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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    • 57 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Dark Blue
    In the end, the problem with movies like Dark Blue is that they willfully ignore the systemic, historical, cultural, and class causes of racism in favor of pinning it all on a few bad apples. Sure, that's entertainment. It's also a lie.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    La Rafle (The Round Up)
    A big, sorrowful, dramatically trite period epic about a bleak chapter in the history of modern France.
  3. Honeymoon in Vegas
    Honeymoon in Vegas is a sweet but tepid comedy so short on real goofiness that when you do encounter some, you tend to be inordinately grateful. [28 Aug 1992, p.49]
    • Boston Globe
  4. Cry Macho
    Old Clint is still Clint, but he definitely looks a little stooped and more than a little frail. There’s an unexpected benefit to that frailty, and it makes this leisurely, not especially plausible film worth watching.
  5. Mission to Mars
    There are times when it moves into the guilty pleasure zone.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Jason Bourne
    It exists for no other reason than that people like Matt Damon, they like him as this character, and the producers know audiences are willing to see more of him.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    I'm Your Woman
    Hart is interested in scrambling our sympathies yet not deft enough to manage where they land, and the female buddy movie I’m Your Woman wants to be unintentionally ends up feeling like a story about a Black couple as seen by their less interesting white acquaintance.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Metroland
    Bale and Watson make most of the film more interesting and watchable than it might otherwise be, finding flesh and blood in a script that isn't always equal to their talents. [23 Apr 1999]
    • Boston Globe
    • 74 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Kung Fu Panda
    Kung Fu Panda goes nowhere surprising even as its images unscroll handsomely before our eyes. The sound could go out in the theater, and you wouldn't ask for your money back.
  10. A Mighty Wind
    Full of redeeming throwaways.
  11. Dangerous Beauty
    Dangerous Beauty is a costume drama that hasn't quite decided whether it wants to exist on the level of serious historical drama or trashy entertainment. [20 Feb 1998, p.C6]
    • Boston Globe
  12. Capitalism: A Love Story
    Redundant for a filmmaker whose work has always dealt with the dismaying consequences of this country’s profit motive. Isn’t every Michael Moore film ultimately about capitalism? This one just has a more facetious title.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Ocean's 8
    We go to heist films to see the suckers get taken in high style. This one just robs us bland.
  14. When Do We Eat?
    The film turns that stale old Seder into warmed-up dinner theater.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Into the Storm
    Bring on the bread and circuses. Into the Storm features laughable dialogue, far-fetched situations, and generic characters played by actors who almost look like more famous stars. I still had a blast; and if you lower your resistance, you may too.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
    Perfume is a pitch-black period epic of squalor and enterprise.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Puccini for Beginners
    If Woody Allen were a young, attractive gay woman, he might make something like this, or so Maggenti hopes. But it would probably be funnier, and it would definitely cut deeper.
  18. Take Me to the River
    Flawed as it is, “River” reminds us where all the great music came from.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Step Brothers
    Take the kids at your peril. Mismarketing aside, Step Brothers is crudely funny, which means that sometimes it's crudely hilarious and more often it's just crude.
  20. Poison Ivy
    Poison Ivy isn't that much of a film. But part of its charm is that it doesn't pretend to be. It is, however, a great showcase for Drew Barrymore, as bad-news jailbait. [26 Jun 1992, p.29]
    • Boston Globe
  21. Finding Neverland
    It's a portrait of the artist as Mary Poppins.
  22. Dr. Dolittle 2
    It's warmer and fuzzier than the first film, though every bit as tedious.
    • Boston Globe
  23. Calvary
    Taking its title from the site where Christ was crucified, the controversy-courting film has a lot of Catholic church business (and doctrine) on its mind, and veers from poetically eloquent to jarringly blunt in hashing it all out.
  24. Peace Officer
    Lawrence is an impeccable, commanding subject, not just because of his credentials but because of his presence and demeanor.
  25. She Hate Me
    A belligerent little sex farce roiling inside an otherwise inconsequential lampoon of corporate America, the movie is rude and ridiculous, fearless up to a point, and breathtakingly hungry to provoke.
  26. Titan A.E.
    A space shot worth taking.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Florence Foster Jenkins
    [A] stagy, troubling, bizarrely entertaining movie.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles
    Who’s the audience for this? Well, me and about five other movie junkies at the crossroads of history and art. Maybe you, too, even if your knowledge of Buñuel stops with the slashed eyeball of “Un Chien Andalou” (1929), still one of the most shocking images in all cinema.
  29. The Backyard
    The most disturbing thing about this grass-roots-inspired extreme-wrestling documentary by Paul Hough is how much worse you expect the violence to be.
  30. Catch a Fire
    In Catch a Fire Noyce has caught the holy spirit. The movie is a thriller that wants to lift you up.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    King of California
    A flaky, tedious, intermittently likable fable about being crazy in a crazy world.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Girl Who Played with Fire
    Whenever The Girl Who Played With Fire threatens to stall, Lisbeth whips out her Taser and tortures another sleazy, abusive man into vomiting forth his dirty secrets. In Sweden, I believe they call this "light entertainment.''
