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. Dung che sai duk
    "Ashes of Time" was always more a work of philosophy than pure entertainment, and a decade and a half later it still is.
  2. RocknRolla
    It's fun to see Tom Wilkinson, for instance, with a massive bald spot virtually eating scenery with a knife and fork.
  3. Rachel Getting Married
    The movie's few false notes come from Lumet's script, which can be overly explanatory. Because Demme is opting for present-tense realism, the characters are forced to fill us in on who did what when to whom, why, and how.
  4. Religulous
    The film has a habit of cutting away from interviews for Maher's commentary during the drive to the next location. You can see him trying to work the car for a laugh.
  5. Beverly Hills Chihuahua
    Forget the metaphors, why not just make a movie about poor, exploited Mexicans?
  6. Blindness
    A perversely enjoyable, occasionally harrowing adaptation of José Saramago's 1995 disaster allegory.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Flash of Genius
    The problem with Flash of Genius isn't that the subject is dull but that the movie is.
    • 20 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    An American Carol
    Ultimately, the problem with An American Carol is the problem with far too much political discourse in this country, left or right: It highlights the worst excesses of the opposition for the sole purpose of discrediting the vast middle.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    How to Lose Friends & Alienate People
    Nothing in How to Lose Friends feels fresh or on target.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
    Sollett's working with stale material, clearly. He genuinely likes people, though, and his fondness revives "Nick and Norah" and sets it spinning with camaraderie and hope.
    • 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.
  12. Ballast
    This is the most significant feature about poor black life since Charles Burnett's 1977 "Killer of Sheep."
  13. The Lucky Ones
    As close as a movie about three Iraq war soldiers should come to mediocre TV comedy.
    • 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.
  15. Miracle at St. Anna
    Miracle at St. Anna is not work of outrage or joy. It's something distressingly new for the filmmaker: a work of obligation. It feels like a movie Lee made in order to say he did it.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Choke
    Disappointing not for what it is but what it could have been.
  17. Nights in Rodanthe
    Once a hurricane blows Gere and Lane into each other's arms, all the director's tasteful style and good sense turn into mush. Given the material, I suppose it has to.
  18. Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story
    If there were a liberal equivalent to Fox News (no, not MSNBC, which is so much milk-fed veal to Rupert Murdoch's steak tartare), Boogie Man is the sort of programming it would thrive on.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
    The movie is almost willfully dull, for its real subject is everything we never say to our parents, or they to us.
  20. Appaloosa
    A warmly made, slightly offbeat movie about friendly devotion. It also happens to be a western, and every man in it is grizzled or wizened or both.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Battle in Seattle
    The chief culprits are Townsend's TV-movie characterizations and a very muddled message.
    • 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.
  23. Lakeview Terrace
    The movie might have something to say about black racism, but the conversations go nowhere, and the cliches of the genre take over.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Ghost Town
    Someone once said about W.C. Fields that he had the rare ability to despise amusingly. I can imagine no greater compliment than to say that Ricky Gervais seems, at his best, like a young Fields.
  25. Igor
    You can't blame John Cusack for jumping at the chance to play Igor.
  26. My Best Friend's Girl
    There's a cheap thrill in watching Hudson defuse Cook's pig antics with some foulness of her own.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Virtual JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived
    Most useful and enlightening as a historical tour through the major crises of the Kennedy administration.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Burn After Reading
    Shallow and proud of it, an antic cartoon that lacks the comic inspiration to go the distance.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Flow: For Love of Water
    Flow preaches to the choir with a starry-eyed NPR eco-humanism that can set the wrong kind of person's teeth on edge.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Towelhead
    Ball's trying to be honest about adolescent coming of age, but since he's dishonest about everything else, the movie collapses in on itself.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Family That Preys
    Family, sadly, is a plate of leftovers: a bland, baldly written melodrama about two longtime best friends and their messed-up families.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    Righteous Kill
    When actors are as great as De Niro and Pacino, watching them in a movie like Righteous Kill is deadly.
  33. The Women
    The movie is a work of ambivalence. Is English making fun of these women? Or is she making a pilot for Lifetime?
    • 56 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Save Me
    An earnest drama about the futility of "rescuing" gay men back to Jesus, Save Me presents a paradox: It's an issue drama in which the most compassionately drawn character is on the other side of the issue.
