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. 24 City
    If this is an unusually sentimental outing for Jia, it’s also characteristically tinged with woe. He’s just added a touch of sweetness to these otherwise sugarless lives.
  2. Herb & Dorothy
    Seemingly limitless access is what makes the movie interesting.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Unmistaken Child
    Unmistaken Child stands as a window on a beautiful and mysterious world. The questions it leaves hanging are for us to untangle.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Up
    On the most basic level the new film is pure vaudeville: a loopy flyaway fantasy that's hysterically funny if only to keep the darkness at bay.
  5. Drag Me to Hell
    Working with his brother Ivan, Sam Raimi is laughing with us - and often louder than we are.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Departures
    This is the kind of tastefully poignant drama that asks its audience to confront taboos and then pats them on the back for doing so.
  7. Munyurangabo
    The finished film, which was completed in about 11 days, has the tidiness and optimism of a fable. But it showcases certain hard facts of life in a war-torn country whose scars have yet to heal.
  8. Pressure Cooker
    The movie's sense of inspiration is realistic. It never implies a future of glamour, only hard-won success.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Girlfriend Experience
    Fair warning: I had to see The Girlfriend Experience twice before its pieces settled into coherent shape.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    O'Horten
    O'Horten is a precise, deadpan drama of slapstick existentialism - a Bent Hamer movie, in other words.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Easy Virtue
    iIf you can ignore a ridiculously overbearing soundtrack - a big if - the film's a pleasant bauble. Still, those coming in cold may be forgiven for thinking they've wandered into "Atonement" remade as a farce.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
    It's bigger, noisier, shinier, and dumber, and it has no earthly reason to exist.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Dance Flick
    If you thought the world couldn't get enough of bad spoof movies, you thought wrong.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Terminator Salvation
    The latest installment in the venerable sci-fi action franchise turns out to be a straight-up war film, grim and muscular and thundering and joyless. It's the color of cement, and it weighs as much, too.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Burma VJ: Reporter i et lukket land
    Burma VJ’ retorts that eyes and ears are everywhere in our ever-tightening global communications mesh. Voices, too, and they get heard. The generals and the ayatollahs have every right to be scared.
  16. Summer Hours
    The movie unfolds like something out of E.M. Forster, but Assayas isn't all that interested in family dynamics. Instead, he's made a chronicle of how the children will handle the sale of the house and its treasures.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Brothers Bloom
    Breezily enjoyable for about 10 minutes, until you realize the entire movie is going to be pitched at the same exuberantly manic pace. It's like being trapped in an elevator with a performing poodle that doesn't know when to quit.
  18. Angels & Demons
    Watching what Howard has done with the book - covering up the lewdness, blunting the snobbery, and spackling the amazing plot holes - is dismaying. This adaptation has the stink of superiority about it.
  19. Jerichow
    As ridiculous German suspense dramas go, you could do worse than Jerichow.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Management
    Sometimes a cute-stalker movie can win the audience's heart. Management only makes you ponder the line between true love and a restraining order.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Adoration
    Watching Adoration is like juggling three tennis balls, a porcupine, and a graduate thesis, but eventually it finds a unifying theme, that of tolerance melting away racial and intergenerational hatreds.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Julia
    The movie’s electrifying without being completely satisfying. Zonca and his star don’t play by Hollywood rules, which is both good (keeps us off-balance) and less so (at times the film doesn’t seem sure where it’s going).
    • 41 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Little Ashes
    The problem is that both Philippa Goslett's script and Paul Morrison's direction lack the stylistic craziness - the sense of real, lunatic danger - a project like this desperately needs.
  24. Next Day Air
    None of these characters provides more than a smattering of laughs, but Def is the one guy we might like to see more of, if only because his role is small and better executed than it deserves.
  25. Outrage
    Outrage succeeds as activism, but it excels as a window into certain political psyches.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Rudo y Cursi
    Rudo y Cursi is a grave and calculated affront to the men of Mexico, and that's the source of its roistering charm.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Star Trek
    In the pop high it delivers, this is the greatest prequel ever made.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Limits of Control
    Jarmusch has come up with a dud.
  29. Revanche
    Revanche was a foreign-language Oscar nominee this year, and it's a better movie than most of the films in the main race. The word "revanche" means "revenge" in German, but "waiting" would have been just as good.
  30. X-Men Origins: Wolverine
    "Wolverine" feels enslaved to its many masters - Marvel Comics, Hollywood, and the young men who devour their products - never sidestepping the déjà vu it inspires.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    Battle for Terra
    Please, moviegoers, time is running out for us. Our civilization (and bottom line) depend on fast-food kiddie meals stuffed with toys. In this way, we conquer the solar system.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Ghosts of Girlfriends Past
    Ghosts is better-than-average McConaughey swill, but not by much - that's its pleasure and its curse.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Merry Gentleman
    An overly muted and cautious piece of work. Watching it is like seeing a man ease out onto the limb of a tree, constantly testing its strength.
