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. The Wind Rises
    The work is more muted than Miyazaki’s more fantastical films, but visually complex and gorgeous, from the rustic mountain scenes to the urban scenes and soaring aerial views.
  2. 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.
  3. Bus 174
    Riveting and courageous documentary.
  4. In the Loop
    The best satire implicates the audience; this stuff keeps our sense of superiority smugly intact.
  5. Soul
    There is a mesmerizing quality to the movie.
  6. Osama
    Obviously, this is no easy sell, but give writer-director Siddiq Barmak full credit for portraying his country's social catastrophe with restraint, concision and some real beauty.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Salt of the Earth
    This much we know: The photographer takes the picture. Less clear is the reverse process – what the picture takes back. And this, to a large and illuminating extent, is the subject of Wim Wenders’s The Salt of the Earth.
  8. Rat Film
    Rat Film is most compelling when it moves out of the history of Baltimore's civic-planning and pest-control schemes and settles on its denizens, both human and rodent.
  9. Turning Red
    This is an energetic, heartfelt, poignant and often delightfully subversive story of one young girl’s path into adulthood, and embrace of her cultural heritage.
  10. Being There
    Jerzy Kosinski's witty but slim novel was based on a witty but thin conceit, and Hal Ashby's film of that novel is equally witty, equally thin. [09 Feb 1980]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  11. Who Framed Roger Rabbit
    Without warning, the picture falls hard into the very trap it had so studiously avoided, the one marked Expensive Gimmick... The same feature that begins like no film you've ever seen ends like every cartoon you've always avoided.
  12. Moonstruck
    From the first stylized shot to the final comic resolution, Moonstruck is completely sui generis - hard to describe but easy to love.
  13. Raising Victor Vargas
    A grownup departure from the teen-romance norm -- it speaks nothing about passion and volumes about trust.
  14. '71
    Republicans or loyalists, Catholics or Protestants – this film is not about political or religious trenches. People died, but it’s more than the bombs, bullets and bodies. The more fascinating damage was done to psyches and souls, and Demange, with ’71, comes for yours.
  15. The Cave
    A subtext of the film is a focus on classical music, as if to ask how humans can be capable of both intense beauty and ruthless inhumanity.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Blackfish
    As more than one orca expert points out in the film, when you take a creature born to roam thousands of miles of open water and stick it in a pool to do tricks, there’s going to be some behavioural blowback. In Tilikum’s case, it’s actually described as a form of induced “psychosis.”
  17. The Guilty
    Cedergren excels at balancing Asger’s cynical cool with his desire to help (or perhaps simply help himself), and the entire endeavour will leave you with a new-found respect for 911 operators.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    I Wish I Knew
    The pacing is steady. The stories are told simply, with zero affectation or buildup by the director. The effect is astonishing.
  19. Corpse Bride
    Ghoulishness and innocence walk hand-in-hand in Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, a movie that digs into Hollywood's past to resurrect the antique art of stop-motion animation and create a fabulous bauble of a movie.
  20. The Territory
    Pritz has managed to make this often abstract and far-away subject feel anything but removed. It’s urgent, desperate and terrifying and the words of the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau ask us not to look away.
  21. Project Nim
    In art there are no rules, just stuff that works. And for the second film in a row, Marsh has created a movie we can't keep our eyes off.
  22. Neil Young Trunk Show
    An impressionistic work that is perfectly in tune with its subject’s hallucinatory music.
  23. The Lighthouse
    While not a remotely pleasant viewing experience, the sensation of watching Pattinson and Dafoe drive each other to the brink is difficult to shake off.
  24. Spider-Man 2
    Raimi doesn't make the mistake of over-thinking the flimsy psychology of the genre. All this conflicted-hero stuff isn't meant to be profound; instead, it's there for the same reason as everything else -- to give the action (the interior action in this case) a healthy shot of pop energy.
  25. Mandy
    Mandy is, if it’s not clear yet, not for everyone. But for those who think nothing of staying up past midnight to devour the strange and fantastic, it hits the sweetest of spots.
  26. 20 Feet from Stardom
    At times, these singers’ versatility has kept them both regularly employed and deliberately anonymous.
  27. 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.
