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. Patrik Age 1.5
    The cute little domestic comedy gains a slightly rough edge - maybe Sven isn't meant to be a father or a husband.
  2. Driving Madeleine
    Driving Madeleine is held together by the funny and dignified performances of its two leads.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Memphis
    I thought of “That’s Life!” while watching Memphis, Tim Sutton’s sometimes forced, sometimes extraordinary tone poem about a modern-day bluesman. Enigmatic and brief — all of 79 minutes — the movie seems to fall into the cracks between documentary and fiction.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    My Week with Marilyn
    The point of "My Week'' appears to be that Colin is the one person in Monroe's life who isn't using her, but if squeezing two books and a movie out of one brief encounter isn't exploitation, I don't know what is.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Kill Your Darlings
    That Ginsberg is played by Daniel Radcliffe might come as a shock, but the shock wears off as the movie rolls on and you realize you’re in very good hands.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
    Merely grand old-school fun - a rollicking class reunion that stands as the second best entry in the venerable series.
  7. Salt
    Jolie doesn't seem entirely bored with the routine. She has a laugh or two at her bionic image: Evelyn is a woman who uses a maxi pad as a bandage.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2
    “If we die, let it be for a cause, not a spectacle,” the heroine barks at one point. If such a statement sounds fairly insane coming from a series that has grossed (to date) $2.3 billion worldwide, Mockingjay — Part 2 is sturdy enough to render it moot while you’re watching. After that, it’s up to you whether to swallow the irony or choke on it.
  9. I Love You Phillip Morris
    The performance often errs on the side of cartoon, but it's laced with flashes of remorse and chagrin, with sincerity. When Carrey tries to do "dramatic acting'' the life always goes of out him.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Tucker & Dale vs Evil
    It's fast, it's funny, and it works.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Everything Must Go
    A comparison to Carver's original story - called "Why Don't You Dance?," easily Googleable, and all of 1,600 words long - is instructive.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Amazing Grace
    It's a doughty movie, stuck halfway between Masterpiece Theatre and Classics Illustrated, but, to his credit, gifted journeyman director Michael Apted understands he's playing the long game.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    One Last Kiss
    More movies should be so funny and perceptive, with writing this sharp and acting this believable.
    • 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.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Made in Dagenham
    The movie moves, but it doesn't breathe.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Beauty and the Beast
    In short, there’s plenty of spectacle in Beauty and the Beast, which will be enough for many if not most young audiences. But there isn’t much magic, and what there is coasts on 26-year-old fumes.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Ivory Tower
    Rossi gives us a survey course when what we need is a seminar; the movie is a useful “What’s Wrong With College 101” but the advanced study remains to be done.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    X-Men: First Class
    Perfectly fine summer folderol, epic enough on its own terms if not quite big enough to expand beyond its genre and matter to people who find it difficult to care about characters who spit gobs of flaming phlegm. I realize there are fewer and fewer of us, but we're a hardy band and stubborn.
  19. The Prince of Tides
    Generous in its emotions as well as its visuals, it makes its healing energies real because it takes the trouble to make its characters' pain believable. It's a big, bold, slightly old-fashioned film carried by its heartfelt conviction, by Barbra Streisand's painstaking direction and self-effacing acting, and by Nick Nolte. [25 Dec 1991, p.47]
    • Boston Globe
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Buck and the Preacher
    A modest entertainment made intriguing by the race element. [15 May 1972, p.14]
    • Boston Globe
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Alien: Covenant
    There are a number of reasons “Covenant” works where “Prometheus” struggled to work. The characters are more incisively drawn this time, and their relationships inherently more dramatic.
  22. Sunset
    Oblique, often beguiling, and portentously cryptic.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Bull
    Bull is one of those quiet heartland indie dramas that can serve as a tonic after a steady diet of blockbuster. It’s about human connection, which is much on people’s minds in these days of global pandemic. And it’s about rodeo bull riders, a group of people I’ve always thought should have their heads examined.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Monsters University
    This is not a bad movie, and to small children it will be a very good one. But it is closer to average than one would wish from the company that gave us “Up,” “Wall-E,” “The Incredibles,” and “Toy Story 3."
