Boston Globe's Scores

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For 7,946 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: 5,228 out of 7946
  2. Mixed: 1,553 out of 7946
  3. Negative: 1,165 out of 7946
7946 movie reviews
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  1. Will & Harper
    There’s an optimism here that coexists with humor, joy, sadness, and more than one laugh-out-loud moment.
  2. Wolfs
    Wolfs has enough action to keep us from contemplating how silly it is.
  3. Megalopolis
    That the director spent 40 years trying to make this worthless, 138-minute hot mess shocks me to no end. “Megalopolis” plays as if every iota of this once-great filmmaker’s talent got sold along with his vineyard.
  4. The Substance
    Had it been 90 minutes, we might be talking about a classic here. If there’s anything that was in dire need of a shot of The Substance to bring out a leaner, tighter version of itself, it’s this film’s Cannes-award-winning screenplay.
  5. His Three Daughters
    Once the general premise is established, “His Three Daughters” lets us bask in the glory of three actors at the top of their game.
  6. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
    Since this is a Tim Burton movie, you can safely assume the love story is the most twisted subplot of all. Still, the actors hold our interest and make the movie believable.
  7. Mountains
    A house is just a structure; what’s inside makes it a home. This film delicately shows what happens when the powers that be decide that the home you made is no longer yours.
  8. Reagan
    Reagan is the worst kind of hagiography. It’s a wretched 2½-hour bore that’s uncurious about its subject.
  9. Blink Twice
    Blink Twice may be aiming for a feminist statement, but it’s ultimately just a slasher movie with a bunch of one-dimensional Final Girls played by Alia Shawkat, Trew Mullen, Liz Caribel, and “Hit Man”’s Adria Arjona.
  10. Between the Temples
    Between the Temples emerges as a quirky and effective showcase for two actors known for playing oddball characters.
  11. Alien: Romulus
    Despite its overdependence on catering to fans, “Alien: Romulus” is the best “Alien” movie since Cameron’s first sequel.
  12. Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes
    Listening to Taylor is so compelling the screen could be blank and “Lost Tapes” would still be interesting. But director Nanette Burstein keeps things visually abundant with home movies, snapshots, film stills, film clips, newsreels, publicity photos.
  13. My Penguin Friend
    Only a true grinch would grumble loudly at a film that delivers its pro-environment message with a light touch that avoids preachiness.
  14. Cuckoo
    If you’re willing to just go with it, no questions asked, “Cuckoo” is an entertaining horror offering. But I must warn you that trying to make sense of the plot will drive you, well, cuckoo.
  15. Kneecap
    It runs out of story about midway through, and spends more time attempting to make these guys look cool than showing us the importance of their acts of linguistic civil disobedience.
  16. The Instigators
    It’s sad when a film wastes the talents of so many fine actors. Sad for us, that is, because I’m sure they were all paid handsomely.
  17. Sing Sing
    Sing Sing refuses to pass any judgment while inviting the audience to acknowledge the incontrovertible fact that these people are humans just like us.
  18. Dìdi
    Dìdi reminds us that our parents aren’t just our parents — they’re people who have their own hopes and dreams. It’s not just about us.
  19. Deadpool & Wolverine
    Ridiculous even by superhero standards, it remains more or less coherent.
  20. Twisters
    Though “Twisters” lives up to the sequel maxim of being louder, larger, and busier, director Lee Isaac Chung (“Minari”) and screenwriter Mark L. Smith don’t deviate from the first film’s formula. Watching the sequel is like playing Mad Libs with the original’s plot.
  21. Faye
    As with any documentary where the star tells the story, “Faye” occasionally comes off a little lighter than a more objective look might have been.
  22. Longlegs
    Once the film started throwing in Satan worship, spooky dolls, and nuns with agendas the Pope would not endorse, it became more silly than disturbing. Still, I have to admire a filmmaker who, once realizing he’s painted himself into a corner, opts to bust through the wall rather than accept being trapped.
  23. Fly Me to the Moon
    The reason romantic comedies fail so often is that they attempt too much. “Fly Me to the Moon” may be the busiest example I’ve ever seen. It’s also one of the worst, despite its eclectic needle drops convincing me that I need to buy its soundtrack album.
  24. Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F
    “Axel F” is a joyless affair, a mediocre simulacrum that made me long for the original.
  25. Despicable Me 4
    It’s cheap pandering to fans, but I really couldn’t stay mad at a movie that uses Culture Club’s “Karma Chameleon” as a point of contention and has two shout-outs to one of the best movies of 1985, “Real Genius.”