  33. 2 Fast 2 Furious
    Regardless, it's sad that Singleton is taking Diesel's sloppy seconds.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Greyhound
    “Dunkirk” or “1917,” this is not. But as a window onto an under-acknowledged arena of combat and a starting point for armchair military historians, Greyhound is seaworthy enough to make it across.
  35. Our Little Sister
    Unlike the Makioka sisters, this quartet lack ambiguity and mystery.
  36. Double Jeopardy
    Judd is pretty much on her own - an assignment she mostly can handle with aplomb.
  37. Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters
    Director Thor Freudenthal (“Diary of a Wimpy Kid”) finds his groove with a succession of flashy 3-D renderings... They’re digitized riffs on the Sarlacc pit from “Star Wars” and the finale of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” — but as with the “Potter” cribbing, when it’s done well, it encourages “Percy” audiences to forgive the derivative chunks and thin emotion.
  38. My Old Lady
    It’s like a Parisian variation on Nicole Holofcener’s “Please Give,” or the premise of another PBS Masterpiece Theater series with Smith.
  39. The Weight of Water
    Though it never rises to its full potential as a film, still offers a great deal of insight into the female condition and the timeless danger of emotions repressed.
    • 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."
  41. The Legend of 1900
    Its protagonist haven't enough emotional substance to carry them through the long, darkly lit introspective sequences.
    • Boston Globe
  42. O
    The film collapses under the weight of the effort to shoehorn Shakespeare's story into a context that ultimately doesn't accommodate it.
    • Boston Globe
    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Last Flag Flying
    A touching but fairly clumsy effort that only acquires the depths of sadness and resilience it needs if you have the memory of the earlier film shoring it up. It proves that second-hand grace is, after all, still grace.
  44. Pride
    It's called Pride, and, while it's neither as socially urgent as "Freedom Writers" nor as danceable and soapy as "Stomp the Yard," it's better acted and tougher to resist
  45. Bully
    Nothing new to say, and, in the end, no real point to make.
    • Boston Globe
    • 56 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Monster
    It’s solid, well-acted, thought-provoking fare, if rarely rising to the level of inspired.
  47. Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
    Slick, loud, assured, overplotted (way overplotted), fairly diverting, and pretty much empty.
  48. Crooked Arrows
    The story is unique and engaging enough to transcend the uplifting sports-underdog formula.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Sicario
    The dark nihilism of Sicario masks a reliance on easier solutions, ones we’ve been fed by decades of genre films and that feed our need for justice dispensed with violent, vengeful directness. The movie promises to clear the fetid air around the drug wars. In the end it’s just another drug.
  50. Fugitive Pieces
    The movie does offer intriguing, perceptive glimpses of the everyday difficulties of being both a survivor and the child of a survivor.
  51. Ride Along
    Hart’s clowning here is that rare case where louder is, in fact, funnier.
  52. Stillwater
    The quality of the acting makes it easy to overlook how increasingly leaden Stillwater becomes — but not easy enough.
    • 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.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Double
    With an aptness that may even be intentional, The Double feels both over-familiar and oddly new. It’s safe to call it a Kafka-esque tale, even though the Fyodor Dostoyevsky novel from which the movie is adapted was written in 1846.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The First Beautiful Thing
    The First Beautiful Thing is the kind of movie - that escapes the sick room to cavort at carnivals and eat cotton candy until the inevitable relapse.
  56. Keeping Up with the Joneses
    The best moments come in seeing Galifianakis’s costars try to keep up with him as he finally, frantically lets loose.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Fall
    The Fall is what you'd get if you told a fiendishly gifted graphic illustrator the plot of "The Princess Bride" and sent him off to come up with his own version.
  58. The Shipping News
    The Shipping News is good news, but not as good as it could have been.
    • Boston Globe
    • 37 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Cold Creek Manor
    The film is a disquieting and often very funny examination of yuppie unease in the country. The problem is, it's disguised as a dopey suspense thriller.
  60. 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.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy
    Captures a shadowy scene.
  62. The Price of Everything
    The documentary has its memorable moments. Period footage of the now-legendary 1973 auction of contemporary art by the collector Robert Scull is riveting.
  63. Ambulance
    The movie is what it is: relentless, shameless, and purely as an exercise in technique almost dementedly skilled. A Bay explosion explodes, a Bay collision collides, and Ambulance has both in abundance. For some viewers, the result will be 2 hours and 16 minutes of movie heaven. It might make others want to call for an ambulance.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    My Blueberry Nights
    Music and nostalgia are what fuel all this filmmaker's movies, though, even a half-baked translation like this one.
  65. Your Name.
    Being cluttered isn’t the only problem with Your Name. It also features insipid characters and dippy montage music from the J-pop band Radwimps.
