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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  1. The Concert
    A passable, sometimes skillful farce.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Get Low
    A charming, spiky period piece that might be called "Boo Radley: The Final Years."
    • 45 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Flipped
    Sweet, smartly acted, and charmingly old-fashioned, Flipped is a minor pleasure that will strike a lot of moviegoers - those who think no one makes movies for them anymore - as a major treat.
  4. The Wildest Dream
    The most powerful moment in the film is a tiny one. Anker and his Irvine, Leo Houlding, plan to reenact most of Mallory's climb wearing gabardine and hobnail boots instead of North Face and Gore-Tex.
  5. Mao's Last Dancer
    The ballets are badly filmed. The camera shoots them often from the point of view of the patrons in the auditorium or in a way that dishonors the choreography.
  6. Centurion
    The profanity is delightful. And the general atmosphere is grim. The movie just isn't terribly inspired.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Paranormal Activity 2
    And again things go bump and eventually yarrrragghhh in the night.
  8. Patrik Age 1.5
    The cute little domestic comedy gains a slightly rough edge - maybe Sven isn't meant to be a father or a husband.
  9. Bran Nue Dae
    The songs are catchy. The lip-synching, meanwhile, is always a little off, and the dancing is usually average at best.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    It's Kind of a Funny Story
    What's largely missing from It's Kind of a Funny Story: genuine emotional pain. Still, the movie's an often charming example of "Cuckoo's Nest'' Lite.
    • 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.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Nowhere Boy
    As sympathetic and well-turned as it is, Nowhere Boy only gives us more mythology.
  13. Conviction
    What Conviction lacks in characterization (the people here are monochromes - bright ones, but monochromes nonetheless) it makes up for with personality.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Monsters
    Monsters is a genuine curio: a moody, low-budget road-movie romance that takes place against a background of alien invasion.
  15. Burlesque
    It's entertaining enough, like watching a celebrity workout film with a plot. But never once is it believable.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Faster
    Faster is meat-and-potatoes action with a side of crazy.
  17. 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.
  18. A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop
    It's more like a cartoon with a body count.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Catfish
    It seems to play as vastly different movies depending on who's looking at it.
  20. White Wedding
    The movie, from South Africa, is charming and its characters' feelings sincere enough. It's just so cluttered.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    I'm Still Here
    Parts of it are close to genius; most of it is actively torturous to watch.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Tamara Drewe
    A frolic that keeps tripping over its own gorgeous feet.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Morning Glory
    Morning Glory is itself a work of extreme fluff, a lightweight bauble about the morning-show wars that floats on the updrafts of character comedy until it charmingly self-destructs in the final act.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Made in Dagenham
    The movie moves, but it doesn't breathe.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Love and Other Drugs
    If product proves especially difficult to swallow, take with a grain of salt and three or more alcoholic drinks, or wait until such time as active ingredients Hathaway and Gyllenhaal have been more effectively utilized elsewhere.
  26. For Colored Girls
    It's too much too-much. The audience I saw it with didn't seem to know whether to clap when it was over or start taking Lipitor.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The King's Speech
    The movie isn't badly done, just overdone - a cozy art-house crowd-pleaser coasting on the expectations of its genre.
  28. Miral
    Miral feels like gastric bypass moviemaking. It's a miniseries awkwardly stuffed in the body of a two-hour drama about the Palestinians' long struggle against the Israelis.
  29. How Do You Know
    The experiment in the new movie is this: What happens when his Type A's are forced out of their comfort zones? If only Brooks had managed to leave his. How Do You Know feels like a collection of scenarios he's done better.
  30. True Grit
    This isn't a rousing movie as much as a reassurance. The brothers (Coens) prove they can play it straight, but they're preferred, for better and worse, at a sharp angle.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields
    In inviting us along to peek into the life, filmmakers Kerthy Fix and Gail O'Hara don't give us quite enough about the art.
  32. Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer
    Gibney has too much information, too much material, and too many people to shape a mystery or a drama or even a farce out of it all. His movie has elements of all three without ever sustaining one.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Barney's Version
    A smart, well-acted two hours at the art house, full of witty observations and fellow feeling. But, really, it has no business being a movie.
  34. Cool It
    Cool It arrives having been labeled the anti-"An Inconvenient Truth." It is. But not in the philistinistic way you'd expect.
