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. Tell No One
    Once the final character has put the last puzzle piece in place, courtesy of an epic explanation, a kind of relief sets in: Someone just needed to spell it all out. It does not entirely help.
  2. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
    Installment six of the Harry Potter’ series, The Half-Blood Prince, merely gets us one movie closer to the finale, which, apparently is so big (and by big, I mean “$$$$’’) that it’s being split into two parts.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Babel
    Babel is a ziggurat of brilliant pieces built on sand. It's also this season's "Crash," a movie you know is Important because it never stops telling you so.
  4. State of Play
    The overall lack of subtlety is a riot - there's even a cautionary production of "Peter and the Wolf" happening in the background during one journalist-politician showdown at a Beltway gala. Still, it's a pleasure watching this cast make the most of the material.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
    Perfume is a pitch-black period epic of squalor and enterprise.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Two Lovers
    The storytelling here is at times as awkward as its hero, and since it is a Gray film Two Lovers takes itself dreadfully seriously. Yet it's one of the few movies I've seen recently that improves on a second viewing, in part because Phoenix does such remarkably subtle work.
  7. Gladiator
    It epitomizes the kind of high-profile bloodshed we now expect to herald the hazy, lazy, blockbuster-fixated days of summer.
    • Boston Globe
    • 58 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Everything Is Illuminated
    Everything Is Illuminated hasn't been adapted so much as gutted, stuffed, and mounted.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    V for Vendetta
    The real villain is a cowed and lazy citizenry. Meaning all of us. Disappointingly, V for Vendetta makes this point early and moves on, at some point turning as shallow as what it protests against.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
    A loud but proficient slab of explode-o-rama summer blockbuster nonsense, perfectly entertaining if you like that sort of thing, extremely skippable if you don't.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Pirate Radio
    Writer-director Richard Curtis (“Love Actually’’) has made a party, not a movie, and if the party goes on much too long, at least the guests are great company and the host’s taste in music is impeccable.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Sunshine Cleaning
    An intelligent, often touching, sometimes pedestrian drama.
  13. 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.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Boys Are Back
    Tidily arranges its raw feelings about fathering and manhood into a decent, intelligent melodrama meant to soothe audiences and provoke no one.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Humpday
    Serves up some caustic laughs before fizzling out.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Death at a Funeral
    The new version is completely unnecessary and sloppier than it should be. It’s also still funny, partly thanks to smart casting in a few key roles and partly because farce this ironclad cannot be denied.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Death at a Funeral
    Death" builds slowly and inexorably to a comic explosion that's just too good -- too insanely, impossibly mortifying -- to spoil here. Let's just say it dwarfs everything that has come before it.
  18. Coach Carter
    Who's it for? How do you put this message across without it seeming medicinal? Sure, MTV is among the movie's producers, but what 11th grader wants to spend a Friday night being hit with such a blunt instrument?
    • 43 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Racing Stripes
    Simultaneously overplotted and simplistic, the new barnyard/racecourse comedy from Warner Brothers is predictable every step of the way, and it contains at least three too many poop jokes.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Travelers and Magicians
    Anyone interested in Buddhism and the chance to see the high-altitude, deep-spirited landscapes of Bhutan from a movie theater seat is herewith directed to Travellers and Magicians.
  21. Assisted Living
    The whimsy Greenebaum wants to construct can't match the terminal sadness that naturally takes over the film. Perhaps in accidental tribute to Todd, the whole thing feels half-baked.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Hitch
    James has the forward drive of a trash-compacted Ralph Kramden with some of Ed Norton's random gentility and, here at least, he has a knack for fine-tuned physical comedy that gets you laughing even when the script's not there.
  23. Uncle Nino
    An effortless heartwarmer that manages to be utterly corny but quite likable.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Constantine
    One thing's clear: R.J. Reynolds won't be showing Constantine at the company picnic any time soon.
  25. Downfall
    A bizarre film.
  26. Cursed
    Marks a return to a not-so-distant time when horror movies weren't soul-rotting atrocities but just enjoyably bad.
  27. Gunner Palace
    Works purely as a series of complex snapshots of the conflict in Iraq.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Don't Move
    A paranoid male fantasy about cheating, with surface similarities to Hollywood movies like ''Fatal Attraction" and ''Unfaithful." This one's Italian, though, and its attitude toward adultery is more European.
  29. Ice Princess
    A feel-good but inane Disney production.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Rider Named Death
    Shakhnazarov's film effortlessly captures the times and the author's conflicted yet unyielding attitude, yet it never draws any conclusions -- the film remains under glass.
  31. Guess Who
    The movie will please those looking for easy physical comedy.
  32. Mondovino
    The movie feels incomplete and uncentered. It's like a grand magazine profile that's all reportage and absolutely no prose.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Beauty Shop
    Formulaic but extremely good-natured comedy.
