Boston Globe's Scores

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For 7,947 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 54% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 44% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 1.1 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 64
Highest review score: 100 Autumn Tale
Lowest review score: 0 Argylle
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 5,229 out of 7947
  2. Mixed: 1,553 out of 7947
  3. Negative: 1,165 out of 7947
7947 movie reviews
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  1. Kiss of the Spider Woman
    Watching J.Lo make movie magic for the captive audience on both sides of the screen reminded me why I watch movies, and how revisiting my favorite films has kept me sane and happy in this bitter little world.
  2. The Wedding Banquet
    The Wedding Banquet is one of the year's most joyful film discoveries - multiculturally hip, acted and directed with finesse, full of bright surprises, with lots of heart. [27 Aug 1993, p.81]
    • Boston Globe
  3. Train Dreams
    This is a gorgeous movie to look at, to listen to, and to experience on an emotional level.
  4. André Is an Idiot
    This is a cautionary tale, but it’s also a celebration of a life filled with crazy stories and lots of love.
  5. Blue Moon
    This is a film about a professional divorce, not a romantic one. The fallout is just as painful.
  6. The Story of Louis Pasteur
    The Story of Louis Pasteur dates from the golden age of Hollywood biofilm, marked by conviction and craftsmanship. [13 Dec 1991, p.60]
    • Boston Globe
    • 57 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Going All the Way
    Going All the Way is a familiar story told with daring and unsentimental eloquence. At a time when it is rare for exceptional books to become exceptional films, Pellington's debut arrives as a pleasant and welcome exception. [10 Oct 1997, p.C5]
    • Boston Globe
  8. The Christophers
    McKellen and Coel give a master class in line readings throughout “The Christophers.” It’s a real pleasure watching two seasoned actors bounce off each other in service to creating their characters. It’s even more delightful to see this in a film made for adults that has plenty to say about human nature, love, and the inspirations that fuel our lives.
  9. Predator: Badlands
    Most franchises use a cookie-cutter approach to their entries, so it’s refreshing when a sequel tells its story in a different tenor than its predecessors. On that note, “Predator: Badlands” is a rousing success.
  10. Jay Kelly
    Jay Kelly would make a good double feature with “Sentimental Value,” another film about a driven moviemaker seen from the perspective of the daughters, not the father. I think this film is the better of the two, even if it is more conventional in its storytelling.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    The Paradine Case
    The Paradine Case is more than just a big and elegant whodunit. It has smart, penetrating, clever characterization and Mr. Hitchcock has used his unexcelled craftsmanship to show the interplay of motive and mood, the power and weakness of love, the courage and cowardice of mankind. [15 May 1948, p.12]
    • Boston Globe
  12. Resurrection
    Bi Gan’s Resurrection is trippy cinema at its best, a nearly three-hour deep dive into experimental cinema.
  13. Pillion
    Pillion is the story of that one relationship that defines a person, the one that finally reveals to them what they want out of sex, love, and life. We can all relate to that.
  14. Manny & Lo
    Lisa Krueger's "Manny & Lo" is the most original and unexpected family-values film of the year. [09 Aug 1996, p.C8]
    • Boston Globe
  15. Father Mother Sister Brother
    The cast is uniformly good, and the stories are intriguing.
  16. Rental Family
    Rental Family is the kind of movie that should not work at all. It takes an unusual premise, one ripe for oversentimentality, and then strikes the perfect balance between heartwarming and heartbreaking.
  17. Is God Is
    [Harris’s] Southern Gothic story of domestic violence, and the repercussions of revenge, has the aura of Greek tragedy and the darkest heart of neo-noir. Its soul is an unapologetic howl of Black female rage represented by the superb lead performances of Kara Young and Mallori Johnson.
  18. Arco
    This is a time travel fable that feeds the heart as much as the brain, tipping its hat to sci-fi favorites as well as masters of animation from Walt Disney to Hayao Miyazaki. It’s an imaginative treat.
  19. Nuremberg
    Rami Malek and Russell Crowe lead a cast of actors doing excellent work in this large scale, old school ensemble piece.