  28. 20th Century Women
    With this complex characterization, Bening looks like a shoo-in for a best-actress nomination come Oscar time, but she is also amply supported here with two performances that nicely capture the insecurities of earlier stages of womanhood.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Pina
    Bausch's work, as performed by her dance company Tanztheater Wuppertal, is shot exactingly by Wenders, who captures everything from the largest gestures to the subtlest facial nuances in ways impossible in 2-D – and of course in far closer detail than seeing the dances performed live.
  30. Animal Kingdom
    Animal Kingdom isn't perfect: Some performance moments are over-ripe, and there's an episode of arbitrary cruelty that's excessively creepy.
  31. Rosie
    Given the affordable-housing crisis in Canadian cities such as Toronto and Vancouver, there’s a lot to relate to in Rosie. One can only hope that if caught in a similar situation, one has Rosie’s grace to keep going.
  32. Hugo
    As well as an engaging fable about a homeless orphan living in a train station, Scorsese's film is a richly illustrated lesson in cinema history and the best argument for 3-D since James Cameron's "Avatar."
  33. The LEGO Movie
    No doubt, there is an uncomfortable number of logos being marketed to kids in the The Lego Movie, along with the obvious one that’s in the title, but the film as a whole is very much in the spirit of Cloud Cuckooland: It’s a place where the use of X-Acto blades and Krazy Glue breaks the rules but almost everything else goes.
  34. Gloria
    Whether you appreciate Gloria as a portrait of a vital woman, muddling through life’s middle chapters, or as an allegory of Chilean resilience, the message is the same: Let’s face the music and dance.
  35. Spider
    This is a rare adaptation where the script (by McGrath himself) heads straight for the novel's horrible essence, reproducing it non-verbally and in an even more concentrated form.
  36. Manhattan
    Never before has Allen been able to integrate comedy and pathos as deftly as he does in Manhattan. [28 Apr 1979, p. 17]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  37. Drag Me to Hell
    An unabashedly schlocky, expertly executed blend of jack-in-the-box jolts and humour.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Ixcanul
    Bathed in dusty hues and rain-forest greens, Ixcanul is gorgeously shot and skillfully frames Maria’s curbed sexuality (look to a scene where she waits for her younger crush in the evening shadows).
  39. Evil Does Not Exist
    However you choose to interpret it, Evil Does Not Exist lingers, magnificently and furiously.
  40. Seymour: An Introduction
    As for Hawke’s own filmmaking skills, it’s hard to find much wrong with this film, itself a meditation on art and the practice of craft. His touch is delicate, and let’s not worry too much if the tone is occasionally fawning.
  41. 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.
  42. Milk
    A worthy docudrama that is solid if not sublime. But, sometimes, a merely good film can brush up against greatness, and this one does so twice – in Sean Penn's magnetic performance and in the cautionary tale's contemporary resonance.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    U2 3D
    The details are astounding. During "Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own," the camera is in so tight that you can see Bono's hand tremble around the mike as he belts out a long, sustained note.
  44. One Night in Miami
    One Night In Miami is an accomplishment relative to the standards of its industry, but for filmgoers seeking new and exciting work that exists outside of that orbit, King’s film is one that you’ve seen before.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    The Naked Kiss
    Something amazing happens in it just about every 90 seconds: From one moment to the next you have no idea where the director is going. It's as if the screen has been hard-wired directly to Fuller's id. [13 Mar 1998]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  46. Kill Bill: Vol. 2
    So much cinematic majesty perched precariously atop so little common sense. But, hell, maybe Quentin's right; relax, enjoy -- a castle with a shaky foundation is still quite a sight.
  47. Vera Drake
    No filmmaker, in any cinematic culture, has a better eye or ear for the working class than director Mike Leigh.
  48. BlacKkKlansman
    A bold, if sometimes preachy, film that is stylistically daring, improbably entertaining and politically supercharged.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
    Vengeance Most Fowl is a cozy return to form that plaits together its own laboured conception and our mechanized conditions in order to enliven its signature duo among the youth of today.
  50. Under the Skin
    All this is initially fascinating, and then progressively less so. The problem is the usual serial-killer issue – things, no matter how weird and kinky, get repetitive.
