Boston Globe's Scores

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For 7,945 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 0.9 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: 5,227 out of 7945
  2. Mixed: 1,553 out of 7945
  3. Negative: 1,165 out of 7945
7945 movie reviews
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    • 79 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Mountains May Depart
    The movie sprawls, almost entirely in a good sense, and it lets the audience draw its own conclusions. None of them is likely to be rosy.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    A Bigger Splash
    The performances are expert.
  3. High-Rise
    Because it stoops to obvious editorializing (a voice-over of Margaret Thatcher on capitalism?), it never quite rises to the top.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Money Monster
    An acceptable time-waster for a slow day in a movie theater or a slow night on cable. But it never makes you mad as hell, so what’s the point?
  5. Too Late
    With Too Late, Hauck confirms that he’s a master of the film medium. What’s less convincing is why this film matters.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Men & Chicken
    As visually overstuffed as a hoarder’s apartment, the movie improves as it goes.
  7. The Meddler
    The Meddler is a disappointment after the talent Scafaria demonstrated in her 2012 feature debut “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World.”
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Captain America: Civil War
    They’ve built up a vast ensemble of character types, all of them played by better-than-average actors, and that they can mix and match the drama, comedy, or action as they see fit.
  9. Fireworks Wednesday (2006)
    Another complex and magnificently acted melodrama.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Keanu
    If you’re in the right mood and seeing it with the right crowd, Keanu can put you close to a giggle coma, even as you realize the material’s far beneath the talents of its stars. They’re Key and Peele, but the movie treats them like Abbott and Costello.
  11. The Man Who Knew Infinity
    The storytelling here might also be stronger if Brown’s dialogue were less conspicuous, and left it to Patel and top-billed Jeremy Irons to more subtly communicate their characters’ passion for numbers.
  12. Mother's Day
    It’s like a nightmare in which you are trapped in an endless Kmart aisle of horrible holiday cards.
  13. Dough
    The few winning, not-so-secret ingredients in Dough are the performances of Pryce and newcomer Holder, who brings zest and freshness to a stale role.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Colliding Dreams
    Directed from the center-left with an ear to parties on both sides of the West Bank separation barrier, it’s knowledgeable and unhysterical, openhearted without seeming naïve. Those on the extremes will probably hate it.
  15. Papa: Hemingway in Cuba
    Marilyn Monroe’s death in 1962 was ruled a suicide, as was Hemingway’s in 1961. Both spawned conspiracy theories. Maybe someone should make a movie about that. Or a decent one about Hemingway himself.
  16. Francofonia
    Sokurov’s elegy for Europe — and for art — is eloquent, sorrowful, and challenging.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Elvis & Nixon
    Elvis & Nixon strains itself to bring the title duo together and then relaxes — finally — while Spacey and Shannon perform the actor’s equivalent of a waltz.
  18. The Huntsman: Winter's War
    Pretty uninspired material for a dream-teaming of actresses who currently rate among the edgiest of them all.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Green Room
    Violence in Green Room is just bad. Unfortunately for its heroes and for us all, it’s also sometimes inevitable.
  20. A Hologram for the King
    It’s like an international-relations microcosm imagined by the Coen brothers, down to an occasional sense that the absurdity isn’t taking us anywhere.
  21. Sing Street
    The songs, written by Carney and Gary Clark, have a goofy but genuine appeal. Watch out, or you might end up downloading the soundtrack.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    We the People: The Market Basket Effect
    The filmmakers have made this for the purposes of near-term celebration rather than long-term understanding, and they’re probably judging their audience well.
  23. The Dark Horse
    Dark Horse falls into the formula of underprivileged kids challenging the elites at their own game. But the outcome is never certain.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Miles Ahead
    It’s all deeply felt and just as deeply unfocused, and that, more than the invented story line, betrays the movie’s subject.
  25. Criminal
    Kevin Costner should stop trying to be so nice. His best performances have been as baddies.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Jungle Book
    The chief attraction of the film is the ersatz India created by the pixel pushers at special effects houses WETA Digital and the Moving Picture Company.
