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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    • 31 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Battlefield America
    If you're looking for a tough, streetwise film about urban kids who get together to enter a national hip-hop dance competition, Battlefield America is not your movie.
  2. Follow Me: The Yoni Netanyahu Story
    Jonathan Gruber and Ari Daniel Pinchot have assembled a straightforward documentary that uses Yoni's own words - in the form of his moving, eloquent letters and poems - to create a searing portrait of his short but meaningful life.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Elena
    Elena reveals a filmmaker in full command of his art and not much interested in catering to an audience. If you want this film, you have to meet it more than halfway.
  4. Moonrise Kingdom
    Moonrise Kingdom is Anderson's seventh movie, and it's the first since "Rushmore" that works from the opening shot to the final image.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Snow White and the Huntsman
    Just feels like it was made from the pieces of every fantasy-action movie ever made.
  6. Crooked Arrows
    The story is unique and engaging enough to transcend the uplifting sports-underdog formula.
  7. Chernobyl Diaries
    The movie wants us to find this frightening, but there's no suspense, no terrifying images.
  8. Mighty Fine
    Chazz Palminteri's the best thing in the movie. He now has the look of a slightly beefier Steve Buscemi. But where Buscemi is all nerves on edge and something bad waiting to happen, Palminteri has a winning ease.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Where Do We Go Now?
    Where Do We Go Now? has a heart and an anger to offset its structural fuzziness. It's refreshingly open-minded about faith, too.
  10. I Wish
    This is much too buoyant a movie for tragedy. But Koreeda's achievement is that he gives us children who might weigh more, emotionally, than their parents, yet they're still these little creatures learning how to wield and bear that weight.
  11. Polisse
    The entire movie is pitched at a scream. But the screaming is more Janis Joplin, Axl Rose, or Mary J. Blige than Jamie Lee Curtis. All the tears I shed were hard-earned. So were all the laughing and clapping and eye-covering. In each case, it was involuntary.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Men in Black III
    Brolin's performance is funny, masterful, confident, and more than a little unsettling. If one human being can sample another, that's what's going on here. The rest of Men in Black 3 is about as good as one could hope for from an unnecessary sequel that's a decade late to the party.
  13. The Story of Film: An Odyssey
    Is The Story of Film worth 15 hours of your viewing life? Well, that's between you and your kino conscience. The first part certainly is. Cousins is extremely good at laying out the emergence of a film grammar. More important, he communicates the sense of wonder and excitement that characterized the emergence of so astonishing a medium.
  14. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
    Eerily tragic and chillingly hard to come to terms with.
  15. The Color Wheel
    You can feel the movie building away from the whiny comedy and toward something more emotionally raw then something sexually weird.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    What to Expect When You're Expecting
    The writing is sharp and the performances bright, and if you've been through the forced gestational march known as pregnancy, there are knowing laughs to be had. If you haven't, do yourself a favor and stay away.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Bernie
    Black gets to play an actual character instead of a loudmouthed cartoon. The movie's bright and endearing and surprisingly lacking in a point. I wish I liked it better.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Darling Companion
    Darling Companion would be instantly forgettable if not for Keaton, who imbues Beth with a sorrow, warmth, wisdom, and rage that feel earned.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Hunter
    The Hunter becomes turgid with corporate conspiracies, hired assassins, and offscreen tragedies, and the appealing leanness of the early scenes gets lost.
  20. God Bless America
    Some of this vigilante-fantasy misbehavior is wickedly funny.
  21. Mansome
    It's a movie so late in noticing a shift in American male grooming that for a documentary on the subject to work, Spurlock would either have to pitch it to our grandparents (or be a grandparent) or trace the arc of the shift and unpack it.
  22. Surviving Progress
    More to the point, the title doubles as accusation. Progress is dangerous and requires survival tactics, just as a hurricane or avalanche does.
  23. Battleship
    If only there were more genuine rah-rah fun involved, instead of just endless, thudding, seen-it-all-before mayhem.