    • 68 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    A Quiet Place: Day One
    The film includes the standard escalating horror set pieces — one occurs on fiery scaffolding, another inside a different flooded subway — that grow repetitive in their oscillating bouts of tension and release. But Nyong’o and Quinn manage to keep the film anchored in connection.
  27. Kinds of Kindness
    Fans of Lanthimos’s works outside his Emma Stone movies will find “Kinds of Kindness” worth watching. As for the rest of us: You’ll start out clapping along with “Sweet Dreams,” but by the end, you’ll be singing Peggy Lee’s immortal question, “Is That All There Is?”
  28. Fancy Dance
    As usual, Gladstone is excellent, and she doesn’t mind ceding the spotlight to Deroy-Olson. The two craft a convincing family unit, one we don’t want to see broken. And though the film hits familiar plot beats, it loses none of its redemptive power.
  29. Daddio
    A talky movie like this one succeeds only if its leads have chemistry and understand their characters. Both actors fit the bill, giving committed performances that elevate the material.
  30. Ghostlight
    The trio give excellent performances, working together to create a credible family unit. Father and daughter hit their strides during their moments of catharsis onstage, which explains why audiences at Sundance reportedly laughed and cried during the climactic performance.
  31. The Bikeriders
    Like Lyon balancing looking out and looking in “The Bikeriders,” Nichols balances the mythic and mundane in this version.
  32. Thelma
    This is one of the year’s best films, and the most fun you’ll have at the theater this summer.
  33. Tuesday
    It felt like I was watching a Wayans Bros. movie instead of one that expected me to take the ideas of dying and grief seriously.
  34. Inside Out 2
    Inside Out 2 is serviceable entertainment. That’s a sad thing to say about a Pixar film, especially when you consider they made classics like “Toy Story,” “The Incredibles,” and, well, the first “Inside Out.”
  35. Treasure
    Julia von Heinz’s direction can’t handle the film’s tonal shifts, and the screenplay (co-written by von Heinz and John Quester) centers on two very poorly written leads who clash in ways that are supposed to be comedic but are mostly infuriating.
  36. Robot Dreams
    Robot Dreams reminds us that animated feature doesn’t mean “movie for kids.”
  37. The Watchers
    There are plenty of things that go bump in the night. “The Watchers” proves they’re only effective if you don’t sleep through them.
  38. Bad Boys: Ride or Die
    Throughout the mayhem, Marcus and Mike bicker like an old married couple. While this interplay has always been the best element of the “Bad Boys” universe, Smith and Lawrence look disinterested this time. It’s as if they’re getting too old for this [expletive], to use a phrase from a much better buddy-cop movie series.
  39. Summer Camp
    By the time the film settles down to give us a few solid dramatic scenes, I appreciated the effort but had long since stopped caring.
  40. Young Woman and the Sea
    The film evokes all of the usual biopic tropes while painting a standard picture of an extraordinary hero.
  41. Hit Man
    Hit Man is one of the year’s best movies.
  42. The Garfield Movie
    The somewhat inappropriate story won’t matter to youngsters who’ll be hypnotized by a color scheme so bright you need sunglasses to view it.
  43. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
    It’s a mechanical exercise that lacks suspense, is too long (at 148 minutes, it’s the franchise’s lengthiest film), and is so chockfull of exposition that I took more notes than I’ve done in years.
  44. Babes
    At its heart, this is a film about sisterhood.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    IF
    IF is nonetheless an enjoyable watch, and a surprisingly gentle one, despite its bumbling cast of fiends, rascals, and other overlooked creatures.
  46. Evil Does Not Exist
    The ambiguous finale provides neither certainty nor respite, and may prove frustrating for some. I had no idea where Hamaguchi’s cautionary tale was taking me, but I remained intrigued until the bitter end.
  47. The Old Oak
    It’s a fable that ties up too neatly to be believed, and it’s a story I’m tired of hearing.
  48. The Fall Guy
    The Fall Guy isn’t just a throwback to the 1980s television show that inspired it; it’s an old-fashioned romp that knows how to build on its gags.
  49. Nowhere Special
    The film is essentially a two-hander between Norton and Lamont, both of whom give excellent, complementary performances. They feel like father and son from first frame to last.
  50. We Grown Now
    “A place is the people,” a closing screen credit tells us. It’s a lovely sentiment, but “We Grown Now” feels more like fleeting memories of those people rather than a fully formed reminiscence.
  51. Challengers
    It’s not that any of the actors are bad. Zendaya has a screen authority that goes way beyond that imperious look. It’s just that none of them is especially compelling.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Sasquatch Sunset
    Consistently weird and frequently wonderful, “Sasquatch Sunset” uses its high-concept premise to consider a host of themes: collective living, coexistence with nature, longing stirred by seclusion.
