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. The Survivor
    It’s a long film, and the payoff might not be enough for some. But as a moody story about moral dilemmas and moving beyond the past, The Survivor outlasts its 129 minutes.
  2. The Good House
    If you can ignore an ending ripped straight from the AA playbook, there’s minor fun to be had along the way.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Best Sellers
    Clichés abound and you think you know where this is going. But in her feature debut, Canadian director Lina Roessler manages some genuine surprises. Caine is wonderful, Plaza is charming. The film has its moments, but one for the books this ain’t.
  4. Blue Bayou
    The film lays emotions on thick, with strong performances and dreamy cinematography. The high points are devastating and show off Chon’s empathetic storytelling. But at its ebb, the film tries to do too much at once, spilling every which way.
  5. Prisoners of the Ghostland
    It is an overstuffed, manic, exhausting piece of instant movie-meme catnip – likely impenetrable to all but the hardest of hardcore genre devotees.
  6. Cry Macho
    On the one hand, you gotta give it to the man. He’s got grit. But surely, there are other cowboys whose stories are just as worth telling.
  7. Drunken Birds
    A melodrama split, then cross-connecting, into three separate parts, Drunken Birds is a startling thing that just narrowly avoids whiffing the landing.
  8. Charlotte
    Sometimes, the animators find an expressive style to match difficult content – a suicide, a mercy killing and several sex scenes – and sometimes they just make the images of Salomon and the refugee with whom she falls in love seem leaden in comparison to the artist’s sprightly line.
  9. Bergman Island
    While the film first regales us in sightseeing tours of the scenic Faro Island, the film ends in an unexpected wallop of heartbreak as Chris begins to describe the film-within-a-film she’s writing in her notebook to her unattentive partner.
  10. The Humans
    The writer’s adage that the specific is universal comes fully alive in this family drama, written and directed by Stephen Karam, based on his Tony-winning play.
  11. The Starling
    Kline and McCarthy are lovely in their few scenes together (they’re the reason for that extra half-star) and for those brief moments, you see the film the actors thought they were making.
  12. The Desperate Hour
    The chance to say something new or revealing about school shooters is squandered, and all the urgent reality runs out.
  13. Spencer
    Spencer works best when Princess Diana gets to be wickedly alive – playing a game with her sons, joking with Hawkins on the beach. When Stewart is given permission to play a person, not a dynasty, she offers up some of her best work yet.
  14. Last Night in Soho
    Though visually sumptuous and a bunch of fun early on, Edgar Wright’s take on sixties and seventies horror eventually devolves into unsatisfying spoof.
  15. Terrorizers
    The excellent cast (Moon Lee, Annie Chen, JC Lin, Pipi Yao, Ding Ning) inhabits rich inner lives, although the love hexagon they find themselves in could be comically described as the “man looking at other woman” meme writ large.
  16. Montana Story
    Thanks to the specificity of Richardson’s performance in particular and Giles Nuttgen’s gorgeous cinematography (the movie is shot on 35 mm), Montana Story evokes a grandiose style of American frontier filmmaking, somewhere between John Ford and Kelly Reichardt. See it on the largest screen you can find.
  17. Are You Lonesome Tonight?
    The story is running a bit thin by the end, yet the almost comic character of the investigative detective is underused. Still, the unlikely presence of Guangzhou, steamy by day, gritty by night, and the shifting viewpoints on the accident add an engaging originality.
  18. Benediction
    The dialogue is quietly scathing, and the production values are sumptuous. But Davies seems most interested in Sassoon as a symbol of hemmed-in Englishness. As a character, he remains poetically opaque.
  19. The Mad Women's Ball
    Laurent is determined in mapping the depiction of the patriarchal violence endured under both the supposition of scientific method as well as the social order of the world outside of the institution; however, the film struggles to keep a similar pace and substance within its story world.
  20. The Eyes of Tammy Faye
    The director, Michael Showalter (The Big Sick), and the screenwriters Abe Sylvia, along with Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato who made the 2000 documentary of the same name, either can’t or don’t want to confine themselves to a consistent tone.
  21. All My Puny Sorrows
    An icy Sarah Gadon can’t plumb it, offering a quietly mannered performance where a beautifully furrowed brow and occasional tear suggest the character cares more about looking elegant than dying. Thankfully, in the warmer roles of Yoli and her resilient Mennonite mother, Alison Pill and Mare Winningham do find the big broken heart at the core of this story.
  22. The Gravedigger's Wife
    Not precious, but humanist, The Gravedigger’s Wife is a striking first from a filmmaker and cast we should hope to see more of.
  23. The Guilty
    Fuqua is reliable in his continued ability to craft tense and measured films for broad audiences looking for complicated tales of morality.