  20. Ju Dou
    Ju Dou is far richer and more jolting than "The Postman Always Rings Twice," which it suggests. When it comes to film noir entrapment, we have nothing on the Chinese. [05 Sep 1990, p.63p]
    • Boston Globe
  21. Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice
    Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice is full of crazy ideas, but its most daring leap occurs when Grabinski’s screenplay finds room for an investigation into the feelings of its characters. The film takes the time for everyone to get personal and emotional gripes off their chests, and does so in such earnest fashion that it balances out the absurdity.
  22. Backbeat
    It's a terrific musical biofilm filled with drive, solid characterizations and - biggest surprise of all - musical performances that jump off the screen. [22 Apr 1994, p.33]
    • Boston Globe
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Invictus
    Freeman portrays Mandela not as a saint but as a man who knows he has the political freedom of being seen as one; it’s a majestically two-dimensional performance with glimpses of a third dimension peeking through.
  24. Up in the Air
    At its best, Up in the Air invents new realms for old Hollywood sophistication.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    An Education
    Best of all, An Education isn’t alarmist. It knows other people can’t seduce us if we don’t seduce ourselves first and that Jenny is level-headed enough to handle it and learn.
  26. District 13: Ultimatum
    There’s no reason a conspiracy this outlandish should work twice. But it’s so hilariously within the realm of plausibility that it does.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Sherlock Holmes
    It pleases me to report, then, that Downey brings his brain, his wit, and his gift for intelligent underplaying, even as he understands he has been hired to play Sherlock Holmes, action hero.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
    In short, “Imaginarium’’ is a Terry Gilliam movie and it’s a mess, which over the years have come to mean much the same thing. It’s one of his better messes, though, or at least this critic was won over by its ramshackle whimsies.
  29. Daybreakers
    Daybreakers has unexpected flashes of brilliance.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Fish Tank
    Fish Tank should be seen for what it does well and for what it hints may come, if Andrea Arnold and her audiences are lucky.
  31. It's Complicated
    Streep is in movie star mode, and she’s irresistible. But Baldwin achieves something not many men have been able to with Streep: You notice him.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    District 9
    The last time I felt the sort of outrageously kinetic action-movie high District 9 delivers, it was 1981 and George Miller, Mel Gibson, and "Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior" had just come roaring out of Australia.
  33. Broken Embraces
    It’s both ridiculous and ridiculously romantic, which is an apt description of a work shaped like a heart and structured like a pretzel.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Where the Wild Things Are
    This version of Where the Wilds Things Are isn’t about childhood at all but about childhood’s end and what’s gained and lost by it. That’s why very young kids, dull Disney princesses, overprotective parents, and self-serious grown-ups should probably stay away.
  35. The Messenger
    The scenes between Montgomery and Stone in plainclothes would seem to be tangential to Moverman's movie, but they're very much its point. Only in uniform do these men make sense to themselves.
  36. Whip It
    Most crucially, Barrymore encourages Page to just let herself go. The sight of her making her way up residential streets in a pair of Barbie roller skates or screaming “Marco’’ in a game of Marco Polo is simply joyful.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    (500) Days of Summer
    It's an "Annie Hall" for the iPod generation: über-designed, pleasing to the touch, making up in generic sweetness what it lacks in bite.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Zombieland
    What Zombieland’ has instead - in spades - is deliciously weary end-of-the-world banter.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Pandorum
    Pandorum is a dark, disquieting dream worth watching out for.
  40. The Damned United
    Hooper, the director, doesn’t include lots of amazing football sequences to upstage his star. He just moves everyone out of Sheen’s way. It’s about time.
  41. This Is It
    Watching Jackson pop, lock, rock, writhe, thrust, and clutch his crotch, even at 50 percent, leaves a feeling of woe: This show really would have been major.
  42. Ponyo
    A movie loaded with strange delights.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Hangover
    It's a worst-case-scenario of bachelor party morning-after, and it is howlingly funny.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Dark Knight
    You come away impressed, oppressed, provoked, and beaten down, holding on to Ledger's squirrelly incandescence as a beacon in the darkness.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Me and Orson Welles
    The British actor Christian McKay resurrects the young Welles as a magnificent mountain of talent, ego, and unsliced ham. He, and he alone, is reason enough to see this movie. The problem is the “Me’’ - Zac Efron.
