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 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. Straw Dogs
    The film has one sly, ominous touch Peckinpah would have liked. David is writing a script on the defence of Stalingrad, a battle that swallowed two million lives. Otherwise, the new version is a vigilante action film bereft of subtlety or restraint.
  2. Buck Rogers in the 25th Century
    The kind of schlock that is impervious to criticism. Take it seriously and you look like a fool; evaluate it on its own comic-strip terms and you are reduced to talking about costumes and special effects. [04 Apr 1979]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  3. The Tomorrow War
    It is a fool’s errand to imagine what someone like Verhoeven would have done with The Tomorrow War’s material – this is a movie made for the express purposes of delivering some lazy woo-hoo summer fun, not any kind of sneaky subversiveness.
  4. The Singing Detective
    At one point, Downey's character is asked, "What are you gonna do with all this rage, this hate?" and he snaps back, "I'll probably just write serious literature." On TV, where the material seemed both serious and literate, that bit of black humour felt prophetic. On film, it's just a good joke.
  5. Ayurveda: Art of Being
    Although filmmaker Pan Nalin is a believer in Ayurveda,there is little in the film to convince anybody else.
  6. Mona Lisa Smile
    First things first: As one of my wise editors noted, no person who can flash as many teeth as Julia Roberts should ever star in a movie called Mona Lisa Smile.
  7. Club Dread
    A splatter of scenes that relocate the funny-bone in the lower anatomical regions -- sometimes hitting the mark, occasionally a glancing blow, often missing completely.
  8. American Assassin
    This movie is not just badly executed, it's also stupid.
  9. Evening
    The characters, full of blue-blood archness and angst, are partial to self-conscious speechifying.
  10. Takers
    The new heist movie Takers is surprisingly okay.
  11. The Son
    The Son is a film that is very cruel to its characters, and by extension to its long-suffering audience.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Pretty Persuasion
    It is also extremely well-written in the fearless way of a smarty pants on a roll in the university cafeteria.
  13. Whatever Works
    As Whatever Works creaks along, the attention-getting nastiness of the first half dissipates and it turns into just another Woody Allen overacted sex farce. Of all the insults hurled about in the film, perhaps the worst is its pandering conclusion. What exactly does Allen take his audience for? A bunch of mindless zombies?
  14. Hoodwinked!
    What big ambitions you have, Grandma. And what a disappointingly modest follow-through.
  15. Extraordinary Measures
    Best when Fraser is on screen. Ian McKellen, who starred with Fraser in "Gods and Monsters," called him the most natural actor he'd worked with, marvelling at Fraser's ability to disappear into roles.
  16. Uncharted
    There is something perversely impressive about a movie that can make globe-trotting adventure seem so relentlessly boring.
  17. Into the Blue
    Stockwell takes an especially leaden screenplay, floats the dull thing up from the depths of mediocrity, and makes it cinematically buoyant. Within limits, that is.
  18. 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.
  19. How to Deal
    Just the umpteenth replay of the girl-meets-boy/boy-loses-girl/boy-gets-girl story.
  20. What the Bleep!?: Down the Rabbit Hole
    In short, it's much fatter with less matter and a distressing shrinkage in thought.
  21. That Was Then... This Is Now
    Says the audience: "Howcum they make movies like this?" [9 Nov 1985]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  22. Boomerang
    Occasionally, Murphy cuts loose with an ad-libbed riff that's almost funny, but then it's back to the slim-fast plot and the stick-on crudities. [03 Jul 1992]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  23. The Invasion
    Haven't they created a movie that is ultimately a soulless clone of a vibrant original and, thus, a splendidly dull example of the very forces it warns us against – the forces of grey and passion-sapping conformity.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?
    Exasperating and goofy documentary.
  25. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
    Like its predecessor, this is a basic bungalow of a flick, where low-maintenance superheroes take their ease and you can pay your (dis)respects painlessly enough. In short, okay to visit, wouldn't want to live there.
  26. Justice League
    No, there's no shortage of interesting characters with intriguing powers on display here, but there's frustratingly little space to tell their individual stories and, biggest problem of all, they lack a worthy opponent.
  27. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1
    It's the most jumbled and tonally confused movie yet.