  35. Biutiful
    The movie wails in pain. And it's that sort of grand empathy that makes Iñárritu both impossible to dismiss and impossible to live with.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Tiny Furniture
    Dunham has been justly praised for her determination in getting Tiny Furniture made, but the movie itself has been overpraised as a result.
  37. Queen of the Lot
    It's one of the funniest things I've seen in a movie, and the closest Jaglom has come to brilliant satire. It also explains why this woman is just chatting on a countertop and not Jay Leno's couch.
  38. 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.
  39. Unknown
    Neeson is much better suited to the loneliness and self-doubt of Martin's crisis than he was for the thuggery of the previous movie.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Rango
    You can feel the actors tossing energy, one-liners, and limbs off each other with gusto.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Legend of Pale Male
    It's notable for some astounding urban wildlife footage and for the way it unintentionally reflects the giddy narcissism of the primate known as homo sapiens.
  42. Jumping the Broom
    It's a self-conscious, inherently absurd tale of a rich black family invaded by secrets, lies, working-class loudmouths, and one or two pairs of pants found down around the ankles.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Thor
    For a holding maneuver, Thor itself turns out to be diverting enough - not close to a sharp-edged romp like "Iron Man" but not the B-movie roadshow some of us were expecting.
  44. Johnny Mad Dog
    Basically, talented French director Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire has too much style on his hands. His film isn't as amorally grandiose as "City of God." Nor does it achieve the hulking tragedy of "Gomorrah."
    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    When We Leave
    As powerful as the movie is, it stays on the outside of a culture looking in.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Battle: Los Angeles
    The Duke is not only name-checked in passing, but Eckhart (who's excellent) even bears a squinty resemblance by the final scenes.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Hanna
    It rockets along entertainingly enough for most of its running time - only that it's made with a self-importance the story itself doesn't warrant.
  48. Soul Surfer
    The best moments come when Robb's all-purpose toughness experiences vulnerable doubt. These moments are flickers, but they're bright and human.
  49. African Cats
    Scholey, Fothergill, and crew do impressive work, but we're also reminded that wild animals don't know from cues, marks, and scripts. That's part of what makes them so compelling.
  50. Kung Fu Panda 2
    It's still Black's franchise, though. And part of the problem with this sequel is how little it lets its star just riff with silly abandon, as he did throughout the original.
  51. The Tree of Life
    The movie is church via the planetarium. It's as if Malick set out to paint the Sistine Chapel and settled for a dome at the Museum of Natural History.
  52. 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.
  53. The Help
    The movie is too pious for farce and too eager to please to comment persuasively on the racial horrors of the Deep South at that time.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Adventures of Tintin
    Quite simply, The Adventures of Tintin is a model of modern movie craftsmanship. It's also, I'm afraid, rather dull.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Take Me Home Tonight
    Completely unoriginal, sure, but watchable and even likable.
  56. Mars Needs Moms
    "Mars" needs Mom more than the filmmakers seem to realize.
  57. Limitless
    Basically an addiction thriller in which the thirst is for the acquisition and execution of knowledge. So you need an actor who seems surprised by how smart he is but not afraid to be charmingly intelligent. Cooper turns out to be perfect for the part.
  58. 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.
  59. Monte Carlo
    Honestly, the whole movie is from 1960-something.
  60. Winnie the Pooh
    Zooey Deschanel shows off her singing on a couple of generically pleasant soundtrack ditties.
  61. The Change-Up
    If I must watch two men not be gay together for the 300th time this summer, those men should be Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Grace Card
    More drama than tract, it's a low-budget Christian indie that just clears the runway on the sincerity of its performances and inclusiveness of its message.
  63. Born to Be Wild
    Ironically, Born to Be Wild banks solely on its tameness to captivate and inspire, aided by an upbeat, sometimes incongruous soundtrack.
  64. Warrior
    This is bench-press melodrama, and it's as manipulative as anything Bette Davis or Jane Wyman ever starred in. You can't abide the shamelessness of any of it.
    • 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.
  66. Footloose
    This remake does something less organically fun. It makes kids nostalgic for something they never experienced.
  67. The Thing
    The basic story is identical, and when there are fraught, climactic opportunities for the movie to make a gutsy departure, it passes up the chance.
    • 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.
  69. Damsels in Distress
    These are women who seemed raised on Louisa May Alcott and might have been aspirationally besotted with Jane Austen. But you sense tragedy looming. They're hurtling, inexorably, toward Tennessee Williams.
