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. Hey Arnold! The Movie
    The updated Dickensian sensibility of writer Craig Bartlett's story is appealing.
  2. Pumpkin
    Fitfully daring, Pumpkin isn't quite sure what it's about -- the tone bounces between thudding satire and toothless camp parody -- but it's definitely a bad-mannered child of our times.
  3. Juwanna Mann
    Here's a truly novel sports film: It actually has a script, decent acting, sympathetic characters. And it's fun.
  4. Sunshine State
    These are valid ideas, but they don't always arise organically out of the script, and can seem clumsily expressed.
  5. Minority Report
    More humdrum than horrible. It isn't futuristic film noir; it's just everyday film beige.
  6. Lilo & Stitch
    Tuned in to the anarchic wisecracks and slapstick humour of traditional Warner Bros. cartoons. In contrast to the computer-generated characters and slick script of a movie like "Shrek," Lilo and Stitch still feels like a cartoon aimed at kids, not their parents.
  7. Windtalkers
    Windtalkers is to movies what Paris is to weather -- if you don't like the show you're watching, just wait a minute and an entirely different picture will blow into view.
  8. The Emperor's New Clothes
    Has a refreshingly different twist: What we have here is a "what if" comedy.
  9. The Bourne Identity
    The problems with Damon's character are the problem with the movie: It's about plot mechanics, not heart and soul.
  10. Scooby-Doo
    Mostly, the plot is busy and incomprehensible and the action sequences directed with all the art of a detonation.
  11. Bad Company
    Feels stale, bloated and willing to get by on sheer familiarity.
  12. Cherish
    Though it is shaped as a woman-in-peril thriller about obsession, Cherish is about being winningly kooky, not violently insane.
  13. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
    Women deserve better women's pictures -- men too.
  14. The Sum of All Fears
    How's this for frightening: The casting of the lightweight Ben Affleck as a CIA agent who holds the fate of the entire world in his pretty-boy hands. Can't deny it, that got my heart pumping like a bunny.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Undercover Brother
    Undercover Brother is very much a hero of our time. After all, the character began not in the 1970s, but three years ago as a cartoon on a Web site.
  16. Nijinsky: The Diaries of Vaslav Nijinsky
    You don't need to have seen a lot of art films to love The Diaries of Vaslav Nijinsky. All it takes is compassionate curiosity and perhaps some lingering memory of the world as a child experiences it.
  17. CQ
    CQ has a modicum of IQ and a dash of style -- the jury's still out on the extent of the inheritance, but the kid clearly learned something at his pater'sknee.
  18. Thirteen Conversations About One Thing
    Smart, serious and deftly composed, New York director Jill Sprecher's jigsaw anthology film, Thirteen Conversations About One Thing, is the kind of work you want to applaud just for its ambitions.
  19. Enough
    When a movie ostensibly on a serious subject is so God-awful silly, is it impossible to be offended, or impossible not to be?
  20. Insomnia
    In the ongoing case of the fan versus the movies, the evidence suggests that a good policier is damn hard to find. So when you come across one that can boast a decent script, taut direction and a single superb performance, there's no need for prolonged deliberation.
  21. Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron
    Visually the film is a knockout. I'm not sure this will matter to the young adult audience, but the film is philosophically confusing.
  22. The Importance of Being Earnest
    Amounts to a complete misreading of Wilde, who used the conventions of artifice to lampoon artificiality. Parker totally misses the point by tacking on such cinematic curlicues -- apparently, in his eagerness to seem movie-friendly, he's too hung up on the importance of not being earnest.
  23. Late Marriage
    Up and down, Late Marriage is definitely rocky, but there's never a point where we lose interest and want out -- as relationships go, that's not bad.
  24. About a Boy
    The love that blooms is essentially between the boys. They both have some considerable growing up to do, but theirs is a true romance and it's awfully sweet. Funny, too.
  25. The Believer
    The artistry of the storytelling, the visual approach and Gosling's performance in The Believer make us believe that Danny's path was the only choice for him, a truly disturbing and fascinating revelation.