  28. Get Rich or Die Tryin'
    Hard-working to a fault, this is a movie that's all effort and no direction, a movie completely lacking in what its hero eventually finds -- a sense of identity.
  29. Firewall
    Overall, it's a satisfying example of the classic thriller, with a nifty digital update for these times.
  30. Mr. Brooks
    If plots were people, this obese thing would be cuing up for liposuction. Mr. Brooks may well boast the greediest yarn in the annals of filmdom. One serial killer just doesn't cut it – no fewer than four, actual and potential, pack these frames.
  31. The Deep End of the Ocean
    The verdict is easy: Pfeiffer terrific, movie not.
  32. Maid in Manhattan
    J-Lo, Ralph-Lower, Movie-Subterranean.
  33. Love Me If You Dare
    Apparently, the idea of their passion is enough to save them from a life of boredom - if only it had the same happy effect on us.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Valiant
    Valiant is weak tea next to the best of Pixar and DreamWorks.
  35. 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.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    The Possession
    The film is basically a compendium of possessed-child clichés.
  37. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
    Judi Dench is much more of a challenge. Drenched in powder and pomp, the grand old Dame pops up in a London carriage. She's there in a flash and then, as quickly, gone, and her fleeting presence is exactly like the fleeting merit of this fourth galleon in the portly franchise: It prompts stirrings, not quite all the way to feelings.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Damien: Omen II
    Don Taylor, a director who specializes in sequels and imitations dutifully puts image to celluloid without distinction. [10 June 1978]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  39. A Minecraft Movie
    If Minecraft is the game where kids exercise their creativity by building new digital worlds full of tunnels and fortresses, A Minecraft Movie is where that creativity goes to die.
  40. The Paperboy
    The Paperboy is southern Gothic wallowing in the swamp of low camp. And if the wallowing were deliberate, this might have been hugely funny.
  41. Unforgettable
    Unforgettable presents a surprisingly conservative view of mental illness, one that would feel more at home in the pearl-clutching milieu of Leave it to Beaver rather than modern day SoCal.
  42. JeruZalem
    The filmmakers score half a point for at least avoiding the old “hero-who’s-constantly-filming” device, but fail to add anything else to the proceedings, except, perhaps, the movie’s unique setting.
  43. Click
    The only effect is to produce that most commonplace of Hollywood paradoxes -- a mood simultaneously frantic and listless.
  44. Blindness
    It's more like a filmed allegory.
  45. The Leisure Seeker
    Sometimes an outsider’s perspective is a breath of fresh air. In this one, you feel the director holding his nose.
  46. Elizabeth: The Golden Age
    A shrill and silly affair, bordering at times on camp.
  47. Pride and Glory
    A talented cast and moments of brutal violence can't dislodge a sense of ho-hum predictability in Pride and Glory.
  48. Sweet Home Alabama
    Light to the point of disposability, Sweet Home Alabama is a small screwball comic idea that spins out far too long.
  49. Madame
    The so-so film’s soul and saving grace is Rossy de Palma, the Picasso-esque muse of filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar, who steals the show and, as the family maid, the heart of a British art dealer.
  50. Jefferson in Paris
    Jefferson in Paris isn't merely wooden; it's concrete. Nor is it simply bad; the thing is astonishingly bad. Sure looks pretty though. [08 Apr 1995]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  51. A Liar's Autobiography - The Untrue Story of Monty Python's Graham Chapman
    The film only really has a pulse when it switches to live action in a few brief archival snippets, most memorably in John Cleese's appropriately outrageous eulogy for his late friend, an offering in the name of "anything for him, but mindless good taste."
  52. Upside Down
    Upside Down is no more than one big-budget, gussied-up fairy tale – a topsy-turvy Romeo and Juliet.
  53. Taken 2
    Just a mediocre action franchise with a solid actor at the head and a travelogue in its heart.
  54. Our House
    A so-so remake of the low-budget 2010 film "Ghost from the Machine" that comes off as run-of-the-mill paranormal thriller. No electricity, one might say.