  53. Remembering Gene Wilder
    The documentary really lays on the praise and sentiment. That may not be unusual in such an enterprise, but it gets tired sooner rather than later.
  54. Civil War
    Civil War can, and frequently does, put its characters through an emotional wringer. It puts viewers through one, too. But those characters seem less like people with actual feelings to be wrung than means to Garland’s filmmaking ends.
  55. The Beast
    The Beast is an unusual film: challenging, ambitious, and inward. Even when inscrutable, as it often is, it holds the attention, though less so the longer it lasts, and it lasts nearly 2½ hours.
  56. Monkey Man
    A date movie “Monkey Man” is not.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Coup de Chance
    The film’s closing is abrupt and maybe too tidy, but “Coup de Chance” is still a clever little thriller. It displays an admirable economy of storytelling, and its jazz-heavy soundtrack helps maintain a jaunty mood.
  58. Wicked Little Letters
    There are many complaints to be made about “Wicked Little Letters” — its forced humor, its even more forced moral lessons, its tonal unevenness (flat-footed jokiness here, cheap sentimentality there) — but chief among them is wasting Buckley.
  59. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
    The problem with “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” is the same as so many of these franchise-based films: They’re all soulless special-effects extravaganzas where CGI takes the place of character development, good writing, and emotional connection.
  60. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
    Seeing the Ghostbusters in the Big Apple where they belong put a smile on my face, at least until I realized I was watching a sitcom about wiseass teens and their dopey parents.
  61. Shirley
    Despite an impressive pedigree in front of and behind the camera, “Shirley” fails to convey just how remarkable the career of Shirley Chisholm really was. The problem isn’t the narrow focus on one of her accomplishments, it’s the even narrower depiction of who she was as a person.
  62. Love Lies Bleeding
    I generally love noir, gore, kick-ass women, the 1980s — but “Love Lies Bleeding” ladled out a visual stew I did not enjoy consuming.
  63. Shayda
    For the first 90 minutes, the film has a light touch that centers its story and makes us identify with Shayda.
  64. Arthur the King
    I should have been more affected by Arthur the King because, after all, “Old Yeller” conditioned my generation to erupt in tears whenever a dog’s fate looks dire. And yet, all I saw were the familiar gears churning underneath.
  65. They Shot the Piano Player
    While uncertainty remains about Tenório’s horrible fate, it’s never in doubt how much he was beloved. “They Shot the Piano Player” is a tribute to the musician and to those who knew him best. See it more than once, and hope the theater plays it loud.
  66. Kung Fu Panda 4
    I enjoyed the first three adventures of the Dragon Warrior, but the best thing he can do now is to give this series a much needed skadoosh, sending it to rest in the cinematic spirit realm.
  67. Dune: Part Two
    Just as in the first film, I was put off by the white-savior narrative (Stilgar’s fervent belief quickly becomes grating), and the Hans Zimmer score that sounds as if Arrakis were in the Middle East rather than space.
  68. Io Capitano
    Io Capitano doesn’t try to convince viewers whether Seydou, Moussa, and all the other migrants have a right to seek a better life. What it does do, however, is tell their story in a way that makes them far more human and relatable than most of the news stories we see nowadays.
  69. Drive-Away Dolls
    This entire film is a troll, a refreshing, claws-out swipe at anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and beliefs. It’s also a testament to the power of queer people in front of and behind the camera.
  70. The Taste of Things
    One of 2023′s best films, “The Taste of Things” is achingly romantic and devastatingly sad. You’ll spend the first two-thirds of this movie salivating, and the last third of it sobbing.
  71. Madame Web
    Johnson tries her best, and O’Connor is good for a few laughs, but “Madame Web” is a lost cause. The special effects are confusing and the action scenes are poorly edited. By the time we get a rote explanation of Webb’s powers, it’s too late to care.
  72. Bob Marley: One Love
    Bob Marley: One Love opts to print the legend, but it will just make you want to listen to “Legend.”
  73. Menus Plaisirs - Les Troisgros
    If you love food porn, this movie will satiate your appetite for visions of French food while providing much insight into how that food is prepared.
  74. The Promised Land
    Though the last third of the film feels rushed, and Bennebjerg’s performance hews dangerously close to mustache-twirling-villain territory, there is much to admire and enjoy here. Arcel has made the kind of cinematic spectacle Hollywood used to excel at, but doesn’t make anymore.