  25. School Ties
    School Ties might have been more potent if it were set in the present instead of 1955; still, it's richly drawn, strongly felt, handsomely produced, with a smoldering performance by Brendan Fraser. [18 Sept 1992, p.56]
    • Boston Globe
    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Creem: America's Only Rock 'n' Roll Magazine
    The magazine changed hands a number of times before shuttering in 1989, but JJ Kramer now owns the brand and the archives and with this movie hopes to reintroduce them to a new generation. And why not? One thing about CREEM is that it always rises to the top.
  27. 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.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Maxed Out: Hard Times, Easy Credit and the Era of Predatory Lenders
    James Scurlock's documentary horror show has a critical message to impart -- your credit cards are out to kill you -- and a naive, ham - handed way of imparting it.
  29. The Courier
    Assured and well made (Dominic Cooke directed), The Courier offers bits of tradecraft — Penkovsky photographing documents with a miniature camera, a special tie clip used as identity-establishing bona fide — and a high-stakes extraction plan gets put in motion. But it’s less about what gets done than the persons doing it.
  30. Men
    What a waste of a superb actress. Buckley almost makes Men worth sitting through. Almost.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part
    A sequel that is noisy, fast, and pretty smart but that lacks the spark of gonzo originality that made the first movie an out-of-nowhere treat.
  32. The Disappearance of Alice Creed
    Alice Creed isn't as good as Tarantino's directorial debut, or another movie it calls to mind, "A Simple Plan.'' But the genetic resemblance to those two films indicates how good much of this extremely assured picture is.
  33. The Matador
    Shepard's Matador demonstrates what an Almodovar picture would feel like without his gonzo sensibility. It's Almodovar for heterosexuals.
  34. Maudie
    The story offers many opportunities for glibness and sentimentality. Walsh falls for none of them. She enhances the grimness of Lewis’s surroundings, but does not exploit it.
  35. Dangerous Animals
    Though Courtney and Harrison give their all, this is a slick-looking yet routine exercise that wastes an ideal premise.
  36. The Good Boss
    Once the comedy does kick in, around the 100-minute mark, it does so quite nastily. The movie never quite recovers.
  37. Dick
    Hedaya is sublime.
  38. Panic Room
    Might give you a few decorating ideas if you happen to have been wondering about a home bomb shelter, but it's a thriller that doesn't thrill.
  39. 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.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Bad News Bears
    The remake is stranded between pushing the scatological envelope and caving in to the formulas the 1976 movie established, and until the well-nigh foolproof ending, it comes up gasping for air.
  41. High-Rise
    Because it stoops to obvious editorializing (a voice-over of Margaret Thatcher on capitalism?), it never quite rises to the top.
  42. Timecode
    Like a good supermarket tabloid, Time Code grabs - and keeps - our attention.
  43. The Boys in the Band
    William Friedkin directs the adaptation of Matt Crowley's off-Broadway play about a group of gay men in Manhattan speaking increasingly frankly as a birthday party wears on. Sufficiently effective that you wonder what Friedkin was thinking with Cruising. [09 Nov 2008, p.N16]
    • Boston Globe
  44. Air Doll (2009)
    For 75 minutes or so, Air Doll is the lightest of Kore-eda’s movies, which include the superb “Nobody Knows’’ (2004) and “Still Life’’ (2008). Gradually, though, the tender music-box score — by one-man Japanese band world’s end girlfriend — is tinged with foreboding.
  45. Through the Fire
    It's hard to blame Telfair for letting his celebrity go to his head. If I were on the cover of Sports Illustrated in the 12th grade, there'd be no living with me either.
  46. Hockney
    That we don’t hear more from Ruscha is one of the documentary’s flaws. Hockney, the subject, is like a great painting. Hockney, the documentary, is a pretty plain frame.
  47. Mortal Thoughts
    It's a sleeper - the kind of fresh, dark, edgy, formula-shunning surprise that snaps you out of the usual Hollywood-induced torpor and nudges you back into believing in movies. [19 Apr 1991, p.44]
    • Boston Globe
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Wild Grass
    In its refusal to connect the dots, Wild Grass is playful unto tediousness, and between Azéma's overly cutesy performance -- all Harpo Marx hair-frizz and popped eyes -- and Mark Snow's painfully (purposefully?) banal lounge-jazz score, the movie functions as a theoretical irritant rather than a film.
