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 point 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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    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Rock School
    As a portrait of dysfunctional pedagogy, it's both refreshing and more than a little terrifying.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Batman Begins
    In Batman Begins, Christian Bale gives us the best Bruce Wayne that has ever graced the screen.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Howl's Moving Castle
    The filmmaker's obsessions have got the better of him. That said, I can't recommend the film highly enough, since bad Miyazaki is still leagues better than anyone else.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Heights
    Heights breathes, is briefly and immediately present, and is over. In this summer of noisy steroid cinema, such small favors are welcome.
  5. Elevator to the Gallows
    The film's look makes a divine accessory for its music, which Miles Davis composed. There's not even 20 minutes of it in the film, yet it still defines the atmosphere, transforming a crime yarn into a bebop noir.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Beautiful Country
    The filmmakers bank against their impulse toward melodrama and deliver a reconciliation that is heartbreakingly understated.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
    The movie's overlong and there are lumps in the batter, but this is a ''Charlie" that the author would recognize as upholding his playfully dyspeptic tradition.
  8. Wedding Crashers
    Tom Cruise might have saved his family from apocalypse. But Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn have just saved our summer.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Edukators
    There's an evenhanded humanism flowing through The Edukators that may strike doctrinaire viewers on either side of the divide as mushy, but it's tough enough for the rest of us to chew on for a long time.
  10. Tony Takitani
    The film itself is also a beautiful work of art, exquisitely framed and precisely envisioned.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
    In the end, it's a lovely little movie about very big things, and the smallness both illuminates it and keeps it from greatness.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    A State of Mind
    It's a quietly wrenching eye-opener.
  13. The Goebbles Experiment
    Weirdly enthralling film.
  14. Pulse
    Where the average Japanese horror flick is petulant and nasty, Pulse is dolorous, shivery, and surreal.
  15. The 40 Year Old Virgin
    A lot of the credit for what's right with 'The 40-Year-Old Virgin goes to the screenplay, which Carell and Apatow wrote. They like these characters and, when it matters, they dare to give them feelings, none truer than Andy's.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Clean
    Clean has the same mixture of human tenderness and borderline-silly Eurochic that marks Wenders films like "Until the End of the World."
  17. El Crimen Perfecto (The Perfect Crime)
    If anyone is capable of pulling off a deviled screwball with cheeky panache, it's de la Iglesia, who's one of the world's great nutty directors yet to find the American following he so richly deserves.
  18. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance
    The violence in the final 45 minutes of Mr. Vengeance is tough to watch.
  19. The Memory of a Killer
    Entertaining.
  20. William Eggleston in the Real World
    The documentary is elliptical, with a slow, drifty rhythm. It presents an up-close but impersonal view of Eggleston.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Proof
    Proof is proof that you can drain most of the juice out of a play and still have an enjoyable night at the movies.
  22. Green Street Hooligans
    The movie, though, is nonsense. At its most credible, the story evokes fond memories of the adult drug narcs hiding among American high schoolers on ''21 Jump Street."
  23. The Future of Food
    Anyone looking for a more practical horror film than ''The Fog" should try The Future of Food.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Lord of War
    Lord of War is advocacy entertainment -- an act of mainstream provocation -- and, for the most part, it works unusually well.
  25. Into the Blue
    Into the Blue is as much a mesmerizing aquatic expedition as it is a reasonably suspenseful action adventure.
  26. Henri Langlois: The Phantom of the Cinematheque
    A sound piece of profiling that has miles of archival footage of the affable, pop-eyed Langlois enthusing.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Loggerheads
    Slow, unadorned, compassionate, and earnest, Loggerheads is a low-fi throwback to the independent films of the 1980s and '90s.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Nine Lives
    Not all of Nine Lives clicks, but at its best it finds an inarticulate sisterly solace that makes you want to see what this director could do with one life per film.
  29. The President's Last Bang
    Writer-director Im Sang Soo's coolly stylized political satire doesn't provide a lot of answers, unfortunately, but it does show how the future of a nation might turn on a few drunken insults thrown around at a high-level dinner party.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
    It's a merry deconstructive delight and easily the best party in town.
  31. Three of Hearts: A Postmodern Family
    One of the smartest things Kaplan does, besides getting talented Boston folk singer Catie Curtis to contribute to the soundtrack, is hang around long enough to see how this three-headed relationship plays out.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    After Innocence
    After Innocence isn't bravura filmmaking, and it doesn't have to be -- this is one of those documentaries where the subject is compelling enough to do the legwork.
  33. Prime
    Yes, Younger has made an update of the ''shiksa who changed my life" story in ''Annie Hall." But Prime is missing the psychological acuity and scabrous cultural wit of Woody Allen at his best. These lovers meet standing in line to see Antonioni's ''Blow-Up" and never mention the movie.
