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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    • 67 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Nowhere Boy
    As sympathetic and well-turned as it is, Nowhere Boy only gives us more mythology.
  2. Johnny Handsome
    Johnny Handsome may lapse into downbeat formula, but its acting is pungent, and, in the case of Barkin and Henriksen, as immediate as a razor slash. [29 Sep 1989, p.34]
    • Boston Globe
  3. 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.
  4. Avatar: The Way of Water
    Cameron’s staging of action sequences remains unparalleled, and that buys some goodwill, but by the end of the movie, I was left with Peggy’s Lee’s immortal question: “Is that all there is?”
  5. K-PAX
    It would be gratifying to report that there's a lot more to K-Pax than Spacey at the top of his form, but there isn't.
    • Boston Globe
  6. Passengers
    More spectacular special effects might have helped, or at least something more creative than a spaceship that resembles a giant Christmas tree ornament shaped like a corkscrew. Perhaps as a well-written play for a cast of three, Passengers might have been first class. Instead, it’s just another mediocre thrill ride.
  7. Stigmata
    Could have been a classy thriller. But all the Aramaic in the world can't save it from its own pounding slickness.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Tamara Drewe
    A frolic that keeps tripping over its own gorgeous feet.
  9. Sweet and Lowdown
    Agreeable eye candy and ear candy, but it's too slight to reach as deep as it thinks it wants to reach.
    • 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.
  11. 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.
  12. A Thousand and One
    A more fleshed-out character might have grounded a last act burdened by an unconvincing plot twist, an odd moment of wish-fulfillment, and an over-reliance on the clichés that befall Black people in urban-set films.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Safe Conduct
    Essentially a dramatic reenactment of a generation's coping strategies.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Allah Made Me Funny: Live in Concert
    The point of "the official Muslim comedy tour" is that these guys are ordinary Americans just like you and me. Unfortunately, that extends to a lot of the jokes.
  15. An Affair of Love
    A bit of a cop-out, wrapping in wistful sentimentality a failure to acknowledge a connection that is more than epidermal.
    • Boston Globe
  16. Scream VI
    The scariest thing about Scream VI isn’t seeing someone get knifed in the face 600 times; it’s this movie’s absurdly inaccurate depiction of New York City.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    ATL
    Is ATL even a hip-hop movie? There's hip-hop in it, certainly, but unlike the recent vehicles for Eminem and 50 Cent -- respectively, ''8 Mile" and ''Get Rich or Die Tryin' " -- it does not have a rapper hero.
  18. Passenger 57
    As Die Hard clones go, it's easier to take than most. [06 Nov 1992, p.38]
    • Boston Globe
  19. The In Crowd
    The moral universe remains unsullied in this lite, lo-cal thriller - the cinematic equivalent of a fizzy summer drink.
    • Boston Globe
  20. Taking Care of Business
    Taking Care of Business could be a lot worse. It's a swift, if entirely predictable, identity-switch movie that wastes little time on the way to its morality play conclusion. [17 Aug 1990, p.36p]
    • Boston Globe
    • 55 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts
    The lack of a credible external perspective beyond the narrative provided by Glass, his friends, family, and associates, makes the film feel too cozy.
  22. Red Cliff
    Even at 148 minutes (and viewed twice!), you still feel as if you’re watching the longest coming attraction ever for a John Woo movie.
  23. October Country
    What results is both real and surreal, giving and self indulgent. That’s the country we all live in.
  24. Sugar Town
    Likable, but at times it's also inescapably sketchy and ramshackle.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Reign Over Me
    In its best moments, Reign Over Me quietly says that we're our problem friends' keepers. At its worst, the movie IS a problem friend.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Nim's Island
    8- to 12-year-olds will have a good time, and you'll have a good time watching them have a good time. Otherwise, the film's an oddity.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Unbroken
    Unbroken stirs a moviegoer by default; it’s an astounding story of human endurance that has been brought a little too safely to the screen.