  49. 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.
  50. Strange World
    Clearly, Strange World is a movie about saving the environment. It is also about the bond between father and son, and how parents must let their kids forge their own paths. Hall and Nguyen deliver these messages with the subtlety of a wrecking ball, but the excellent voice-over work plus the score by Henry Jackman make the preachiness palatable and the film fun.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Dan in Real Life
    There's a great movie to be had in the notion of a busybody whose advice keeps blowing up in his face, but Dan in Real Life merely sets it up and walks away.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Get Him to the Greek
    If the movie’s all too predictable in its broad outlines, it’s scurrilously funny in the details, and it pushes its two leads and one of its supporting actors in entertainingly fresh directions.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Powerpuff Girls
    Forgoes that split-level wit to concentrate on mere rock 'em sock 'em mayhem.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Art of Self-Defense
    Casey is possibly on the spectrum, but one of the problems with The Art of Self-Defense is that all the other characters seem to be, too.
  55. Saving Face
    Actually the problem with Saving Face as a romantic comedy is that its central romance is a drag.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Cadillac Records
    It's a hell of a story, and Cadillac Records wants to tell it so badly that it threatens to warp the narrative out of recognition.
  57. Ali
    Ali, in short, is far from a seamless success, but it does get the big things right and it respects a subject who commands respect.
    • Boston Globe
  58. Twelve and Holding
    Cuesta prizes curiosity and perception over conflict resolution. He likes the way kids take their cues from adults and the ways they revolt against them. Even as the kids do the ugliest things, the film stays cool without ever being cold.
  59. Samsara
    The result is like an issue of National Geographic gone mad.
  60. Troublemakers: The Story of Land Art
    Crump has directed Troublemakers with assurance and energy. Perhaps too much so.
  61. Drop
    The absurd plot twists in “Drop,” might be tolerable if the film weren’t so distastefully tethered to domestic violence.
  62. The Good Nurse
    The Good Nurse is at its best as a medical police procedural. It helps that Noah Emmerich and Nnamdi Asomugha, playing the cops, give solid, understated performances.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Clerks II
    With Clerks II, the director retreats to home turf, but is Smith playing it safe or is he really interested in seeing how the old nabe has changed? Bit of both, actually.
  64. Tetro
    A family melodrama with charm.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Unknown White Male
    The Unknown White Male that Murray has made asks profound questions. They're just not necessarily the right ones.
  66. Coco Before Chanel
    I could have watched this woman rip a piece fabric and turn it into a dress all day. I haven’t seen a lot of that. I have seen movies about a woman caught between two men, as Chanel is here.
  67. Find Me Guilty
    The best I can say about his (Diesel)performance is that it's charmingly terrible.
  68. Telling Lies in America
    It's a surprisingly sweet underdog immigrant coming-of-age story set in 1961. [24 Oct 1997]
    • Boston Globe
  69. Eddington
    For all that “Eddington” variously concerns itself with politics and conspiracy theories and violence and the Western landscape, what it’s really about is social media.
  70. A Letter to Momo
    Though it touches on the usual themes of youthful innocence and imagination challenged by misfortune, and on occasion achieves moments of supremely subtle, sublimely exquisite detail, “Momo” strains when it comes to evoking whimsy and magic.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Walk on Water
    There’s something happening here and it isn’t exactly clear. What is clear is that Eytan Fox may yet make a great film for the 21st century.
    • 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.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Grazia's Island
    If you prefer your domestic clashes sunnier and more strenuously poetic, Respiro may be your respite. If nothing else, it's a reminder of how severely underutilized Valeria Golino is as both actress and cinematic glory.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Sex and Lucia
    Isn't a first-date movie. As a third -date movie, though, it's just about perfect.
  75. Sleepy Hollow
    A gorgeous screenful of period eye candy.
