The Globe and Mail (Toronto)'s Scores

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For 7,293 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: 4,350 out of 7293
  2. Mixed: 1,827 out of 7293
  3. Negative: 1,116 out of 7293
7293 movie reviews
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    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Knowing
    A catalogue of made-in-America delusions, hallucinations and cosmic catastrophes that draws on environmental fear-mongering in one reel and evangelical lore the next.
  2. Journey 2: The Mysterious Island
    Yes, The Mysterious Island is everything a 12-year-old boy could want – endless adventure involving a reckless adolescent hero, with a pretty girl in a clinging T-shirt around to watch him struggle.
  3. Beverly Hills Chihuahua
    Barrymore's charm helps make Beverly Hills Chihuahua a congenial family outing.
  4. Larry Crowne
    Next semester, the stars should drop Speech 217 and enroll in Chemistry 101 – they dearly need some.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    For Keeps?
    Nice try, spermatozoa. You look forlornly out of place in this make- believe version of reality, where pregnancy intrudes on those well placed to cope with it, and moral issues are fudged wherever possible. [15 Jan 1988]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  6. Mad Money
    The pocketing of tired bills headed for the shredder, the producing of tired movies headed for the theatre -- it's all just recycling.
  7. What to Expect When You're Expecting
    It's a sitcom-y ensemble film (complete with product placement) that feels like you're flipping around the TV dial.
  8. Black Adam
    Johnson, who is also a producer here, having shepherded Black Adam through a decade and a half of development, gets off relatively easy. The real victim, or perhaps perpetrator, is Collet-Serra.
  9. G.I. Joe: Retaliation
    Feels like a five-year-old with a megaphone, excitedly yelling about his latest bulldozer-soldier-dinosaur smash-kill-squash-everything game.
  10. Superintelligence
    Superintelligence arrives this week as a comedy with actual charm, wit and, yes, laughs.
  11. Cinderella
    The movie is basically a sumptuous almost two-hour long music video/musical. And as we wind down the summer – looking ahead to yet more uncertainty in the fall (Variants! Elections! Just Life In General!) – it’s delightful to indulge in a flight of fantasy.
  12. Oh Heavenly Dog
    As a risque children's entertainment, it's better than a street-corner dirty joke, but it's no place for adults to hang around. [17 July 1980]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  13. Every Which Way But Loose
    Every Which Way But Loose is a fists-out-and-up Burt Reynolds movie without Burt Reynolds. I never thought I'd miss the Beverly Hills good ol' boy so much. [22 Dec 1978]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  14. Machete Kills
    It is all so intentionally ridiculous that it gets boring, and you just wait for the next big cornball revelation to momentarily jolt you awake, like Sofia Vergara strapping on her machine-gun bra, or Lady Gaga’s appearance as a hit woman. Machete kills, sure. Unfortunately, he overkills.
  15. Mallrats
    Talky, crude and sexist, Mallrats is significantly less funny, a flatulent sequel to the director's small start.
  16. TMNT
    With your sharper minds, you'll probably figure it out. I hope so. Hope you'll like the movie too. But here's a bit of advice: Don't bet your allowance on it. Make Daddy pay.
  17. Hardware
    To his credit, writer-director Richard Stanley, a South African native now living in England, brings his own bloody specialties to the banquet, and Hardware, although neither original nor especially thought-provoking, does serve its intended purpose by sending the hungry horror film fan away from the table satiated and nauseated. Compliments to the chefs. [12 Oct 1990]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Battleship
    Battleship has its moments, like the rare occasions when it nods to its origin: There's a nice eureka when we learn that evil alien ships can be outwitted, improbably, by plotting co-ordinates on a grid, à la your granddad's board game.
  19. Mambo italiano
    Patterns itself after the Greek model -- that is, more ethnic humour with a contemporary twist.
  20. Torque
    A good stupid movie: an energetic send-up of a discredited genre that does for motorcycle movies, say, what Jonathan Demme's debut, the 1974 drive-in classic, "Caged Heat," did for chicks-in-prison flicks.
  21. Home Again
    Home Again is a tight, witty script from a first-time director with a long list of hits ahead of her – and, of course, the golden age of Hollywood dynasties lighting her way.
  22. Venom: The Last Dance
    Venom: The Last Dance remains steadfast in the franchise’s commitment to storytelling that, like a pot of water that never quite hits boiling point, is neither so-bad-it’s-good nor so bad it’s raucously entertaining, even if only unintentionally so.
  23. Smokey and the Bandit II
    You don't mess with a sure thing. So Smokey and the Bandit II is carefully designed to cash in on the same box office bonanza as its namesake. The plot - about transporting an elephant to the Republican Convention - is obviously just an excuse to get this cartoon show on the road, where the cast can ham it up unashamedly.
