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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  1. Finding Vivian Maier
    The chief problem is the documentary’s misapprehension of the artistic personality.
  2. Bears
    As with all of Disneynature’s features, there’s astonishing documentary work on display in Bears — but a leaner, less conspicuously structured view of the wild might have had even greater impact.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    That Demon Within
    There’s a half-realized, half-haunting Hitchcockian psychodrama buried somewhere within That Demon Within. What’s on the surface plays more like Wong and Lam simply forgot to take their meds.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Railway Man
    Throughout, Firth compellingly plays a man struggling to make sense of the ordeal that his life has become. Too often, though, you can feel the movie struggling right along with him.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Transcendence
    There’s a lot of intelligence in Transcendence. Ironically, almost all of it feels artificial.
  6. In Bloom
    Despite the seeming inevitability of tragedy and despair, In Bloom remains true to its title. Though political and personal upheaval threatens to overwhelm them, Eka and Natia’s clarity and courage resist the ignorance, injustice, and rage all around.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Heaven Is for Real
    While Heaven Is for Real asks a lot of questions, it ultimately has no doubt whatsoever about the answers. Take it on faith or not at all.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Watermark
    Watermark feels less focused than “Manufactured Landscapes.” While it presents us with awful and/or awe-inspiring images and ideas, the movie lacks the tightening grip that made the earlier work so unforgettable.
  9. Joe
    Joe is one more in the line of Southern Gothic miserabilism that includes “Winter’s Bone” and “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” films that many have praised but some find condescending.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    A Birder's Guide to Everything
    At its occasional best, A Birder’s Guide to Everything hints at the profound pleasure of standing very still and witnessing wonders the rest of the world passes by.
  11. The Raid 2
    The film was technically astonishing and yet brazenly simple.
  12. Dom Hemingway
    Entertaining if inconsequential gangster farce.
  13. Oculus
    At its best, it delves into the murky areas of memory, childhood trauma, and family conflict. But it forgoes such troubling issues for mumbo jumbo and glowing-eyed wraiths.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Under the Skin
    What’s under the film’s surface is intriguing enough, but it’s the surface itself that holds you in a dark trance. A portrait of alienation filmed from the alien’s point of view — or is it just a woman’s? — the movie’s a cinematic Rubik’s Cube that snaps together surprisingly easily, yet whose larger meanings remain tantalizingly out of reach.
  15. Rio 2
    It’s fun in stretches, but also busily forced.
  16. Draft Day
    It’s a big deal for the NFL and ESPN, no doubt, and Draft Day serves as 110 minutes of product placement for both.
  17. The Unknown Known
    “The Fog of War” (2003), about McNamara, won Morris a best documentary feature Oscar. The Unknown Known takes its title from a favorite phrase of Rumsfeld. It also accurately describes its subject, whose smiling inscrutability makes him consistently fascinating and often maddening.
  18. The Missing Picture
    His film aspires to a poetry about barbarism that will not let us forget.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Nymphomaniac: Volume II
    Vol. II is less focused than “Vol. I” — less funny, too, although there are a few dank laughs — and you feel Von Trier’s inspiration and energy start to flag during the final laps.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Jodorowsky's Dune
    In retrospect, it’s obvious why the film was never produced: The director was a lunatic.
  21. Island of Lemurs: Madagascar
    The animals are so magically entertaining to watch here (helped by some gently mischievous narrative assists), the educational treatment is a fun time in its own right.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Anita
    If you were alive in 1991, the televised images may still stick in your mind and your craw.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Captain America: The Winter Soldier
    The new film isn’t nearly as bleak as Christopher Nolan’s take on Batman (in general, Marvel seems more risk-averse when it comes to fiddling with the crown jewels), but it still creates an action-movie landscape torn between patriotic ideals and harsh post-9/11 realpolitik.