  34. Dust to Glory
    Brown lays out his guiding philosophy up front when he says of the Baja, ''This isn't about a race, it's about the human race."
    • 72 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Control
    Takes your angriest thoughts about urban public transportation and magnifies them into a grubby and rousingly antisocial fantasia on post-communist breakdown and bureaucracy.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Man Who Copied
    What could have been an effervescent 90-minute experience is so in love with the sound of its own voice that it develops genre trouble and piddles on for two-plus hours.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
    Visually playful and often good fun, it never settles on a convincing narrative shape.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    xXx: State of the Union
    There are really only two kinds of big-budget action movies: stupid, and good and stupid. Surprisingly, XXX: State of the Union is good and stupid, which makes it an immediate improvement over 2002's meatheaded "XXX."
  39. À Tout de Suite (Right Now)
    Like all of Jacquot's movies, it's not crazy enough.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Writer of O
    This gulf between a woman's public and private faces is an intensely rich subject that Rapaport glosses over.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    My Mother
    Isn't for the kiddies. It probably isn't for anyone not interested in the darkest corners of the human psyche.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Madagascar
    Antic, cute, scattershot, it's a remarkable-looking but terribly uncertain bit of CGI fluff, with its richest humor off to the sides of the action and a whole lot of average in the middle.
  43. Saving Face
    Actually the problem with Saving Face as a romantic comedy is that its central romance is a drag.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    5x2
    It flirts intriguingly with the unknowable, what it shows us of the knowable isn't terribly interesting.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    My Summer of Love
    At its most interesting, the movie offers us the sight of people desperately embracing faith in the hopes it will pull them through.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    War of the Worlds
    War of the Worlds pushes some of the right buttons and enough of the wrong ones to make you wish that Spielberg would move on from aliens already and use his unparalleled talents to focus once more on earth.
  47. Rebound
    Rebound is about as unmotivated as Coach Roy, doing nothing to distinguish itself from any other movie ever made about winless teams that learn to stop losing.
  48. Happy Endings
    The cast is strong. Kudrow and Gyllenhaal provide the movie's emotional center.
  49. The Warrior
    What really makes 'The Warrior worthwhile is its indomitable soul.
  50. The Island
    Bay's strength as a filmmaker, the reason his superficial yet entertaining productions can never be completely ignored, is that he appears to lack shame. He'll blow anything up and run anybody over. The moral complexities don't matter to him. He just wants to stage spectacles, appreciate very good-looking people, and assert his cowboy aesthetic.
    • 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.
  52. Must Love Dogs
    While Lane is her typical winning self, the film is mawkish. The more we're cajoled to root for Sarah Nolan, the divorced preschool teacher she plays, the more Must Love Dogs stops resembling a movie and starts feeling like a greeting card.
  53. Sky High
    A squeaky clean, family-friendly comedy that merely sounds like an unreleased Cheech and Chong romp.
  54. Saint Ralph
    As predictably uplifting movies go, Saint Ralph isn't completely charmless.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Four Brothers
    A faux-low-budget revenge thriller, pure and simple. There's nothing special about it, and that's what's refreshing.
  56. The Great Raid
    The Great Raid amounts to a noble failure. This is sad news for those of us who remain hopelessly partial to Dahl's mean streak. The failure we can live with. It's the noble part that will never do.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Asylum
    A classy unintentional hoot.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Reel Paradise
    An amusingly damning portrait of a man trying to impose his will on a world that, really, has better things to do.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Brothers Grimm
    An absurd mess that's more entertaining than it has any right to be.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Constant Gardener
    A predictable conspiracy thriller that somehow ends up diminishing the real urgency of the West's humanitarian disconnect from Africa. If it sends audiences home to log on to the Amnesty International website, terrific -- but that still doesn't make it a very good movie.
  61. The Baxter
    A self-consciously arch work of hipsterism that's more styled than funny.
  62. Margaret Cho: Assassin
    Assassin is funnier and less awkward than her last concert film, 2004's ''CHO Revolution," but nowhere near as consistently gut busting as 2002's ''Notorious C.H.O." or (first and still best) 2000's ''I'm the One That I Want."
    • 47 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Cote d'Azur
    A broad, bawdy, silly French farce set on the Riviera in high season, it's a diversion at best and a strained souffle at worst, but it rings enough Gallic changes on the old family-summer-gone-horribly-wrong genre to deliver some unexpectedly sharp laughs.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Music from the Inside Out
    Daniel Anker's Music From the Inside Out is so intent on divining the mysteries behind the creative act that it comes up frustratingly short on specifics.
  65. Stupid Boy
    Garçon Stupide was shot on digital video and is the rare piece of European sexual realism centered completely on a boy's awakening.
  66. Flightplan
    Doesn't have its heroine's conviction. It'd be better if it had.
