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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    • 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.
  2. Men in Black: International
    Although Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson aren’t at all bad together, neither do they strike sparks. That’s unfortunate, since the movie flirts, and that is the word, with the idea of a romance between them.
  3. The Power of the Dog
    Campion’s best-known films (the remarkable The Piano, 1993; The Portrait of a Lady, 1996) are not just set in the past but summon it up with a rare capacity to make viewers feel a sort of displacement from the present. She does that here, too.
  4. The Princess and the Warrior
    Nowhere near as dynamic as the title implies. It's hard not to think of it as ''Sleepwalk Lola Sleepwalk.''
    • Boston Globe
    • 35 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Dreamcatcher
    The longer it takes for the eldritch glop to hit the fan, in fact, the less true the movie may be to King. For better and for worse, Dreamcatcher is true to King.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Wuthering Heights
    If the new Wuthering Heights makes you uncomfortable, that's part of Andrea Arnold's game plan.
  7. OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies
    An arch espionage comedy that's never as amusing as it thinks it is.
  8. OSS 117 - Lost in Rio
    Gallic humor translates splendidly when it comes courtesy of Moliere. The drop-off from that height is very, very steep.
  9. Aquamarine
    Unique because it's the rare movie that fiercely respects the altruistic loyalty that bonds girls to one another.
  10. The Dressmaker
    Aussie Rosalie Ham’s quirky gothic novel is too tonally erratic to be completely satisfying. But we do get two Kates for the price of one, in a sense, as this crazy quilt of a movie allows her to play both entertainingly vampy and vulnerable.
  11. All Together
    The comedy in Robelin's movie veers from wacky and overwritten to truly, beautifully sad, especially the whimsical final sequence, which is as apt an existential tribute to the afterglow of Fonda's fabulousness as you'll see.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Duchess
    At a certain point, The Duchess stops attending to the topiary and becomes a women's melodrama instead.
  13. Ju-on: The Grudge
    Gets on your nerves.
  14. Goat
    John Landis’s “Animal House” (1978) this is not.
  15. Jackpot
    Bummer theater.
  16. Vitus
    "Joshua" is a horror movie that doesn't want to freak you out too much. Vitus freaks you out, but its makers seem to have no idea that it does.
  17. Frontrunners
    The movie doesn't know what it wants to say about the election or the people who run in it.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Danny Collins
    Danny Collins leaves absolutely nothing to chance. The cast is full of sharp little turns by Melissa Benoist — the girlfriend in “Whiplash” and a future Supergirl — and Josh Peck and Katarina Cas, the latter playing Danny’s bubblehead user of a fiancée.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Aladdin
    Here’s the thing about Disney’s “live-action” remakes of its animated classics: The new versions may be bigger, louder, and more lavish, but they’ll never be original. The thrill of first impact is gone.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Official Secrets
    It’s an occasionally plodding but rarely dull movie, and one whose stakes outweigh its impact as drama. In the end, the message is both illuminating and disturbing.
  21. A/k/a Tommy Chong
    This isn't a great piece of nonfiction filmmaking, but it has its moments.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Together Together
    Together Together sounds like a really bad idea on paper, and for the first half-hour or so, it’s a really bad idea on screen. Yet a funny thing happens to this surrogate-pregnancy romantic comedy (I told you it was a bad idea) as it bumps along: It develops curious and unexpected pockets of feeling.
  23. Iron Man
    Downey appears to like all this make-believe. Even the clunky dialogue sounds witty out of his mouth. This is not a part that makes great demands on his talent, and his slummy approach to it is amusing.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    A Wrinkle in Time
    So how’s the movie already? Not terrible, not great, something of a disappointment after what feels like a geological epoch of hype.
  25. Moscow, Belgium
    I wanted to keep watching. I wanted to leave. In between, I prayed for the piano-accordion soundtrack to silence itself for just one scene (it's like being trapped in a little French restaurant that refuses to close).
    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Overnight
    A bonbon of embarrassment comedy.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Blackballed: The Bobby Dukes Story
    Fueled by off-kilter characters, charming and funny -- if haltingly awkward -- dialogue, and a reasonable amount of thematic ingenuity, "Blackballed" succeeds as a modest tribute to the kind of aging boys club that idles for hours in somebody's parents' rumpus room, its members tossing around big-man talk but trapped in emotional adolescence.
  28. The Insider
    A big, dark juggernaut of a movie about a big, dark juggernaut of a subject.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Just Mercy
    As true-story dramas about innocent men on death row go, Just Mercy is just above average. I still hope it reaches the widest audience possible. To quote a statistic cited in the film, for every nine prisoners executed in this country, one is found to have been wrongfully convicted. That’s a number to shame a nation.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael
    Leave it to James to sum up a legendary, culture-altering talent: “She turned her lack of self-awareness into a triumph.” Both sides of that coin live on in our modern culture, and Kael’s voice fills every self-satisfied corner of the Internet. Two decades after her death, she’s still the ghost in the machine.