  27. Barbershop: The Next Cut
    This time the not-so-idle talk is about taking a socially conscious stand against gang violence. And while some of this territory is covered too tritely and safely to have all the impact intended by director Malcolm D. Lee (“The Best Man Holiday”), the movie’s entreaties are compelling enough.
  28. The Invitation
    Kusama’s handling of point of view is diabolically shrewd. She maximizes the terror potential of the vapidly ostentatious modernist mansion without fetishizing it. She intensifies the monstrosity of some of the characters by making them all too human. And as for guessing the ending — good luck.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Demolition
    What keeps you interested in Demolition is accompanying Davis as he solves the mystery of himself. What keeps you checking your watch is that the character’s not terribly interesting to begin with.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    April and the Extraordinary World
    A delightfully deranged steampunk adventure.
  31. Born to be Blue
    For the next two decades, the end notes reveal, Baker made the best music of his career. The film does its job if it encourages people to give that music a listen.
  32. Hardcore Henry
    When the action is at its sharpest, such as with Henry’s mid-chase leap from a detonating truck onto the back of a motorcycle, it’s spectacular.
  33. The Boss
    The loosey-goosey fun might be a bit much at the finish, but it’s still a laugh watching McCarthy try to get back on her feet.
  34. I Saw the Light
    Tom Hiddleston puts in a performance as Williams that ranks with that of Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash in “I Walk the Line.” And Hiddleston gets to do it in a better movie.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Midnight Special
    The truth is that this is a mystery movie, and the mystery is trying to figure out exactly what the heck is going on here.
  36. Take Me to the River
    Despite outstanding performances, the characters lose subtlety as they grow more extreme, and their secrets when spelled out become anticlimactic. Maybe with a little more mystery, the evil would seem less banal.
  37. The Clan
    It’s a mordant if unwieldy thriller examining how evil not only becomes the norm, but a virtue.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Everybody Wants Some!!
    A nice long soak in the Proustian detritus of its era.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Marguerite
    Marguerite strives for ambiguity and settles for a muddle. It piles too much on its serving plate, and at 129 minutes it’s definitely overlong.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    City of Gold
    It is a film about Los Angeles, culture and coexistence, the American dream. It is the opposite of narrowcasting.
  41. Alienated
    That’s one of the problems with Brian Ackley’s no budget sci-fi psychological thriller. No horror can compensate for the preceding 75 minutes of tedious, repetitious bickering. It’s about as thrilling as a couple’s therapy session with a married pair who hate each other and for good reason.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Krisha
    Krisha sucks you into its gradually worsening family dynamic with a confidence of style and a maturity of observation that is remarkable in a home-brewed Kickstarter movie. At times you laugh in horror. At other times you shrink from the screen. There are truths here.
  43. My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2
    If you appreciated the first movie’s sweetness, then you’ll likely be charmed enough. Otherwise, you’ll find the oof-to-opa! ratio hasn’t changed.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
    It plants a flag for a new corporate entertainment franchise and it will make international containerships of money, so does it matter that Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is joyless and incoherent? Probably not.
  45. Hello, My Name Is Doris
    Field next tries to touch our hearts with her pitifulness. Stay away, crazy woman! At times she seems about to turn into Glenn Close in “Fatal Attraction.”
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Creative Control
    You realize the movie isn’t nearly as clever as it looks.
  47. The Bronze
    Disappointingly, this scruffy indie doesn’t live up to its promise either, despite a few flashes of subversive inspiration.
  48. Remember
    Egoyan ekes out an engaging and meaningful potboiler.
  49. The Divergent Series: Allegiant
    This doesn’t even feel much like Tris’s story anymore, just generically overdigitized combat. The main thing she’s diverging from at this point is the tone that hooked us in the first place.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Eye in the Sky
    Its strength and limitation is that it’s a gimmick that works.