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  24. Tango & Cash
    We're back on the buddy-cops beat again, with Stallone emerging as a Dapper Dan this time. Sporting cerebral specs topped by an immaculate coif, he gets to wear Armani suits and speak an occasional complete sentence. Sly looks fine in the duds but seems to find those sentences a bit taxing. Guess he's just out of practice. [28 Dec 1989]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  25. Little Ashes
    Anyone interested in hearing the artist's heart-to-hearts properly translated is encouraged to seek out Leonard Cohen's flamenco serenade, "Take This Waltz."
  26. Longing
    A tonally bizarre and dramatically inert feature that is so detached from baseline human emotion it might as well be the fever dream of Artificial Intelligence, the new Canadian-Israeli film Longing is the most frustrating cinematic experience of the season.
  27. The Purge
    So, fans, gear up for rock-em-sock-em action, yet don’t be disappointed if much of the goonery seems a bit tepid and, dare I say, staged.
  28. At First Sight
    Director Irwin Winkler (Night and the City)is rarely better than pedestrian in handling this story. At worst, the dramatic elements are plain clumsy.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Good Burger
    There may be something to Kenan and Kel,but you see only hints of it in this movie, which is pretty much standard-issue, French-fries-up-the-nose stuff. [26 July 1997, p.C7]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  30. Hellbound: Hellraiser II
    Clive Barker is not without a sense of humor. And he's certainly not without a sense of what will scare his audiences senseless. [28 Dec 1988]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  31. Love Wedding Repeat
    Just like the film’s half-hearted conceit, take comfort in knowing that you’ll be able to divorce yourself from the proceedings with the click of a button.
  32. Jumanji
    The terror sequences (not only animals but monsoons and earthquakes and quicksand) are scary until they get monotonous: after a while, you have a sense you're watching a clip reel from every Hollywood disaster flick ever made.
  33. Mr. Woodcock
    Who wants to watch any film where Sarandon, the sexiest 60-year-old woman alive, is first prize in a corn-eating contest?
  34. Crisis
    While the film is awful, Jarecki’s approach to filmmaking is still paint-by-numbers watchable, solely because the genre is familiar. The director has clearly watched enough movies to understand that pool halls and dive bars are good places for gangsters to hang out, that seedy deals happen in motel rooms and that a mother’s love is stronger than any other earthly force.
  35. Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel
    As shrill, partly-animated musicals about singing vermin go, Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel really isn't all that bad.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    Iron Eagle
    The vulgarity and jingoism of Iron Eagle prevent it from functioning even as breezy entertainment. [17 Jan 1986, p.C10]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  37. Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse
    At least Without Remorse gets one thing right: casting onscreen dynamo Michael B. Jordan as the out-for-blood hero.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Waterboy
    As a satire on the only true religion of the American South -- football -- The Waterboy is a delight.
  39. Agent Cody Banks
    Of course, none of the film's geopolitical subterfuge will matter a whit to Agent Cody Banks's audience: adolescent boys in need of a surrogate hero. They will respond enthusiastically to this boisterous, well-carpentered kiddy-flick.
  40. 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.
  41. Jesus Henry Christ
    Try not to be in the same room as Jesus Henry Christ. At the very least run when the first fire alarm sounds.
  42. The 9th Life of Louis Drax
    The result is an intriguing but uneven thriller that doesn’t fully establish the tone and style that would be needed for an audience to accept its supernatural plot.
  43. First Sunday
    The problems with First Sunday extend well beyond the hokey premise and predictable performances to the fundamentals of script, direction and tone.
  44. Olympus Has Fallen
    Korean-American actor and former model Yune (who played a similar role in "Die Another Day," the last Pierce Brosnan James Bond film) makes a colourful villain – handsome and insufferably assured, and also an unchivalrous sadist who kicks around the Secretary of Defense (Melissa Leo in a pageboy wig) as though she’s a hacky sack.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 12 Critic Score
    Kick-Ass 2
    Arriving at the tail end of blockbuster season, this cheaply produced sequel to the surprise 2011 hit arrives in plenty of time to claim the title of the year’s most unpleasant movie.
  46. Stay
    Stay is all dressed up with no place to go, an eye-popping exercise in lavish style unattached to any discernible content.
  47. Stage Mother
    Today, homophobia may still blight many a queen’s family relations, but Stage Mother feels dated and formulaic.