  35. Bangkok Dangerous
    Bangkok Dangerous is bad without lifting a finger toward interesting. The trouble with it is that the people who've made it don't appear to understand life enough to allow any of it into their movie. This is an airless affair.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    A Secret
    A structural mess that turns contrived just when it should be hitting home.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    The Pool
    Like Anderson, many directors claim to value local color, but few have gone as far, or achieved such impressive results, as has Chris Smith in The Pool.
  38. Babylon A.D.
    When this Vin Diesel vehicle isn't pointlessly frenzied, it's narratively inert, wasting some decent production design, and a French-flavored cast primed for fun.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    I Served the King of England
    A charming, damning portrait that has been stinging audiences in the Czech Republic since its 2006 release. In any language, what the movie says about surviving fascism by rolling with it speaks loud and clear.
  40. College
    The grime, filth, slop, vomit, and crotch-nibbling pigs double all too easily as a recipe for this movie's failure. It hasn't been made so much as excreted.
    • 15 Metascore
    • 12 Critic Score
    Disaster Movie
    The filmmakers are idiots.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Year of the Fish
    At its best, Year of the Fish makes a virtue of naivete - its heroine's, its director's, and the fragile fairy-tale belief that everyone deserves a happy ending.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Traitor
    The film's a propulsive international espionage thriller, built on the hurry-scurry bones of the "Bourne" movies.
  44. Death Race
    Smartly, Anderson makes some eclectic casting choices that keep the story from feeling as though it's populated by video-game characters.
  45. The House Bunny
    The movie is a commercial for Hugh Hefner that makes his magazine seem like "Seventeen."
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Hamlet 2
    In the new comedy Hamlet 2, Coogan comes perilously close to wearing out his welcome. It's actually a pretty fascinating sight.
  47. Trouble the Water
    The film is so immersed in Roberts's life that it becomes easy to think that most of what the camera sees is also from her perspective. It's actually too seamless.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Momma's Man
    Deeper, darker currents move through Momma's Man, eddying around fears of letting go on both sides of the generational divide.
  49. The Rocker
    A grubby little redemption comedy that in every way feels like a consignment-shop Jack Black vehicle.
  50. Star Wars: The Clone Wars
    Once again, even reasonably committed fans will need a scorecard to keep track of who's fighting whom. What's the real target audience - i.e. kids - supposed to make of it all?
  51. Vicky Cristina Barcelona
    Fitfully good.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Fly Me to the Moon 3D
    Fly Me to the Moon is a crummy movie for kids, yet it still holds out the prospect of past wonders and future marvels. It's one small step for a housefly, one giant leap for 3-D.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 25 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Mirrors
    At nearly two hours, Mirrors is overlong for a summer horror toss-off, and the movie's three or four false endings make it seem even more of a haul.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 25 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Henry Poole Is Here
    Manages a fairly rare trick: It's a movie that's both deeply felt and completely phony.
  55. The Girl Cut in Two
    It's intriguing. To be honest, though, there is less to it all than meets the eye.
  56. Tropic Thunder
    Despite its contradictions, the film stayed with me after I left the theater. It's frivolous. But it's also powerfully surreal.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Elegy
    Elegy drifts helplessly into melodrama, and it loses its bearings and its head in a ridiculous final act.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Beautiful Losers
    For a film about a gaggle of slackers, Beautiful Losers is remarkably polished; with its quicksilver editing and fastidious mise-en-scene, it's as tight as the artists are slack.
  59. Hell Ride
    It's a self-amused, self-conscious, seriously limp throwback to motorcycle westerns of the 1970s.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    What We Do Is Secret
    One for the fans, even though writer-director Rodger Grossman and co-writer Michelle Baer Ghaffari labor mightily to spin it into something larger.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Pineapple Express
    Disappointingly, Pineapple Express is less than the sum of its ingredients, even if it's still a good stupid time at the movies.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Bottle Shock
    Low budget, self-distributed, awkwardly charming, it's the kind of midrange Hollywood entertainment that's supposed to be extinct in this modern age. It makes you want to support your local vintner and your local moviemaker.
  63. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2
    In the intervening years, they've become pretty good actors, too. Now where's the filmmaker who'll give them more to do than pregnancy scares and falls off donkeys?
    • 82 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Frozen River
    Does what too many independent American movies only pretend to do: Takes you to an unnoticed corner of our country and shows what it's like to actually live there.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
    Despite exotic locations, epic cinematography, and much spectacular crash and bang, this "Mummy" feels like a threadbare toss-off.