  28. 13 Going on 30
    It's looking for comedy and romance in the obvious places.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Sisters in Law
    Despite the lack of an especially defined narrative arc, the people are what make the movie -- as they should in a tale like this.
  30. Studio 54
    The documentary is good on the gay aspect of 54, and disco generally. Schrager became highly successful as an impresario of boutique hotels. Still, when he talks about Studio 54 there’s a touch of wonder in the tough-guy growl.
  31. All the Old Knives
    The filmmaking is stylish yet impersonal — or can true style be impersonal? Maybe that’s why proficiency is a better word. A general slickness obtains.
  32. The Quick and the Dead
    The Quick and the Dead is a sly, savvy Hollywood sendup of Sergio Leone Westerns with Sharon Stone playing the Clint Eastwood righteous avenger role and Gene Hackman the heavy. You'd call it a spaghetti Western, but the budget is too high. Maybe we'd better think of it as Hollywood's first angel-hair-pasta Western. [10 Feb 1995, p.47]
    • Boston Globe
  33. Die Another Day
    Die Another Day is still as professionally mediocre as its predecessors.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Delirious
    Everyone here is obsessed with finding "the real thing" - the next hot actor, the next revealing paparazzi shot, the lover or the friend who'll make it all worthwhile. Everyone settles for the illusion of reality instead. It's prettier, and it doesn't hurt so much.
  35. Daddy's Home
    Consider it a predictable movie with flashes of unpredictability, one that actually coaxes some early laughs with, yes, scatological wit, then makes us groan when it shamefully takes the low road back to poopville a bit later on.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Starsky & Hutch
    Stealing the movie, however, is rapper Snoop Dogg as Huggy Bear, the pimp/informant originally portrayed by Antonio Fargas on the TV show.
  37. Tangled
    The movie has a field day with thousands of airborne lanterns, a troop of Neanderthal thugs (one is a mime), some surprisingly fleet camerawork, and good editing. I can't think of a cartoon more confident about how to use jump cuts for comedy. Those senses of cleverness and innovation merely underscore how shopworn the rest of this movie is.
  38. The Wall
    Watching Taylor-Johnson’s character engage the enemy this way is intriguing, but also a bit removed from the realism the film is after. Can you say catch-22?
    • 59 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Happenstance
    It has every mark of inspiration by imitation.
    • Boston Globe
  40. Space Cowboys
    Space Cowboys does achieve liftoff.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Birth of a Nation
    Produced, co-written, and directed by its star, The Birth of a Nation is very much a first film, its hesitancies disguised as bluntness, and the best things about it are Parker’s acting and his ambitions.
  42. Europa Report
    Technique largely does the work of imagination. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The nuts and bolts of Europa Report may feel very familiar, but the movie doesn’t look quite like anything else.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Flyboys
    The movie's straightforward and ingratiating, and as pretty-boy history lessons go, it's a lot less obnoxious than "Pearl Harbor."
    • 58 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Roman J. Israel, Esq.
    You’re left with another Denzel Washington performance that gets under your skin and stays there, rankling away. That’s a lot more than most movies offer — even the better ones.
  45. Chuck
    The film’s casting in general is a strength, however deep the resonance of what the actors are playing. Schreiber’s ex-girlfriend, Naomi Watts, is a brassy, savvy presence as Wepner’s bartender soulmate.
  46. Saw VI
    Who knew that the franchise’s creators would eventually find a plot twist that made sense?
  47. Catherine Called Birdy
    Ramsey is close to a force of nature, equally skilled at conveying Birdy’s curiosity, humor, orneriness, and not-infrequent bewilderment. In other words, she’s a 14-year-old.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Noah
    Noah is equal parts ridiculous and magnificent, a showman’s folly and a madman’s epic.
  49. Justin Bieber: Never Say Never
    The movie usefully, carefully, and cogently argues that Bieber is more than his hair. He is his hoodies. He is his pop-hooks. He is his many handlers.
  50. Babylon
    Babylon is a labor of love that never feels laborious. But as the allusions and inside jokes pile up, they become distracting. Or they do if you care about old movies.
