Jay Carr

Select another critic »
Boston Globe
For 1,227 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 64% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 34% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 0.7 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Jay Carr's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 66
Highest review score: 100 Husbands and Wives
Lowest review score: 0 Beaches
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 845 out of 1227
  2. Mixed: 223 out of 1227
  3. Negative: 159 out of 1227
1227 movie reviews
view
per page
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Jay Carr
    Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport
    Movingly recounts a hitherto untold story in the voices of the people who lived it.
    • Boston Globe
    • 43 Metascore
    • 63 Jay Carr
    Basic Instinct
    Paul Verhoeven's Basic Instinct is a slick, trashy, blatantly manipulative thriller that you won't stop watching once you start. [20 Mar 1992, p.25]
    • Boston Globe
    • 54 Metascore
    • 75 Jay Carr
    Rock Star
    As generic as its title, but two things enable it to land: the basic likability of Mark Wahlberg as the wannabe protagonist, and the contagious energies in the rock concert sequences.
    • Boston Globe
    • 93 Metascore
    • 88 Jay Carr
    Brother's Keeper
    Part courtroom drama, part murder mystery, part social anthropology, Brother's Keeper is nonstop fascinating. [19 Sep 1992, p.29]
    • Boston Globe
    • 76 Metascore
    • 63 Jay Carr
    Jesus' Son
    It's often a downer, with a sweet but largely passive protagonist.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Jay Carr
    Bugsy
    Just when you thought gangster movies had peaked, here's Warren Beatty in Bugsy, a film so suave, outrageous, flamboyant, knowing and above all playful that you're liable to overlook the fact that it's more loaded with American resonances than any three pop culture courses you could sign up for. [20 Dec 1991, p.53]
    • Boston Globe
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Jay Carr
    Down in the Delta
    Down in the Delta, Maya Angelou's film-directing debut, strongly establishes her ability to command emotional authenticity and fashion-rich, beautifully wrought images that tap into the stabilizing dignity of family life. [25 Dec 1998, p.C7]
    • Boston Globe
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Jay Carr
    An Angel at My Table
    Dodging the pitfalls of making a film about a writer is no small challenge, but Campion succeeds unforgettably in Angel at My Table. [14 Jun 1991, p.31]
    • Boston Globe
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Jay Carr
    The Lair of the White Worm
    The film belongs to Donohue's cool, toothy slinker, who sports instant fangs when she lures a pimply student into her bath and later shimmies deadpan out of an art nouveau urn when the snake-charming record starts its amplified grooving. [11 Nov 1988, p.61]
    • Boston Globe
    • 44 Metascore
    • 75 Jay Carr
    Plunkett & Macleane
    Scott makes it easy to overlook the conventionality beneath his sometimes overdone but almost always enjoyable combination of atmosphere and propulsiveness.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 63 Jay Carr
    Silverado
    Silverado plays like a big-budget regurgitation of old Westerns. Whatkeeps it going is the generosity that flows between Kasdan and his actors. It's got benevolent energies, but not the more primal kind needed to renew the standard Western images and archetypes. [10 Jul 1985, p.26]
    • Boston Globe
    • 57 Metascore
    • 38 Jay Carr
    The Addams Family
    Ultimately, the film's self-censoring will to sweetness and innocence is even more fatal than the flimsiness of the plot. [22 Nov 1991, p.33]
    • Boston Globe
    • 60 Metascore
    • 75 Jay Carr
    To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar
    Tone is everything here, and the film never loses the smiling poise and benevolence that help you buy its gauzy plot as the three sashay through it. Douglas Carter Beane's script is witty as well as buoyant, which is a big help. [08 Sep 1995, p.99]
    • Boston Globe
    • 58 Metascore
    • 63 Jay Carr
    Solomon & Gaenor
    It takes us nowhere we haven't been before, except geographically.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Jay Carr
    What's Cooking?
    This good-hearted but undersupplied ensemble piece is only appetizer-deep.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Jay Carr
    Erleuchtung garantiert
    Likable, go-with-the-flow comedy.
    • Boston Globe
    • 82 Metascore
    • 88 Jay Carr
    Three Kings
    You walk out amazed and refreshed by the way it kicks the assumptions out from under the genre.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Jay Carr
    The Getaway
    Director Roger Donaldson seems a bit too obviously caught up in the slick technology of zapping us with mayhem and death to allow Thompson's gritty viciousness to take root. [11 Feb 1994, p.41]
    • Boston Globe
    • 85 Metascore
    • 75 Jay Carr
    The Iron Giant
    A solid, not to say ironclad, winner in the less than overcrowded family animation arena.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Jay Carr
    Nixon
    It's huge, brilliant, dark and cathartic, with a towering and complex performance by Anthony Hopkins that humanizes Nixon more than Nixon ever was able to humanize himself. [20 Dec 1995, p.33]
    • Boston Globe
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Jay Carr
    The Eyes of Tammy Faye
    A lively and affectionate cross between an infomercial and a genuflection.
    • Boston Globe
    • 75 Metascore
    • 88 Jay Carr
    Tumbleweeds
    You'll care what happens in this film with more than enough freshness and originality to avoid succumbing to girls-on-the-run cliches.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 100 Jay Carr
    The Commitments
    Cross Fame and Spinal Tap, color it Irish, and you've got The Commitments, the summer's most irresistible movie. [30 Aug 1991, p.79]
    • Boston Globe
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Jay Carr
    High Heels
    Mostly it's Paredes' imperious - then surprisingly generous - high-handedness that carries High Heels. [20 Dec 1991]
    • Boston Globe
    • 87 Metascore
    • 88 Jay Carr
    All About My Mother
    A tender genuflection to the women's energies that keep that spinning world from keeling over.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 88 Jay Carr
    Batman Returns
    The new film is simply more confident, more idiosyncratically dark, weird, gnarled and twisted than "Batman." And because it's more obviously permeated by Burton's style and sensibility, it's also more fun. [19 June 1992, p.47]
    • Boston Globe
    • 66 Metascore
    • 88 Jay Carr
    The Land Before Time
    From its opening evolution sequence of squiggly things in the water through its references to the great circle of life, The Land Before Time embraces a larger perspective than merely that of the adventure story. It's an affecting work, and a work of quality. [18 Nov 1988, p.29]
    • Boston Globe
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Jay Carr
    The Tailor of Panama
    Many spy capers lose their intended irony and wry black humor, but The Tailor of Panama stays stylishly on target in ways that would put a heat-seeking missile to shame.
    • Boston Globe
    • 24 Metascore
    • 25 Jay Carr
    Staying Alive
    Staying Alive, the sequel to John Travolta's "Saturday Night Fever," plays like wet cement. [16 Jul 1983]
    • Boston Globe
    • 62 Metascore
    • 75 Jay Carr
    The Goonies
    But, fittingly, it's the kids who carry this outing. They're led by Sean Astin, who's rightly more of a dreamer than the others. Jeff B. Cohen engagingly handles the most cliched role, the fat kid who keeps stuffing his face. And I couldn't help wondering if Ke Huy Quan, who played Indy's sidekick in the Temple of Doom, knows that not all movies are made in caves. In any case, you can relax. The Goonies is entertaining despite its calculated flavor. [7 Jun 1985, p.61]
    • Boston Globe
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »