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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  1. The Believer
    An amazing and incendiary movie that dives straight into the rough waters of contradiction.
  2. Brotherhood of the Wolf
    A zestful genre outing, and then some, right up its final overkill.
  3. Chaos
    The best that can be said of the men in Coline Serreau's Chaos is that some of them are pimps.
  4. Merci Pour Le Chocolat
    The magic of their perfectly shaded performances is that you always have to wonder ... Is she really that bad?
  5. The Hurricane
    (Washington's is) an astonishing performance, partly because it's so devoid of histrionics, and it has Oscar nomination written all over it.
    • Boston Globe
  6. Power Trip
    Part Marxist social drama and part Michael Moore corporation-needling, with fed-up residents trying to outsmart the big, bad naive company to keep their lights on for free.
  7. Lumumba
    Structural shortcomings and all -- gives a neglected giant of African independence his due.
    • Boston Globe
  8. Dr T and the Women
    A comedy of chaos, an ensemble comedy, with characters swirling around one another unaware, in their uniform desperation, of how funny they are.
    • Boston Globe
    • 45 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Maid in Manhattan
    It's Lopez who's the proper focus of this dream. So intent has she been on becoming a superstar in the past few years that many people have forgotten that, given decent material, she can act.
  10. Mondays in the Sun
    Loach makes a working metaphor of the old ant-and-grasshopper story, but the film's images are what echo the loudest.
  11. Millennium Actress
    The movie's narrative can be taxingly ornate, but there's something beautiful about its metaphorical conflation of politics and glamour, the real and the fictional.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Eight Legged Freaks
    Doesn't try to be anything it's not. It's happy being a funny, shoot-'em-up, run-for-your-life, green-guts monster movie. And as green-guts monster movies go, it's a beaut.
  13. Finding Forrester
    A juicy and gratifying teacher movie (a genre to which I'm partial). The joy in performance shared by Connery and Brown is the big reason.
    • Boston Globe
  14. Fantasia 2000
    A solid two-bagger, not a home run.
    • Boston Globe
  15. Happy, Texas
    I can't imagine anyone not feeling entertained by Happy, Texas.
  16. Hart's War
    Reminds us that the human dynamic can do a lot that explosions can't, even when the film flirts with formula.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Blue Streak
    A rather witty, streetwise comedy/action movie with a lot going for it.
  18. A Decade Under the Influence
    The movie star Julie Christie turned 62 last month, and anyone under the impression that she merely floated through her prime heedless of the age in which she worked should catch her in A Decade Under the Influence.
  19. The Tailor of Panama
    Many spy capers lose their intended irony and wry black humor, but The Tailor of Panama stays stylishly on target in ways that would put a heat-seeking missile to shame.
    • Boston Globe
  20. Rabbit-Proof Fence
    As ambitious as this may be, however, the movie's objectives tax its energy even as the girls' plight tears at your heart.
  21. Jakob the Liar
    Deserves a place alongside "Life Is Beautiful" and, yes, even "Schindler's List."
  22. Godzilla 2000
    A ton of fun, and then some.
    • Boston Globe
  23. Willard
    Wonderfully deranged.
  24. Just an American Boy
    Earle's song introductions, like those of his mentors Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark, are as meaty, pointed, and touching as the tunes themselves, and his spoken words -- full of humor and humanity -- are the heart of the film.
  25. Sylvia
    At heart, Sylvia is constructed as a psychological suspense film framed around the ambiguities of Hughes's infidelity and Plath's resulting paranoia. So at its strangest, the movie is a potboiler.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Big Eden
    It's a refreshing alternative to hipper-than-thou moviemaking.
    • Boston Globe
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Babí léto
    This wistfully charming slice-of-life comedy celebrates an elderly man defiantly thumbing his nose at old age.
  28. 102 Dalmatians
    It is Close's performance that gives the movie its oomph and will leave adults with smiles as wide as the kids'.
    • Boston Globe
  29. Big Animal
    Gathers a sort of darkness as it comes to its oblique conclusion.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Northfork
    This is very much the bargain that Northfork offers an audience: Buy into the brothers' elegiac meditation on angels, Eden, and the death of American innocence or sit back and scoff at it as so much David Lynch lite.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator
    A tale of narrow talent destroyed by pop hubris, raging insecurity, substance abuse, and murder.
  32. Thirteen Days
    It turns the nerve-fraying Cuban missile crisis into a big pop myth with the grip of a vise.
    • Boston Globe
  33. Rana's Wedding
    An invitation to see something a little less pretty, and potentially more enduring.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Dog Park
    A romantic comedy with an adult sensibility, a film that avoids characters-as-caricatures (with one exception), and deftly mixes cynicism and hope.