  51. Enemy at the Gates
    It's too circumscribed and polite for the story it's telling, curiously deficient in the unexpected.
    • Boston Globe
  52. Planes
    Planes has some wonderfully goofy, even ineffable, touches.
  53. Friday Night
    Has a sultry and complex psychological intent all its own, yet it's reminiscent of some earlier Denis works, including ''Nenette and Boni.''
  54. Calendar Girls
    More like that crowd-pleasing UK fluff that requires great actresses to do wacky things. Mirren is such an easy, breezy presence that you might think she's playing the screenwriting equivalent of air.
  55. Extraordinary Measures
    The screenplay by Robert Nelson Jacobs affirms life and jerks tears with welcome degrees of humor and muscle.
    • 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.
  57. 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."
    • 63 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Andre Gregory: Before and After Dinner
    Kleine's film is rambling and unfocused but mostly charming, and it steps into deeper waters almost in spite of itself.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Girl on the Train
    If only the movie had the courage to be as gonzo as it wants to be!
    • 64 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Greenland
    Greenland, a solid, stolid disaster film arriving on major streaming platforms this week, posits that the sky is falling, puts manly Gerard Butler in the middle of it, and asks us to be diverted by the spectacle of civic breakdown and mass panic. Are you not entertained? Somewhat surprisingly, yes.
  61. Lost Illusions
    A good movie, Lost Illusions aspires to be a great one, but that ambition helps keep it from being a better movie. It’s overstuffed and a mite too leisurely: a self-consciously dignified film whose least dignified characters are its most compelling ones.
  62. Blue Beard
    Breillat’s film can seem at times like a far less opaque version of another story set in the 17th century about sex and power: Peter Greenaway’s “The Draughtman’s Contract.’’
    • 57 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Burnt Orange Heresy
    When a cast is assembled that is as elegantly depraved as the one in The Burnt Orange Heresy, attention must be paid. And this art-world thriller has enough burnished surfaces, glamorous locations, and dark doings to keep an audience rapt for much of the running time. Yet somehow you may end the movie feeling less full than when you began.
  64. Light It Up
    Light It Up isn't a great movie, but it's a cut above most so-called urban thrillers.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    The Cherry Orchard
    As Ranevskaya, the film's focal point and one of its only sources of vitality, Rampling is an enigmatic treasure.
  66. Holy Smoke
    In the end, Holy Smoke crashes and burns.
    • Boston Globe
    • 59 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Siberia
    Siberia is a Freudian wallow made by a New York street fighter of a Fellini, and it is nothing if not authentic in its stress-fractured machismo.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Magnificent Seven
    It ain’t Shakespeare, or even Kurosawa. But it’s an acceptable remake of a western that itself was an acceptable remake of one of the greatest movies ever made. Enjoyable, even, until the last act proves how dull an overextended gun battle can get.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Twentieth Century
    The Twentieth Century exists somewhere on the Venn diagram between midnight movie, fever dream, Turner Classics fetish object, and all-Canadian prank. Does that sound interesting? By all means. Does the movie go anywhere? Not really. Will you mind? I didn’t.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Puffy Chair
    Ostensibly a road-trip farce, Chair really depicts the highway to man-child hell: The laughs come from the gulf between how mature the characters think they're being and what emotional toddlers they are.
  71. Denial
    The film works adequately as a historical drama.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Suspiria
    When art-minded film directors stoop to genre-minded filmmaking, it’s generally a good idea to duck. Despite sequences that may lodge in your memory forever, Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria is no exception to this rule.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Ides of March
    The filmmaking is shallow but assured, the star charisma thoughtful but undimmed. As for the character, I'd vote for Mike Morris. Actually, I wish I could.
  74. The Good Girl
    Despite Aniston's hard work, Good Girl could be better.
  75. Emilia Pérez
    Though I’ve had weeks to roll “Emilia Pérez” over in my head, I still haven’t reached a conclusion about it. If nothing else, this movie will lodge itself in some corner of your brain that you’ll return to now and again.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    30 Days of Night
    A proficient, atmospheric fangfest that does nothing you haven't seen before but still does it passably well.
  77. Thirteen Lives
    The heart of the movie is the discussions among the divers and, even more, the scenes in the caves. Simply as a technical achievement, the underground and underwater filming is highly impressive.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Mud
    The most striking aspect of Mud is the air of myth and tall-tale telling that hovers lightly over the settings and characters.
  79. Fast Food Fast Women
    A warmhearted, hardworking little comedy that owes a lot of its charm to its modesty.
    • Boston Globe
  80. Barenaked in America
    Insights run more along the lines of which ''Sesame Street'' character each of them identifies with.
  81. Bad Times at the El Royale
    A line gets crossed. It isn’t the one between California and Nevada. It’s the one from “Bad” to worse.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Broken English
    A conventional New York-lonely hearts story made watchable by one element and one element only: Parker Posey.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    How She Move
    When the cast starts clomping atop a car, their synchronized bodies joining with the booming cross-rhythms, we're sold.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Eagle Eye
    A movie only a copyright lawyer could love. It strip-mines at least three Hitchcock classics - "North by Northwest," "The Wrong Man," and "The Man Who Knew Too Much" - then commits unlawful assault on Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" just for the heck of it.
  85. After Midnight
    Can be quite amusing and enjoyable to watch.
  86. Taboo
    The intriguing subject, unfortunately, collapses under too many talky scenes of the samurai discussing their feelings and gossiping about who loves whom.
    • Boston Globe
    • 80 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
    A look at Morgan Neville’s 2018 documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” is enough to remind a viewer how engaged Fred Rogers could be and was. By contrast, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood comes a little too close to turning him into a magical sprite. That’s a fairy tale that grown-ups may need, but something tells me the children know better.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    50/50
    Kendrick gives a truly bad performance here - she's a self-conscious actress playing a self-conscious person and getting her signals all mixed up - and it's unclear whether she has been hung out to dry by her director or if it's just that the character makes no sense whatsoever.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Trouble Every Day
    A success in some sense, but it's hard to like a film so cold and dead.
  90. Cruella
    Kohl-eyed and in command, she vamps, she camps, she stamps — and not just her foot. If Stone put any more spin on her line readings, she could audition to play a gyroscope.
  91. The Way of the Gun
    Sometimes trips over its own contrivance, especially at the ammo-ridden end.
  92. Turistas
    Turistas is not a slasher film -- not conventionally. Released by Fox's new teen division, it's the latest aquatic titillation from John Stockwell, the man who also brought us "Blue Crush" and the shockingly good "Into the Blue."
  93. Laurel Canyon
    Frances McDormand rescues this role from the throes of cliche. It's as though drippy dialogue and sappy rock were a small price to pay for a part that lets her flash her breasts, get stoned, and join in a three-way.
  94. Motherless Brooklyn
    What’s best about the movie is mood and texture, and the ensemble cast (the second best thing about the movie) mostly defers to those qualities. In that sense, Motherless Brooklyn might be described as novelistic, and in a good way.
  95. What's Your Number?
    It's that awkward, tedious monster mash of "chick flick'' and romantic comedy.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Exodus: Gods and Kings
    Scott’s “Exodus” is dutiful, deeply earnest, and more than a little dull.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Promised Land
    It's a fine line between interesting characters and "Northern Exposure" quirk, but the movie mostly stays on the right side of it.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Nothing Like the Holidays
    Both despite its familiarity and because of it, Nothing Like the Holidays brings it home for Christmas.
  99. Die Hard 2
    It's not quite as jolting as the high-impact original, but it's got enough explosiveness to blow away the other sequels in this summer's parade of high-body-count blockbusters. [4 July 1990, p.29]
    • Boston Globe
    • 80 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Secret World of Arrietty
    At the technical level, The Secret World of Arrietty isn't as ambitious as the studio's finest work, and the animation is stronger on texture than detail.
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