  66. Swing Vote
    Swing Vote is a satire that's afraid to satirize.
  67. Sixty Six
    In the end, though, Weiland ("Made of Honor") pours so much heart into his autobiographically "true-ish" story that accessibility is a nonissue.
  68. In Search of a Midnight Kiss
    A romantic comedy with film noir shadows.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 100 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Man on Wire
    The sight is magical and heartbreaking in equal measure. Look, the movie says: Where so many would fall, a man walks on air.
  70. The X Files: I Want to Believe
    The truth is, indeed, still out there. And when Carter finds it, may he heed its wisdom: Let go.
    • 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.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Baghead
    The movie's cheap, it's clever - it's even a little scary in places.
  73. Brideshead Revisited
    The film plays fast and loose with the book, until its emotional depths, spiritual conflicts, and Waugh's discreet humor have been wrung out.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    American Teen
    Parents are another matter. Almost to a man and woman they lay expectations on their children that ignore who those children are.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    CSNY/Déjà Vu
    The film, like the tour it documents, wallops you in the face with politics.
  76. Boy A
    Boy A comes frustratingly close to succeeding as tragedy.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Dark Knight
    You come away impressed, oppressed, provoked, and beaten down, holding on to Ledger's squirrelly incandescence as a beacon in the darkness.
  78. Mamma Mia!
    The movie takes the ABBA jukebox musical that ate London, and is still eating Broadway, and turns it into a surprisingly sensuous experience.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Space Chimps
    Short, cheap, weird, and passably diverting.
  80. Transsiberian
    Unfortunately, there's never a moment where you can't see Anderson and his co-writer, Will Conroy, yanking on the strings.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Mad Detective
    Mad Detective is equal parts gonzo inspiration and overwrought indecision. It could be called "The Lunatic From Kowloon."
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Hellboy II: The Golden Army
    Of all the comic book movies that have spun out of theaters this long and pulpy summer, Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy II: The Golden Army is the most unapologetically comic book-y.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Journey to the Center of the Earth
    For a harmless "Indiana Jones" knock-off, Journey to the Center of the Earth has an awful lot riding on it.
  84. Meet Dave
    On just about every occasion in Meet Dave, Murphy appears to be on the verge of cracking himself up. This is good news. At least someone found him funny.
  85. A Man Named Pearl
    This is moviemaking that honors the craftsmanship of its subject.
  86. Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired
    If you go into "Wanted and Desired" with preconceptions, prepare to feel them challenged and altered, even if they are ultimately confirmed. The facts speak loudly.
  87. Giorni e nuvole
    In American movies, the iconic question usually is, can men and women be friends without the sex part getting in the way? Here it's, can a husband appreciate his wife as a woman? The movie's success in Italy is partly a matter of frustration: Women need their men to grow up.
  88. Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
    Thompson - his brilliance, his self-destruction, and the ground he broke - is always at the center, but the film occasionally loses its focus.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Wackness
    Disappointingly, the movie runs along the track of many earlier coming-of-age dramas, with appointed station stops at Cynicism, Puppy Love, Puppy Sex, Puppy Heartbreak, and Greater Wisdom.
    • Boston Globe
  90. 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.
  91. Hancock
    Once the vulgar comedy dissipates, we're left with poorly photographed, bullet-riddled summer-action mayhem. The only thing drunker than Hancock is the editing and camerawork.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 12 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Finding Amanda
    Finding Amanda, unfortunately, is one vast, irritating surface.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 100 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    WALL-E
    The best American film of the year to date.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Wanted
    Preposterous, luridly entertaining.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Trumbo
    Trumbo never wavered in his belief that his persecution was only a horrible symptom. He understood the real victim of blacklist America was America itself.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Elsa y Fred
    Elsa & Fred does graze against an interesting idea: that the vitality of our youths lives on in the prison of aging bodies.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Last Mistress
    Cool, carnal, and lethal, The Last Mistress is a period drama with a difference.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Red Roses and Petrol
    Because "Petrol" is so grim, its few moments of repentance and reconciliation don't feel as contrived as they might otherwise; if any film has earned the right to be sentimental, it's this one.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Get Smart
    The movie errs by turning Max into a figure of hangdog sympathy: "The 40 Year Old Virgin" with a shoe phone.
  100. The Love Guru
    This is the first time we've seen Myers in the flesh since he committed assault and battery on Dr. Seuss, and I wish the cat had stayed in the hat.
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