  24. Cesar Chavez
    Plays more like an exercise in nostalgia than a dramatic re-creation of a triumphant fight for civil rights.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Sabotage
    Stupid, sadistic, misogynistic, confusing, and more than a little ridiculous. Here’s the thing, though: It keeps you watching, if only to see how tortured the plot or characters are going to get. I’m not sure that “entertainingly awful” is a recommendation, but the shoe fits.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Noah
    Noah is equal parts ridiculous and magnificent, a showman’s folly and a madman’s epic.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Lunchbox
    The Lunchbox isn’t an example of bravura moviemaking or cutting-edge style but simply a tale told with intelligence, restraint, and respect.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Face of Love
    The result isn’t a great movie, but it is an excellent guilty pleasure.
  29. Particle Fever
    A key point, though, is that all the scientists profiled have staked their careers on this one discovery.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Nymphomaniac: Volume I
    Seems calculated to shock, but what’s most disquieting about Nymph()maniac is how funny, tender, thoughtful, and truthful it is, even as it pushes into genuinely seamy aspects of onscreen sexuality. Obnoxious he may be, but von Trier knows how to burrow into our ids.
  31. Grand Piano
    Though Mira shows skill at evoking mood and building tension despite the constrained circumstances of the premise, the narrative quickly and embarrassingly breaks down.
  32. Bad Words
    Misogynistic, homophobic, scatological — none of these words come up in any of the spelling bees that take place in Jason Bateman’s directorial debut, but they apply to the film.
  33. Muppets Most Wanted
    The well-worn plot basics are dressed up nicely by the film’s consistently clever humor, as well as a celebrity cameo roster that’s stacked even by Muppet standards.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Divergent
    Divergent is almost good enough to make you forget what a cynical exercise it is on every possible level. The original 2011 young adult novel by Veronica Roth — reasonably engrossing, thoroughly disposable — reads exactly like what it is: an ambitious young author’s attempt to re-write “The Hunger Games” without bringing the lawyers down on her head.
  35. Visitors
    Visitors is lovely, soothing, like the cinematic equivalent of tasteful elevator music, but it doesn’t convey as much truth as a single glimpse into Triska’s eyes.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Veronica Mars
    They’re calling it a movie, but no matter how you squint at it it’s a TV show.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Grand Budapest Hotel
    What does it add up to? What’s it all about, Wes? In a word: evanescence.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Omar
    The movie lands like a punch.
  39. Better Living Through Chemistry
    One hopes that, for their own good, when any of these actors are offered a script like this again, they’ll have the sense to just say no.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Need For Speed
    All that’s missing is Clyde the orangutan from Clint Eastwood’s “Every Which Way But Loose,” which, trust me, this movie could have used.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me
    She’s a diva — she knows it, we know it, the director knows it — but over the years Stritch seems to have learned that the only way to deal with that is honestly. So she’s a paradox: a diva with no illusions about herself.
  42. Child's Pose
    Of all the great monster mothers in cinema history, Cornelia Keneres (Luminita Gheorghiu, who sets the standard other performances should be judged by this year) ranks high on the list.
  43. Bethlehem
    A taut, expertly constructed, and suspenseful police procedural, it also explores the issues of loyalty, trust, betrayal, and revenge that those engaged in such morally ambiguous if essential activities would prefer not to think about.
  44. Mr. Peabody & Sherman
    In the film’s sharpest visual sequence, they land in ancient Egypt, with the filmmakers entertainingly cribbing from “Indiana Jones” and “The Wizard of Oz” to get them out of tight spots.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    300: Rise of an Empire
    Basically, if the first “300” was a pep-talk from Coach on how to lose with dignity, Rise of an Empire is an inspirational speech on the value of teamwork.
  46. Stalingrad
    It’s a brutal bit of screen poetry that’s matched too infrequently by the aching human stories director Fedor Bondarchuk is so anxious to tell.
  47. If You Build It
    If this blend of community service, innovative teaching, and creative approach to design and construction sounds idealistic, the film’s final scenes deliver enough stress and sweat to show that idealism takes hard work, too.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Cousin Jules
    Cousin Jules is one of those rare experiences that’s rooted in the past yet feels very much of the moment. On top of that, it’s timeless.