  46. Summer Hours
    The movie unfolds like something out of E.M. Forster, but Assayas isn't all that interested in family dynamics. Instead, he's made a chronicle of how the children will handle the sale of the house and its treasures.
  47. Drag Me to Hell
    Working with his brother Ivan, Sam Raimi is laughing with us - and often louder than we are.
  48. The Box
    The Box is the work of a visionary flirting with commercialism after having so grandly flouted it with “Southland Tales.’’ He doesn’t give in completely. Several trips to the megaplex might be required for The Box to make complete sense.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Coraline
    "The Corpse Bride" with teeth, Bruno Bettelheim retooled for the multiplex, a nightmare of daft and creative consequence. I really liked it.
  50. Food, Inc.
    The whole thing is as subtle as a watermelon in a bowl of Cheerios but necessary, nonetheless.
  51. Julie & Julia
    This is blissful moviemaking. Much of the pleasure we have in watching it comes from seeing Tucci and, obviously, Streep connect.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Twilight
    Actually, the movie's a better movie than the book was a book, in part because Meyer struggled to put her characters' galloping emotions into print whereas director Catherine Hardwicke just visualizes them in all their inarticulate purpleness.
  53. Cold Souls
    The movie turns what could have been a tedious meta-movie exercise into a sincere dour farce.
  54. The Cove
    The Oceanic Preservation Society doesn't change the world so much as call attention to something so very wrong with it. And in doing so, The Cove culminates with an image of political agitation that might be one of the most oddly effective public service announcements you'll see.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Apocalypto
    Say what you will about Gibson, but he's a genuine filmmaker, and Apocalypto gallops along the thin line between the deluded and the inspired with such conviction that you're yanked into its wake.
  56. Rachel Getting Married
    The movie's few false notes come from Lumet's script, which can be overly explanatory. Because Demme is opting for present-tense realism, the characters are forced to fill us in on who did what when to whom, why, and how.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    I Can Do Bad All by Myself
    It’s the best Tyler Perry movie to date - the writer/director/actor/mogul’s most confident and competent mixture of uplifting black middle-class melodrama and low-down comedy.
  58. Knocked Up
    Debbie gets away with being such a cauldron of extremes because the airy-voiced Mann is extremely good at playing them. She happens to be Apatow's wife (the kids in the movie are theirs), and with the possible exception of Téa Leoni , it's hard to imagine who else could get away with this combination of needling and affection.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Oldboy
    More than anything else, Oldboy recalls Alfred Hitchcock with all restraint tossed to the wind, or Hitchcock's most obsessed devotee, Brian De Palma, at his most nastily inspired.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Thirst
    Thirst is deliriously bonkers and keeps getting more so; you watch it holding your breath, waiting to see where Park will zigzag next.
  61. Zodiac
    Zodiac is a kind of corrective remake of "Se7en," a renunciation of that earlier movie's psychotic nihilism. That rejection extends to a neat sight gag. Fincher gives us a shot of a cardboard cutout for "Dirty Harry" that mocks the personal abyss that catching Zodiac becomes.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    House of Flying Daggers
    It's a perfect example of how far production design and editing WON'T take you when the story's not there.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Into the Wild
    One such paradox, which Into the Wild doesn't note, is that those who flee civilization more often than not bring it with them. The bus in which Christopher McCandless died is now a tourist destination.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    I Love You, Man
    The movie stakes out a whole new arena - male social performance anxiety - and ruthlessly mines it for comic embarrassment.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Atonement
    The movie never goes as deep as the novel (no movie could), but it's a worthy approximation: a Merchant-Ivory movie that turns in on itself with a lucid and painful sigh.
  66. Duplicity
    Duplicity so thoroughly equates sex and money that, in a manner apt for a recession, the audience is rewired when it's over. You don't care whether they love each other. You just want to see them paid.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Role Models
    Any movie that shows its heroes firing up a joint between stints as high-school anti-drug crusaders is true to its black little heart.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Bronson
    Bronson isn’t a story in the traditional sense at all. It’s a meditation on the art of rage - an action painting passing itself off as an action movie.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Casino Royale
    If you miss the old cliches, consider whether, after 21 Bond films and countless parodies, your response is simply Pavlovian.
