Jay Carr

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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
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    • 71 Metascore
    • 63 Jay Carr
    Damage
    The best scenes come when the family gathers under tense circumstances that give Ian Bannen (as the MP's father) and Miranda Richardson (as his wife) the chance to unleash some civilized ferocity that's genial in his case and icy in hers. Her spurned-wife scene toward the end is the film's most powerful, and still would be even if the stilted sex scenes were volcanic. [22 Jan 1993, p.25]
    • Boston Globe
    • 38 Metascore
    • 50 Jay Carr
    Blow Dry
    The characters, in short, are never given enough dimension, enough chance to develop the individual tics and eccentricities on which this kind of comedy thrives.
    • Boston Globe
    • 71 Metascore
    • 88 Jay Carr
    Shadow of the Vampire
    He's (Dafoe) the stuff bad dreams are made of. He's also the best movie vampire since Schreck's original. He deserves a bloody Oscar.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 63 Jay Carr
    Crazy/Beautiful
    To have been the film it could have been, crazy/beautiful needed to be messier.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 75 Jay Carr
    Glengarry Glen Ross
    If Foley's strategies don't quite regenerate the caged-animal urgency of the play, the tradeoff of some verbal fireworks for piercing closeups isn't all bad. [16 Sep 1992, p.72]
    • Boston Globe
    • 92 Metascore
    • 100 Jay Carr
    E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
    Music for the eyes. That's why it has become a treasured classic. That's why we'll see it again and again. [2002 re-release]
    • 50 Metascore
    • 63 Jay Carr
    Twins
    The attempts to supply heart are never more than synthetic, but Schwarzenegger, as the good guy with the good genes, and his goofy sweetness lift Twins into the win column. [9 Dec 1988, p.33]
    • Boston Globe
    • 57 Metascore
    • 38 Jay Carr
    Back to the Future Part II
    The sequel goes down the tubes by spreading itself across four time zones and inviting comparison to the original by spending most of its time back in 1955, where another mess must be set right. [22 Nov 1989, p.35]
    • Boston Globe
    • 97 Metascore
    • 100 Jay Carr
    Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
    The phone scene, in which he's on the hot line to his Russian counterpart, is a classic of prevarication, a masterpiece of nothingspeak in the face of disaster. [28 Oct 1994, p.48]
    • Boston Globe
    • 50 Metascore
    • 75 Jay Carr
    The Iron Ladies
    The same underdog formulas and sunny disposition that turned it into an unexpected Thai box-office hit should win it friends here, too.
    • Boston Globe
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Jay Carr
    Regarding Henry
    Nichols is a director who cleanly sculpts his scenes, leaving no intention or action vague. Maybe he should have allowed for a little more ambiguity. [10 July 1991, p.51]
    • Boston Globe
    • 59 Metascore
    • 88 Jay Carr
    Nico and Dani
    The film is rightfully carried by Nico and Dani and under Gay's artful helmsmanship it's carried with remarkable sympathy and believability.
    • Boston Globe
    • 51 Metascore
    • 75 Jay Carr
    All the Little Animals
    Involvingly acted, surehandedly crafted.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Jay Carr
    Fly Away Home
    Nobody does a better job of putting animals and people in the same movie than Carroll Ballard, and he does it again, humanely as ever, in Fly Away Home. [13 Sep 1996, p.D8]
    • Boston Globe
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Jay Carr
    The Last Temptation of Christ
    It could have been shorter, some of its exchanges misfire, but I respect The Last Temptation of Christ, and I'm much more for it than against it. It's the most spiritual biblical movie of our times. [2 Sep 1988, p.25]
    • Boston Globe
    • 67 Metascore
    • 63 Jay Carr
    Gladiator
    It epitomizes the kind of high-profile bloodshed we now expect to herald the hazy, lazy, blockbuster-fixated days of summer.
    • Boston Globe
    • 73 Metascore
    • 63 Jay Carr
    Of Mice and Men
    This handsome remake has distinction, but isn't as wrenching, urgent or keeningly lyrical as that 1939 original. [16 Oct 1992, p.33]
    • Boston Globe
    • 31 Metascore
    • 75 Jay Carr
    The Big Hit
    The last word in good-time mayhem.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 0 Jay Carr
    Beaches
    Although we're only two weeks into 1989, we've already got a movie so resoundingly awful that it's bound to stand the test of time and emerge as one of the year's worst. [13 Jan 1989, p.48]
    • Boston Globe
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Jay Carr
    The Lion King
    This is an instant classic, primal and immediate in its depiction of the death of a parent, firmly anchored in the Disney style while extending its boundaries with arresting new perspectives and a tough-mindedness simply not possible to its most obvious ancestors, Bambi and The Jungle Book. [24 June 1994, p.47]
    • Boston Globe
    • 57 Metascore
    • 75 Jay Carr
    Osmosis Jones
    In a dismal summer for movies, Osmosis Jones is a fresh breath of foul air.
    • 18 Metascore
    • 50 Jay Carr
    Company Man
    It's not that the film is devoid of honestly earned laughs here and there. The problem is that there are too few of them and that the film can't connect them.
    • Boston Globe
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Jay Carr
    Hit and Runway
    A mildly diverting gay-straight odd couple comedy that has just enough bright one-liners to carry it past its plot structuring.
    • Boston Globe
    • 83 Metascore
    • 88 Jay Carr
    Memento
    The most disorienting and trippiest data-retrieval caper in years.
    • Boston Globe
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Jay Carr
    Wild Reeds
    Wild Reeds is not only Andre Techine's best film in a decade, it's one of France's, too. [22 Sep 1995, p.57]
    • Boston Globe
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Jay Carr
    Misery
    Two scenes in Misery are shockingly brutal. But many more are wickedly amusing - especially the ones stemming from the fact that no small part of the writer's torture is the way his deranged muse uses language. There's something simultaneously comical and scary about the way Bates employs euphemisms to keep the lid on. [30 Nov 1990, p.29p]
    • Boston Globe
    • 49 Metascore
    • 63 Jay Carr
    DragonHeart
    Dragonheart has what it needs at its heart - namely, the dragon. The rest of its story, about a disillusioned knight joining forces with the world's last dragon to help peasants overthrow a tyrannical 10th-century king, has a warmed-over quality. [31 May 1996, p.47]
    • Boston Globe
    • 44 Metascore
    • 88 Jay Carr
    Snow Falling on Cedars
    The kind of richly layered film that Hollywood seldom attempts, much less brings off. But it's more than brought off here in grand, solid style and beautifully crafted detail.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 88 Jay Carr
    Unstrung Heroes
    Unstrung Heroes, with its small, detailed brush strokes and its eye for specifics, marks Diane Keaton's directorial breakthrough. [15 Sep 1995]
    • Boston Globe
    • 54 Metascore
    • 75 Jay Carr
    Music of the Heart
    Avoids the potentially suffocating pall of uplift hovering over its quite exhilarating story.
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