  31. Benediction
    Benediction has at least three things in common with its immediate predecessor, “A Quiet Passion” (2016). Both are biographies of poets, Siegfried Sassoon and Emily Dickinson, respectively. Both are suffused with great feeling. And despite having much to recommend them, both don’t really work.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Wanted
    Preposterous, luridly entertaining.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Love Actually
    Charming, if terribly overstuffed, vision of romantic London gridlock.
  34. The Exception
    In other words, it’s hopeless tosh — but expertly done hopeless tosh.
  35. Innocent Voices
    Not a happy time at the movies. It bears the distinction of bringing to the screen a dark nugget of history.
  36. 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.
  37. Elemental
    With its preachy, dull love story between a boy made of water and a girl on fire, Elemental should have been called “Guess Who’s Coming to Disney.”
  38. Warlock
    Although Warlock doesn't muster enough of a charge to shoot for genre classic status as Sands subsides, it does have a degree of interplay uncommon in such outings. [19 Apr 1991, p.43]
    • Boston Globe
  39. Ten Canoes
    It's a thriller that refuses to thrill. It taunts us with resolution and mysteries, then slaps our hand for reaching out for a conclusion.
  40. The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra
    A terrifyingly cheap-looking B-movie comedy mocking terrifyingly cheap-looking science-fiction B-movies. As such things go, this one has its moments.
  41. The Clan
    It’s a mordant if unwieldy thriller examining how evil not only becomes the norm, but a virtue.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Old
    Old is a fiendish idea only partially realized.
  43. 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.
  44. Bedazzled
    The important thing is that Hurley looks smashing in her succession of red outfits.
    • Boston Globe
  45. The Flash
    The action gets increasingly overblown, even by superhero-movie standards. Bad as smash-crash-bash can be, portentous smash-crash-bash is far worse.
  46. The Comebacks
    As dumb spoofs go, The Comebacks isn't bad. It takes almost every sports movie of the last five years ("Field of Dreams," too) and blends them into a single slapdash comedy.
  47. Bubba Ho-tep
    The film's good humor is often betrayed by its low-budget roots, however, as though it couldn't afford to be more original or ambitious than its premise.
  48. Mr 3000
    Mac's TV show seems to have trained him to settle for feel-good tack-ons that cut against the prickly nature of Mr. 3000. The actor has such a serious and wise bearing that it's hard to believe Stan as a shallow jackass, which is why several of his scenes with Boca seem phony.
  49. The Year of the Everlasting Storm
    Poitras includes screenshots, Zoom sessions, surveillance footage, even voice mails. The overall effect is both hypnotic and deeply unsettling, like watching a real-life William Gibson novel.
  50. Any Given Sunday
    Far too long, but its rambunctiousness is engaging, propelled by Stone's virtuosic quick-cutting.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Inferno
    Inferno is the exact cinematic equivalent of an airport paperback, which is what’s fine and forgettable about it.
  52. Wonder
    Much as there is right with Wonder, there’s just as much that isn’t. Emotionally, the movie rarely feels false.
  53. Basic Instinct
    Paul Verhoeven's Basic Instinct is a slick, trashy, blatantly manipulative thriller that you won't stop watching once you start. [20 Mar 1992, p.25]
    • Boston Globe
  54. Jesus' Son
    It's often a downer, with a sweet but largely passive protagonist.
  55. The Upside
    What makes The Upside work as well as it often does is how the actors are able to convey the unlikely affinity these unlikely people share.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    50 First Dates
    The plot -- it's inspired and ridiculous at the same time -- is best described as "Groundhog Day" meets "Memento."
    • 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.
  58. My Penguin Friend
    Only a true grinch would grumble loudly at a film that delivers its pro-environment message with a light touch that avoids preachiness.
  59. Silverado
    Silverado plays like a big-budget regurgitation of old Westerns. Whatkeeps it going is the generosity that flows between Kasdan and his actors. It's got benevolent energies, but not the more primal kind needed to renew the standard Western images and archetypes. [10 Jul 1985, p.26]
    • Boston Globe
    • 64 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Interview
    One comes away from Interview exhausted and a little unclean, entertained by the acting equivalent of a pit bull fight but needing a hose-down. The movie confirms that in every relationship "there are winners and losers." True enough, but for the audience this one's a draw.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Zack and Miri Make a Porno
    Rudely silly rather than transgressively shocking, Zack and Miri is the sort of bawdy but fundamentally decent farce you could take Grandma to, provided Grandma were familiar with the oeuvre of Traci Lords.
  62. Snitch
    Snitch gets a decent amount of drama (and action, of course) out of the argument that there’s paying for a crime, and then there’s overpaying.
  63. Worth
    This is not the most promising dramatic material — legal and actuarial material, yes, dramatic, no. Yet Worth manages to combine process and emotion in a way that works.