  24. The Card Counter
    There is an urgency to these stylistic choices which ask us how we might best realize, through image and sound, both the memory and feeling of violence, of hope, of salvation for the damned. As in life, the grotesque and the beautiful exist concurrently and are each given fair weight.
  25. Kate
    It’s a shame that both Umair Aleem’s script and Cedric Nicolas-Troyan’s (The Huntsman: Winter’s War) direction ultimately feel rote because both Winstead and Martineau’s performances are fun to watch. Their playful, natural chemistry keeps the film from dragging on and lends a necessary levity and wit to the movie’s 106 minutes.
  26. Dear Evan Hansen
    The songs are clever; the actors dig in (especially Amy Adams and Julianne Moore as Connor and Evan’s moms, respectively). And Ben Platt’s voice is undeniable, a thing of wonder, a pure emotion-delivery system. You will be moved.
  27. Flee
    Amin’s story is given life and depth, charted here with a care for his wholeness rather than too simply his refugee status.
  28. Huda's Salon
    Although the film doesn’t fully deliver on the political-thriller element, it asks some powerful questions: How does violence become intimate, blurring the line of morals and ethics?
  29. Compartment No. 6
    Russia’s stark landscape makes for breathtaking and sometimes comical scenes. This is a trip well worth taking.
  30. Dug Dug
    Dug Dug is cleverly crafted, with its sharp edits and evocative sound design lending some bite to the satire. When the truth is revealed at the end, it’s stranger than fiction.
  31. Attica
    The racial context is incisive; the retelling is tense, tight and chilling. These kinds of stories are emotionally wrenching to watch but can’t be told too often.
  32. The Power of the Dog
    There is exquisite dramatic tension here, built partly by Campion’s deft storytelling and partly by her powerful cast.
  33. One Second
    Billed by the director as his tribute to cinema, One Second is affectionate and sweet – perhaps a bit too sweet, considering this premiere was much delayed after the film was held back by the Chinese government for supposed technical reasons in 2019.
  34. 7 Prisoners
    This could have been a thriller, but thrills are cheap and Moratto aims for something more documentative, sombre and meditative. It’s about paying debts and the illusionary concept of freedom.
  35. Learn to Swim
    Just like a jazz tune, the film establishes an image, elaborates on it and brings it back to a more-or-less satisfying close.
  36. Ste. Anne
    A highly abstract look at family, memory and regret, all filtered through the reality of daily life in the Métis Nation, Ste. Anne makes a big impression.
  37. Night Raiders
    With Night Raiders, Goulet can confidently claim to be today’s most effective practitioner of Indigenous sci-fi, a subgenre in which time-tested cinematic thrills – speculative fiction, violence, a heightened sense of style – act as Trojan Horses for themes that audiences might otherwise ignore. Everyone wins.
  38. Petite Maman
    Quiet and reverent, as if filmed entirely in hushed tones, Sciamma’s film is supremely confident in its every element.
  39. Violet
    Munn’s exquisitely readable face, which cycles through emotional states with delicate flickers, is Bateman’s strongest asset. Her weakest is her storytelling.
  40. Aloners
    Aloners manages to delicately infuse what otherwise seems like a slice-of-life drama with shots of mystery that keep us invested in Yu Jin’s otherwise humdrum life.
  41. The Electrical Life of Louis Wain
    Cumberbatch excels once again at breathing life into a sorrowful genius.
  42. I'm Your Man
    Director Maria Schrader’s new sci-fi-tinged rom-com might be conventionally structured, but it is also smoothly crowd-pleasing work, tackling all the anxieties and neuroses of midlife romance with the fears and promises of next-generation technology.
  43. A Night of Knowing Nothing
    Right from its opening frame, there’s a lyrical, dreamlike quality to Payal Kapadia’s debut feature.
  44. Memoria
    It’s a beautiful work of cinematic concentration that’s purely Apichatpong.
  45. Silent Land
    The director’s larger point is deployed with such subtlety that it creeps up on the viewer with devastating force.
  46. The Middle Man
    The Middle Man is an understated gem.
  47. Paka (River of Blood)
    Within India’s multilingual cinematic universe, Malayalam cinema has long established its own narrative. Despite its occasional disjointedness, Nithin Lukose’s debut feature is a worthy addition to that tradition.
  48. Ali & Ava
    A quiet study of its characters, Ali & Ava is a fresh take on otherwise well-worn rom-com narratives.
  49. Whether the Weather Is Fine
    With great humour and heartbreak, Whether the Weather is Fine is the kind of film intrepid cinephiles long to discover at TIFF.