  51. Red Army
    Red Army ends with Fetisov back in Russia, as a politician. Despite the sometimes shabby way in which he was treated by an authoritarian hockey regime, he says he “never had more fun than playing with those five guys.” Once a comrade.
  52. The Post
    After successfully telling a complex story, Spielberg inevitably overdramatizes its [spoiler omitted] ending.
  53. Cunningham
    If we are take Merce Cunningham at his word, and the joys of dance really are ephemeral, Cunningham makes a compelling case for the doing of it, over and over again.
  54. The Magdalene Sisters
    The film is an attack on religious hypocrisy, mixing melodrama and black humour in a volatile blend.
  55. Geographies of Solitude
    In keeping with Lucas’s general life philosophy, Mills’s film doesn’t attempt to paint a portrait of one woman, but rather a capturing of the land that woman calls home.
  56. Tyson
    An absorbing and not-too-uncomfortable experience, so long as you remember there's a camera lens and a big distance between you and the film's violent subject.
  57. Henry V
    Clever and confident use of limited resources in an unfamiliar medium. Kenneth Branagh has made the right choice nine out of 10 times, and the tenth is easily forgiven because of the youthful ardor of that bright face and that bright talent. [10 Nov 1989]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  58. Eastern Promises
    What it doesn't have is the resonance of Cronenberg's "A History of Violence," a film that exploited the same genre even while transcending its limitations. Eastern Promises delivers, but not on that scale.
  59. Footnote
    A father-son academic rivalry provides fodder for this caustic comedy set in the Talmud Department of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
  60. Being 17
    Age in Being 17 comes in awkward bursts, and yet the film moves sublimely. Director Téchiné, 73 years old, is wise beyond his years.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Free Solo
    Whether you care about climbing or not, you’ll appreciate this tale of passion, discipline and, ultimately, transcendence. One incredible climb for one athlete, one quantum leap for mankind.
  62. Trouble the Water
    Spike Lee's voluminous "When the Levees Broke" proved a thorough indictment, a compilation of tragic and appalling facts encyclopedically catalogued. By contrast, Trouble the Water (on Oscar's short-list in the best doc category) has a more personal focus and, although just as damning, manages to strike a more hopeful chord.
  63. Saint Maud
    I’ve come around to Glass’s singular, purpose-filled vision – one that is intent on pushing its audience so far outside their comfort zones that you’d need a map to find your way back to baseline existence. Clark is also a wonder as the title character, playing a deluded and dangerous antihero with an unnerving zeal.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Misericordia
    With Misericordia, Guiraudie deftly strikes the balance between the playfully sacrilegious and the sociopathic, rounded out by a seductively bizarre cast of dwellers and clusters of puckered, corpse-fed mushrooms.
  65. Mustang
    It could be a cautionary fable about the predatory hypocrisy of any patriarchy, of any community predominantly defined by social conservatism.
  66. Palm Springs
    While Barbakow and writer Andy Siara don’t exactly reinvent the ever-spinning wheel here, they do add enough of a winsome, layered charm that Palm Springs feels like a vacation you actually might want to extend forevermore.
  67. The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki
    As for the winner and new champion, it has to be Kuosmanen, who never met a boxing-film cliché he couldn’t discreetly avoid.
  68. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
    Though Burton's version is faithful, the filter of his sensibility has turned it into another of his necrophilic creepshows.
  69. Court
    The film’s own unhurried pace might frustrate the popcorn crowd, but it is the blasé, blank-faced unconcern for expediency from judges, prosecutors and bailiffs that should prove much more infuriating.
  70. Locke
    The combination of Hardy’s almost androgynous features and powerful physique evokes a young Marlon Brando, and while it’s premature to say he has a talent to match, he has emerged as one of the screen’s most versatile and compelling presences. Locke is what you might call his sedentary tour de force.
  71. 20,000 Days on Earth
    The film is so incessant on bolstering Cave’s repute and noble struggle with the art of songwriting that it can’t help but seem bloated and self-important. Sometimes seriousness should speak for itself.
  72. Neptune Frost
    While Neptune Frost is at no loss for multi-faceted thinking, its development of these concepts too often remains at the surface of meaning. The Black futures envisioned here are largely concerned with aesthetics and, while sonically and visually lush, seem hollow in comparison to the range of their full potential.
