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. Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine
    Kasparov is a compelling film subject: suave, sardonic and as emotionally high-pitched as he is intellectually gifted.
  2. The Green Butchers
    Black comedies don't get much darker than this.
  3. A Very Long Engagement
    Certainly long and not always engaging and comes with a predictably basic ending, yet there are unexpected pleasures, moments of beauty and tiny pockets of joy to sustain you through the journey.
  4. Alexander
    Call it "Alexander the Grate," because, over the marathon of its three-hour running time, this wonky epic really does get on your nerves.
  5. Christmas with the Kranks
    Ho, ho, horrible.
  6. National Treasure
    Coming from writers responsible for such material as "Snow Dogs" and "The 6th Day," National Treasure is not so much a no-brainer as a brain-stunner, so audaciously ridiculous you are initially intrigued, then soon irritated by its incoherence.
  7. The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie
    Truth be told, the full 99-minute movie does not entirely hold water; it feels like three or four good episodes connected with plot padding. Aesop probably wasn't too hot at long-form fiction, either.
  8. Bad Education
    Even when the plots of sexual confusions, transgression and tragedy became absurdly complicated and arbitrary, there was always the mise-en-scène to die for.
  9. Days of Being Wild (re-release)
    It is a work of great beauty that rewards continued visits.
  10. Jandek on Corwood
    A revealing portrait of outsider music nerds.
  11. After the Sunset
    Though there are a few annoying moments when the actors get in the way of the scenery, mostly it succeeds.
  12. Seed of Chucky
    This movie is about the opposite of political correctness. It's about rooting for the bad guy and the black ending, and shouting at the screen whenever you feel like it. If you like that sort of thing, go see it. If you don't, then don't.
  13. Finding Neverland
    Because it's a well-crafted and superbly acted sweet little tearjerker, we're content too -- it's a mild pleasure to watch.
  14. Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason
    Rather than being one of us, this stumpy-legged dingbat is a realization of our worst social fears. Before we were laughing with her, and now we're laughing at her.
  15. Kinsey
    A mature biopic as entertaining as it is timely.
  16. The Polar Express
    So delightful it should come with a parental advisory: "Jaded adults, beware. Viewing this may pierce your shell of cynicism and spark a renewed belief in the magic of movie-making."
  17. Alfie
    [Law] talks straight to the camera like the young Michael Caine, but this time our hunk has got zilch to say. That's because a bastard's candour is off-limits in today's politically correct market — it just wouldn't be polite.
  18. Fade to Black
    It's the perfect sort of movie to have playing on a television in the corner of a rec room during a low-key beer and pizza party.
  19. The Incredibles
    The smarter script and stronger range of performances than most high-budget blockbusters clogging theatres these days make you wonder why the live-action feature isn't already obsolete.
  20. Ray
    Ray rambles on for two hours and 40 minutes, mining repetitive episodes like a TV miniseries.
  21. Saw
    Let's just say this: It's a lucky thing I wasn't shackled to my seat in the theatre during this movie. I'd be limping home.
  22. Birth
    Despite its trappings, despite its style, Birth is just a tall tale with a short reach.
  23. Enduring Love
    Ultimately, the movie suffers from the same fate as its characters. That first explosive scene creates a state of shock, leaving everyone and everything to drift about in a numbing vacuum.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Malevolence
    A low-budget American horror film that's already established itself as a fan favourite, Malevolence flaunts all the trappings of an old-school slasher flick.
  25. Sideways
    There's fun to be had in watching these losers drift without a compass.
  26. The Grudge
    There are so many events here but no real story. Perhaps that is what's making the drowned kabuki ghost so irate: She's desperate to find a coherent script.
  27. Surviving Christmas
    Remember that the director, the renowned Mike Mitchell, is the genius who helmed "Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo," and be sufficiently generous to accept that such a high level of excellence is hard to sustain.
  28. Lightning in a Bottle
    Comes alive with the more relaxed performances from its senior set.
  29. The Machinist
    An hallucinatory mix of the imagined and the real, all revolving around the mystery at the cold heart of the tale.
  30. Undertow
    Green may be right to avoid the melodramatic waves of the conventional thriller. But, if so, he needs to dive a lot deeper than this -- there's just not enough under in Undertow.
  31. Sex Is Comedy
    This is amusing, and even poignant in the final moments.
  32. Team America: World Police
    Give it an A for concept -- a bizarre marionette version of a Jerry Bruckheimer-style action movie; B for its occasional moments of convulsively funny comedy; and D for the politics, for pandering to exactly the kind of reactionary sentiments it purports to satirize.
  33. Shall We Dance
    Now, forcibly deported to Chicago and peopled with American stars, the same story is huffed and puffed and squeezed into an entirely different cultural context. Guess what? Sayonara sushi, hello turkey.
  34. Being Julia
    A bland Shaun Evans is woefully miscast as the brash American.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    P.S.