  70. Kill the Irishman
    The best thing about the picture (unless you like exploding cars, in which case the rest of the movie is just so many interruptions between getting to see all these big old '70s boats going boom) is its proudly hammy supporting cast.
  71. Margin Call
    In the case of Jeremy Irons playing the aloof English billionaire who owns the bank, that's dinner theater. But it's of the highest caliber.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Big Year
    If anything, The Big Year plays like Ron Howard's "Parenthood'' with birds instead of children.
  73. Jack and Jill
    What's more genuinely wacky is what a kick the movie can sometimes be, completely in spite of its big, flat stunt.
  74. What's Your Number?
    It's that awkward, tedious monster mash of "chick flick'' and romantic comedy.
    • 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.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    My Week with Marilyn
    The point of "My Week'' appears to be that Colin is the one person in Monroe's life who isn't using her, but if squeezing two books and a movie out of one brief encounter isn't exploitation, I don't know what is.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Take This Waltz
    The new movie's a visual achievement and a narrative muddle: A color-drenched story of lust, love, and infidelity, it suffers from a vagueness that may be the point but that feels accidental.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Iron Man 3
    The best scenes are when Stark just cuts impatiently through the claptrap.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Snow White and the Huntsman
    Just feels like it was made from the pieces of every fantasy-action movie ever made.
  80. Elektra Luxx
    Does a lot of winking and teasing.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Potiche
    What the movie utterly fails to resolve is what François Ozon is up to here and where he's going next.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Double Hour
    What appears at first to be a Euro variation on David Lynch's patented mind games, though, ultimately settles for more conventional pleasures. The movie makes sense, more's the pity, although you may need to see it twice to figure out how.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Vow
    It's quite watchable date-night cheese - the kind of movie you can simultaneously snort at and enjoy.
  84. Public Speaking
    Without any framing background information, this affectionate documentary and its continual monologues can feel a little too insidery and indulgent. [22 Nov 2010, p.G9]
    • Boston Globe
      • Posted Jan 10, 2024
  85. Contraband
    I don't know that a lot of Contraband makes sense. But I'm not sure that it has to. The director Baltasar Kormákur carries the movie off with efficiency, brutality, and humor.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Bourne Legacy
    The best thing that can be said about The Bourne Legacy is that Renner will survive it.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Henry's Crime
    Occasionally too pleased with itself, it's also pleasantly unpredictable, and it has a trio of sweet hambone performances at its center.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Monsters University
    This is not a bad movie, and to small children it will be a very good one. But it is closer to average than one would wish from the company that gave us “Up,” “Wall-E,” “The Incredibles,” and “Toy Story 3."
  89. Rise of the Guardians
    This does seem to leave room for bigger, bolder, more momentous adventures down the line.
    • 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.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Men in Black III
    Brolin's performance is funny, masterful, confident, and more than a little unsettling. If one human being can sample another, that's what's going on here. The rest of Men in Black 3 is about as good as one could hope for from an unnecessary sequel that's a decade late to the party.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Rock of Ages
    The movie has its cheesy pleasures, and some of them are even intended. I'm just not sure whether Tom Cruise's impersonation of Axl Rose is one of them. 
  93. Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted
    You can picture the DreamWorks corporate confab: "OK, the kids respond to move-it, move-it repetition - give us something else repetitive, and let's get herding." It wasn't just desperate, it was insulting.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Brave
    Eventually it straightens out into a fast, funny, emotionally resonant story about mothers and daughters, but it takes a while to get there and it's never less than weird.
  95. The Croods
    Some of the exotic landscape the group trailblazes looks imported from “Avatar” — happily, bringing that immersively dimensionalized, eye-catching quality along with it.
  96. The Elephant in the Living Room
    The movie effectively rids you of any notion that owning a cougar or a python is a good idea.
  97. Armadillo
    Metz is another artist more interested in war's side effects than combat itself, although he and his crew are embedded for battle.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Higher Ground
    The end result's a muddle and a good argument for why actors shouldn't direct themselves first time out. Farmiga's a generous and observant performer, but she lacks a shaping hand, not to mention the ruthlessness that's probably a necessity for any director.
    • 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.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Hesher
    It's a fearsome and giddily unhinged performance in a movie that isn't entirely sure what to do with it.
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