  55. It Takes Two
    The movie is a competent formula kid flick stuffed to the dimples with movie deja vu, a sop to those Hollywood-bashing politicians who want old-fashioned family values on their celluloid. [17 Nov 1995]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    • 45 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Wonder Park
    While Wonder Park starts sweet and shallow, it develops into something more robust. Sometimes it’s a bit too precious, and despite its attempts at comedy, it isn’t all that funny. But as a nuanced young character, June is a refreshing creation. She shines through the glittering theme park.
  57. The Distinguished Gentleman
    The Distinguished Gentleman isn't - distinguished, that is - but it's a notable cut above Eddie Murphy's recent ventures. [04 Dec 1992]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  58. Step Up 3-D
    The third instalment of the Step Up dance-romance franchise shifts the action from Baltimore to New York, adds a D to the 3 and invades your space with bubbles, balloons and a whole lotta breakin'.
  59. Alien Nation
    Alien Nation lives out precisely the fate of the alien nation it depicts - both full of potential, both hoping to please, and both immediately co-opted, enslaved by the same commercial forces that granted their release. [12 Oct 1988]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  60. Hall Pass
    Wisdom lies in taking a pass on Hall Pass, but bravery demands something else, something far more instructive: Watch it, every vacuous frame, if only to measure the precise aesthetic distance from blessing to curse.
    • 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.
  62. Sydney White
    For all these references to the fairytale, Sydney White soon takes an easier path, recycling familiar "Mean Girls" and "Revenge of the Nerds" scenarios.
  63. I Love You to Death
    Based on an allegedly true story, this is a dark comedy that begins with a charmingly light touch.... Alas, it's when the tale stays murderous, amateur night dragging into amateur day, that the picture loses both its energy and its edge. [09 Apr 1990]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  64. Prom Night
    A slow-moving but otherwise efficient Canadian B-movie that gives the audience what it came for: blood and guts (the title, coincidentally, of Lynch's previous film). It is similar but inferior to Carrie, Halloween and When a Stranger Calls; it is similar but superior to Friday the 13th. [17 Sep 1980]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  65. Flower
    Everyone here is simply a mismanaged thing to be moved around an isn’t-that-shocking storyboard as needed.
  66. The Statement
    Never comes together as a persuasive whole. Instead of moral complexity, we get an overfamiliar pursuit tale and investigation story. Worse, the movie fails the first test of a thriller: It lacks any significant suspense.
  67. Home Fries
    A twisted, but not particularly clever, black comedy.
  68. Elizabethtown
    It's obvious now that the cinematic junk routinely released every Friday can be safely categorized as a mere failure. But this alleged comedy is a whole other species entirely. This is a bona fide, absolute, unmitigated fiasco.
  69. The Prodigy
    Another stroke of casting fortune was landing Scott as the disturbing Miles. I hesitate to applaud any business decision that encourages a kid to channel the spirit of a rapist and murderer, but the young actor accomplishes what I can only assume The Prodigy set out to do: make you reconsider parenthood, and just how much paprika you should stock.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Legend of Billie Jean
    The Legend of Billie Jean is a ridiculous caper that borrows a snippet of the sublime only to make itself more ridiculous. [20 July 1985]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  71. The 15:17 to Paris
    The 15:17 To Paris, like "Sully," "American Sniper" and (to a lesser extent) "Gran Torino" before it, combines such conceptions of late style: both harmonious and intransigent, resolute and difficult, defined by lively contradiction.
  72. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
    Steers can compose and capture a shot fine enough, but seems otherwise bored to be here. Each of his scenes collide lazily against the next; transitions are rushed and often ugly, and the director never seems to know what emotions he should be steering his cast toward.
  73. Surrogates
    The questions the movie raises have less to do with science than movie execution: Do the actors sound so robotic because they are playing robots well or humans badly? And did a machine write this dialogue? If so, could we please apply for an upgrade?
    • 45 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    The Running Man
    You don't expect much from an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, of course: lots of combat - high-tech and/or hand-to-hand - a skeletal plot upon which to hang shots of the most admired pecs in Hollywood, and costumes that don't cover the pecs. But The Running Man, it must be reported, does not meet even these unexacting standards. [16 Nov 1987]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  75. Fanboys
    Turns out a movie about an infatuated bunch of Star Wars nerds can really set your teeth on edge.
  76. The Rhythm Section
    It is fun, though, to spot the differences a female director brings to the genre.