  26. Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones
    Watching Attack of the Clones is like getting rapped on the head with a rubber mallet -- no lasting damage (I pray and hope), but bad enough to bring on an acute bout of dizziness and disorientation. Definitely do not operate heavy machinery after viewing -- this behemoth is brutal.
  27. Unfaithful
    Since life's infidelities have a way of ending on a messy note, it becomes art's responsibility to impose order upon the mess, to give it an aesthetically convincing shape. And that's exactly where Lyne falls short.
  28. The New Guy
    If physical appearance creates its own class system (in high school and beyond), then Qualls is perfect for this proselytizing role. He has that rarest of movie-star faces -- one that over comes the tyranny of beauty.
  29. The Lady and the Duke
    Rohmer doesn't attempt to create any skepticism about Grace's perspective on her experiences; we are shown them as she saw them, and seeing is the real pleasure of The Lady and the Duke.
  30. The Mystic Masseur
    A mildly enjoyable if toothless adaptation of a much better book.
  31. Hollywood Ending
    More than merely stale and dated, Hollywood Ending seems lazy and careless -- the structure is loose to the point of crumbling.
  32. Spider-Man
    There's a particular upside-down, half-masked kiss that instantly becomes one of movie history's more memorable smooches. It's the kiss to send any teenaged boy on a spinning high, as well as launching the new age of arachnophilia.
  33. Sade
    Despite Auteuil's performance, it's a rather listless amble down the middle of the road, where the thematic ironies are too obvious and the sexual politics too smug.
  34. Life or Something Like It
    This is an excellent movie for watching Jolie, one of the more entertaining sidelines in recent Hollywood movie going. There are two firsts for her here: Angelina does blonde and, more importantly, Angelina does comedy.
  35. Dogtown and Z-Boys
    Highly entertaining.
  36. Jason X
    This time the action takes us out of the usual campgrounds and girls in underwear into the realm of outer space, where no one can hear you screaming "Enough already."
  37. The Salton Sea
    It uses violence as a drug, injecting it into the audience and hoping to addict it. Once the dependence is created, it is simple to feed it with formulaic films.
  38. Enigma
    The combined talents of Apted, Stoppard and the stellar cast make Enigma a puzzle worth solving.
  39. My Big Fat Greek Wedding
    With Corbett's laidback persona nicely countering Vardalos's authorial performance, the picture radiates a pure affability that's awfully attractive. My Big Fat Greek Wedding is a very slim movie that succeeds on its own modest terms without pretense or apology.
  40. The Scorpion King
    The style here is much more in the spirit of the smash and slash of the Conan movies than the banter and computer-generated monsters of the Mummy movies.
  41. Murder by Numbers
    This is the kind of film where the audience has to sort through the sequences, like visiting the green grocer's: liked that bit, can do without those.
  42. Nine Queens
    Often more ingenious in appearance than fact. The hunter-gets-captured-by-the-game scenario is predictable and the sequence of shell games does not, when reconsidered, actually add up.
  43. World Traveler
    As beautiful to look at and as emotionally disconnected as its central character.
  44. Space Station 3D
    The film is a vertiginous experience of hanging 350 kilometres above the Earth.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    The Triumph of Love
    A gorgeous, witty, seductive movie.
  46. Human Nature
    Human Nature's zigzag ingenuity wears out some time before the farce bounces slowly to an uneven conclusion. For all its highfalutin title and corkscrew narrative, the movie turns out to be not much more than a shaggy human tale.
  47. New Best Friend
    Calls itself a movie. It has words and pictures like a movie, and will appear in theatres like a movie, and will damn sure charge admission like a movie. But, truth be told, that's pretty much where the resemblance stops.
  48. Changing Lanes
    Definitely erratic, this thing -- all in all, it's the sort of commercial vehicle you might want to stay well back of.
  49. Frailty
    This is a guy movie, a gothic creepshow.
  50. The Cat's Meow
    The result is good gossip, entertainingly delivered, yet with a distinctly musty odour, its expiry date long gone.
  51. The Sweetest Thing
    Pimenthal's script consists of the scantiest storyline, framed around a succession of strained Farrelly Brothers-style gags that feel as though they were peeled off the floor of the editing room for "There's Something About Mary."