    • 20 Metascore
    • 25 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Informers
    You come away with only the memory of Christie, the film's perfect California blonde, lying insensate on the beach in the final ravages of AIDS - a potent and frightening image the rest of The Informers can't live up to.
  35. Fighting
    Fighting has real grit and excellent acting. In other words, there is gold in that dirt.
  36. Il Divo
    Il Divo is showboat moviemaking, but the opulence is of a piece with the film's damning assessment of the durable Italian elder statesman Giulio Andreotti.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Soloist
    Isn't so much a story of perseverance and musical triumph as it is of despair, acceptance, and social commitment. The movie's a call to arms: We are our brothers' keepers, it says, and our brothers are in terrible shape.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Throw Down Your Heart
    Through it all, Fleck seems at a loss for words, stumbling through small talk and staring feebly as a Ugandan musician weeps during a song about his dead father.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Tyson
    Terrifically compelling and, more than that, unexpectedly moving.
  40. Earth
    This Earth doesn't really have anything new to say, but it does present some newly entertaining ways of saying it.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Treeless Mountain
    Feels both masterful and hesitant - it’s the work of a born filmmaker who’s still not quite sure what she wants to say.
  42. 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.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    17 Again
    The movie itself is petrified meatloaf. It's a body-transference comedy in the vein of "Big," "Freaky Friday," and other candidates for Turner Classics.
  44. American Violet
    American Violet feels less like life and unreasonably more like the movies.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Crank: High Voltage
    Imagine some very smart people setting out to make a very naughty action film and shooting themselves in the foot. Voila: Crank: High Voltage.
  46. Every Little Step
    In Every Little Step, the performers bleed, sweat, cry theater - without having to tell us.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Is Anybody There?
    Writer Peter Harness has based his screenplay on his own childhood experiences, but personal doesn't necessarily translate to fresh.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Lemon Tree
    Referencing the popular song, the movie's title reminds us that "the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat." That, in a rind, is Riklis's deeply frustrated view of his country's stalemate, but you can only take a metaphor so far before it falters in the face of endless geopolitical complexity.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Anvil! The Story of Anvil
    Anvil! is one of the sweetest, funniest films I've seen this year. Also the loudest and most foulmouthed.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Dragonball: Evolution
    Nearly all the actors seem to be having a good time, and the action moves so fast that you don't mind when something nuts happens.
  51. Hannah Montana: The Movie
    Miley may vacillate, but for now her indentured servitude to Disney continues. The image that comes to mind is Princess Leia chained to Jabba the Hutt, but that's probably just me.
  52. The Mysteries of Pittsburgh
    Almost nothing works in this movie.
  53. Observe and Report
    This new movie is crazier, scarier, funnier, and more bewildering. It's the strangest movie I expect to see from a Hollywood studio for the rest of the year.
  54. Lymelife
    Like so many of these farm-raised films, this one looks polished, but takes no risks, offers no surprises, and contains a final sequence that's laughable for its lack of courage.
  55. Adventureland
    Harmless enough, but "indie comedy" sounds like something better seen at Urban Outfitters than at a movie theater.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Sugar
    In its unhurried fashion, Sugar can take its place with the best baseball movies. Where most focus on the grand slam, this one's about the life that surrounds the game and everything that comes after.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Alien Trespass
    It's pretty endearing - a low-budget labor of schlock.
  58. Fast & Furious
    By 2009, the franchise has nothing new to offer. The culture, through video games and reality television, has caught up to the series and surpassed it.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Gigantic
    Gigantic plays like a Sundance movie with half the nouns removed; fetchingly cryptic for a while, it's ultimately just obscure.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    Paris 36
    In short, the financial crisis and social upheaval of 1930s France never looked so appealing.
  61. The Song of Sparrows
    The images in The Song of Sparrows have a poetic grace that's to be desired in storytelling. You feel Majidi's hand much more than you do God's.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Tulpan
    In the tradition of ethnographic dramas from "Nanook of the North" to "The Fast Runner," Tulpan drops us in the middle of a godforsaken nowhere and marvels at the people who live there.
  63. Goodbye Solo
    It sounds like the old unstoppable-force-meets-immovable-object trick. Ramin Bahrani's Goodbye Solo has the trappings of such a story, but, mercifully, none of the follow-through.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Monsters vs Aliens
    If you have to see Monsters vs. Aliens - and if you're a parent, you will have to - make sure it's the 3-D version.
  65. Spinning Into Butter
    Despite all the hyperventilating, the movie fails to consider what these crimes mean when, say, the residents of the White House happen to be black. The filmmakers recognize that identity politics are often a trap door. But it's one they're helpless to save themselves from falling through.
  66. 12 Rounds
    As one of the WWE's marquee pro wrestlers, John Cena is some actor. As a straight actor . . . he's a great wrestler.
  67. The Haunting in Connecticut
    There is still a great horror movie about foreclosure to be made. In the meantime, this movie plays games. (How many rounds of hide-and-seek should an audience tolerate?)