  35. Welcome to Collinwood
    At some point we're flashed a junkyard billboard telling us that Collinwood is the ''Beirut of Cleveland'' - yes, but here, it's by way of Looney Tunes.
  36. The Man Without a Past
    It's a quiet little gag homage both to Boris Karloff and to the set up of shelf-loads of pulp novels and films noir. And Peltola, with his flat, serious face and damp, oil-black hair, happens to look, at times, like Richard Widmark and Kirk Douglas.
  37. Dark Blue World
    A bittersweet world, and it's frankly one to which we've been before, but seldom do we see it rendered with such exquisite, if pained, craftsmanship.
    • Boston Globe
  38. Men of Honor
    Just what Gooding needed to restart his stalled career.
  39. Swimming Pool
    Very much a genre picture, relying on notions of suspense, surprise, and comeuppance. Indeed, at the center of this movie is a question of whether what we're seeing is really to be believed.
  40. The Legend of Bagger Vance
    It offers pleasures of a kind that fewer and fewer films even seem to remember, much less aspire to.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Phone Booth
    Short, suspenseful, funny, and profane, the film's a throwback to the neat little B-level thrillers the entertainment industry used to crank out by the dozen in the post- World War II era and the early days of TV.
  42. Heist
    Not only reminds us that there's a little larceny in all of us, it reminds us how much fun it can be to commune with our inner thieves.
    • Boston Globe
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Demonlover
    Expect Demonlover to become a midnight-movie staple in the coming years. And expect shards of it to roil your dreams for weeks.
  44. Someone Like You...
    There are three main reasons for seeing Someone Like You - Ashley Judd, Ashley Judd, and Ashley Judd.
    • Boston Globe
  45. Fellini: I'm a Born Liar
    Only loosely concerned with behind-the-scenes gossip and is squarely focused on the nature of Fellini's insatiability.
  46. Thomas and the Magic Railroad
    A train worth catching.
  47. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
    This third installment is the loudest, dopiest, and least inventive of the three. But what the movie...lacks in intelligence it makes up for in sheer doom.
  48. The Rookie
    It's not afraid to play cornball when it isn't playing baseball, but The Rookie gets away with it.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    All About the Benjamins
    All About the Benjamins has: flash, cash, and enough videogenic eye candy to make ''Miami Vice'' look like ''Little House on the Prairie.''
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    In My Skin
    In My Skin takes that pain/pleasure principle and magnifies it until you're either dumbstruck or running screaming from the theater.
  51. Intimacy
    Sometimes gets bogged down in its own wordiness.
  52. The Grandfather
    A solid, humane, old-fashioned film in the best sense of the term.
  53. Good Boy!
    The film is touchingly firm about leveling with children, drawing a careful, crucial line between fantasy and reality, without patronizing or haranguing them.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Zero Day
    Without even trying, Coccio may have stumbled over the truest metaphor for Columbine yet.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    L'Auberge Espagnole
    The movie also rather sweetly suggests that the apartment being shared is Europe itself. There's a reason this warm, stylish human comedy was a big hit all across the Continent: It conveys a new generation's conviction that borders no longer matter.
  56. Hamlet
    This is a sizzling, invigorating Hamlet.
    • Boston Globe
  57. Bossa Nova
    One of the most warmly beguiling romantic comedies the Southern Hemisphere has sent our way in ages.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Cuckoo
    The Cuckoo is smart enough to steer away from allegory and into the specific every chance it gets, though -- so much so that when the film finally does slip the mortal coil, you still hang with it.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Like Mike
    I don't want to sell Like Mike as something it's not. It's a cash-in, all right - just better written, more tightly edited, sharply performed, and a little more heartfelt than most.
  60. Love and Diane
    fully devotes itself to painting a family portrait seldom allowed such rich cinematic detail.
  61. The Gift
    A solidly crafted, suspensefully written, powerfully acted little juggernaut.
    • Boston Globe
  62. The Core
    The real core of The Core is the beautiful friendship between a highly emotive Eckhart and the sacrificial Karyo. Their bond is the best thing to happen to Franco-American relations since SpaghettiOs.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion
    Less a documentary than a cry of outrage -- a series of exotic images that slowly turn horrifying.
  64. Kingdom Come
    In the end, it's simple warmth and sincerity that make this ensemble piece so disarming.
    • Boston Globe
  65. Le divorce
    This present-day Paris of Le Divorce is smartly shot and costumed, and the whole affair is breezy and uncharacteristically insouciant, given the reserved nature of the folks responsible for it.
  66. The Santa Clause 2
    For an anonymous Saturday afternoon, it's the best lump of coal Hollywood can jam in your stocking.
  67. Together
    The best thing about Together, apart from the way some of its characters grow on you even as others put you off, is the way it snatches idealism back from the brink of life-smothering orthodoxy.
  68. Up at the Villa
    Is a chamber romance, in that there's nothing grand or sweeping about it, but it's got all the style it needs to go with those glorious Tuscan settings.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Ha-Chaverim Shel Yana
    Juxtaposes slice-of-life tales with hints of worldly conflict to delightfully comic effect.
  70. Timecode
    Like a good supermarket tabloid, Time Code grabs - and keeps - our attention.
  71. Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer
    Aileen is Broomfield working compassionately. Perhaps it's only because he knows he can't save Wuornos that he can offer her as she might have been: part wounded animal, part self-destructive martyr, and all tragedy.
  72. Music of the Heart
    Avoids the potentially suffocating pall of uplift hovering over its quite exhilarating story.
  73. Trembling Before G-d
    Examines this dilemma with compassion and sensitivity.
  74. Spy Kids
    Wacky enough and gadget-driven enough to appeal to bored kids looking for fresh energies.
    • Boston Globe
    • 58 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Grey Zone
    Should be seen: It's a worthy ordeal, with flaws that, ironically, make grist for later arguments.
  76. The Last Castle
    The kind of movie you can enjoy easily enough, as long as you don't think about it much.
    • Boston Globe
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Lost in La Mancha
    It is an honest, dumbstruck, not particularly deep demonstration of how insanely difficult it is to make a movie, any movie, no matter how blithe the end result may appear on screen.
  78. Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde
    Witherspoon is a professional, demanding we give ourselves over to her carbonated pluck.
  79. The Seagull's Laughter
    Lively and beautiful filmmaking. It may leave you scratching your head, but it shouldn't leave you cold.
  80. I Capture the Castle
    If there's true magic to be found in the proceedings, it's in Garai's dexterous performance.
  81. The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle
    It's a sunny, funny, fittingly cartoony blend of computer-generated 3-D representations of the flying squirrel and his pal the moose with actors.
    • Boston Globe
  82. Medea
    Medea works on von Trier's own imagistic terms. There are shots and sequences in this movie that feel unique.
  83. The Sea Is Watching
    As rich and literary a work as you might expect.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Confidence
    Run the game, bow to the movies that did it better and before, keep the dialogue on the line between hard-boiled and hokey, and throw one last curveball before the lights come up. It's a con in itself, but the reward's in the playing.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Ignorant Fairies
    It's a soapy, simplistic, but surprisingly affecting ambisexual melodrama that plays a little like Pedro Almodovar without the surreal frills.
  86. Insomnia
    Has to be appreciated simply for doing its job, for being the only thriller I've seen recently that made me wonder how my knuckles ended up in my mouth.
  87. Die, Mommie, Die!
    Busch combines French absurdist theater and American performance art with a drag queen's flamboyant wit.
  88. The Big Hit
    The last word in good-time mayhem.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Dirty Pretty Things
    This is the meatiest role Tautou has had post-''Amelie'' and she drops the zombie-pixie act for once, giving us a character who's caught in a daily dance between propriety and abandon, and who can only dance faster as desperation sets in.
  90. Yossi & Jagger
    What the movie lacks in ambition, originality, and grit, it makes up for in pure feeling.
  91. Bread and Tulips
    Manages the right balance of fairy tale and joyous self-discovery. And the Venice locations don't hurt.
    • Boston Globe
  92. The Legend of Drunken Master
    Intoxicating fun.
  93. Kissing Jessica Stein
    Small, sharply written, incisive comedy examines, with smarts and style and sexiness, the very nature of modern romance - gay, straight, and in between.
  94. Secret Lives: Hidden Children and Their Rescuers During WWII
    These children are indeed the faces of war. It's just harder to recognize them because they're the ones someone cared enough to save.
  95. Hearts in Atlantis
    A powerful and surehandedly crafted depth charge of a movie.
    • Boston Globe
  96. Urbania
    It plays like Scorsese's ``After Hours,'' but for higher stakes.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Winged Migration
    If it were any more real - if it were Imax, say -- the audience would be molting.
  98. Rock Star
    As generic as its title, but two things enable it to land: the basic likability of Mark Wahlberg as the wannabe protagonist, and the contagious energies in the rock concert sequences.
    • Boston Globe
  99. Chopper
    Too quick to uncritically and unthinkingly accept its subject's rollickingly self-mythologizing take on himself.
    • Boston Globe
  100. Girlhood
    Documentary filmmaker Liz Garbus spent three years shooting two teenagers living in a Maryland juvenile detention center. The completed film is called Girlhood and it feels as much a work in progress as its two troubled subjects do.
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