  52. Lucky Break
    Isn't quite funny enough to make it as a comedy, or touching enough to make it as a romance. It's a pleasant effort that doesn't hit any of its targets.
  53. High Crimes
    This thing's got more plot than an Alliance convention. Unfortunately (to extend the comparison), not a whole lot of it makes a lick of common sense.
  54. Big Trouble
    A feature that suffers from the rarity of its wit yet benefits from the briskness of its pace.
  55. Crush
    In the future, as recorded in the bible of British cinema, it will be written that "Four Weddings and a Funeral" begat "The Full Monty" which begat "Billy Elliot" which begat way too many pale imitations struggling to peddle the same brand of sloppy sentimentality. Amen.
  56. The Rookie
    The embodiment of the very message it so modestly conveys -- it's the accomplished little guy we fervently root for.
  57. Time Out
    Skip work to see it at the first opportunity.
  58. Death to Smoochy
    Sporadically funny, twisted for sure, it risks becoming as repetitive and shrill as the kinds of programs it satirizes.
  59. Clockstoppers
    There's a scientific law to be discerned here that producers would be well to heed: Mediocre movies start to drag as soon as the action speeds up; when the explosions start, they fall to pieces.
  60. Panic Room
    Generally makes good on its promise. There are shivers to be felt, especially in the early stages, and there's fun to be had, including the post-movie pleasure of detecting the soft spots in the plot. The result is an always-watchable picture from a director capable of more.
  61. Blade II
    Though superior to the original Blade, the superiority is mostly in the myriad ways the "suck-head" enemies can be blown up, melted and dismembered.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    Sorority Boys
    The film's putrid sexism is subverted in a series of sharp and funny scenes that at least raise Sorority Boys to the level of "American Pie."
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Son of the Bride
    What starts off as a possible Argentine "American Beauty" reeks like a room stacked with pungent flowers.
  64. Pauline and Paulette
    What a graceful movie this is.
  65. Resident Evil
    While computer games can boast an abundance of nifty graphics and odious villains and plucky protagonists on long journeys, they're invariably a tad wanting in the cinematic essentials -- you know, stuff like plot and characterization and theme.
  66. Y Tu Mamá También
    "You're so lucky to live in Mexico," Luisa says. "Look at it -- it breathes with life." So does Y Tu Mama Tambien, both the pant of passion and shuddering sigh of regret.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Showtime
    It is, from beginning to end, a paint-by-numbers movie. There's a mildly entertaining climax, but most of Showtime is a layering of tired pop-culture tropes by actors who are not especially interested in what they're doing.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Harrison's Flowers
    A bizarre and flawed movie. It serves up the 1991 siege of Vukovar with a crazed Balkan bloodthirstiness that is shocking and sickening to watch, far beyond anything usually seen in an American movie.
  69. Ice Age
    There are too many moments in Ice Age when you find yourself thinking: less bonding and fewer anti-Darwinian life-lessons please; more of that anarchist Scrat.
  70. Festival in Cannes
    Festival in Cannes is definitely Jaglomesque, but can't get that tricky balance right -- the result is a picture as charmingly insubstantial as the world it invokes.
  71. The Time Machine
    A revisiting of George Pal's 1960 adaptation of the H. G. Wells novel. Pal's take on the book was visually delightful and occasionally clever; this one is always workmanlike and mainly pedestrian.
  72. All About the Benjamins
    This is a movie fantasy, folks -- like James Bond, without the smarm and martinis.
  73. We Were Soldiers
    If the action is graphic and immediate, other aspects of the movie are inexcusably bad.
  74. 40 Days and 40 Nights
    All this holding back is a bad idea, especially as the subject of an entire movie.
  75. Stolen Summer
    You leave Stolen Summer with the feeling that you have watched acrobats stumble on a tightrope with no net below. Not a great show, but at least nobody got badly hurt.
  76. Big Bad Love
    The cast is so oddly interesting you wish you could see them doing something less wasteful
  77. Mean Machine
    Barely a chuckle in sight.
