches: Closer invites and even gains our intimacy, only to finish by driving us ever farther away.
  100. House of Flying Daggers
    Actors Zhang Ziyi and Takeshi Kaneshiro are the kind of startlingly good-looking, glamorous stars that evoke classic Hollywood adventure films.
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