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 1.1 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: 5,229 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. Happy Endings
    The cast is strong. Kudrow and Gyllenhaal provide the movie's emotional center.
  2. Kodachrome
    The pervasive, absorbing bitterness and hurt falter only when the story eases off its characters’ cynical insistence that people don’t change. Sudeikis knows how to play jarringly nasty — see “Colossal,” for one — but choked-up can be a reach here.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Boys Are Back
    Tidily arranges its raw feelings about fathering and manhood into a decent, intelligent melodrama meant to soothe audiences and provoke no one.
  4. Bossa Nova
    One of the most warmly beguiling romantic comedies the Southern Hemisphere has sent our way in ages.
  5. 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.
  6. 13 Going on 30
    It's looking for comedy and romance in the obvious places.
  7. Sacrifice
    Sacrifice wants to have it both ways. It's willing neither to give itself up to the goofy sincerity of genre conventions nor to make the demands on viewers that serious drama requires. The sacrifices Chen's characters make would signify that much more if he'd made a sacrifice or two himself.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
    The movie plays like a global-political farce made by people who’ve never left the Upper West Side.
  9. Fifty Dead Men Walking
    A richer movie might speculate on McGartland’s life now. How does a local hero survive in an anonymous void?
    • 57 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Broken Hearts Gallery
    A tart, eager-to-please screenplay by first-time director Natalie Krinsky and a cast skilled at verbal badminton hook a viewer from the start, and “Gallery” especially stands as a welcome showcase for Geraldine Viswanathan.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Army of the Dead
    Some films wear their length like an epic and some just wear you out; Army of the Dead tends increasingly toward the latter.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    How I Live Now
    A meticulously observed, rapturously directed account of World War III and its aftermath as seen from the point of view of a spoiled young woman. The movie’s pretty fascinating before it goes bonkers.
  13. Kinky Boots
    Not since ''Mannequin on the Move" has a flamboyant black man brought so much fabulousness to stiff white heterosexuals.
  14. Our Kind of Traitor
    Whatever the turning point, his transformation from feckless academic to stalwart knight occurs too easily. It should be the heart of the story, but instead is just a troublesome detail in a hollow movie.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    How to Live Forever
    A cheerfully rambling documentary that's much more thought-provoking than the sum of its parts.
  16. Smart People
    Mostly, Smart People is a failure of imagination.
  17. Candy
    Told in a serenely observational fashion.
  18. Bad Words
    Misogynistic, homophobic, scatological — none of these words come up in any of the spelling bees that take place in Jason Bateman’s directorial debut, but they apply to the film.
  19. Natural Selection
    The movie has elements of road picture, social satire, and odd-couple romance, but mostly it's about lack of pacing and tone. Somewhere very (very) deep in here is a whiff of "Citizen Ruth," and who knows what Alexander Payne might have done with this material. Instead we know what writer-director Robbie Pickering has done with it, and that ain't much.
  20. Uncle Drew
    Is the movie any good, and does Irving embarrass himself? The answers are: sort of, and nowhere near.
  21. The Fourth War
    It's intelligently crafted, above average for this presumably dying genre, and if you can get past a couple of potential credibility problems, you'll find it absorbing. [23 Mar 1990, p.45]
    • Boston Globe
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Katy Perry: Part of Me
    Part of Me is one aspect of Perry, but her fans may leave the movie wanting more.
  23. The Look of Love
    Although Raymond’s career extended over five decades of London sleaze, decadence, and celebrity, neither director nor actor provide much insight into the man or his times, not to mention the significance of Raymond’s prime product.
  24. Flesh and Bone
    Few directors lavish as much tenderness upon life's bruised survivors as Kloves does, and many a more prominent director has failed to find in the dust-choked West Texas plains the wistfulness with which Quaid and Ryan fill their most solid and shtick-free work yet. [05 Nov 1993, p.42]
    • Boston Globe
  25. The Grand
    A defective poker comedy where the poker is a lot more interesting than the people playing it.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Forbidden Kingdom
    Unashamed about giving its audience a good time, and the high spirits go a long way toward counterbalancing the cliches.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Albert Nobbs
    As the title character in Albert Nobbs, Glenn Close skulks through Edwardian-era Dublin like a eunuch on a stealth mission.
  28. What's Cooking?
    This good-hearted but undersupplied ensemble piece is only appetizer-deep.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Human Stain
    Benton has laid bare a great author's creaky plotting only to deliver a melodrama with bookish pretensions.
  30. 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.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Chimpanzee
    In general, the more young people who see the film, the more who will be made aware of a fascinating, complicated near-relative whose numbers are dwindling rapidly.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Teen Spirit
    Very like a gummy bear, Teen Spirit gives you a nice little sugar rush until the lights come up and you realize you’re still hungry. Part of the problem is the script, which includes lines of dialogue so generic it’s as if Minghella is daring himself to squeeze a drop more juice out of them.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Southpaw
    This is a genre with especially sturdy bones, and when Southpaw connects, which is more often than you might expect, you feel it down to your toes.
  34. Extraction 2
    As per sequel rules, everything has to be bigger. But bigger doesn’t always equal better, as Extraction 2 proves.
  35. Shirley
    Despite an impressive pedigree in front of and behind the camera, “Shirley” fails to convey just how remarkable the career of Shirley Chisholm really was. The problem isn’t the narrow focus on one of her accomplishments, it’s the even narrower depiction of who she was as a person.
  36. Money for Nothing: Inside the Federal Reserve
    The best thing about Money for Nothing is the many talking heads trying to explain what monetary policy is and what the Fed does: controlling the supply of money and, with any luck, guiding the economy.
  37. The Secret Life of Bees
    On screen something happens that goes beyond Monk's powers of description and Fanning's way of seeming 14 and 44 at the same time.
  38. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
    The movie bogs down only toward the finish, when it turns into a metahuman free-for-all.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Miss Potter
    The immediate problem with making a movie based on Potter's life is that it doesn't seem to have been very interesting.
  40. Easy Money: Hard to Kill
    Once again, the most resonant drama here is all about conveying a self-loathing born of inescapable circumstances.
  41. Evil Dead
    Are we really looking to Evil Dead for gnarly possessions played straight? That’s what Alvarez gives us for an overlong stretch, until his reinterpretation of the malevolent-hand gag kicks off a last act that’s more freewheelingly, twistedly grisly. (Don’t skip the credits, because the fan-energizing momentum peaks at the very end.)
  42. In the Name of My Daughter
    More disappointing than the film’s inertia and amorphousness is its sacrifice of the real-world themes of class, money, corruption, and power. Unable to decide what story he wanted to tell, Téchiné hedges his bets and loses everything.
  43. Thor: Love and Thunder
    A little Waititi can go a long way, and the arch self-awareness that gave “Ragnarok” its kickiness feels increasingly tired here: more schtick than kick.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Madagascar
    Antic, cute, scattershot, it's a remarkable-looking but terribly uncertain bit of CGI fluff, with its richest humor off to the sides of the action and a whole lot of average in the middle.
    • 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.
  46. Mardi Gras: Made in China
    Redmon's film is a welcome reminder that everything comes from somewhere and responsible people should at least pause to examine the label. For one thing, that's how bigger and better documentaries get made.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Dreamland
    If you're young, the film may intoxicate you. If you're older, it may make you relieved you're no longer young.
  48. Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
    Is a truly political stoner movie even possible? The entire point of getting high is to take some of the sting out of life. The movie goes after easy targets and goes soft on the harder issues.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    City of Ghosts
    It's an actor's film, all right -- peppered with rich supporting performances but unconvincing in the telling.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    My Life Without Me
    It has a naive, heartfelt selfishness that may offend some viewers, and a resolve that others will find intensely soothing. ''Dying's not as easy as it looks,'' cautions Ann's doctor (Julian Richings), but here it's as easy as a movie can make it.
  51. The Grandfather
    A solid, humane, old-fashioned film in the best sense of the term.
  52. Titus
    A brilliant production of a mediocre play.
  53. Hannibal
    ''The Silence of the Lambs'' was a classic; Hannibal is only a good movie of its type.
    • Boston Globe
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Faster
    In the end, promotion, as good as it may be, doesn't make for a real documentary. Faster is a kind of bone-crushing fun, but there's little drama and certainly no insight.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Code 46
    What this dystopia doesn't do is shock. In truth, Code 46 traffics in notions of speculative social fiction that are so familiar by now as to feel disconcertingly normal.
  56. 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.
  57. The Sun Behind the Clouds: Tibet's Struggle for Freedom
    While never heavy-handed about its politics, the film makes no effort to disguise its strong anti-Chinese bias.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Maze Runner
    Using a refreshingly gentle FX touch, Ball has successfully transposed the decaying, vine-covered concrete jungle look of his short onto this gorgeously-designed feature. The neophyte knows how to direct heart-pumping chase scenes and has coaxed surprisingly solid performances from his young ensemble cast, especially O’Brien and Poulter.
  59. Iron Man 2
    Robert Downey Jr. looks as hung over in Iron Man 2 as he seemed drunk in “Iron Man.’’ He does his share of drinking this time, too. And the sequel makes more out of his insobriety. It has an early stretch where it fizzes and slurs, with the stars stepping on each other’s lines and feet. The movie feels drunk, too.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Our Friend
    Some things remain a mystery. If we were a little bit better as people, this decent, clear-eyed movie hints, they might not.
  61. The Muse
    The season's brightest piece of counterprogramming.
  62. Cars 2
    This is an action movie that nods to Hayao Miyazaki and those sleeky dumb European chase thrillers with guys like Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson.
    • 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.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Days of the Bagnold Summer
    Clever and bright, Days of the Bagnold Summer gains much from Daniel, Sue, and their realistic relationship — from their arguments to moments of bonding and everything in between — creating an endearing if weightless film.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Toast
    I could pile on the cooking metaphors until you cried "uncle," but the fact remains that there's a very good movie in here that its makers have failed to bring off.
    • 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.
  67. Little Big League
    As baseball movies go, Little Big League is a bunt single. Metaphorically speaking, it knows how to put the bat on the ball, though it's too lightweight to knock anything out of the park. [29 Jun 1994, p.83]
    • Boston Globe
  68. The House with a Clock in Its Walls
    Tricky territory to navigate, but it ultimately lends some genuine poignancy to the story’s familiar accidental-family themes. If there’s someplace Roth makes a mark, it’s here.
  69. Strangers with Candy
    Still comic, but bigger isn't better.
  70. 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?
  71. The Addams Family
    Ultimately, the film's self-censoring will to sweetness and innocence is even more fatal than the flimsiness of the plot. [22 Nov 1991, p.33]
    • Boston Globe
  72. First Knight
    First Knight, despite its unfortunate title, is not a stupid film, just a mostly flat and talky one. It's gorgeously crafted and filled with goodwill, but it's more admirable than genuinely compelling or moving, much less ablaze with conviction. It's got the trappings, but not the inner fire. [07 Jul 1995, p.27]
    • Boston Globe
  73. 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.
  74. 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.
    • 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.
  76. Finch
    Finch pretty quickly settles into a buddy picture. It’s a dog picture, too, of course, Goodyear, a mutt, being so good at mugging for the camera. The whole thing is as sentimental as it is implausible, and it’s very implausible.
  77. Coach Carter
    Who's it for? How do you put this message across without it seeming medicinal? Sure, MTV is among the movie's producers, but what 11th grader wants to spend a Friday night being hit with such a blunt instrument?
  78. 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.
  79. Lorne
    As a documentary about Lorne Michaels, “Lorne” isn’t much; it’s more of a look at “Lorne Michaels,” the character his mysterious nature created.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Quiet One
    The movie is congenial, self-effacing, and reasonably dull, and since it promises an inside look at 30 years of being a Rolling Stone, that has to be considered a disappointment. On the other hand, Oliver Murray’s film about the life and times of Bill Wyman offers proof that even average blokes can be rock stars, and maybe more of them than we think.
  81. Brighton Rock
    Joffe's biggest mistake isn't visual, it's chronological. What makes Pinkie so terrifying in the novel is that he's just 17.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    High School Musical 3: Senior Year
    For all its unforgivable blandness, "High School Musical" opens young audiences to the charms of this most transporting of movie genres.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Great New Wonderful
    A quieter, less melodramatic piece of work than last year's "Crash," and arguably a better one.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Dinner
    An acrid family affair that has been aggressively over-directed by the talented Oren Moverman (“The Messenger”) and brought to intermittent life by a very good cast.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Confetti
    A good-natured but terminally mild British mockumentary.
  86. A Walk Among the Tombstones
    The problem with this adaptation of Lawrence Block’s detective yarn isn’t that it casts Neeson in a role we’re seeing him play again and again. It’s that no one else in the movie makes a character feel nearly as broken-in and fully inhabited as he does.
    • 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.
  88. Traveller
    Traveller is a little too rosy and pat, but it clambers its way to entertainment value all the same. [2 May 1997]
    • Boston Globe
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Last Kiss
    It very much wants to be "Garden State" five years down the line.
  90. The Tavern
    A steadily engaging and winningly humane film that loves its characters.
    • Boston Globe
  91. The Man from Elysian Fields
    Somewhere in this movie, amid the ponderous exchanges and unfortunate O. Henry-style coincidences, there's American tragedy.
  92. Up at the Villa
    Is a chamber romance, in that there's nothing grand or sweeping about it, but it's got all the style it needs to go with those glorious Tuscan settings.
  93. Wind
    Wind is quite content to keep things at the visual and visceral level, and on that unambitious but highly photogenic plane it's a handsome piece of salt-water escapism. When those sails start popping as they're slapped with gusts of sea air and the tacking gets intense, Wind gives you an adrenaline-filled ride. [11 Sep 1992, p.37]
    • Boston Globe
    • 57 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Wrath of Man
    Even the gunplay, of which there is plenty, feels secondhand.
  95. Today's Special
    A modest but extremely enjoyable movie.
  96. Jules
    Inside the sci-fi dramedy Jules lurks a message about senior citizens being ignored and deprived of their independence simply because of their age. Unfortunately, the script by Gavin Steckler takes a most confounding route to get to it — one involving an alien, town hall meetings, and FBI agents who want to keep the extraterrestrial here under wraps.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Last Chance Harvey
    Harvey is so thin it barely registers as a movie, yet these two actors - British apples and American oranges in their respective approaches to character - almost miraculously weave something memorable out of nothing much.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Horrible Bosses
    I say kill off everybody else and bring back Farrell for the sequel.
  99. Mama
    The frustration, though, is how much the movie leans on made-ya-jump scares and contrived plot devices when its quieter chills and already fraught setups are so potent.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Company You Keep
    LeBeouf may yet mature into an American James McAvoy — a charismatically spineless leading man — but Sarandon and her character have him and his character for lunch.
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