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. Volver
    Volver brims with personal and cinematic allusions, but no one hungry for a well-told tale from a master storyteller is required to understand them.
  2. Shottas
    A slick but dull new shoot- ' em-up from Jamaica, doesn't penetrate the mysteries of high-rolling, high-risk thug life.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Unknown
    Unknown is punchy and entertaining. Maybe not the sort of thing you'd want to spend $10 plus a mortgage for popcorn on, but a nifty surprise on DVD several months from now -- or on pay-cable on-demand right now.
  4. Romántico
    The musician is candid about his own demons and gives the filmmakers access to his wife, two very different daughters, and, for a nicely done montage, his family photographs.
    • 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.
  6. Catch a Fire
    In Catch a Fire Noyce has caught the holy spirit. The movie is a thriller that wants to lift you up.
  7. Saw III
    Television is a state of mind. And the makers of Saw III have delivered the most despicable episode of "One Life to Live" ever.
  8. Climates
    It's one of the great movies on the vicissitudes of love, commitment, and attraction.
  9. Shut Up & Sing
    Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck's film is a fascinating look at the intersection of commerce, celebrity, and controversy.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Death of a President
    Turns out to be rather less than the sum of its headlines.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Absolute Wilson
    Absolute Wilson may not be original, but Wilson absolutely is. And for the glimmers of that originality that shine through here, the film is worth watching.
  12. Marie Antoinette
    As art, the movie is neither shallow nor profound, just inconsequential. Yet Coppola is too clever a filmmaker to dismiss the movie out of hand. If her film is mostly surface then she skims with style.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Running with Scissors
    There's grace here if the movie were willing to dig for it. Occasionally it does.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Flags of Our Fathers
    You come out of the theater impressed by the scope of Eastwood's reach and frustrated by how little remains in his grasp. As gifted as this filmmaker is, this isn't the sort of thing he does best.
  15. Flicka
    The best parts of Flicka are its pinch-me optimism and its old-fashioned-movie flourishes.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Prestige
    It's like "The Illusionist" crossed with a really hard Sudoku.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple
    Harrowing and inexorable, the film recaptures the progressive insanity of Jim Jones and the hundreds of worshipers in his thrall, and it certainly gives you willies to last for days.
  18. Sweet Land
    A lovely , old-fashioned farm romance quietly doubling as a comment on immigration and American identity.
  19. Hair High
    If Plympton is making pastiche, he's also having a laugh at a universal experience that for a lot of people was probably pretty crummy. Apparently, it was a little crummier for him.
  20. The Grudge 2
    The most popular facial expression for victims in The Grudge 2 is something I'd like to call "deep befuddlement." This time "deep befuddlement" goes double for paying customers.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Man of the Year
    One walks out of Man of the Year aching for the squandered opportunities.
  22. The Marine
    What follows is serviceable action set to music you'd find in a video game -- or a military ad.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Deliver Us from Evil
    It isn't often you get to meet the devil in all his glory, but here he is in Deliver Us From Evil, and his name is Father Oliver O'Grady.
  24. Driving Lessons
    Everybody in the movie is so tightly wound that Walters seems a model of actorly limberness. She cuts through the movie with speed and mannish, zany wit.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Infamous
    The pleasure of Infamous is in its gallery of larger-than-life portrayals.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 25 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Tideland
    The results are dull, of all things. The movie itself feels like an overstuffed burrito,
  27. Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker
    For kids strung out on Anthony Horowitz's 007-lite adventure series, this maiden adaptation is a pleasant enough diversion from having to flip the pages.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    So Much So Fast
    It is harrowing, heartbreaking, cheering, and unforgettable.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Departed
    When The Departed roars to life, as it does in so many of its scenes, you feel like nobody understands movies -- the delirious highs, the unforgiving moral depths -- as well as this man does. Welcome back, Marty.
  30. Little Children
    What Little Children understands so well, and so poignantly, is a kind of parental existentialism that hits 30- somethings with kids: How does having children make you such a less interesting adult?
  31. Employee of the Month
    Perhaps Employee of the Month, which was typed then directed by Greg Coolidge, is unfolding in the key of satire. But you'd have to be a dog to hear it.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
    The new prequel isn't really a slasher movie at all. It's a mess, with too much to say, and an odd genre in which to preach.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    49 Up
    No matter their wealth or social status, these people share disappointments and elations and a sense that life, in the end, may be what life is about.
  34. Black Gold
    You buy "fair - trade" coffee; you assume you're being socially responsible. But now, along comes Black Gold to tell you that all fair-trade coffee is not created equal, and that Ethiopia, the "birthplace of coffee" and home of some of the world's best beans, may be getting the least fair shake of all.
  35. Tales of the Rat Fink
    To those filmgoers who wouldn't know Rat Fink from Barton Fink, this reviewer's advice is: Pass. The latest counterculture tribute by Mann, director of 1988's "Comic Book Confidential" and 1999's "Grass," is as proudly silly as it is informative, and it can't help that a critical amount of brand coolness gets lost in the translation.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Kettle of Fish
    The result is movie goulash: made with love, impossible to digest.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Shortbus
    In Shortbus, the impish writer-director John Cameron Mitchell does the unthinkable: He puts the joy back in movie sex.
  38. ...So Goes the Nation
    Distinguishes itself from the recent glut of mediocre political documentaries by opting for nonpartisanship.
  39. Wrestling with Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner
    The filmmaker invites us to reconsider the author as someone warmer and less intimidating than his body of work. On that count, Wrestling With Angels succeeds.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Queen
    A subtle, often very funny, ultimately touching tragedy of royal manners and meaning.
  41. The Guardian
    The point of all this solemnity may be to pay serious respect to those rescue swimmers, who courageously look after errant kayakers or victims of Hurricane Katrina. But what we get in exchange is a movie that feels too much like a Coast Guard recruitment film. Who wants to pay to see that?
  42. Open Season
    As cartoon rip-offs go, Open Season can be surprisingly entertaining, in a made-for-6-year-olds kind of way.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    School for Scoundrels
    It achieves something previously thought impossible: It renders Billy Bob Thornton unfunny.
  44. A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints
    The first-time filmmaker aspires to show us what caused him to leave his neighborhood and stay gone for 20 years. All I can really glean is that the place was too loud.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    loudQUIETloud: A Film About the Pixies
    Even a fan, however, might prefer the excellent, recently released concert DVD "Pixies: Live at the Paradise in Boston" to this tepid behind-the-scenes experience.
  46. The Last King of Scotland
    The Last King of Scotland joins the ranks of nightmarish innocents-abroad movies, from "Midnight Express" to "Hostel," where the disillusioned hero fights to return to civility.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    All the King's Men
    I'm not the first observer, or even the second, to liken the star's (Penn) portrayal of fictional Louisiana governor Willie Stark to the late John Belushi's impersonation of Joe Cocker.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Flyboys
    The movie's straightforward and ingratiating, and as pretty-boy history lessons go, it's a lot less obnoxious than "Pearl Harbor."
  49. Jackass Number Two
    This is extreme comedy, and it's amazing how director Jeff Tremaine, who along with Spike Jonze has been affiliated with this troupe from its outset, creates an environment where self-inflicted torture is uncontrollably funny without being morally offensive.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Fearless
    Call it "Jet Li's Wushu Retirement Party."
  51. Jesus Camp
    If we are in the midst of a culture war, as many people proclaim in Jesus Camp, then the left should be concerned. The right's Christian soldiers appear to be extremely well trained.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    American Hardcore
    A sloppy mosh note to the genre, with its own excesses and oversights. It's like a flier for a band you've never heard of: torn, soaked with beer, itchy with aggression.
  53. The Science of Sleep
    This pop-up book of a film is an ideal arrangement between director and star.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Renaissance
    Stark eye candy of the first order, the film is saddled with the oldest story this side of "Blade Runner." Still, comic-book fanboys and graphic designers with time to kill should feel no shame in checking this one out.
  55. Old Joy
    Kurt and Mark's trip to those hot springs is a figurative return to Eden. Anyone who's had a disillusioning reunion with a moony old friend knows what Mark discovers: They're too old to stay that innocent. None of this hit me until after the movie ended. But it hit me hard: You can't go home again.
  56. Sólo con tu pareja
    Without trivializing the disease, the film challenges AIDS' stigma (albeit for heterosexuals) at a moment when it was still considered a death sentence.
  57. The Black Dahlia
    The first thing you notice about this so-so adaptation of James Ellroy's novel is the shoddy acting.
  58. Everyone's Hero
    Everyone's Hero is sincere and heartwarming; sometimes it's funny.
  59. Gridiron Gang
    The movie's inevitabilities (the humiliating loss, the ebb and flow of camaraderie, the triumphant finale) have deep resonance.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Last Kiss
    It very much wants to be "Garden State" five years down the line.
  61. Aurora Borealis
    An unremarkable comedy-drama.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Confetti
    A good-natured but terminally mild British mockumentary.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 100 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Ground Truth
    The documentary any American with an opinion on our involvement in Iraq owes it to his or her conscience to see.
  64. Haven
    Silly little thriller.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The U.S. vs. John Lennon
    The primary talking head is Ono, of course, who's serenely protective of Lennon's greater legacy. Her cooperation ties the film's hands, but only to a point.
  66. Keeping Mum
    The movie is another of those harmless and politely made dark comedies that the English seem incapable of doing without.
  67. Al Franken: God Spoke
    Neither a profile nor a critique, though, the film's only focus is its subject's mild self-regard.
  68. Hollywoodland
    Hollywoodland has scraps of old movie glamour. It also has shades of later movies that sullied all that class and refinement with a lurid touch, namely Roman Polanski's "Chinatown." But that's all Hollywoodland is: scraps and shade.
  69. The Protector
    The Protector is about 84 minutes long, and only four of those minutes are devoted to plot.
    • 19 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Covenant
    The Covenant is dopey, formulaic stuff for the Friday night fright crowd. Worse for them, it's never remotely scary.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Le petit lieutenant
    You can sense Baye's struggling within the limits imposed on her. In her own way, she can convey the heat of a Penelope Cruz, the power of Mirren, the barely contained madness of Judi Dench -- but not here. They're just not on the beat she's been given.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Red Doors
    Think of Red Doors as a promise, and hope that Georgia Lee keeps it.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Vajra Sky Over Tibet
    A gorgeous, meandering travelogue that only gradually bares its teeth.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Crank
    Crank is an efficient, witty, junkyard dog of an action movie for its first hour. Unfortunately, the script runs out of gas before the hero does. While it's cooking, though, it's violently preposterous fun.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Crossover
    Earnest and predictable, Crossover deserves more than the horselaughs that will probably greet it in theaters -- but not a lot more. The movie is harmless, which is both its strength and its weakness.
  76. The Wicker Man
    As it is, LaBute has cleverly repurposed his creepy source material. This Wicker Man, which wasn't screened for critics, is a nutty atonement for the gender assaults of his filmmaking and playwriting past, including "In the Company of Men," "Your Friends & Neighbors," and "The Shape of Things."
  77. This Film Is Not Yet Rated
    The filmmaker doesn't exactly let anyone off the hook.
  78. Bubot Niyar
    Heymann's film was originally a six-part series for Israeli TV. The feature he and his crew have made smoothly truncates those three hours into a rich, discretely damning 85-minute portrait of intolerance.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 25 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Beerfest
    Making a comedy that celebrates binge drinking and cretinous behavior isn't a crime against nature. Making one that's as brutally unfunny as Beerfest is.
  80. Idlewild
    The camerawork is steady, the editing patient, the choreography playful. It's a zippy and inspired piece of moviemaking. But there's one problem. It's playing under the closing credits.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    How to Eat Fried Worms
    The movie has a pleasing skinned-knee innocence that makes you wish everything else about it wasn't so shoddy.
  82. Invincible
    Has the problem of drifting in and out of authenticity.
  83. The Quiet
    Too confused to provide any thrills, even indecent ones.
  84. Queens
    It's called Queens and, no, silly, it's not about six gay men who want to get married. It's about their MOTHERS. And this being a Spanish comedy of the lowest Almodovar-ian order, the moms are a lot more flamboyant than their sons.
  85. When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts
    There are moments -- just a few of them -- when the film . . . does feel a bit like work, a relentless civics lesson about the storm and its still-unfolding aftermath.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Snakes on a Plane
    A movie called Snakes on a Plane had better be one of two things: So bad it's good or so good it's great. Darned if it isn't a little bit of both.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Accepted
    Low of brow and pure of heart, the movie plays like "Animal House" extra-lite, and as such it's decent indecent fun.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Illusionist
    Illusionist is like an overupholstered wing chair in the corner of a men's club -- you settle in only to be startled by how ridiculously comfy you are.
    • 17 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Material Girls
    Isn't as witty, stylish, or sophisticated as the similarly themed "The Devil Wears Prada." Material Girls is pitched to the Seventeen crowd, and it succeeds on its own terms. These days, even pre teens live in a material world.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Factotum
    Looks steam-cleaned, and that can't be right.
  91. Trust the Man
    This is a movie that's built around characters the audience is bound to find more insufferable than anyone does in the movie itself.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Conversations with Other Women
    The charm of Conversations With Other Women, a gimmicky but oddly moving two-character drama that flies in from who knows where, is its intelligentknowingness.
  93. Pulse
    If Pulse is unsurprising as a horror movie (come on: chalky, soul-sucking freaks again?), as a campaign against the Internet, digital piracy, cellphones, and anything that computes anything (like laptops or brains), it's a riot.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Step Up
    Alive with infectious rhythm, likable characters, and slick dance moves, Step Up gives clichés a good name.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Zoom
    Pure Saturday matinee kiddie fodder and this close to going straight to DVD.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Half Nelson
    Gosling may be the soul of Half Nelson, but Epps is the film's heart.
  97. Poster Boy
    An overwrought story of American politics and image-making that really only gets interesting in the final act.
  98. House of Sand
    It's a grand outdoor spectacle (the only real interiors are within tents, and those are hard to come by) and a perfectly juicy melodrama.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    World Trade Center
    One reason World Trade Center is such a good, healing cry is that it absolves us of the discomfort of thinking about everything that has happened since.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Lunacy
    At nearly two hours Lunacy becomes repetitive, at first ingeniously and then with a slowly dulling edge. The meat parade ceases to shock.
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