  48. Spun
    Spun is so hip it hurts.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Police Academy
    Despite the quick succession of sight gags director Hugh Wilson engineers in the film, Police Academy has it weak moments, particularly with Steve Guttenberg and Kim Cattrall in the leads. [23 Mar 1984]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  50. Village of the Damned
    His take on metaphor is painfully literal, his approach to style is hilariously Hollywood. In lieu of black-and-white realism, we're given visual shtick. [02 May 1995]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  51. Career Opportunities
    It's so much like Home Alone, it's the unofficial sequel, Home Alone II: Out on His Own. Career Opportunities shows us what happens when the Macaulay Culkin character grows up. It's not a pretty sight. [1 Apr 1991]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Drillbit Taylor
    Drillbit Taylor brings Seth Rogen's hot streak to a sudden halt.
  53. Desperados
    Maybe Rapoport’s script from way back when was fiercer, sharper, and funnier, and the sands of time have simply eroded any of its interesting edges down to mere nubs of gross-out nothingness. But watching it today on Netflix, it can’t help but feel highly algorithmic.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Dumb and Dumber
    An atrocious movie. An offensively stupid movie. A movie so witless and so crammed with bathroom humour that you will be deeply thankful for the darkness that envelops you - it lets you hide the fact (disturbing as it is) that you do laugh at the antics of Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels, in spite of yourself.
  55. Pompeii
    No doubt the audiences in the Coliseum would offer a thumbs-up to the scale of the destruction, though even they might have had some quibbles about the special effects, which, too often, resemble a very large pile of melting crayons.
  56. The Woman in the Window
    The Woman in the Window isn’t sure whether it’s a thriller, a drama, a psychological study or a slasher. Each Big Moment™ succeeds in eliciting a reaction, but that just leads to a new state of confusion. Confusion that’s spurred on by questions that aren’t answered.
  57. When the Game Stands Tall
    Jim Caviezel, as coach Ladouceur, doesn’t get much to work with, the script reducing the man to a two-dimensional motivational speaker awash in “there’s no I in Team” platitudes.
  58. Jiminy Glick in Lalawood
    The film has enough laughs to stock a 90-minute entertainment. Unfortunately it throws out enough material to fill five comedies. And most of the jokes die in silence, throwing off a flop-sweat tsunami that carries away Short's best work.
  59. Sahara
    Most of the personality work in the film is left to Steve Zahn.
  60. I Still Believe
    As far as the preaching-to-the-choir genre goes, though, I Still Believe is a far more tolerable exercise than, say, last year’s anti-abortion screed "Unplanned" or any recent movie with the word “Heaven” in the title (Heaven Is for Real, Miracles from Heaven).
  61. The Limits of Control
    Only a few events happen in this minimalist film, and most of them keep getting repeated through most of its running time.
  62. Crank: High Voltage
    The movie feels like a form of aversion therapy designed to take the fun out of dumb.
  63. Supergirl
    Supergirl is made by people who can make a woman fly halfway around the world and can't get a plot to walk around the block. [22 Dec 1984]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  64. Dune
    When Dune is not inept, confusing, ridiculous or unpleasant, it's boring. [14 Dec 1984]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  65. Passengers
    What's worse than the actual movie itself, though, is how indicative it is of modern group-think studio production.
  66. 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.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Secret Agent
    On screen, the result feels stagey and cramped, as though the film had been "adjusted for your TV set" before going to video. [13 Dec 1996]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  68. Monster Trucks
    It may not have the easy, feel-good family flick sheen to win over the box office, but it’s clever and compassionate enough to pay down a few big-ticket karmic debts.
  69. Running Scared
    Running Scared's relationship to "The Cooler" is roughly that of industrial metal to a quaint torch song.
  70. G-Force
    It's an action-comedy. It's in 3-D. There's a video-game tie-in. Throw in a fluorescent Slushie from the candy counter and your eight-year-old will be in heaven.
  71. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
    The one source of relief comes from the score -- a sampling of period ditties by the likes of the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin and Neil Young.
  72. Miss Bala
    In its entirety, Miss Bala seems to exist merely for one shot near its end: Rodriguez strutting in slow-motion across the screen while wearing an evening gown and brandishing an assault rifle. And while yes, she does look bad-ass, there’s no way in hell it makes up for the film’s preceding 90 minutes of patchy plotting and lifeless writing.
  73. Before I Go to Sleep
    Throbbing musical crescendos and flickery flashbacks abound but apart from some outlandish plot machinations, nothing here is good or bad enough to be memorable.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    Super Troopers 2
    Coming soon to a screen in hell’s multiplex is Super Troopers 2, a sequel that sets back Canadian-American relations to an 1812 level and retroactively awards an Oscar to "Porky’s II" and a Pulitzer citation to 1995’s "Canadian Bacon."