  51. Miracles from Heaven
    Riggen has no shame when it comes to jerking the tears — surging music, cute children, suffering children — and sometimes her manipulations work even on the hardest of hearts.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    In the Shadow of Women
    In the Shadow of Women, a portrait of a troubled French marriage, has the simplicity and subtle punch of a good short story.
  53. Embrace of the Serpent
    Though some of the concepts may be New Age boilerplate, the film’s images linger; especially that of the river, the snake devouring us all.
  54. Trapped
    Why do Parker and the other clinic owners and staff persevere despite constant harassment and potential assassination? Not for the money, certainly. Perhaps because no one else will.
  55. Talent Has Hunger
    An illuminating celebration of music and the art of teaching, comes at a time when both art and teaching are held in low esteem.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Rams
    If you can adjust to its rhythms, which move according to the seasons and to long-held family grudges, you’ll find it quietly funny, sometimes quite sad, and ultimately rather profound. If you can’t, you’ll be left in the cold with the sheep.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Knight of Cups
    Lubezki is arguably this movie’s secret star, and he invests the movie’s Los Angeles settings with the strangeness and newness of a NASA rover traveling across Mars.
  58. The Wave
    It follows the lead of more recent Hollywood disaster movies like “2012” and “The Impossible.” It features just one family; everyone else is part of the scenery.
  59. The Boy and the Beast
    For answers, prepare to sit through two hours of complications, though you will probably figure it out before the spectacular ending.
  60. London Has Fallen
    For the sequel, London Has Fallen, Butler and director Babak Najafi (HBO’s “Banshee”) strike a tone that’s more consistent — consistently dumb.
  61. Zootopia
    Judy and Nick’s unlikely-buddies routine is amusing, but their exploits and interplay occasionally neglect the youngest demographic.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
    The movie plays like a global-political farce made by people who’ve never left the Upper West Side.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Triple 9
    There’s a reason the movie has been pushed off the back of the truck into late February. It’s damaged goods.
  64. Jack of the Red Hearts
    This is not “Rain Man”; it’s better.
  65. Eddie the Eagle
    Inspiring, or amusing? Appealingly, Eddie the Eagle invites both tags.
  66. A War
    May also be among the best war movies of all time.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Only Yesterday (1991)
    Takahata and his animators balance aspects of nostalgia and the present day, urban modernity and rural timelessness, love and regret with a visual and aural sensitivity that draws a viewer in from the first frames.
  68. Snowtime!
    Despite a few diverting moments and some ambitiously dramatic themes, this one is simply too uneventful and too populated by thinly sketched characters to keep its target audience engaged.
  69. The Club
    Enigmatic, atmospheric, and seductive, the film unfortunately sheds little light on subjects that have too long been hidden in the dark.
  70. Risen
    As played by Fiennes, who has the aquiline face and piercing eyes of Max Van Sydow, Clavius is no pushover. You believe his disbelief, so when it wavers, yours might as well.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Eisenstein in Guanajuato
    A lot of this is naughty, overproduced egghead fun, and the scenes between Eisenstein and Canedo simmer with sexual tension. But too much is never enough for Greenaway, and while the leading men give bravura performances, the supporting cast is weak — Lisa Owen as Mrs. Upton Sinclair is actively dreadful — and the film’s hyperactivity ultimately wears you down.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Race
    Race wants so badly to get every last bit of the big picture that it dashes past the little details that actually tell a story. Like an over-trained athlete who pulls a hamstring in the big race, the movie tries to do it all and comes up short.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Witch
    This startling, assured feature debut from New Hampshire-born, Brooklyn-based writer-director Robert Eggers has one foot in early American history and another in legend and fairy tale.
  74. Where to Invade Next
    Mastering subtlety, you won't be surprised to hear, remains on Moore’s to-do list.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Ingrid Bergman in Her Own Words
    In its occasionally over-gentle way, the documentary testifies to the ego necessary to be a great star and to live a great life.