  64. Gunner Palace
    Works purely as a series of complex snapshots of the conflict in Iraq.
  65. Solomon & Gaenor
    It takes us nowhere we haven't been before, except geographically.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Third Person
    Third Person staggers well over the two-hour mark only to self-destruct in a burst of overwrought cleverness.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Lucky Number Slevin
    The most original thing about Lucky Number Slevin is that it lets Lucy Liu play a screwball heroine.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    John Dies at the End
    This loopy slacker horror farce is so intent on playing with your head — and time, and space, and paranoid conspiracy theories — that it doesn’t care about making sense. Which doesn’t stop the film from being a pretty good bad time.
    • 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.
  70. Unaccompanied Minors
    Crashes the slapstick of "Home Alone" into the youthful angst of "The Breakfast Club."
  71. Cool It
    Cool It arrives having been labeled the anti-"An Inconvenient Truth." It is. But not in the philistinistic way you'd expect.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Gracie
    An inspirational sports movie, soccer subdivision, and it stops at every expected station of the cross on its road to the triumphant against-all-odds finale (in sudden-death overtime, yet). Yet it also feels appealingly handmade in a way most jock dramas don't.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Murder by Numbers
    For much of its length, the film is plausible, if predictable and ponderous. Its strongest assets are its actors.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Hot Tub Time Machine
    Depressingly, and in keeping with the stringent rules of bad-boy shock-comedies, all the women here are bimbos, shrews, and slutburgers except for one cool chick -- Cusack’s love interest, played by Lizzy Caplan -- who acts like a guy.
    • 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.
    • 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.
  77. Winnie the Pooh
    Zooey Deschanel shows off her singing on a couple of generically pleasant soundtrack ditties.
  78. Free Zone
    A minor movie on a major subject, a drama with an almost unbearable lightness.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Ready Player One
    It overuses ’80s nostalgia as shorthand for genuine emotional involvement, and it presents us with a rapturous digital wonderworld only to sternly lecture us that reality is the better value.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The United States vs. Billie Holiday
    The director is Lee Daniels, of Precious (2009) and The Butler (2013), here evoking the historical era and its figures with verve and intelligence but unable to find a dramatic center other than his electrifying star.
  81. The Details
    Manages to be both compelling and unsatisfying. But what limits it isn't lack of execution. The movie is many things, but a mess isn't one of them. Estes knows exactly what he wants. Whether it's worth wanting is another matter.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Me Without You
    More predictable than it ought to be - you can set your watch by the appearance of the mournful Nick Drake song on the soundtrack.
  83. Man on the Train
    There's the air of sadness and worry all over this movie, and sometimes it's heavy. But it's air all the same.
  84. 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.
  85. Away We Go
    In tone and plotting, Away We Go feels like a fairy tale built on an aggravating collection of attitudes. It's condescending, judgmental, righteous, yet sincerely searching.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Hustle
    A watchable, unnecessary re-do that works hard but lacks the charm to really zing.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    A Late Quartet
    The performances are worth a look, especially since Christopher Walken so rarely gets to play a sane person.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Edge of Darkness
    The movie’s weaknesses include the overuse of grainy flashbacks of Craven’s daughter as a child, and the conversations he has with her after she is gone. Both are tremendously moving ideas but eventually succumb to bathos from repetition.
  89. Captain America: The First Avenger
    This is what the ongoing onslaught of comic book movies lacks: stars. Real stars. Robert Downey Jr. is the exception when he should be the rule. It's possible we take these movies for granted because the marketing tells us we should.
  90. Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny
    As a movie, it’s a mess — and lazy, too.
  91. Stomp the Yard
    For his part, Short, another pop choreographer, sounds like Vin Diesel, but he moves like a bee. When he dances, he makes sure every girl in the theater goes home stung.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Out of the Furnace
    Out of the Furnace could have been a starkly powerful human drama or a cheesy, vibrant action film. It splits the difference and ends up playing like a lesser Springsteen song.
  93. The Others
    Has everything you want in a supernatural thriller except thrills.
    • Boston Globe
    • 79 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Let Me In
    It's an honorable attempt, but there's still no genuine need for this film to exist.
  95. I.Q.
    There's not only physics between them, but chemistry. I.Q. may be slight, but it's a civilized delight. [23 Dec 1994, p.45]
    • Boston Globe
  96. A Better Life
    This isn't a case of a liberal-minded movie inflicting goodness upon a character but a man radiating goodness because, well, he is good.
  97. Lucky You
    Playing the character with this much girlish innocence is risky. Barrymore can seem dumb, but as Lucky You unfolds, we realize that the character is just a device to bring viewers into the parallel universe of poker.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Out of Time
    An overly constructed little thriller that squeezes a fair amount of suspense out of its far-fetched plot.
    • 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.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Black Mass
    It’s a solid if not stellar crime drama, well put together, very well acted, and lacking only a genuine reason to exist.
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