  75. Argylle
    Argylle is a cynical cash grab that has the audacity to use that “new” Beatles song, “Now and Then” (itself a cynical cash grab pieced together with far more skill than this movie) as the basis for its score and the “love theme” for Aidan and Elly.
  76. Origin
    It’s not a fun time at the movies, but it’s an informative and worthy one.
  77. I.S.S.
    This film isn’t terrible; it’s just empty. There are few things more disappointing than a genre movie that forgoes developing its intriguing premise to focus on cheap, failed attempts to thrill.
  78. Driving Madeleine
    Driving Madeleine is held together by the funny and dignified performances of its two leads.
  79. Mean Girls
    Though I enjoyed both films, I had the same problem with this “Mean Girls” as I did with the original: I didn’t know whom to root for as the story played out.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    The Beekeeper
    Director Ayer, whose career took off when he wrote 2001′s “Training Day,” has frequently attempted to create Action Movies That Matter (the stressful 2014 World War II picture “Fury,” for one); this is absolutely not one of those. He tackles this assignment without much self-seriousness but doesn’t seem keen to embrace its silliness quotient, either.
  81. The Book of Clarence
    Samuel’s sophomore full-length feature is an ambitious misfire, a noble failure that starts off like “Monty Python’s Life of Brian” and ends like “The Passion of the Christ.”
  82. Public Speaking
    Without any framing background information, this affectionate documentary and its continual monologues can feel a little too insidery and indulgent. [22 Nov 2010, p.G9]
    • Boston Globe
      • Posted Jan 10, 2024
    • 92 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    The Zone of Interest
    The film is not just about a Nazi couple, or even just about the banality of evil. Rather, it is about the ways in which people close themselves off to destabilizing truths. We all live beside some sort of looming awfulness. How we act in the face of that evil is what matters.
  84. Night Swim
    Night Swim has its characters make infuriatingly asinine decisions to serve its plot.
  85. All of Us Strangers
    It’s simultaneously cathartic and heartbreaking.
  86. Ferrari
    Driver and Cruz are perfect surnames for actors starring in a movie called “Ferrari.” That was just one of the many thoughts I had as the minutes slowly ticked by. At least the loud sound mix kept me awake.
  87. The Color Purple
    The Color Purple ultimately works far better in pieces than as a whole. Considering those pieces contain some of the best moments I’ve seen in 2023, I’m able to put my concerns aside as a mildly nagging uncertainty.
  88. The Iron Claw
    Unfortunately, Durkin’s script is so shallow that every character is reduced to a simple sketch.
  89. American Fiction
    The satire isn’t as brutal as it could have been — and perhaps needed to be — but overall, I thought “American Fiction” was a rousing success that got me thinking about my own experiences.
  90. Migration
    Parents will be tortured by this film. If the whiny adult ducks and their even whinier kids don’t give them a headache, the garish animation will.
  91. Fallen Leaves
    In a year of movies with bloated runtimes, Kaurismäki keeps his at a brisk and welcome 81 minutes, not one of which is wasted.
  92. Monster
    It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a movie so fully collapse in its third act as this one does, and it does so without warning.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Poor Things
    Through it all, Bella claims center stage; and whether she’s acting as an innocent or a sophisticate, Stone has no problem anchoring the chaos.
  94. Wonka
    It’s not as memorable as the original, but like a good piece of chocolate, Wonka is at its most delectable when you’re consuming it.
  95. Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget
    Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget isn’t a bad movie; it’s just an unnecessary one. Whoever thought audiences would be clamoring for the sequel to a 23-year-old film with such a satisfying ending to its story must have been out of their clucking mind.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé
    The movie’s presentation of her whole personhood adds sweetness to the spectacle, and drives home the outro of “My House,” a thumping new Beyoncé track that plays under the credits: “Pick me up even if I fall/ Let love heal us all, us all, us all.”
  97. Eileen
    Ultimately, I respected the dramatic destination at which the film arrived, but I kept asking myself if the trip was really necessary. Sometimes you admire a movie more than you like it.
  98. The Boy and the Heron
    The Boy and the Heron leaves us with questions about our place in the universe and whether it’s worth saving. You may also exit the theater contemplating the afterlife. Regardless of the ideas swirling around in your head, you’ll have witnessed the work of a director who has not lost his ability to stoke your imagination.
  99. Silent Night
    Silent Night wants to be the new action movie associated with Christmas. But don’t worry, fans of “Die Hard”; that movie’s place is still secure.
  100. Maestro
    Imitation and musical enthusiasm are all there is to this performance; in the dramatic scenes that make up the majority of Maestro, Cooper is the weak link that drags everything down.
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