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Shall We Kiss?
    The whole thing's weightless: An upscale date-movie bonbon that keeps yielding pungent aftertastes.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Knowing
    Starts off mildly ridiculous, ascends to the full-blown ludicrous, and finally sails boldly off the edge of the absolutely preposterous.
  70. Sin Nombre
    It's the tone of the movie's two sides - action and stillness, graphic violence and romantic melodrama - that don't cohere.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    I Love You, Man
    The movie stakes out a whole new arena - male social performance anxiety - and ruthlessly mines it for comic embarrassment.
  72. Duplicity
    Duplicity so thoroughly equates sex and money that, in a manner apt for a recession, the audience is rewired when it's over. You don't care whether they love each other. You just want to see them paid.
  73. The Great Buck Howard
    This is an old man's movie, without an old man's experience. Despite McGinly's stated affection for Kreskin (the movie ends with a written appreciation of him), there's nothing personal about it. It's the movie equivalent of handing us a business card.
  74. Valentino: The Last Emperor
    The decadence is obvious. But true to the Valentino prerogative, it's beautiful - sad, too: a dream life moving into the unknown.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Sunshine Cleaning
    An intelligent, often touching, sometimes pedestrian drama.
    • 7 Metascore
    • 25 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Miss March
    A sex comedy that appears to have been made by people who've never actually had sex.
  77. The Last House on the Left
    Like the current hit "Taken," Last House 2009 packs a vicarious jolt that might feel cathartic to certain moviegoers.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Edge of Love
    A "great poet" movie, the poet in this case being Dylan Thomas, and it's utter bollocks.
  79. Race to Witch Mountain
    This is not a movie. It's a coming attraction for a theme park.
  80. Severed Ways: The Norse Discovery of America
    While most of the scenes in Tony Stone’s peculiar Middle Ages art project look like a homemade educational reenactment, the film is actually more involving than it should be.
  81. Tokyo Sonata
    Tokyo Sonata, in so many senses, is about an allergic reaction to the very idea of what it means to be Japanese. The characters misplace their belief in etiquette, politesse, dignity, and propriety - or they struggle to maintain it.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Watchmen
    The best moments in Watchmen, then, work as delirious music-videos.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Phoebe in Wonderland
    Phoebe in Wonderland gradually loses its grip on tone and believability, climaxing with a show-must-go-on moment that's just plain silly. Thankfully, Barnz knows exactly where to end his film: on the face of a girl, and an actress, at the crossroads.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Everlasting Moments
    Quiet, observant, and intensely moving whenever Heiskanen is on screen, and it has a valedictory sweep that feels like a summing up.
  85. Fados
    As a production, Fados is pretty with its reflected surfaces and many projected images. But at times it hurts for the bite and texture of life outside that studio. For all the dolorous singing about and shots of streets, it'd be nice to hit one.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Tokyo!
    If you've seen "Paris, je t'aime" or "New York Stories," you know the rate of return on these urban omnibuses is variable, and so it is here. Go in expecting minor pleasures and you'll be fine.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    12
    The new film's not only almost double the length of the original, it's four times as ambitious - a sprawling, surrealist, ultimately disturbing portrait of a society lurching uncertainly toward democracy. What's really on trial in this movie? Just the Russian soul.
  88. Crossing Over
    If Crossing Over is less self-congratulatory than "Crash" about confronting its designated problem, it's just as inept at dramatizing the complex ways that problem unites and divides us. Here every cause is something you can wear around your neck.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Echelon Conspiracy
    There's nothing in Echelon Conspiracy as suspenseful or entertaining as your average episode of "24."
    • 45 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience
    Its swooping 3-D visuals let fans briefly feel they can touch a group that barely exists behind a wall of beefy security men.
    • 17 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li
    This is a movie for the overcaffeinated, undereducated teenager in all of us.
  92. Examined Life
    Over the course of the film's 88-minutes, Taylor cuts away to what's happening around her subjects (the unexamined life, I suppose). Perhaps she's attempting to make connections the thinkers don't.
  93. Madea Goes to Jail
    There is, however, Viola Davis, who might win an Oscar tomorrow for her one scene in "Doubt." Her part here - a minister combing the street for crack-whores to rescue - is about three times as large.
  94. Fired Up!
    Fired Up feels like everybody's first time doing anything - writing, acting, directing, cheerleading.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Katyn
    A history lesson for a country and a people forced to forget at gunpoint.
  96. Gomorrah
    Both a staggering realist thriller and a jeremiad.
    • 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.
  98. Friday the 13th
    The movie might have worked if it winked more - or if it played things completely straight.
  99. Under the Sea 3D
    It's all a treat to behold, and, at least where the turtle and the jellyfish are concerned, it's transcendently beautiful, too. I just wish there was more of it.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Coraline
    "The Corpse Bride" with teeth, Bruno Bettelheim retooled for the multiplex, a nightmare of daft and creative consequence. I really liked it.
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