  76. How to Be Single
    Exhausting and seemingly endless.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Zoolander 2
    This needless sequel amps the silliness to DEFCON-4 levels of frantic surrealism and overstuffs the running time with famous faces. It’s a pop quiz instead of a movie, and it’ll be dated by tomorrow morning.
  78. Deadpool
    They even make the requisite cameo by Marvel founding father Stan Lee feel profanely inspired. Not your usual Marvel superhero scene? In this case, that’s a good thing.
  79. The Choice
    In the end, though, the film disappointingly, even lazily, shies away from being anything more than you’d expect.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Dreams Rewired
    Dreams Rewired is scattered by necessity and intent, and it throws off enough sparks to set your brain reeling.
  81. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
    Writer-director Burr Steers delivers a screen mash-up that’s generally done in the right, warped spirit. It lampoons Austen cleverly enough at points, without winking any harder than needed.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Hail, Caesar!
    There are the serious Coen brothers movies, like “No Country for Old Men” and, um, “A Serious Man,” and there are the not-so-serious ones. Hail, Caesar! is the opposite of their serious ones, and it is delightful.
  83. Kung Fu Panda 3
    A story that builds toward Po training an army of his panda brethren fails to deliver exponentially greater fun.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Lady in the Van
    The Lady in the Van ultimately presents a number of facts that would seem to “solve” Mary Shepherd. I’d like to think Smith knows better than that. In her hands, the lady in the van remains complex and unknowable — a mystery to the end. And that, friends, is acting.
  85. Mojave
    In his second directorial effort, Mojave, Monahan has no such map to follow, and he wanders in a land of sophomoric pretentiousness and banal profundities.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Finest Hours
    It’s a movie made for the kind of audiences who feel that movies aren’t made for them anymore — you know who you are. If you go, you might want to bring a raincoat.
  87. Ip Man 3
    Returning director Wilson Yip commits to this tone too late, getting lost in tangential conflict and stunt casting — in this corner, Mike Tyson! — at the expense of the drama and even the action.
  88. Monster Hunt
    He (Hui) does not achieve the surreal grandeur of Hayao Miyazaki’s animated films, but he has enough imagination and talent to engage his audience on its own level.
  89. The 5th Wave
    It’s tough to stay focused on the provocative bits when soapy talk of teenage yearning and angst keep making us snicker.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Son of Saul
    On the whole it’s daring and committed, and in Röhrig’s tremendously focused performance, it honors all the saints we’ll never know. And that’s worth any risk.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 100 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    45 Years
    I emerged from the movie in a white-out haze of emotions, synapses overloaded, grateful beyond words to an actress who can convey so much with such subtlety of means.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Mustang
    Mustang is a damning portrait of the lot of women in rural Turkish society, but its outrage and empathy spill over the sides of the movie to embrace the planet as a whole — anywhere a woman is condemned for all the thoughts others have about her.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Janis: Little Girl Blue
    I’d like to think of the singer watching this movie somewhere, nodding in thanks at what it gets right and howling with laughter at what it misses.
  94. Troublemakers: The Story of Land Art
    Crump has directed Troublemakers with assurance and energy. Perhaps too much so.
  95. Norm of the North
    Denounce the cynics who pander such pabulum as entertainment for children.
  96. Ride Along 2
    You’ll have to be satisfied with a modest assortment of energetically comic moments here, because the story sure isn’t a reason to catch this encore, and neither are who-asked-for-’em cast additions such as Ken Jeong.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi
    A straight-up combat film. Not a very good combat film — it wallows in genre clichés and makes a hash of its action scenes — but one that does get you to empathize with its grunts, the “secret soldiers” of the title.
  98. Anomalisa
    It takes a few minutes to catch on, and it would be indiscrete to specify what it is, but once you figure out what’s really strange about it you have entered the solipsistic prison of a tormented mind.
  99. The Forest
    Zada gets credible performances from Dormer and Kinney, but their characters undergo such unlikely psychological contortions that these efforts are to no avail.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Revenant
    Iñárritu has his eye so firmly on the myths of America that he loses sight of the men who made them. But he’s hardly the first person to do that.
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