  77. The Burning Plain
    It's possible to admire the performances of stars Charlize Theron and Kim Basinger in The Burning Plain , even as you backpedal from the film, hoping the ponderous megasoap will just go away.
  78. She-Devil
    Seidelman isn't that exclusive - any cliche will do, the cruder the better. [8 Dec 1989]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  79. Mayday
    The coolest-looking movie of the year is surprisingly lame.
  80. Snatched
    Snatched piles bad ideas on good ideas and lame bits of gross-out humour on genuinely funny bits of character work, without ever building enough dramatic force or comic energy to craft a full movie from the results.
  81. The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra
    The Lost Skeleton also reminds you that real filmmaking -- the illusion of one event following another -- is actually a skill.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Meet the Browns
    Perry's methods are never subtle, but no contemporary filmmaker works harder to make sure ribs are tickled and tears are jerked.
  83. Full Frontal
    Despite (or maybe because of) its showy cleverness, Full Frontal merely seems full of itself -- it's a small film made by a big ego pretending to a modesty he no longer feels.
  84. EuroTrip
    But Eurotrip has no provocative central characters, an absolute must for a gross-out teen comedy. As their names suggest, Scott, Coop, Jenny and Jamie are wusses. "Animal House"'s Bluto Blutarsky would've swallowed them whole without belching.
  85. Kicking & Screaming
    Luckily for the viewer, Ferrell is an irresistible presence. His occasional moments of unwarranted weirdness are the only thing that makes this otherwise pedestrian movie bearable (let alone interesting) to watch.
  86. 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.
  87. Ghostbusters: Afterlife
    This is a movie that is one giant Easter Egg, cracked and rotten and sulphurous in its stink.
  88. Outside the Wire
    Hafstrom’s feature might be fine background noise to fold your laundry to. But there is also a very real danger that the film’s sloppy plotting and watered down set-pieces might also make you so disoriented and frustrated that your socks will end up in mismatched little balls.
  89. Smokin' Aces
    Twitchy, messy and uneven, it's an action flick that just won't shut up. The movie is somewhat saved by a smattering of wacky minor characters and humorous bits of non-essential business, but they certainly don't add up to a satisfying experience.
  90. Mean Machine
    Barely a chuckle in sight.
  91. Indecent Proposal
    With some movies, though, it's just the opposite. Like this one. It's a whole lot easier to forget than to forgive.
  92. Red Joan
    Young Joan is played by Sophie Cookson, magnetic in the role. Dench is underused, though. The film’s suspense is waiting on the world-class actress to bust out some chops. It never happens. The spy who bored me, rather.
  93. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me
    A two- hour-plus surrealistic bummer - it makes the audience feel as if it is coming down from a virulent drug. (The pacing, the images, the music and the endemic menace recall clinical descriptions of cocaine-induced paranoia.)...A disgusting, misanthropic movie.
  94. Angel Has Fallen
    There’s no thrill to this thriller. Nor is there nuance to the characters.
  95. The Lonely Guy
    Mostly I laughed at the idea that Steve Martin could ever understand what it means to be a lonely guy, and that Arthur Hiller, who directed this, or Neil Simon, who adapted it, or Ed Weinberger and Stan Daniels, who wrote it, could ever understand what it means to be a lonely guy. [28 Jan 1984]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  96. Stella
    The bad news is that Stella is an unintentionally hilarious mess, handily summed up by what Haskell sees as "the lowest level" of the woman's film - "(It) fills a masturbatory need, it is soft-core emotional porn for the frustrated housewife. [2 Feb 1990]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  97. Country Strong
    Country Strong has a pleasant soundtrack of conservative country music, many of the tunes newly written for the movie, some of them performed by old pros and some of them performed by the cast.
  98. Rampage
    The plot is cursory, the dialogue is repetitive and the psychology is cheap. Hanging in for the wanton violence may prove too much for anyone not seriously addicted to the guilty pleasures of cheesy sci-fi.
  99. The Outsiders
    This is an honestly moving, ungainly film. [25 Mar 1983]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  100. The Expendables
    Still, what makes Sly's new film fascinating is that, 35 years after he created and starred in the ultimate little-boy fantasy, "Rocky," Stallone remains such a guileless, big-dreaming innocent.
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