  50. The Devil's Drivers
    Although the most dramatic events in the film tend to happen off screen, both men endure jail time, devastation of their property and familial heartbreak for participating in such a high-risk, high-reward career.
  51. Dionne Warwick: Don't Make Me Over
    If you see Dionne Warwick as the greatest-ever interpreter of the music of lyricist Hal David and composer Burt Bacharach, you wouldn’t be wrong. There’s more to her story, however, as shown by this lively, contextual bio-doc.
  52. Wildhood
    Filmed in Nova Scotia and featuring both English and Mi’kmaw, Wildhood beautifully captures the beauty of the landscape and its community as well as moments of humour, even as it treads some bleak spaces.
  53. The Odd-Job Men
    The laughs and the wisdom creep up on you in this small and subtle comedy about male relationships.
  54. Listening to Kenny G
    Even if you’d rather die than be trapped in a broken elevator with endless Kenny G music, Lane’s excellent accomplishment is making 97 minutes about the musician so much smart fun.
  55. Jagged
    Alison Klayman’s documentary about the making of Jagged Little Pill should be as raw as its source material, but plays it incredibly safe instead.
  56. Oscar Peterson: Black + White
    With his elegant bio-doc Oscar Peterson: Black + White, director Barry Avrich discreetly (perhaps too discreetly) sniffs around the question of Peterson’s legacy and whether he truly received the respect he deserved in his lifetime.
  57. 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.
  58. Maria Chapdelaine
    Today’s YA generation is unlikely to appreciate the monosyllabic performances and stately pace, but Pilote delivers a beautiful film in the tradition of the Quebec canon.
  59. Quickening
    To use the parlance of young people these days, Quickening is a mood.
  60. The Worst Person in the World
    Trier has an incredible ear for dialogue and can observe the pitiful drama of a millennial breakup like no other.
  61. Mogul Mowgli
    Using Toba Tek Singh as a recurring narrative device is sublime, for those who understand the reference and the burden it carries.
  62. 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.
  63. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
    Shang-Chi is a first, but it’s firstly fun to watch.
  64. Candyman
    In its attempts to revisit the original film’s discrepancies, DaCosta’s film ends up only retracing its narrative inconsistencies with full force and even deeper perplexity. Gone is the alluring entanglement of erotics and fright, replaced here by flat characters limply stumbling over a script intent on hitting us over the head with its social commentary.
  65. Vacation Friends
    Vacation Friends could’ve been the fun, lackadaisical resort comedy it wants to be. Our ensemble has considerable chemistry and are all charismatic performers in their own right. It’s fun to watch Cena in goading jock mode, until Howery jumps off a cliff with his glasses still on. Unfortunately, Tarver’s film soon veers hard on its cinematic jet skis, and falls flat on its face.
  66. He's All That
    Despite some clever, winking nods to the original, including appearances by Cook herself and Matthew Lillard, He’s All That fails to deliver on what She’s All That did so well: a sweet, lighthearted romance that hinges on the chemistry between its two leads.
  67. The Hidden Life of Trees
    Based on the 2015 book of the same title, The Hidden Life of Trees is a documentary both simple and startling.
  68. The Lost Leonardo
    Whatever the experts say, any viewer can observe the large gap between the damaged original and the perfect restoration. Perhaps the only definitive thing one can say about the most expensive painting in the world is that, regardless of who painted it in the 16th century, it is a creature of the 21st.
  69. Misha and the Wolves
    Misha and the Wolves is as much a documentary as it is a wrestling match: filmmaker versus subject, truth versus fiction. Ultimately, the viewer comes out the winner.
  70. Cryptozoo
    There is a certain charm to Shaw’s deadpan comedy – and I genuinely appreciated what I can only assume was an intentional callback to Michael Cera’s fate in 2013′s This Is the End – but one visit to the Cryptozoo was enough for me.
  71. The Truffle Hunters
    By focusing on the old men and their dogs who spend their time in the woods of Northern Italy searching for the prized fungus, Dweck and Kershaw operate on a level of gentle, removed observation.
  72. I Carry You with Me
    While the film is tonally incongruous and confusing at points, Ivan and Gerardo’s powerful love story has such high stakes, you can’t help but swoon.
  73. Demonic
    Unfortunately, Demonic often lacks the substance and energy needed to back up its narrative originality and hybrid genre form. While it is refreshing to see the groundedness with which the director approaches his newest project, his larger-than-life ideas still seem to have trouble finding their exact footing.
  74. The Night House
    It’s elegantly filmed and well constructed, building to a haunting climatic sequence that could sear your eyeballs.
  75. The Protégé
    As for who’s the cat and who’s the mouse, that’s easy: Filmmaker Campbell is the former and we’re the latter. The Protégé plays with its viewers – if one is up for the game, there are worse ways to spend 109 minutes.
  76. Reminiscence
    For a film about memories, Reminiscence is ultimately truly forgettable.
  77. PAW Patrol: The Movie
    We’re still a long, long way from the heights of animation titan Pixar. But you (parents, that is, not whichever five-year-old might have a Globe subscription) might also put your phone down for a stretch to see just what’s happening on-screen. At the very least, you’ll see which toys you’ll soon have to buy. Yelp!
  78. Beckett
    Despite its shortcomings, Beckett manages to be a semi-effective thriller, with Washington holding enough attention to get the audience to root for his titular protagonist, but the lack of character development means viewers are never fully invested in his story.
  79. Swan Song
    It’s quite a film Stephens has made.
  80. CODA
    There isn’t enough raw drama, deep-felt emotion, or genuine artistry on display here to keep CODA from staring down its own obligatory end: a half-smile and a shrug.
  81. Dream Horse
    This is a small, sentimental and straightforward film that offers little in the way of surprises. Instead, it wins on heart and a simple message about the value in fighting to keep one’s dreams alive.
  82. Vivo
    It’s glorious in some parts, stretches out your willingness to suspend disbelief in others. Nevertheless, a movie that leaves you with a Missy Elliott style grrrl power anthem as an earworm is totally worth a lazy summer afternoon sprawled in front of your TV – as you make mental notes to sign up your kids for musical theatre classes the minute you’re allowed.
  83. 12 Mighty Orphans
    With its old-fashioned look, quaint unsophistication and self-consciously big heart, this film is Hoosiers meets The Longest Yard, with an Oliver Twist.
  84. Annette
    Annette’s failure to ignite is especially frustrating because, not infrequently, Carax delivers images and moments that verge on the indelible.
  85. Free Guy
    Free Guy is here, it repeatedly reminds us, to have a good time, not a long-franchise time. But there is something so overwhelmingly corporate and safe about the thing that you can see the glimmer of a brand-new cinematic universe in every twinkle of Reynolds’ dreamy hazel eyes.
  86. The Exchange
    The Exchange flips the script – and it’s funny, because it’s true.
  87. The Suicide Squad
    The most derivative but finely tuned of superhero movies to come out in ages.
  88. Jungle Cruise
    Jungle Cruise taps into a type of thrill-ride nostalgia that feels algorithmically created. Everything about the film is just right, from its charismatic stars to its jungle hijinks to its heart-to-heart chemistry between Lily and Skipper – all of it only slightly updated for a 2021 crowd.
  89. The Green Knight
    The power of Lowery’s work here is to filter his many influences into a singular vision that feels entirely in his sole possession.
  90. Stillwater
    It is at once highly watchable and baffling.
  91. Jolt
    Jolt is a perplexing mix-up of genre and intentions. From one scene to the next, I had no real understanding of where the film might go next – but instead of anticipating the unpredictable, I came to quickly dread the arbitrariness.
  92. Old
    The movie, and I don’t think I’m over- or under-selling this, is pure chaos. From its rib-poking opening to its magnificently messy conclusion, Old is a feverishly earnest look at mortality, responsibility and, um, well … I wish that I could explain just what I think Shyamalan is getting at in his final 15 minutes
  93. Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins
    Watching Snake Eyes (full title: Snake Eyes – G.I. Joe Origins) is not a physically painful ordeal. But it is an emotionally harmful one – a soul-deadening exercise that approximates satire, minus the self-awareness.
  94. Pig
    Director Michael Sarnoski’s feature debut is more like a Nicolas Cage supercut: alternately ridiculous, bare-bones, heartfelt, puzzling and what-in-god’s-name-y. And more often than not, it works.
  95. Fear Street Part Three: 1666
    Ultimately, Fear Street is a shiny and expensive super-cut of callbacks and needle-drops. It is cool but empty horror worship.
  96. Space Jam: A New Legacy
    The corporate-synergy-ness of it all is both deeply distressing and unintentionally fascinating.
  97. Gunpowder Milkshake
    This is regurgitated shoot-’em-up nothingness fetishistically dressed in the cosplay of equality. The women are not characters to care about, but props to kill and be killed.
  98. Bone Cage
    If Olson and his game cast weren’t so determined to shade their characters with delicate, sometimes tremendous layers of humanity, Bone Cage’s fatalism might be impossible to digest.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Black Conflux
    It is rare for a first feature to be so well directed, thoughtful and entertaining.
  100. The Sparks Brothers
    The film is too long for the non-enthusiast. And we don’t learn much about the brothers’ personal lives – it’s as if they exist for the band and nothing else. But even if the music isn’t your thing, it’s hard not to admire the duo’s commitment to their creative impulses.
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