  49. Son of God
    For the most part, though, the film maintains its low ambitions; it is mostly inoffensive, only occasionally ludicrous, and at times, at least for me, genuinely moving.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Non-Stop
    Writers John W. Richardson, Chris Roach, and Ryan Engle bet that the central hook — Who’s the bad guy? How’s he doing this? — will keep us paying attention. And they’re right.
  51. Fatal Assistance
    Fatal Assistance has few answers, and adds little clarity.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Tim's Vermeer
    The deeper Tim’s Vermeer takes you, the peskier and more profound the questions get.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Wind Rises
    Should you see it? Of course you should. Anything Miyazaki does is worth your time. But the movie’s a gorgeous, problematic anomaly in an illustrious career.
  54. Stranger by the Lake
    What Stranger by the Lake lacks in suspense and back story it makes up for in atmosphere: It’s a subtle exercise in the pathetic fallacy.
  55. Easy Money: Hard to Kill
    Once again, the most resonant drama here is all about conveying a self-loathing born of inescapable circumstances.
  56. In Secret
    That’s the key to this movie — the way Thérèse looks at things; it’s a rare film that focuses on a woman actually looking and how she responds to what she sees.
  57. Pompeii
    Anderson’s stab at rendering the Mount Vesuvius catastrophe with a 3-D “Titanic” gloss.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 25 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    3 Days to Kill
    3 Days to Kill is pretty terrible, but it’s not really Kevin Costner’s fault.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    12 O'Clock Boys
    As a depiction of extralegal activity, 12 O’Clock Boys is eye-opening but sometimes needlessly ambiguous.
  60. Like Father, Like Son
    A bittersweet musing about the nature of parenthood and about the conflict between nature and nurture, it is as banal and insightful as its title.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Winter's Tale
    Goldsman takes Helprin’s book — a work overflowing with events, ideas, characters, passions — and pounds away at it until all that’s left is mush.
  62. Endless Love
    Though Zefferelli’s version was trashy and downright nuts, at least it made you feel the love. This pallid replay just seems endless.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    About Last Night
    Despite a frisky soundtrack that starts off with James Brown’s “Sex Machine” — trust me, it’s downhill from there — this is the visual equivalent of Muzak. You don’t have to see it to have seen it.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    RoboCop
    The film doesn't embarrass itself or dishonor its predecessor, which is something.
  65. Vampire Academy
    Despite such attractions as Gabriel Byrne as a vampire with a skin disease and a décor that combines Hogwarts with “Suspiria,” the only lesson learned here is that Hollywood needs fresh blood.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Monuments Men
    It’s a great story, and much of it’s true. This should work like a pip. Instead, The Monuments Men is a tonal mishmash: Half “Hogan’s Post-Doctoral Heroes,” half “Saving Private Rembrandt,” and half “Ingres’s 11.” That’s three halves, so you can see the problem.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The LEGO Movie
    The first great cinematic experience of 2014.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Gloria
    If the movie’s about anything, it’s about the tension between what we owe our families and what we owe ourselves.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Labor Day
    The movie’s a somber affair, but if you see it in the right frame of mind, it’s the guilty-pleasure hoot of the season.
  70. That Awkward Moment
    As for the dialogue, although the characters talk really fast, swear a lot, and overlap their lines, what they’re saying isn’t very funny or authentic. It’s as if David Mamet collaborated on writing an episode of “Two and a Half Men.”
  71. I, Frankenstein
    Eckhart doesn’t really do any of that classic grunting as Frankenstein 2.0, but maybe he should have.
  72. Gimme Shelter
    Gimme Shelter is sometimes moving and inspiring, but you have to wonder: Though Kathy and her movement give teenagers shelter, do they give them a life?
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Invisible Woman
    Beneath the period décor and lamp-lit elegance, this is a story of a profound emotional crime prompted by profound love.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Square
    An electrifying, at times heartbreaking documentary from the Egyptian-born, Harvard-educated documentarian Jehane Noujaim (“Control Room”).