  34. Gay Sex in the 70s
    Yet despite the retrospective sensationalism, Lovett's 70-minute documentary is a sobering anti-erotic cautionary tale.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Syrian Bride
    The Syrian Bride could be one of those big, teeming matrimony comedies like "Monsoon Wedding" or "Father of the Bride" but for the barbed wire running right down the middle of the aisle.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Ice Harvest
    "Bad Santa" it's not. Bumptiously entertaining it is.
  37. Syriana
    In its seriousness, Syriana has an absorbing, ominous roundness that plays even better with a second viewing.
  38. Transamerica
    It's debatable whether watching Huffman get dressed, take hormones, and learn to use a more feminine diction could sustain an entire movie, but the character is certainly a creation more original than a lot of the film itself.
  39. Be Here to Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt
    When the film ends, we're haunted. We've been driving with a ghost.
  40. The Descent
    A cult classic is born.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Mrs Henderson Presents
    Mrs. Henderson Presents is a very old hat, and Judi Dench wears it beautifully.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
    A gracefully subtle metaphor about life's Deep Magic has become a war film; what was a one-chapter battle toward the end of the book is now a ripsnorting Armageddon that looks like something Hieronymus Bosch might dream up after a heavy meal.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    King Kong
    It's not so much a remake as it is a loving re-creation of the 1933 original on extra-strength steroids, with a side order of Botox. You've seen it all before but most assuredly never like this.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Producers
    Susan Stroman directed the show on Broadway and what she has done here is photograph that show -- no more, no less. This is good news for anyone who couldn't afford a trip to New York and $100 tickets, but it's a fairly odd approach to cinema.
  45. Last Holiday
    Director Wayne Wang and his screenwriters sometimes ape ''Pretty Woman." But Latifah's obvious forebear is Pearl Bailey, who was just as regal and straight-up.
  46. Nanny McPhee
    Thompson adapted the screenplay from Christianna Brand's "Nurse Matilda" books, and she and director Kirk Jones balance the slapstick and levity with darker enchantments. At its most enjoyable the film feels like Roald Dahl's idea of "Mary Poppins."
  47. Final Destination 3
    Week in and week out, horror movies cheat us, so it's wonderfully cathartic to watch a bunch of kids cheat death in what turns out to be the best installment yet in the "Final Destination" franchise.
  48. Through the Fire
    It's hard to blame Telfair for letting his celebrity go to his head. If I were on the cover of Sports Illustrated in the 12th grade, there'd be no living with me either.
  49. Eight Below
    It's the most touching love story about tragically separated sexy beasts since "Cold Mountain."
    • 62 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America
    As a coherent, well-judged alternative history, the movie's a mess. As a thought-provoking and frequently hilarious jeremiad, it scores again and again.
  51. Night Watch: Nochnoi Dozor
    It's also the first apocalypse-minded franchise that's earned its downbeat mood. The action, for starters, is post-Cold War, post-Chernobyl, post-perestroika. Darkness is so much a part of the Russian psyche it must be nice to see a local movie try to put its hand toward the Light.
  52. Sophie Scholl: The Final Days
    Rothemund gives us his sophisticated filmmaking only in the finale, which is devastating in its briskness and fury.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Tsotsi
    It's a solid, earnest drama of moral redemption that places old cliches in an unfamiliar setting.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Unknown White Male
    The Unknown White Male that Murray has made asks profound questions. They're just not necessarily the right ones.
  55. Black Orpheus
    This is a movie about the marriage between sound and image, and the sound is wearing the pants in the relationship.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Deep Sea
    Travels around the world via the oceans' floors to show us symbiosis at work in a variety of ecosystems.
  57. Failure to Launch
    The movie brings to mind the more polite parts of "Wedding Crashers." Failure to Launch, while totally exuberant and appealingly made, is not nearly as randy.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Hills Have Eyes
    Hills is a far cry from its cheesy and predictable predecessor. "Gruesome" doesn't begin to describe the horrors that are revealed on-screen here.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Shaggy Dog
    What The Shaggy Dog feels like, more than anything, is an old-fashioned Disney movie.
  60. She's the Man
    A screwball comedy that made me wish I were 13 again, because this is precisely the kind of movie I would have gone nuts for in the ninth grade.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Thank You for Smoking
    Like its protagonist, the movie is smart, soulless, glib, and utterly charming -- just the thing to warm up a movie season that's been late to bloom.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Beauty Academy of Kabul
    It's that gulf between earnest idealism and beaten-down realism that's the unexpected drama of Beauty Academy.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Slither
    The acting is playful aces all around: Fillion gives good exhausted incredulity, Banks gives good virginal idiocy, and Rooker gives great conflicted monster arrogance even before the aliens get him.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That!
    It's raucous and loud as hell; the hyperactive editing could trigger grand mal seizures.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Devil and Daniel Johnston
    Jeff Feuerzeig's film is as good a portrait of the artist as a beloved basket case as you'll see, but it's kept from greatness by the questions it refuses to ask itself.
  66. Iron Island
    Like the great Iranian filmmakers, Rasoulof has no use for the artificiality of heightened drama.