  73. The Apostle
    A too-perfect mirror of its creator, The Apostle's greatest strength doubles as a singular weakness -- in the end, it feels like an immaculate forgery.
  74. RRR
    Visually exhilarating as it may be, it’s worthwhile to remember that RRR is inspired by true events. It’s a work of historical fiction that’s just as inventive as its thrilling special effects.
  75. Election
    At best, the humour in Election is perceptive, nasty, pointed, and lets no one off its barbed hook, not even the audience. In other words, it's a lovely piece of satire, made all the more relevant by the setting.
  76. Creed
    For the first time in the series, Stallone did not write the script, yet director Ryan Coogler and his co-writer Aaron Covington aren’t exactly brimming over with fresh ideas: Worn thin with repetition, the sentimental old premise muffles suspense and dampens emotion.
  77. Pride & Prejudice
    This is Austen as chick-lit, not too deep, but with some integrity and the worthy goal of reaching a younger audience by offering a starch-free version of the story.
  78. Monsieur Lazhar
    It's an exquisite, humanistic and subtly topical work of cinema art that manages to keep the intimate, revelatory sensibility of a one-man play intact while fleshing out the characters and creating a very realistic and richly detailed school community.
  79. Leaving Las Vegas
    At best, Leaving Las Vegas is pure alchemy -- it makes of flawed humanity a hymn, and of forlorn hope a beacon.
  80. Transit
    Both leads fit their performances seamlessly into this destabilizing scheme, providing a provocative timelessness to the characters.
  81. Venus
    Like similar English comedies, it also teeters on the mawkish.
  82. The Love Witch
    The Love Witch handily achieves its goals, employing Biller’s strong sense of retro style and Robinson’s wink-wink performance to deliver a subversive homage to a host of out-of-fashion genres.
  83. Diner
    A serious and funny and subtle work - a work of art - that was easy to confuse with exploitation teeny-bopper quickies because it did what the quickies had tried to do. But Diner did it right. [22 Apr 1982]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  84. Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am
    The Pieces I Am is compellingly organized and like much of Morrison’s writing, forces the viewer to think carefully to keep up.
  85. Peter Hujar's Day
    It can be slow going, certainly, but it’s always rewarding. Pull up a chair, stay a while.
  86. Night of the Kings
    City of God crossed with A Prophet by way of One Thousand and One Nights, Philippe Lacôte’s Night of the Kings is an ambitious thriller that constantly surprises.
  87. Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working with Time
    A beautiful, probing art documentary.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Second Mother
    Muylaert’s is attuned to matters of social stratification and economic mobility, and the manner in which Brazil’s leisure class is propped up by the undervalued exertions of domestic labourers.
  89. Nowhere to Hide
    An immersive, compact and unpolished documentary from the Kurdish-born, Oslo-based filmmaker Zaradasht Ahmed.
  90. Window Horses
    In the film's finest moments, as a generous Iranian host explains traditional Farsi poetry, the animation and the themes mingle and explode in a riot of cross-cultural colour as the stringy Canadian cartoon meets gorgeously rendered illustrations – and personifications – of Persian traditions.
  91. Anselm
    In truth, as this film observes more and more of his compelling oeuvre, the viewer becomes more engrossed in the art than its cinematic presentation and the 3-D effect seems to fade into the background, necessary rather than impressive.
  92. Hit Man
    Linklater knows exactly the power that his leading man commands, but instead of lazily exploiting it off the top, the director reverse-engineers a charm offensive so earth-shaking that it registers on the Richter scale.
  93. Afire
    The dramedy of manners is as rich and rewarding an experience as any of Petzold’s more ambitious films. Afire arrives like a calm wind, and leaves with everything and everyone perfectly scorched.
  94. 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.
  95. 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.
  96. Tell No One
    The result is a whodunit so nicely crafted that you're tempted to forgive the Byzantine plot -- hell, you're even tempted to pretend you actually understand its twisting obscurities.
  97. 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.
  98. Paying for It
    Thanks to Lee’s smooth construction and her performers’ carefully calibrated performances – Beirne is particularly engaging in a role that doesn’t automatically earn sympathy – it all clicks together.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »