Boston Globe's Scores

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For 7,964 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: 5,240 out of 7964
  2. Mixed: 1,556 out of 7964
  3. Negative: 1,168 out of 7964
7964 movie reviews
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    • 40 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Illegal Tender
    The movie's a genuine oddity: a Latino action drama with one foot in bullet-spitting genre flicks -- '70s blaxploitation and '80s coke-kingpin films are the primary reference points -- and the other in raggedly personal family melodrama.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Mr. Bean's Vacation
    Either you'll find the man hilarious -- or he'll seem like one of those awful, tedious comedians who only THINKS he's hilarious.
  3. The Nanny Diaries
    The movie's banal fantasies badly chafe any anthropological consideration of what a girl should do with her career. This isn't life. It's Lifetime.
  4. Resurrecting the Champ
    If most boxing movies are about redemption, Resurrecting the Champ is a boxing movie that goes to exasperating lengths to redeem its boxing writer.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Right at Your Door
    The film is low budget but puffed with self-importance, and it offers proof that Hollywood filmmakers should probably steer clear of topics that actually matter.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    September Dawn
    The movie isn't THAT bad -- it's just made-for-TV historical treacle that has somehow found its way to the big screen (and barely that; if you want to be moved or outraged by the film, you'll have to travel to Danvers or Revere).
  7. War
    Fun here is fleeting.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Hottest State
    When Laura Linney turns up about an hour into The Hottest State, you can see the movie that might have been.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Hannah Takes the Stairs
    Shot with intentionally banal anti-style - minimal soundtrack music, found sound, jitter-cam - the movie achieves a wisdom that's bigger than it seems.
  10. Superbad
    As films about the young and the horny go, I preferred the smarter approach director Jeffrey Blitz takes in "Rocket Science."
    • 67 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Death at a Funeral
    Death" builds slowly and inexorably to a comic explosion that's just too good -- too insanely, impossibly mortifying -- to spoil here. Let's just say it dwarfs everything that has come before it.
  12. Them
    Technique is all you have to admire. There's nothing underneath the formal exercise. The film's coyness about what's happening is cheap.
  13. Manda Bala (Send a Bullet)
    The title is Portuguese for "send a bullet" and the clever American tag line is "the rich steal from the poor; the poor steal the rich."
  14. The 11th Hour
    The word bears repeating, so everyone from Andrew Weil to Stephen Hawking to Mikhail Gorbachev is here to speak the still-inconvenient truth. The filmmaking, however, is far more relentless than in that Oscar-winning Al Gore slide show.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Invasion
    Buried somewhere within the bipolar extravaganza that is The Invasion is an awfully good movie that got away.
  16. The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters
    A portrait of two different men whose compulsion for Donkey Kong is hilarious.
  17. The Last Legion
    The film is nothing to be ashamed of (especially if you're Kingsley). But it's as if everybody involved knows what the deal is.
    • 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.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Skinwalkers
    Watching the movie is a little like picking up issue #42 of a comic book after you've skipped the first 41: There's an entire back story mythos hovering in the background like a phantom limb.
  20. 2 Days in Paris
    Here's all you really need to know in order to determine whether Julie Delpy's 2 Days in Paris is something you need to experience for yourself: Her blond hair is often all frizz, and she prefers glasses with a big black frame. She's Mia AND Woody.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Rocket Science
    When it's not opting for whimsy, Rocket Science makes you cringe, which is what's good about it.
  22. Rush Hour 3
    Rush Hour 3 reminds us that Tucker is an utterly strange entertainment phenomenon: He exists only in the world of these movies.
  23. Stardust
    Stardust certainly could have gone somewhere fun. But the magic and zip you need to get a blimp like this off the ground is scarce.
    • 13 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Daddy Day Camp
    Innocuous amusement for 5- to 8-year-olds and other people stuck in the anal stage of development.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    In Paris
    Dans Paris provides a brooding, poetic echo - an after-dinner mint to a lasting meal.
  26. The Bourne Ultimatum
    The movies are smart -- smarter than you, but not in an off-putting way. Their basic appeal, especially this new one, is that Matt Damon’s killing machine, Jason Bourne, is the cleverest man on earth. And we thrill to his sense of superiority.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 25 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Ten
    The Ten is a virtually snicker-free exercise in audience pain. It's less a movie than an endurance test.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Becoming Jane
    Anne Hathaway's Jane is headstrong and clever, balanced and true.
  29. La faute à Fidel!
    Brilliantly, the movie becomes a double coming-of-age story. The parents' political awakening parallels their daughter's.
    • 21 Metascore
    • 0 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Bratz
    A live-action film based on a line of dolls, it's pure marketing chum for tweeners: a proudly shallow, purposefully bland ode to girly-girl narcissism. I could actually feel my brain stem shrivel up as I watched it.
  31. Hot Rod
    If the movie weren't so playfully dumb -- did you ever think you'd see Ian McShane throw Andy Samberg through a basement shelving unit? -- this would be exasperating.
  32. Underdog
    Underdog! Rest assured, there is no superhero cliche left unchewed; they even manage to slide in a "Lady and the Tramp" homage while they're at it.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    El cantante
    Ideally, it would give you a sense of an entire people knocking the planet off its axis with a shake of their hips. If only El Cantante were that movie. Instead, it's a curiously sludgy cross between a Doomed Star biopic and a J. Lo vanity project.
  34. No End in Sight
    Ferguson's film is a clear-sighted counterpoint to the former secretary of defense's impression. As the title suggests, it's a seemingly infinite mess.
    • 16 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    I Know Who Killed Me
    An intensely unpleasant killer-thriller mystery.
  36. Molière
    Showing up for Molière eager for the story of one of the theater's greatest comedy writers would be unwise. It's not that kind of party.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    No Reservations
    The movie's pleasant and light, though, and its emotional crises are the crust on an acceptably edible crème brulee.
  38. The Simpsons Movie
    It would be a stretch to call The Simpsons Movie more than a crisper, livelier-looking episode of the series. The change in mediums changes nothing.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    This Is England
    As its title implies, This Is England isn't a hyperstylized head-trip a la "Trainspotting" but a straightforward calling to account.
  40. Who's Your Caddy?
    As it develops, Who's Your Caddy? just becomes depressing. You want to alert the United Negro College Fund: A mind has terribly gone to waste.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Arctic Tale
    Arctic Tale has a very precise audience in mind: Young children who aren't yet ready for the graphs and sociopolitical alarm bells of "An Inconvenient Truth."
    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Devil Came on Horseback
    Too often the movies view the problems of Africa through Western eyes, but "Devil" turns that weakness to a literal strength, because Steidle could do nothing in his position except take photographs.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Goya's Ghosts
    An overstuffed turkey that's entertaining for all the wrong reasons.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Hairspray
    If you look fast, you'll see Waters himself in a cameo (as a flasher; what else?), proof the new film is in touch with its dyed roots.
  45. I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry
    Broad and badly made but sporadically inspired, "Chuck and Larry" is still an amazing improvement over "License to Wed," this month's other wedding comedy.
  46. Sunshine
    If their movie doesn't float your boat as a work of science-fiction, action, philosophy, heliocentrism, or staggering visual spectacle (although, it really should), then it certainly succeeds as a parable for cinematic ambition.
  47. Live-In Maid
    Quite easily Live-in Maid could have descended into a kind of Joan Crawford-Bette Davis gorgon salute. But everyone here seems way too smart for that, though apparently the movie is being prepped for an English-language version. So beware.
    • 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.
  49. My Best Friend
    Leconte's writing is tight and nimble, and while the tests of the duo's friendship are facile, under the circumstances, they make sense. The bond between Francois and Bruno approximates the real thing; Leconte seems to be arguing that you can grow a flower from fake soil.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Talk to Me
    Especially wonderful is Taraji P. Henson as Petey's longtime girlfriend Vernell , a vision in Foxy Brown period clothes with a pixie smile, lollipop legs, and a filthy mouth. After "Hustle & Flow ," this is at least the second movie Henson has stolen, and will Hollywood please do something about it?
    • 73 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Time
    Kim is a hard director to pin down. This is the first time the inconsistency has spilled onto the screen, though.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 25 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Captivity
    A wan, derivative entry in the torture-porn cycle.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
    Darker, leaner, less expansive , and meaner, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is all business, and it casts a spell utterly unlike the first four films.
  54. Joshua
    Joshua is the sort of movie in which nobody does what you would do: like spank or demand an extra-strength time out.
  55. The Method
    The movie doesn't trust that an illuminating comedy of pathetic people can be entertaining for long, so it sprinkles some hormones on the proceedings.
  56. Introducing the Dwights
    Nothing about this movie works, not the title (it used to be called "Clubland "), not Blethyn's attempt to inject comedy into her rickety stereotype of a character.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Rescue Dawn
    The question remains: Why would Herzog want to dramatize what he has already captured as nonfiction? To better control the material, I think, and to bring it in line with his own obsessions.
  58. Transformers
    Partly impressive, partly inane buck-banging toy of a movie.
  59. License to Wed
    If unused spit takes, flubbed dialogue, and extra improvisation are so uproarious, why not give us 90 minutes of that? License to Wed is tolerable for about five.
  60. Ratatouille
    All the voice work here is excellent, especially Oswalt's. He sounds like Paul Giamatti but with a greater capacity for confidence.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Sicko
    Sicko is Moore's best, most focused movie to date -- much more persuasive than the enraged and self-righteous "Fahrenheit 9/11."
  62. Evening
    Whatever Evening is saying about life, death, and guilt isn't terribly new or interesting.
  63. 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.
  64. Dr. Bronner's Magic Soapbox
    Alternately shows the elder Bronner as lovable and nutty, sinister and terrifying, victim and victimizer. Ultimately, those disparate elements never coalesce.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Live Free or Die Hard
    Sorry, boys. After two decades, the first film still does more with one skyscraper than Live Free or Die Hard does with an entire country.
  66. 1408
    As thrillers go, 1408 leaves too much room for fun.
  67. Evan Almighty
    Only in the last 30 minutes does Evan Almighty put his gifts to decent use. Epically hairy and biblically robed, Carell suggests at that point what a bolder, more psychologically serious treatment of religious conviction would have been like.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    A Mighty Heart
    I almost wish A Mighty Heart were about the Captain, and I'd bet director Michael Winterbottom does, too. The character contains all the contradictory impulses of this region of the world that the West tries and miserably fails to boil down to black and white.
    • 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.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Lady Chatterley
    Pascale Ferran's Lady Chatterley is sensual in escalating degrees of heat, but the film's eroticism, which is substantial, is laid on with a caress. The movie's a slow-motion swoon back into Eden -- a nature documentary about humans -- and it's hypnotic.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    You Kill Me
    It's a predictable but acridly pleasant 12-step bonbon: self-help noir.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Manufactured Landscapes
    An eloquent ecological warning.
  73. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
    The early dilemma in "Rise of the Silver Surfer " is this: Save the world or marry Jessica Alba . Your conscience says, "Save the world." But the Maxim reader in you knows better.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Nancy Drew
    The movie's fodder for tweener girls with indiscriminate Nick TV addictions, but there's just enough wit on display to make you realize it could have been worse.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Eagle vs Shark
    Watching Eagle vs Shark is like sitting next to a terminally awkward first date at a restaurant. You cringe and feel protective toward the poor, sweet dweebs at the same time.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Fido
    Andrew Currie's stylish satire falls into the narrower niche of zombie farce, as pioneered by "Shaun of the Dead ," "Slither," Robert Rodriguez's half of "Grindhouse."
    • 73 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    When the Road Bends: Tales of a Gypsy Caravan
    This is music to gorge on, raw ethnic survival in the form of sound.
  78. Ocean's Thirteen
    Breezy humor and a dazzling heist keep 'Ocean' franchise in the money.
  79. Hostel: Part II
    The moviemaking is driven only by contempt; he (Roth) wants to nauseate us into submission.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Surf's Up
    The most colorful of the penguin 'toons to date, both figuratively and literally.
  81. La Vie en Rose
    If even half of Olivier Dahan's robust film about Piaf's life is true -- and let's face it, much remains shrouded in myth and mystery -- it's a wonder she could get dressed in the morning, let alone forge a legendary singing career.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    12:08 East of Bucharest
    For all its pessimism, the movie prompts a viewer to search his or her own memories for actions rather than reactions, and to mull over the differences between the two. It's a dark little ride, but at the end the lights hesitantly flicker back on.
  83. Knocked Up
    Debbie gets away with being such a cauldron of extremes because the airy-voiced Mann is extremely good at playing them. She happens to be Apatow's wife (the kids in the movie are theirs), and with the possible exception of Téa Leoni , it's hard to imagine who else could get away with this combination of needling and affection.
    • 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.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Mr. Brooks
    A fertile example of the Studio Film Gone Berserk, where too many characters and too many story lines geometrically progress until a level of blissful absurdity is reached.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Crazy Love
    Crazy Love doesn't downplay the awfulness of what happened , but it also knows a good media circus when it sees one.
  87. Day Watch
    Anyone looking for sleek futuristic action and production design should keep walking.
  88. Mala Noche
    This is the first, smallest, and most essential planet in the Van Sant solar system. The seediness of "Drugstore Cowboy " started here. So did the one-way crushes in "My Own Private Idaho " and the gorgeously epic longueurs of "Last Days. "
  89. 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.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Pierrepoint
    Like its hero, the movie doesn't flinch for most of its running time.
  91. Bug
    Engrossingly manic version of Tracy Letts's great stage play.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
    You can bet your parrot "Pirates" will be back, even if "At World's End" hasn't the foggiest idea when to quit.
  93. Angel-A
    The movie might have been more tolerable had Besson searched harder for a performer and not a specimen. Barbara Stanwyck in her prime might have made more sense.
  94. Golden Door
    It's so hypnotically breathtaking, you don't realize you're not breathing. By the final shot, you don't realize you're crying either, but there go the tears.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Paprika
    Someone walking cold into a movie theater showing Paprika might be excused for thinking the screen was having a Technicolor seizure. Fans of Japanese anime and filmmaker Satoshi Kon will simply feel dazzlingly at home.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Steel City
    Steel City may be the only movie released this year that's so observant you can hear what the characters AREN'T saying.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Boss of It All
    The Boss of It All finds the common ground between business and acting -- panicky improvisation -- and wonders whether applause or an executive comp package is the greater reward.
  98. Shrek the Third
    The journey is not very exciting, but the destinations are inspired.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    In Search of Mozart
    Most of the color and zest among the movie's many talking heads comes from the refreshingly irreverent opera director Jonathan Miller.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Brooklyn Rules
    Too many cliches and not enough energy have come along for the ride.
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