  66. Sicario: Day of the Soldado
    Murky, clunky, but sometimes nihilistically exhilarating.
    • 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.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Cuba feliz
    Grittily beautiful film that looks, sounds, and feels more like an extended, open-ended poem than a traditionally structured story.
    • 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.
  70. Sabrina
    Sabrina is a nice try that doesn't quite strike the romantic pay dirt it's after, but you won't walk away from it empty-handed. [15 Dec 1995, p.61]
    • Boston Globe
    • 74 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Flushed Away
    Parents will while away the time in moderate boredom until the film unexpectedly springs to life in its midsection, then just as abruptly goes back to sleep.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Skeleton Twins
    The bitter, funny dialogue by director Craig Johnson and co-writer Mark Heyman gives the two stars room to work both comic and dramatic sides of their gifts.
  73. Undercover Blues
    The script by Ian Abrams puts them through strictly formulaic moves, but it has flashes of wit and it's even literate. [10 Sept 1993, p.47]
    • Boston Globe
    • 58 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Holy Land
    For all the film's flaws, it has a caustic, nondenominational view of apocalypses to come.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Finest Hours
    It’s a movie made for the kind of audiences who feel that movies aren’t made for them anymore — you know who you are. If you go, you might want to bring a raincoat.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Monsieur Ibrahim
    When Shirley MacLaine made this same movie, more or less, as "Madame Sousatzka," there was a whole lot of acting going on. Sharif brings us to Ibrahim with a modesty that oddly reminds you of why the actor is a legend.
  77. Barbershop: The Next Cut
    This time the not-so-idle talk is about taking a socially conscious stand against gang violence. And while some of this territory is covered too tritely and safely to have all the impact intended by director Malcolm D. Lee (“The Best Man Holiday”), the movie’s entreaties are compelling enough.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Them That Follow
    The snake stuff is riveting — how could it not be? But Poulton and Madison Savage’s treatment of the rural community tilts toward the anthropological: A few corny bits of dialogue can make the parishioners feel like types instead of characters.
  79. Girl, Interrupted
    There's too much control in it and not enough danger.
  80. Beginners
    The movie is foggy with reverence and uncertainty. This is the passive work of a man nervous to touch the third rail of his parents' discontent.
  81. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
    So “Marcel” is sweet, it’s charming, it’s clever. It’s also about as long an 89 minutes as you’re likely to spend in a movie theater this summer.
  82. Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg
    The documentary, like the series, is haimish in the extreme - cozy, warm, homey.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Summerland
    Spectacular locations on the southeast coast of England and a handful of fine performances are the best that can be said for Summerland, but that’s still better than most.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Accepted
    Low of brow and pure of heart, the movie plays like "Animal House" extra-lite, and as such it's decent indecent fun.
  87. Three Stars
    Maybe because Hachmeister has a background in journalism, his movie endeavors to educate by covering a lot of ground in its 90-plus minutes, which is certainly commendable, it's just not that satisfying.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Boy Erased
    Boy Erased is strongest when it simply focuses on Jared as he copes with the trauma of coming out in a repressed society. This includes, in the film’s most shocking scene, a sequence of collegiate gay rape that leaves the boy with PTSD, which goes unnoticed and untreated by parents, authorities, and, to some extent, the film itself.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Vacancy
    At its worst, Vacancy is merely the kind of taut B-chiller they don't make any more, other than to riff on them in "Grindhouse."
  90. The House Bunny
    The movie is a commercial for Hugh Hefner that makes his magazine seem like "Seventeen."
  91. Criminal
    Kevin Costner should stop trying to be so nice. His best performances have been as baddies.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Logan Lucky
    The new movie, a heist comedy, has been described in some quarters as “Ocean’s 11” for the NASCAR crowd, and that’s not wrong. It also feels like the director is trying to reverse-engineer one of the Coen brothers’ loopier excursions and not getting every one of the pieces in order.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The War Within
    Hampered by a mopey leading man.
  94. Bounce
    Something is missing in Bounce, the muted dynamic of which calls forth a perhaps inevitably muted reaction.
    • Boston Globe
  95. Look Both Ways
    The debut live-action feature of Australian animator Sarah Watt has several other things to recommend it as well, including a black-humored screenplay, realistic performances, eye-catching artwork, and a few creative turns on some well-worn themes.
  96. Maleficent: Mistress of Evil
    This franchise might be all about shedding light on lost details, but “Mistress of Evil” sometimes leaves us in the dark.
  97. Scream 2
    I'm not sure that I really want to see "Scream 3,'" but Craven, Williamson, and the screamers certainly bring this one off by not only slapping all their cards on the table, but insisting we admire the way they play them.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Miles Ahead
    It’s all deeply felt and just as deeply unfocused, and that, more than the invented story line, betrays the movie’s subject.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Mystery Team
    Mystery Team is a guilty pleasure - a deeply dumb movie made by pretty smart people.
  100. 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.
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