    • 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.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Greatest Game Ever Played
    What's missing here is the one thing any duffer knows you need: Focus. The Greatest Game Ever Played works so hard to convince you of the truth of its title that it never settles down to address the ball.
  69. Serenity
    For folks like me, who missed "Firefly," the short-lived TV show on which the movie's based, watching Serenity is like showing up for a big lecture course at the end of the semester. And yet, after an hour of intense disorientation, the movie's arch sarcasm becomes oddly entertaining.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The War Within
    Hampered by a mopey leading man.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    In Her Shoes
    Entertaining enough, but it's more pat than provocative -- this is what makes it a bona fide audience pleaser while keeping it from drawing real blood.
  72. Before the Fall
    Unusually compelling, even if it's treacly enough to be "The Chorus" in goose step.
  73. Innocent Voices
    Not a happy time at the movies. It bears the distinction of bringing to the screen a dark nugget of history.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story
    Just rent the kid ''National Velvet" when you get home. That movie's proof you don't need a true story to be inspired.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Shopgirl
    Still manages to be a Steve Martin vanity project in ways that are fairly creepy.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Emmanuel's Gift
    Directed in the breathless inspirational tones of an infomercial, the film's an acceptable document of a thoroughly remarkable individual.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Protocols of Zion
    May be the most successful forgery in the history of hate.
  78. Paradise Now
    It doesn't take its ideas or its audience far enough. The result is a humanist potboiler.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Three... Extremes
    Gore fans will want to bump the two-and-a-half-star rating up a star, whereas those who can't handle on-screen violence will want to stay the hell away.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Chicken Little
    Shiny and peppy, with some solid laughs and dandy vocal performances, but even a small child may sense how forced this movie is -- how hard it tries to be all things to all audiences.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Jarhead
    All writers are entitled to tell the story of their own war, whether it's on the battlefield, in their head, or -- as is usually the case -- somewhere in between. Like it or not, Anthony Swofford did just that. Mendes, by contrast, tells the story of a Hollywood war, and it's simply not the news we can use.
  82. The Dying Gaul
    The film builds into a lurid and suspenseful thriller.
  83. Get Rich or Die Tryin'
    On most levels his performance is as flat as his abs: very early Wahlberg.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Ellie Parker
    Eventually the energy of the original short runs out and the movie coasts on fumes, but it remains surprisingly enjoyable for all that.
  85. Breakfast on Pluto
    Ambles along nicely, but feels as if it's never going to end.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Just Friends
    Funnier than any low-rent rip-off of "There's Something About Mary" has a right to be. It's crass, it's unsophisticated, it aims right for the slapsticky pleasure center of the under-30 moviegoer's brain. So sue me, I laughed. A lot.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Memoirs of a Geisha
    The film version of Memoirs of a Geisha is very like a geisha itself: a thing of exquisitely refined surfaces beneath which beats an ordinary heart.
  88. The Family Stone
    The movie is a holiday romantic comedy that wants to put the holiday romantic comedy out of business.
  89. The Matador
    Shepard's Matador demonstrates what an Almodovar picture would feel like without his gonzo sensibility. It's Almodovar for heterosexuals.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Match Point
    The question that should be asked is whether Woody Allen has made a good movie this time out, and the honest answer is "almost."
  91. The World's Fastest Indian
    The film is at its best in Utah, both because in David Gribble's exhilarating cinematography we finally get to feel the full power and intoxication of the sport.
  92. Wolf Creek
    Wolf Creek is ultimately all about the torture and the trauma. Happy holidays.
  93. Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Impassioned Eye
    Pays high-toned tribute to its subject. How high-toned? Bach and Ravel play on the soundtrack as a honeyed light streams through the windows of Cartier-Bresson's Paris apartment.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Bubble
    Bubble is a stunt in search of a movie, and it almost finds one.
  95. Following Sean
    If ''Sean" was about conviction and revolution, Following Sean is about ambivalence and resignation. In either case it's pretty easy for a funny-provocative kid to stand out.
  96. Annapolis
    Directing Annapolis is Justin Lin, whose previous feature was the irresponsible high-school comedy thriller "Better Luck Tomorrow." This second movie is more his speed.
  97. Manderlay
    Spike Lee has been treading similar terrain with both greater cogency and fewer similarities to Bertolt Brecht. Manderlay, though, is mad and perplexed in its own inscrutable, schematic way. The trouble is the angrier it gets, the more infuriatingly banal it becomes.
  98. Battle in Heaven
    With relentless and ruminative deliberateness, Reygadas shows us a Mexico City that seems to be decaying from the inside out.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Winter Passing
    Winter Passing plays like two indie movies trapped in one film, and Zooey Deschanel is in the better of them. Will Ferrell is in the other one.
  100. 16 Blocks
    It's unbelievably bland.
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