  24. The Dictator
    You're left with an inert, politically neutral movie, a satire that can't bring itself to properly satirize anything.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Elles
    Both provocative and muddled, the film's a moody, passive-aggressive tract that's buoyed by superior performances and sunk by its own uncertainties. An alternate title might be "The Joylessness of Sex."
    • 72 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Headhunters
    It's crisp entertainment even as plot absurdities gum up the works.
  27. Sound of My Voice
    It's as much a satire as a mystery, a film as much about art as it is about faith.
  28. Goodbye First Love
    This is an easy movie to spoil. It's rather plotless. But things happen in precisely the way that life happens.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    First Position
    Because its subjects are so driven and so talented, First Position, which is about ballet, is more gripping than the norm.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Dark Shadows
    Tim Burton has got his groove back.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    This Is Not a Film
    In short, This Is Not a Film is the world within an apartment, and it is quietly devastating.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
    It's predictable fluff, sometimes pleasantly so, at others times irritatingly.
  33. The Avengers
    You don't need to be a "comic-book person" to find the set pieces exhilarating. But if you are such a person, or a fan of the movies that comic books turn into, The Avengers feels like the moment you've been waiting for.
  34. Safe
    Writer-director Boaz Yakin delivers his conflicting elements mostly as intended, and with obvious ambition. But he fails to take care of certain fundamentals - most problematically, coaxing out the emotion he's seeking from Statham and young newcomer Catherine Chan.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Raven
    A grimly preposterous serial-killer thriller set in 19th-century Baltimore, this riff on the final days of the author of "The Tell-Tale Heart" and other masterpieces of the macabre might qualify as literary desecration if it weren't so silly.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Five-Year Engagement
    Five-Year Engagement alternates between realistic scenes of couples bickering and broad character farce, and the two halves mesh uneasily.
  37. Turn Me On, Dammit!
    What's refreshing about the Danish movie is how direct the girls are.
  38. The Pirates! Band of Misfits
    The movie could also teach something to the makers of "Pirates of the Caribbean" about delivering a story quirky enough to actually stick with you.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Monsieur Lazhar
    There's a quiet metaphor here: How do you teach children without touching them - their minds, their souls, their sensitivities?
    • 57 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Chimpanzee
    In general, the more young people who see the film, the more who will be made aware of a fascinating, complicated near-relative whose numbers are dwindling rapidly.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Fairy
    The Fairy may be as close as we'll ever get to a live-action cartoon.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Marley
    It's an outstanding, warts-and-all look at reggae legend Bob Marley.
  43. Damsels in Distress
    These are women who seemed raised on Louisa May Alcott and might have been aspirationally besotted with Jane Austen. But you sense tragedy looming. They're hurtling, inexorably, toward Tennessee Williams.
  44. Think Like a Man
    It's not much of a part for Henson. None of these characters makes real-world sense. They're walking chapter outlines.
  45. To the Arctic
    More storytelling and less preaching would have served those messages better.
  46. The Lucky One
    Seeing her (Schilling) and Efron fumble at each other is like watching a stick of butter and a bag of flour not turn into a cake.
  47. Inside Hana's Suitcase
    In the end, what makes Inside Hana's Suitcase so powerful is the most traditional technique of all: authentic and eloquent storytelling by memorable characters.
  48. October Baby
    Its anti-abortion stance aside, October Baby looks and feels like a Lifetime movie waiting not to happen.
  49. Life Happens
    Unfortunately, the potential for screwball comedy is wasted because L!fe Happens never finds its thematic tone or comedic rhythm.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Lady
    It can't be easy to turn one of the most stirring human rights dramas of the past quarter century into stultifying screen pageantry, but director Luc Besson and writer Rebecca Frayn have managed the trick with The Lady.