  70. Spider-Man 3
    Raimi, who shares script credit with his brother Ivan and Alvin Sargent, strikes an exquisite balance between pop and woe, drama and whooshing adventure.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Machuca
    It's a tale powerfully told, nevertheless, with an unusual vantage point in its upper-class young hero.
  72. Aliens of the Deep
    Stirs excitement about exploration of all kinds.
  73. Lost Embrace
    Has a novelist's human touch. Were it a book, it would go somewhere on the shelf with Jonathan Safran Foer and early Philip Roth.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Nomi Song
    Succeeds at its main tasks. It re-creates new wave New York with Proustian force, from the Kiev (the diner) to Fiorucci (the clothing store).
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    My Mother's Smile
    It's a bit of a mess but strong stuff nevertheless -- a mournful, often wickedly funny religious satire that suggests what Kafka might have come up with had he been raised Catholic.
  76. Pooh's Heffalump Movie
    A fine afternoon at the megaplex. And it will make a welcome addition your home library when it's released on video.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Because of Winn-Dixie
    In pace, sensibility, and big, beating heart, this is a child's first indie film, and it's the better for it.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Animation Show 2005
    It's a mixed bag almost by definition. Yet the good is good indeed, making this show worth a look for devotees of the form.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Up and Down
    The film bears a resemblance to such multicharacter dramas as Robert Altman's ''Short Cuts" and Paul Thomas Anderson's ''Magnolia" -- like them, it's a portrait of a society straining at the seams -- but it manages the neat trick of being both charming and bilious.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Dear Frankie
    The movie's still shameless; the difference is you don't mind.
  81. Intimate Stories
    A delightful road movie.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Walk on Water
    There’s something happening here and it isn’t exactly clear. What is clear is that Eytan Fox may yet make a great film for the 21st century.
  83. Whisky
    A fine film of few words and very little motion.
  84. Robots
    Isn't as trippy, scary, handmade-looking, or environmentally aware as some of Miyazaki's pictures. But it shares their dreaminess. Even at its most ingenious, not even Pixar does that.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Millions
    You really don't need to borrow someone else's kids to ponder and enjoy what Millions has to offer.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Fifty-Fifty
    True to its title, Schizo is both gripped by the past and pulled toward an unknown future.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Steamboy
    Boys of all ages, by contrast, will be mesmerized by the relentless, breathtakingly visualized action.
  88. Fever Pitch
    Effortlessly entertaining romantic comedy.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Kung Fu Hustle
    Like a meal prepared by an extreme chef, ''Hustle" is more than a bit of a mess. It still tastes like nothing you've ever had before.
  90. Major Dundee (re-release)
    Expanded, Major Dundee is still a mess of great scenes sprinkled among some fairly monotonous action.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Palindromes
    What makes Palindromes bearable is that Solondz has yet to come up with an answer.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Double Dare
    Focuses on a parallel universe that moviegoers rarely consider: that of the invisible, hard-working craftspeople who put the illusion together.
  93. The Game of Their Lives
    What the cast members lack in sharpened skill they more than make up for in raw gusto and athletic scrappiness (most of the actors have logged a lot of soccer in their pasts). These guys give a sport that is virtually nameless in the movies a good name in this one.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    3-Iron
    Dreamlike and the slightest bit precious, the film is a beautiful, over-cultivated hothouse flower.
  95. Mysterious Skin
    The film is actually a major artistic breakthrough for Araki, a onetime bad boy of independent filmmaking. Its psychological intelligence, attention to emotional currents, and humanity are surprises.
  96. Brothers
    Piercingly co-written and directed by Susanne Bier, the movie dramatizes one man's collapse and the other's surprising maturation.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Mad Hot Ballroom
    Watching these pint-size Astaires and Rogerses practice the fox trot, tango, rumba, and swing is the immediate hook to Mad Hot Ballroom.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Tell Them Who You Are
    In more ways than one, Mark Wexler gets the release he's seeking.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
    As female-bonding comfort food goes, ''Sisterhood" is that rare meal both adolescent girls and their mothers will be able to agree on.
  100. Lords of Dogtown
    The movie is like a daydream, and it's most infectious when the characters are in motion or misbehaving, which is often.
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