  76. Darkman
    The film works because Raimi's motor-rhythmed pop sensibility was ready to take off in this movie, and does, in a series of wonderfully hyperkinetic comic-strip lurches. [24 Aug. 1990, p.34]
    • Boston Globe
  77. Vincent & Theo
    Vincent and Theo is one of the great Robert Altman films... It's Altman's most structurally conventional film, although it's filled with such trademarks as overlapping conversations. It's also his most personal and deeply felt. [16 Nov 1990, p.81]
    • Boston Globe
    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Oliver Twist
    The result is an expertly made, very watchable film that's curiously lacking in impact. By Polanski standards that has to be a disappointment.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Hostiles
    Despite the film’s length and aspirations, its anthropological correctness and historically accurate gore, Bale’s transformation from stone killer to empathetic ally is unconvincing.
  80. Do I Sound Gay?
    David Sedaris contributes a story about talking to a hotel clerk over the phone, which doesn’t add much to the discussion but is very funny.
  81. Soapdish
    Soapdish should have been a laugher. But this new spoof of TV soaps isn't nearly as funny as the real thing. Soapdish holds only the merest sliver of entertainment. [31 May 1991, p.28]
    • Boston Globe
      • Posted Jun 28, 2017
  82. The Phantom of the Open
    The movie is alternately preposterous and predictable, forced in humor and saccharine in emotion, and it’s not exactly steady in striking a balance between the two.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Overnight
    A bonbon of embarrassment comedy.
  84. Just Another Girl on the I.R.T.
    Harris means to give us a realistic look at contemporary African-American women and succeeds impressively. [09 Apr 1993, p.46]
    • Boston Globe
    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Hanna
    It rockets along entertainingly enough for most of its running time - only that it's made with a self-importance the story itself doesn't warrant.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Pacific Rim
    Pacific Rim is, hands down, the blockbuster event of the summer — a titanic sci-fi action fantasy that has been invested, against all expectations, with a heart, a brain, and something approximating a soul.
  87. The Smashing Machine
    Living up to her surname, Blunt doesn’t just chew and swallow the scenery, she regurgitates it and chews it again. Along with the bad writing given to her character, she singlehandedly torpedoes “The Smashing Machine.”
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Swallow
    The film’s greatest strength is its lead actress, Haley Bennett, who’s on camera for almost the entire running time and who portrays a desperately lonely woman’s journey through self-destruction toward something like sanity.
  89. The Warrior
    What really makes 'The Warrior worthwhile is its indomitable soul.
    • 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.
  91. We Were Soldiers
    It isn't afraid to genuflect to heroes and heroism and has everything it needs to connect with the resurgence of patriotism after Sept. 11.
    • Boston Globe
  92. The Autopsy of Jane Doe
    A lean indie horror flick that manages to creep us out even before getting to the part that’s meant to be truly unsettling.
  93. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I
    For a studio so clearly willing to take risks with so many of its movies, this particular movie has a whiff of exploitation. Rowling wrote one epic funeral that Warner Bros. requires us to attend twice.
  94. The Fantastic Four: First Steps
    Fantastic Four: First Steps alternates between battle sequences that you’ve seen countless times and interminable scenes of exposition disguised as emotional beats. The actors play this poorly written material as if they were doing Ibsen, which is commendable, but their attempts fail because you truly don’t give a damn about their plight.
  95. Aristide and the Endless Revolution
    An absorbing piece of investigative journalism.
  96. The Lovers and the Despot
    What they don’t quite make clear, and perhaps it is impossible to do so, is what really happened in this odd episode of international espionage epitomizing movie-mogul tyranny.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Down in the Valley
    The performances are deep and rich -- Wood is coming to seem like a smarter Chloe Sevigny, Rory looks to be the Culkin with talent, and Norton's portrayal of Harlan aches with ambiguity.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Year of Living Dangerously
    The movie masterfully evokes, through stunning direction and magnificent performances, the heat and passion of desperate people living in desperate times. [18 Feb 1983]
    • Boston Globe
    • 65 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Mississippi Burning
    Mississippi Burning plays loose with truth, turning the history of the civil rights movement on its head. The filmmakers shamelessly transform what was ultimately a triumph of due process and nonviolent civil disobedience into an ugly might-makes-right spectacle. It's "Dirty Harry" coming at you from the left. [27 Jan 1989, p.72]
    • Boston Globe
  100. In a Better World
    The movie is swept up in earnest self-importance.
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