  67. Phat Girlz
    This is a disarming and, in its own way, delightful vehicle for its star and executive producer, the comedian and actress Mo'Nique. Who could hate this movie?
  68. Friends with Money
    Holofcener writes as well as Albert Brooks at his best, and her finesse with actors is as assured as James L. Brooks's on his TV and film projects from 20 and 30 years ago.
  69. I Am a Sex Addict
    Zahedi's search for fulfillment is depleting, like throwing good sex after bad. The more we learn about the hole in his soul, the more vivid his misogamy becomes.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    4
    Immense, mystical, and deranged beyond immediate comprehension, Ilya Khrzhanovsky's 4 is an apocalyptic allegory of Mother Russia and its current state of squalid exhaustion.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    American Dreamz
    American Dreamz pitches its softballs with style. Martin Tweed, the preeningly heartless British host of the title TV show, just may be the great comic role that has always eluded Hugh Grant.
  72. Sir! No Sir!
    Zeiger's movie is a timely salute to the risky and brave men and women who had the temerity not only to think for themselves but to speak their minds.
  73. Mountain Patrol
    Never has a movie so soberingly made the fight to save life and the struggle to hold on to it seem so futile.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Somersault
    The movie has more style than depth and it's sometimes in danger of confusing the two.
  75. Mongolian Ping Pong
    In Mongolian Ping Pong the point is to look under the majestic vistas and see value in ordinary things -- ping-pong balls included.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Water
    Succeeds in its central goal: to turn a forgotten class of women into real, memorable human beings who deserve a different life.
  77. Lady Vengeance
    For most of Lady Vengeance, Park is playing with us. But the jokey atmosphere dissipates and the fun turns inside out in the movie's last act.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Hoot
    The movie balances cardboard comic bad-guys with believable teenagers, has the courage to avoid romance, and unlike most Hollywood films suggests parents can be helpful and loving as well as clueless.
  79. X-Men: The Last Stand
    The happiest news about the third (and final?) X-Men movie is actually quite sad: headstones. Yes, The Last Stand brings the lamentable deaths of several major characters.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Russian Dolls
    The film isn't especially deep, but it's mostly delightful.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Giuliani Time
    Giuliani Time has an ax to grind and wields it with dull-edged force.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Keeping Up with the Steins
    To paraphrase the old ad for Levy's rye bread, you don't have to be Jewish to love "Keeping Up With the Steins," but it helps.
  83. Twelve and Holding
    Cuesta prizes curiosity and perception over conflict resolution. He likes the way kids take their cues from adults and the ways they revolt against them. Even as the kids do the ugliest things, the film stays cool without ever being cold.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Cars
    The movie wins you over through crack comic timing and an awareness that the point of driving isn't how fast you get there but what you see on the way.
  85. A Prairie Home Companion
    Kline's combination of pratfalls and urbanity is funny, but it rubs against the rest of the movie's effortless rustic charm. He's like Errol Flynn on a hayride.
  86. An Inconvenient Truth
    In an eco-horror show that politely masquerades as a documentary, the former vice president effectively warns of man-made cataclysm.
  87. Only Human
    A dinner-from-hell comedy about a pretty Jewish Spaniard who brings a nice Palestinian guy home to her outspoken Madrid family.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Superman Returns
    A generally thrilling entertainment that's not quite the grand slam you want it to be.
  89. The Road to Guantanamo
    The film's insistence on the men's innocence is matter of fact. But it's also an urgent corrective to the suspicious eye the movies so often cast on Arabs and Islam.
  90. The Devil Wears Prada
    While the picture isn't brilliant, it is, at its most entertaining, a kicky, surprisingly astute throwback to bygone Hollywood social comedies.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Motel
    Kang balances the uproariously comic with the profoundly sad, and the two tones amplify each other with subtlety.
  92. The Blood of My Brother
    Combines an insider's perspective with what can only be described as gutsy cinematography.
  93. The Great Yokai War
    A big, silly party.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    A Scanner Darkly
    There's conspiracy here, as there is in all of Dick's books, and it wraps the film up with a moving but somewhat neat bowtie.
  95. Changing Times
    Another gorgeous and immensely satisfying reminder that there are few better directors than Téchiné when it comes to capturing the vagaries of the heart.
  96. Edmond
    In Mamet's understanding, straight white maleness is the most powerful weapon such men have. It can also be illusory, which is why the last scenes of Edmond are so touching.
  97. Miami Vice
    The movie is seriously sexy and seriously entertaining.
  98. The Ant Bully
    The movie has a great time playing with ideas of scope and perspective, shifting between microscopic and macroscopic.
  99. Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
    We are treated to the riotous, almost David Lynchian moment in which Ferrell runs around a motorway in his undies screaming that he's on fire. He's not. Actually, come to think of it: He is.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    World Trade Center
    One reason World Trade Center is such a good, healing cry is that it absolves us of the discomfort of thinking about everything that has happened since.
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