  51. Goon
    The movie's unlikely sincerity can't completely offset its ugliness for less bloodthirsty viewers, but it helps, and it does smooth over some narrative rough edges.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Blue Like Jazz
    It does give believers and those tottering on the edge something to chew on, and it steadfastly refuses to demonize everybody else.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    We Have a Pope
    Whenever it stays with Piccoli, though, it's mysterious and moving, struck by the humility of a man who's not up to playing God.
  54. Detention
    The movie itself is never truly clear. If it's also never intentionally bad, its unintentional badness keeps blasting into shockingly clever places.
  55. Bully
    Bully contains some moments of real alarm and, in the school bus, one nightmarish motif.
  56. The Three Stooges
    How could the Farrellys not? It pleases me to report that the movie is far from a disaster – on a dozen or so occasions, it's even funny.
  57. Lockout
    If you're an "Escape From New York" fan, you might have wondered about those rumors about a possible remake...Well, wonder no more. Producer Luc Besson's action factory has beaten everyone to it, stylishly. They're just calling the thing Lockout, and setting it in outer space.
  58. Hipsters
    Hipsters is also kind of amazing, thanks to headlong enthusiasm and an endearing obliviousness to just how ghastly the whole thing keeps threatening to become.
  59. Gerhard Richter - Painting
    The man we meet is intelligent and good-humored. "They do what they want," he says with a shrug, indicating a set of just-completed canvases. "I planned something different."
  60. Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope
    "I've seen the look on people's faces when I've brought them there," Whedon says of the convention. "It's the look I had on my face. 'My tribe, my tribe, I've found my tribe.' "
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Cabin in the Woods
    The movie balances nicely on the edge of meta-horror, with characters breaking free of their assigned roles (in more ways than one) and monkey-wrenching the very urban legend they're dying to get out of.
  62. The Pruitt-Igoe Myth
    Under a different set of circumstances - in a different society - the development might have flourished. But The Pruitt-Igoe Myth is a documentary, not fantasy.
  63. Losing Control
    This is a manic hour and a half. It's full of pushy, grabby, assertive, borderline obnoxious characters, not all of whom went to Harvard.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Thin Ice
    The movie never fully clicks.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Jiro Dreams of Sushi
    Jiro Dreams of Sushi is a foodie's delight, obviously, and best seen either on a full stomach or with restaurant reservations immediately following.
  66. American Reunion
    The directors don't know how to make this new plot funny or infectious. Most promises of comedic pleasure go as unfulfilled Stifler's T-shirt. This movie hasn't a clue where to begin the donation process.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Kid with a Bike
    The Dardennes achieve lyricism without seeming to try.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Raid: Redemption
    Poised at the midway point between an ultraviolent video game and a neo-classic dance musical. As midnight-movie mash-ups go, it's pretty amazing.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Boy
    Hyper-stylized, funny, a crowd-pleaser.
  70. The Deep Blue Sea
    Rachel Weisz has become an exquisite camera artist. In a single shot, she can open up a whole movie. The Deep Blue Sea has a scene like that.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Intruders
    Its muddled, overambitious story leaves us unsatisfied - you might even say hollow.
  72. Wrath of the Titans
    The moments that elevate Wrath above the routine are right in line with Liebesman's "Battle: Los Angeles'' high points: frenetically shot u-r-there combat sequences that feel like the real thing.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Mirror Mirror
    Just a limp, jokey family film that wants to have its fairy tale magic and its hip irony, too.
  74. Free Men
    Nobility with little pacing, imagination, or energy tends not to work too well on the screen. Rahim has the eyes of the young Mandy Patinkin. If only he had some of the wildness.
  75. Footnote
    Footnote culminates with stirring gravity that you wish Cedar had the confidence - in himself, his material, and us - to sustain. Both Uriel's dilemma and his father's are unenviable, even as you understand the deep guilt, sense of conflict, and hubris this mix-up provokes.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Delicacy
    "Unpredictable'' is one adjective you could use to describe the new Audrey Tautou movie, Delicacy. Others might be "charming,'' "offbeat,'' "droll.'' "Unfocused'' and "underwhelming'' also apply.