  75. The Nut Job
    The plot doesn’t take clever turns, the visual thrills aren’t all that thrilling, and you’re ultimately left to get your heist-movie kicks elsewhere.
  76. Ride Along
    Hart’s clowning here is that rare case where louder is, in fact, funnier.
  77. Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
    Slick, loud, assured, overplotted (way overplotted), fairly diverting, and pretty much empty.
  78. Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones
    What I found more disturbing was the casual misogyny of the convoluted story line.
  79. Wrong Cops
    No doubt a labor of love, the result is just plain laborious for the audience.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Past
    The Past, the new film from Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, is taut, quiet, democratic, observant — a fine meal made with rare and subtle ingredients.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    August: Osage County
    So, no, August: Osage County isn’t all that original, and sometimes it’s just a lot of yelling. But it does rouse itself to a powerful fury every so often, and Letts knows an audience’s dirty little secret: We love the bloodlust of a family feeding on itself.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Lone Survivor
    The actors are excellent, as are the bruising re-creations of the firefight and the uncountable injuries sustained.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Justin Bieber's Believe
    Where Bieber’s first concert documentary, 2011’s “Justin Bieber: Never Say Never,” chronicled his rise to fame, his new one is damage control.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom
    The movie is extremely well produced, it features two excellent lead performances, and it is dull.
  85. Grudge Match
    Stallone and De Niro simply don’t generate enough combative spark to make this anything more than an amiably mediocre diversion.
  86. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
    The quest ends in a surprise Capra-esque resolution, which both satisfies and cloys.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Her
    It is a love story. Also a profoundly metaphysical meditation on what it means to be human. Also one of the more touchingly relevant movies to the ways we actually live and may soon live. Oh, and the year’s best film, or at least the one that may stick with you until its story line comes true.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Wolf of Wall Street
    One of the funniest yet most depressing movies in Martin Scorsese’s long career — a celebration and evisceration of male savagery, financial division. It’s like “GoodFellas,” only (slightly) more legal, which is very much the point.
  89. White Reindeer
    Writer-director Zach Clark doesn’t rise much above that level of subtlety in his lampoon of the phony goodwill and soulless commercialism of the Yuletide season. Luckily, he has a cast that elevates the puerility into genuine pathos and absurdity.
  90. Walking with Dinosaurs
    However well-intentioned the movie may be, it spills over with flat cutesy humor, making a slog out of an experience that should be filled with wonder.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Inside Llewyn Davis
    A transporting cinematic experience with a churl at its center, and how you feel about the movie may depend on how you feel about the churl.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues
    While Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues is a disappointment — how could it not be? — it’s not for lack of trying. If anything, the movie tries too hard.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    American Hustle
    It’s a juggling act that Russell can’t sustain and doesn’t: The last 20 minutes feel aimless, and the movie doesn’t end so much as coast to a halt. And still you walk away giddy and full. American Hustle takes your money and makes you glad you were fleeced.
  94. Tyler Perry's A Madea Christmas
    It’s a Christmas nightmare, stuck with two obnoxious relatives who think they’re funny, and won’t shut up.
  95. The Last Days on Mars
    Last Days aspires to the kind of no-frills, psychological terror of Duncan Jones’s brilliant “Moon” (2009) but, despite some determined performances, settles for the clichés of the abortive “Apollo 18” (2011).
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Saving Mr. Banks
    Because it’s a Hollywood movie from a major corporation looking fondly at itself, it concludes that, while art may heal our psychic wounds, craftsmanship and commerce heal them better.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
    Second verse, same as the first, a little bit shorter and a little less worse.
  98. At Berkeley
    The observations coalesce into a cogent whole, providing insights that are never overtly stated.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Punk Singer
    As pointedly as The Punk Singer looks at the past, the movie’s uncertain where the energy of that original moment has gone. Where are the riot-grrrls of today? Take your daughters to the movie, then ask them.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Out of the Furnace
    Out of the Furnace could have been a starkly powerful human drama or a cheesy, vibrant action film. It splits the difference and ends up playing like a lesser Springsteen song.
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