  75. Shelby Oaks
    The script, which has a “story by” credit from Stuckmann’s wife and fellow genre enthusiast Samantha Elizabeth, jumps all over the place in tone, from wild to solemn, with no real resting place in between.
  76. Mojave
    Isaac pulls a full Tom Hardy by adopting a weirdo voice, awkward mannerisms and unknown motivations in a bid to give life to a villain who is, in his own words, pure “motiveless malignancy.” It doesn’t work, nor does anything else in this so-bad-it’s-good-no-wait-still-bad mess from William Monahan.
  77. Easter Sunday
    It’s disappointing that the film takes that well-worn trope of a big family get-together and just lazily adds a Filipino layer to it.
  78. White Chicks
    White Chicks could and should be a much more mischievous movie. A half-dozen writers have managed to create a succession of thin sketches that add up to "Some Like It Warmed Over," with a touch of stink.
  79. Chappie
    A movie about a robot policeman given a childlike conscience, Chappie is one of those incongruous Franken-films that’s simultaneously bombastically brutal and treacly. Like E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial crossed with Transformers, or RoboCop starring Jar Jar Binks, it’s a recipe guaranteed to produce aesthetic indigestion.
  80. Hop
    In this Willy Wonka-like animated world where multihued candies move about on assembly lines, the constant introduction to Rube Goldberg-style devices and slapstick action grows increasingly tiresome.
  81. The Unforgivable
    Drawn, taut and nearly silent, Bullock convincingly creates a shell of wariness and self-protection, and then gradually lets it crack.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    The Quiet Ones
    With its latest, The Quiet Ones, the company continues a tired trend, choosing the trite over the terrifying. The stale tone is struck from the outset with four simple words: “Inspired by actual events.”
  83. Darling Companion
    The film sputters and stalls and winds up behaving like the worst sort of oldster – passing gas and pretending to be deep.
  84. House of Wax
    The original was shot in 3-D; this, by contrast, is 1-D all the way.
  85. Metro
    Although it always moves and rarely labours, the film truly comes alive only in those fleeting moments when it departs from the safe formula -- that is, only when Murphy draws on his personal talents to kick this baby into something resembling a higher gear. The rest of the time, well, here's the key to your Metro -- a renter with some mileage on it.
  86. The Hunted
    Friedkin has huffed and puffed and blown up a single chase sequence into the whole damn movie. You got your hunted, you got your hunter, and away they go. And go and go.
  87. Things Are Tough All Over
    With Things Are Tough All Over their once well-oiled comedy has rusted firmly into place. Now, the erstwhile darlings of the counter-culture seem about as raucously rebellious as a senescent Lucy Ricardo. [2 Aug 1982]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  88. Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie
    Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie is not the heart-warming, life-affirming, feel-good hit of the summer. Let Pocahantas and Casper provide the hugs and lessons. The Power Rangers, as usual, are on hand to kick intergalactic butt. [30 June 1995]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  89. Gangster Squad
    The irony is worth noting: Back when it was really 1949, Hollywood made noir with teeth; this is nougat with pretensions.
  90. Fatman
    For a movie about an assassin charged with killing Santa Claus (!) on the orders of a Richie Rich-like brat (!!), and starring Mel Gibson (!!!) as Kris Kringle himself, Fatman is astoundingly boring.
  91. Lethal Weapon 3
    It's better than 2, but not nearly as good as 1. On the slippery slope of sequel-land, that's an okay average. [15 May 1992]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  92. Anna
    Anna relies on a time-shifting structure that is laughably exhausting.
  93. Vantage Point
    Quaid and Whitaker, who serve more or less as the designated humans in this clockwork contraption of a film, are capable in corny roles, but otherwise Vantage Point is as stuffed with cardboard performances and expositional speeches as any seventies disaster flick.
  94. Halloween II
    When it's good, it's because it's imitating its predecessor (but it suffers from tired spilled blood) and when it's bad, it's because it's imitating its own imitators. [31 Oct 1981]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  95. Table 19
    RSVP: Decline with regret.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Fletch Lives
    Fletch Lives exists only to provide a vehicle from which Chase can crack wise, get into ridiculous situations and put on disguises. A lot of this silliness is amusing (some of it very) and not a little of it borderline tasteless.
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  97. Act of Valor
    A recruitment poster loosely disguised as a movie.
  98. The Boss
    A lazy Melissa McCarthy vehicle that relies on relentless potty-mouth moments.
  99. Eat Wheaties!
    Despite its unique premise, Eat Wheaties! is easy to embrace.
  100. Horrible Bosses 2
    Dumb, dumber, dumbest.
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