  77. The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye
    The movie doesn't exactly argue anything. It's mostly a collection of scenes and footage, directed by Losier in plumes of abstraction and unified by Megson's voice-over.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Hunger Games
    What The Hunger Games does have is a game cast, a large budget well spent, Collins on board as co-writer, and Lawrence as Katniss.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Salt of Life
    The Salt of Life is about that moment in a man or woman's life when members of the opposite sex stop seeing them, and while the mood is jauntily sensual, the undertow is fierce.
  80. Undefeated
    The movie charts its nine-game winning streak and post-season. If there's a problem, it's that there are too few moments like that one with Chavis in the locker room.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    The FP
    This purposefully bad dystopian gangsta drama - imagine a "Boyz 'n the Hood,'' "Mad Max,'' and "Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo'' mash-up - simply fails.
  82. Jeff Who Lives at Home
    Jeff Who Lives at Home devotes so much of itself to mocking the loneliness and personal shortcomings of these characters that once it stops jabbing and turns serious, you start laughing.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Casa de mi Padre
    It's a solid short film stretched to Silly Putty thinness.
  84. 21 Jump Street
    We have lots of terminology for what happens when two male stars appear to have the platonic hots for each other. The genre is called bromance. The feelings are bromantic. The orientation is bromosexuality. What Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum have in 21 Jump Street scrambles, transcends, and explodes all of that.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 25 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    We Need to Talk About Kevin
    Ramsay delivers an overdirected, conceptually obnoxious art film that's torture to sit through, listen to, and think about.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Being Flynn
    Mostly, though, Being Flynn is memorable for the sight of a once-great actor rousing himself to a performance the movie itself isn't prepared to handle.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Forgiveness of Blood
    Marston's a miniaturist even when The Forgiveness of Blood calls out for larger gestures, and you occasionally sense a more bruising, compelling movie lurking behind this one.
  88. A Drummer's Dream
    Nearly all the interviews are with the professionals. That's fine, since these guys are almost as good at talking as they are at smiling.
  89. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
    It's all been called Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, just like Paul Torday's 2007 novel, and, except for some despicable behavior in the later going, it couldn't be more harmless.
  90. Friends with Kids
    There's also new piety and self-righteousness about parenting. Comedies are nervous to find the real humor and wonder in having a family. It's usually tragedy or nothing.
  91. Silent House
    This is acting that seems more freaked out, more traumatized than it ought to for a movie about an unwanted houseguest.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    John Carter
    Against the odds, John Carter is itself pretty amazing - an epic pulp saga that slowly rises to the level of its best imitations and wins you over by degrees.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    In Darkness
    In Darkness is a disaster movie, and the disaster is the Holocaust. In the space between the two halves of that sentence, you have what works about the film and what's a little creepy.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Kill List
    A scuzzy little cross between a crime movie and a horror freak-out that gets under your skin and stays there, even if you can't understand half of what the characters are saying.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Tyrannosaur
    The movie is cruelly frank about the ways damage cascades down to the powerless, but while it's not for the fainthearted (or for animal lovers), rewards are there.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Chico & Rita
    A likable but cliched star-crossed romance set along the post-WWII Havana-New York jazz axis, the Spanish-made film features terrific music, passable artwork, and characters who stubbornly refuse to become more than sketches.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie
    See it in the right sick frame of mind, and Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie can be shockingly and terribly hilarious. Or not.
  98. Dr. Seuss' The Lorax
    It's been animated by the same company that made "Despicable Me,'' which is to say you don't know whether to watch The Lorax or lick it.
  99. Project X
    The party itself is something to see. A Pasadena blowout turns into a horny, druggy, apocalyptic scene culminating in riot police, news choppers, and a gentleman with a flamethrower.
  100. Good Deeds
    Good Deeds is the first of the 11 movies he's written and directed to try a one-tone-fits-all approach. Sadly, that tone is funereal, and it's always a beat out of step with the rhythms of both real life and most movies.
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