Tom Russo

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Boston Globe
For 366 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 55% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 42% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 7.3 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Tom Russo's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 58
Highest review score: 100 Richard III
Lowest review score: 25 The Food of the Gods
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 200 out of 366
  2. Mixed: 113 out of 366
  3. Negative: 53 out of 366
366 movie reviews
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    • 42 Metascore
    • 63 Tom Russo
    The Divergent Series: Insurgent
    It’s a sequel that sticks to more routine territory of action, angst, and dystopian gloom — mostly a sound approach, thanks to the consistent strength of franchise lead Shailene Woodley and a mix of intended and inadvertent surprises.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Tom Russo
    Run All Night
    The story loses its convincingly scaled sense of jeopardy in the late going, and it ultimately unravels.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 63 Tom Russo
    Chappie
    Chappie boasts so many entertaining elements, particularly the lead motion-capture performance by Blomkamp’s go-to guy Sharlto Copley, its shortcomings don’t sink the movie.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 75 Tom Russo
    Song of the Sea
    Director Tomm Moore (the 2009 Oscar contender “The Secret of Kells”) crafts a traditionally rendered feature whose doe-eyed characters faintly echo Miyazaki yet offer a beauty all their own.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 38 Tom Russo
    McFarland USA
    This chronicle of an ’80s high school cross country coach leading a team of Mexican farm laborers’ kids to competitive glory may be based on a true story, but the forced drama doesn’t help it to feel that way.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 38 Tom Russo
    Hot Tub Time Machine 2
    Compared with last time, the returning team of director Steve Pink and writer Josh Heald practically doodle the gang’s motivations and worse, their surroundings.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 75 Tom Russo
    Kingsman: The Secret Service
    It’s also a movie that further establishes Vaughn as one of the edgier and more underrated genre voices of the moment, and that makes us wonder why Colin Firth hasn’t indulged in an action sideline all along.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 25 Tom Russo
    The Loft
    There’s no redeeming this softcore nonsense, which plays like a script that “Storage Wars” stumbled across in Joe Eszterhas’s old locker.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 38 Tom Russo
    Blackhat
    Unfortunately, Mann also leans on ill-fitting story elements that he might easily and smartly have avoided, and the movie’s rhythms and credibility pay for it.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 63 Tom Russo
    Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb
    Seeing Ben Stiller, the late Robin Williams, and their magically roused gang together again, this time in London, is initially all about indulgent, nostalgic smiles rather than new wows. But then comes the movie’s exceptionally clever and fresh final act, which delivers genuine surprise along with many laughs.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Tom Russo
    Penguins of Madagascar
    It’s a movie content to stay within the show’s comfort zone, changing things up mainly with flashier, 3-D visuals, a couple of which are dazzlers, and a theme that doesn’t connect in any notable way.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 63 Tom Russo
    Horrible Bosses 2
    A new misadventure whose negligibly refined formula somehow ends up being more consistently entertaining.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Tom Russo
    Beyond the Lights
    Unfortunately, as the story builds toward tenderness, it’s undercut with slathering tongues and bare-chested stud-muffin shots.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Tom Russo
    Diplomacy
    The dialogue also reflects the material’s stage origins in ways that don’t always translate well.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Tom Russo
    Big Hero 6
    A rousing movie that’s satisfyingly infused with traditional Disney sentiment.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 63 Tom Russo
    John Wick
    The movie’s one big pitfall, really, is that Reeves’s character is so intently focused, he takes care of business a bit too quickly. Some final skirmishing and a tonally false sign-off feel like unconvincing bids to stretch the story to a more legit feature length.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 63 Tom Russo
    Kill the Messenger
    It’s an engrossing portrait not only of government intrigue and crusading after the truth, but of media and their tangled motivations. Engrossing enough, in fact, that Cuesta needn’t try as hard as he occasionally does to heighten the drama and give it added flash.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 63 Tom Russo
    Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
    What the filmmakers come up with is a modestly likable mix of zany and gently warmhearted, even if they overdo both elements at times.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 38 Tom Russo
    The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears
    As tiresome as the relentless, indulgent inscrutability and lack of story momentum can be, it says something for the movie’s visceral power that there isn’t an urge to quit on it.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Tom Russo
    A Walk Among the Tombstones
    The problem with this adaptation of Lawrence Block’s detective yarn isn’t that it casts Neeson in a role we’re seeing him play again and again. It’s that no one else in the movie makes a character feel nearly as broken-in and fully inhabited as he does.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 63 Tom Russo
    Dolphin Tale 2
    Some angst away from the dolphin tank feels like padding, but there’s enough bona fide narrative to please tomorrow’s marine biologists and their parents.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 25 Tom Russo
    Innocence
    It’s an idea that could make for decent genre viewing, if only its cast had some range, and its indie reach didn’t exceed its mainstream-polished grasp.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 63 Tom Russo
    No No: A Dockumentary
    The idea that documentarian Jeffrey Radice would make the episode both the hook and the opener for his film is to be expected — it’s an attention-grabbing story. But a hook is all it is.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 63 Tom Russo
    The Congress
    Lem’s story is merely a springboard for Folman’s wildly sprawling meditations on what the advent of virtual performance means — for artistic integrity, creative spirit, celebrity culture, human identity, even our hold on reality.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 38 Tom Russo
    Life of Crime
    The cast does capable work, but you’ll wish the movie concentrated more on the comedy, which has some zing, rather than the straighter elements, which quickly start to drag.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Tom Russo
    When the Game Stands Tall
    It makes for a structurally glitchy inspirational exercise whose climax carries all the goosebump-making drama of a Pats preseason game.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 63 Tom Russo
    Sin City: A Dame To Kill For
    You could argue that the only thing that’s automatic about A Dame to Kill For, really, is some of the firepower that its hardcases are packing.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 63 Tom Russo
    The Expendables 3
    It’s a preposterously overstuffed strategy that, go figure, not only works, but even cures a thing or two that ailed the previous movies.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 25 Tom Russo
    Let's Be Cops
    None of this is as riotously zany as it wants to be.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 38 Tom Russo
    Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
    The repartee, as ever, is weak. Even with all the extra layers of digital detail, it’s still tough to keep these four straight. And the CG characters’ slimy rendering and motion-capture expressiveness could go down with “The Polar Express” as a study in inadvertent, technologically misguided screen creepiness. Wackier would have been OK, guys — it’s the Ninja Turtles.
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