    P.S.'s ending, a cautiously happy conclusion, feels like an afterthought.
  36. Moolaadé
    Once in a rare while a film comes along that is boldly original, communicates an important idea in an elegantly simple fashion and happens to be highly entertaining. Such is the case with Moolaadé.
  37. Vera Drake
    No filmmaker, in any cinematic culture, has a better eye or ear for the working class than director Mike Leigh.
  38. Friday Night Lights
    In the deck of clichés that is the typical sports movie, it at least does us the courtesy of shuffling the cards a little.
  39. Raise Your Voice
    The film suffers from a syndrome I'll call the Pop Princess's New Clothes. Hilary can't really sing, and neither can Terri, so you can't help but wonder, what's the big whoop?
  40. Around the Bend
    Who would have guessed that, among all the cutesy curves in Around the Bend, the guy walking the straightest line is Christopher Walken?
  41. Stage Beauty
    At best, the film makes a more convincing case for the adventure of artificiality: Take Billy Crudup, add a little rouge to his cheeks and suddenly: Voilà, the guy can act.
  42. Silent Water
    The fact that these atrocities are not well known in the West is a good reason for this film to exist.
  43. Taxi
    Very little of it works.
  44. Tarnation
    An astonishing multimedia diary.
  45. Ladder 49
    I like firemen just as much as the next red-blooded gal (they're big, strong, real-life heroes, what's not to like?) but something about Ladder 49, for all its slow-motion shots of burly guys in T-shirts sliding down poles and running into burning buildings with gushing hoses, made me seriously want to gag.
  46. Shark Tale
    Though Shark Tale will make waves at the multiplexes and move a lot of plastic toys at Burger King, the movie lacks real heart. It feels like a cold-blooded, always moving, profit-making machine.
  47. I Heart Huckabees
    So I didn't Huckabees, nor did I entirely not it. Rather, when the end draws nigh and judgment beckons, I'm doomed again to dither in the tepid netherworld, that vast limbo where movies are only half-decent and movie-going is merely half-ed.
  48. Dig!
    Timoner offers a resonant, often painfully funny, drama about two good friends who become enemies against the backdrop of the pop-music business.
  49. Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry
    The older John Kerry, today's candidate, is conspicuous both by his absence (he's not interviewed here) and by the contrast between then and now, between the hero he was and the politician he's become. That contrast gives the film a nostalgic yet palpable sadness.
  50. Infernal Affairs
    Here is a psychological twister with an implausible and hard-to-follow plot. All of this is more than compensated for by terrific performances, a seductive colour palette that is greenish and glassy, and a minimalist style reminiscent of Michael Mann.
  51. Shaun of the Dead
    Plays perfectly on two levels — it's a clever comedy, but disguised as a fun, dumb horror flick. A movie made to delight, and even accidentally enlighten, both the living and the dead.
  52. First Daughter
    A dull, formulaic romance comedy with an ulterior motive and a sly message. Remarkably, the message is this: "Please Re-elect George Bush."
  53. The Forgotten
    There is nothing worse than a thriller that doesn't play fair... The Forgotten is just a big, fat, obvious cheater.
  54. The Motorcycle Diaries
    Captures some of the spirit of the real Che.
  55. Anatomy of Hell
    A crashing bore.
  56. A Dirty Shame
    Waters's rude, lewd and occasionally nude extended skit takes a simple idea and beats it limp.
  57. The Yes Men
    Packs a wickedly satiric punch.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Blissfully Yours
    A rare example of a truly independent film, Thai or otherwise, the fascinatingly aesthetic Blissfully Yours.... has a simple narrative and an adoration of nature that lists the film toward the experimental. [10 Sept 2002, p.R4]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  59. The Take
    As a first-time director, Lewis shows a impressive visual sense -- abandoned factories take on an eerie gorgeousness through his lens.
  60. Mr 3000
    Predictable but highly entertaining.
  61. Wimbledon
    While Bettany and Dunst are both appealing, their chemistry lacks much fizz. As it is, the pair seem less like lovers than bouncy transatlantic cousins.
  62. Zelary
    A trite but sturdy offering, a showcase for popular young Czech actress Anna Geislerova, as well as the beautiful Moravian countryside, shot in glowing earthy tones.
  63. Silver City
    Long, windy, diffuse in its message and blunt in its satire.
  64. Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence
    The effect of so much pretension and so many lovely images eventually becomes soporific.
  65. Incident at Loch Ness
    A successful hoax is annoying for everyone except the hoaxster. No one enjoys being the credulous, unsuspecting dupe of a wise---joke -- personally I loathe it.
  66. Cellular
    Using a kidnapping plot to call up some old-fashioned suspense, it doesn't even get a dial tone.
  67. Resident Evil: Apocalypse
    A superior entertainment to both "RE 1" and "Alien vs. Predator."
  68. Criminal
    Jacobs is a competent director but he doesn't bring anything extra to this shell game of a narrative.
  69. Paparazzi
    There is no energy here. No sense of movie invention or fun.
  70. Wicker Park
    If plot were oats, Wicker Park would choke a horse.
  71. Warriors of Heaven and Earth
    The spaghetti western may be dead, but the noodle eastern looks to be alive and well.
  72. Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War
    The film is never as powerful or convincing as it should be.
  73. Vanity Fair
    This might be tolerable if Nair hadn't missed the central point, that Becky Sharp isn't sharp like spice, she's sharp like a razor.
  74. Hero
    In the end, the spectacular martial-arts epic seems to signify nothing much more than its own beauty, as brilliant and ephemeral as a fireworks display.
  75. Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid
    The refined taste insists on risibly bad, on hysterically bad, on poke-your-seatmate-in-the-ribs bad, and this falls well short of that hallowed mark -- it's just routinely bad.
  76. Suspect Zero
    The trouble is that the plot is so elliptical to be almost unfollowable (though it helps to have seen the trailer).
  77. Exorcist: The Beginning
    The devil is back in Exorcist: The Beginning, and he is more disgusting than ever. Not more scary, just really yucky, in a kind of maggots-on-a-pizza-slice way.
  78. Bright Young Things
    Worse still is his idiotic tampering with the so-called "Happy Ending" -- in print, it's bleakly ironic; on screen, incongruously sentimental.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    End of the Century
    It makes for a compelling story and some thrilling music.
  80. Rosenstrasse
    In the end, this tale of human decency fails to make you feel enough.
  81. Mean Creek
    After a solid start and a strong buildup through two acts, the movie fumbles the resolution. Ethical lines that were convincingly wavy suddenly straighten out, too quickly and too neatly.
  82. Red Lights
    Before it turns into a thriller, and goes badly awry, Red Lights paints a devastating little portrait of a marriage on the rocks.
  83. Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Movie
    A vigorously cross-marketed product, with comics, collectable cards, games and a television series.
  84. We Don't Live Here Anymore
    What you're smelling is Ang Lee's "The Ice Storm" without the pathos and the punch, or John Updike's "Rabbit Redux" minus the insight and the style.
  85. The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement
    Like the first movie, Princess Diaries 2 relies primarily on the chemistry and screen appeal of Andrews and Hathaway to elevate the storytelling above the level of mush.
  86. Collateral
    The first half is exhilarating, and the rest is a tolerably honourable surrender to Hollywood conventions.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    Little Black Book
    The finale just seems hypocritical, even nonsensical in a comedy that derives its few laughs from a farting dog and an accidental gynecological exam. This book is better left closed.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Code 46
    It all contributes to a vision of the future that is as haunting as it is dispiriting.
  89. Open Water
    The movie is also banal in ways that are irritating and second-rate.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Manchurian Candidate
    Part patrician WASP, part Lady Macbeth and revealing more than a little of Hilary Clinton steel, Streep crackles with neurotic energy and barely checked sexuality, sublimated into an addiction to power and an unhealthy devotion to her son.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    Thunderbirds
    Simply put, this is a bad, bad film, this summer's answer to last summer's "The League of Extraordinary Gentleman." A dog for the dog days of summer.
  92. The Village
    Not only is The Village not credible, its shallowness makes it dislikable, a shopworn gothic plot focusing on stereotypical characters with disabilities, with no ambitions beyond playing a simple-minded audience head game.
  93. Festival Express
    The film is not about the audience's shared experience, and a lot more about how cool it is to have a backstage pass.
  94. Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle
    Plays it a little too safe and hackneyed with the comedy, but the characters and the talented actors who play them are a refreshing change of pace that make the movie feel like a minor buddy-comedy revolution.
  95. Intimate Strangers
    If you like movies in which fashionably dressed people spend a lot of time smoking and talking cryptically about sex in dark, overfurnished Paris apartments, you should put down your café au lait and run out to see this film right now. If not, you probably just don't like French movies.
  96. Garden State
    Braff's deadpan performance and dry reactions are deft, and his ability to shape a scene to a punctuation point is impressive, but he's all over the place as a writer.
  97. She Hate Me
    One of the most preposterous efforts by any major director in recent memory.
  98. The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi
    It feels like one long non-sequitur -- like closing a Charles Bronson film with a disco medley -- but there's an emotional consistency to Kitano's boisterous celebration of movement.
  99. The Bourne Supremacy
    Directed by Paul Greengrass, the unflinching eye behind "Bloody Sunday," The Bourne Supremacy not only lives up to the promises of the novel by Robert Ludlum, but in many ways manages to improve on the first film.
  100. Catwoman
    [Pitof's] managed to create an entire digitalized city that has all the allure of an underground parking garage. And his action, it's cluttered; his editing, it's confused. The result: blandness butchered, hamburger chopped, kitty littered.
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