  78. Queen of the Damned
    When Queen of the Damned knows it's ridiculous, it's moderately entertaining fun; when it tries to be serious, it's truly ridiculous.
  79. Monsoon Wedding
    It's a fascinating babel, and Nair, using the unfolding ritual of the wedding as a centre point, captures the competing sights and sounds with her own unique mix of cinematic borrowings -- think Robert Altman meets Bollywood.
  80. Dragonfly
    Dragonfly has more plot than a figure-skating competition, and just about as much credibility.
  81. Hart's War
    Having seen the TV series "Hogan's Heroes," we already know that a German prisoner of war camp can be cartooned; Hart's War goes further as a cartoon that takes itself seriously.
  82. Crossroads
    Marks the emergence of a talented young actress. Not Britney -- who has the amateur's tendency to stand looking awkward after delivering her lines -- but Manning (Crazy/Beautiful), who plays Mimi with the gusto of a young Holly Hunter. Though she has little competition here, when she's on the screen she pretty much owns it.
  83. Scratch
    This engaging documentary is an excursion into the immense "art" form of hip-hop.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Super Troopers
    When Farva sees O'Hagan in civilian wear -- a denim jacket and blue jeans -- he asks his boss, "Where'd you get the Canadian tuxedo?" Such moments may not be as exciting as the sight of Homer Simpson at the CN Tower, but they'll do.
  85. John Q
    Like a tone-deaf singer at a benefit concert, John Q. is a bad movie appearing on behalf of a good cause.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    Return to Never Land
    All would be forgiven if Peter were worth believing in. Instead, the boy who wouldn't grow up comes off like a shrill, obnoxious little drip. Shrek should give him a right pounding.
  87. Collateral Damage
    Morally simple, action packed and explosive.
  88. Rollerball
    What's up with director John McTiernan? The man has got to get a career of his own -- sponging off the pale leavings of Norman Jewison just won't do.
  89. Big Fat Liar
    Big Fat Liar becomes a progression of increasingly elaborate slapstick stunts, in the brutal, noisy "Home Alone" vein, in which the complexity of the pranks rarely yields a commensurate comic reward.
  90. Birthday Girl
    Rare is the movie that arrives without fanfare -- that sneaks between the cracks, pops up relatively unheralded on the big screen, and takes the viewer by delighted surprise. Well, check the moon for blue because Birthday Girl is just such a picture.
  91. Slackers
    Before immediately handing the movie an F and sending it off to summer school, give the filmmakers, and especially co-star Jason Schwartzman, credit for their anarchic willingness to try anything to shock a laugh loose from an audience.
  92. Hey, Happy!
    An exuberant mess of a movie. You despair at the mess, at the narrative and structural chaos; and yet you delight in the director's sheer infectious energy.
  93. Storytelling
    Solondz has finally made a movie that isn't just offensive -- it also happens to be good. He's still shouting, still violating our politically correct sensibilities, but the shocks now have thematic purpose. They don't just titillate, they resonate.
  94. Maelstrom
    Like many of his (young) generation, Villeneuve is front and centre with the visual and musical language. He doesn't always hit the mark, but he is already trying for a symbolic allusiveness that is entirely beyond the reach of many filmmakers.
  95. The Son's Room
    Always perceptive and curiously light in tone if not in content -- such a remarkably delicate look at an absolutely devastating subject.
  96. Waydowntown
    Waydowntown may not be perfect, but it is perfectly astute in the target it selects and in the questions it raises.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    The Count of Monte Cristo
    The story stands up pretty well for a movie that's about 20 minutes longer than it ought to be, and has few of the action-beats that action-film audiences have grown accustomed to.
  98. Beijing Bicycle
    Beijing Bicycle is a good film that owes a huge debt to a better film. And that, of course, is Vittorio De Sica's "The Bicycle Thief."
  99. The Mothman Prophecies
    The result is a minor picture with a major identity crisis -- it's sort of true and it's sort of bogus and it's ho-hum all the way through.
  100. Metropolis
    May not have the most sophisticated narrative, but it is one of the most spectacular and masterly demonstrations of animation in screen history.
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