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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  1. The Quiet
    Too confused to provide any thrills, even indecent ones.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  9. 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.
  11. 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.
  15. Poster Boy
    An overwrought story of American politics and image-making that really only gets interesting in the final act.
  16. 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.
  19. The Descent
    A cult classic is born.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Barnyard
    Speaking as both a parent and a critic, I do believe I'd rather drive rusty railroad spikes through my eyes than have to sit through one more computer generated family film about talking animals. The bad news for Hollywood is that after seeing Barnyard my kids feel the same way.
  21. The Night Listener
    What makes the film such a guilty pleasure is how Williams's righteous self-pity is perfectly matched to Collette's nuttiness and despair.
  22. Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
    We are treated to the riotous, almost David Lynchian moment in which Ferrell runs around a motorway in his undies screaming that he's on fire. He's not. Actually, come to think of it: He is.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Bridesmaid
    The film reveals its secrets slowly, and Chabrol tightens the screws not according to the rules of Hollywood suspense but with a cool, level gaze.
  24. Quinceañera
    At its core, Quinceañera, a modest but remarkably poignant comedy, is the story of a neighborhood.
  25. Boynton Beach Club
    Cannon actually is funny -- not to mention funny-looking. Plastic surgery has left her physically absurd, like a vaguely glamorous R. Crumb cartoon.
  26. Miami Vice
    The movie is seriously sexy and seriously entertaining.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Scoop
    Scoop is distinctly minor Allen, with less weight to it than one of his old humor doodles in The New Yorker.
  28. John Tucker Must Die
    The movie is as inconsequentially pleasant as its star, and far nicer than the title lets on, too.
  29. The Ant Bully
    The movie has a great time playing with ideas of scope and perspective, shifting between microscopic and macroscopic.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    13 Tzameti
    13 (Tzameti) is an existential horror film, a violent prank, a metaphor for modern Europe, and a first-time director's startling calling card.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    Another Gay Movie
    You get the impression that the cast and crew of Another Gay Movie could have made a genuinely funny film if they weren't obsessed with out-grossing the already gross "American Pie."
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Brothers of the Head
    The film is something to see, and when it addresses the mysterious bond connecting creative people, it has an urgent, ugly splendor.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Little Miss Sunshine
    It looks at the all-American obsession with winning and chortles darkly. You still come out of the movie wanting to give your family a hug.
  34. Darshan: The Embrace
    According to several sojourners who speak in the film, Amma is the embodiment of love. And according to her website, it's her religion, too.
  35. Been Rich All My Life
    A so-so documentary about another fascinating, underreported piece of Harlem history.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Clerks II
    With Clerks II, the director retreats to home turf, but is Smith playing it safe or is he really interested in seeing how the old nabe has changed? Bit of both, actually.
  37. Lady in the Water
    There is a good chunk of Lady in the Water that is simply too well made and affectingly acted to dismiss as a mere exercise in arrogance.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Monster House
    Monster House is the first horror comedy made exclusively for fourth-graders.
  39. My Super Ex-Girlfriend
    Runs out of fresh ideas about how to make its heroine look nuts.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Fan-Fan the Tulip
    What played as glorious period tomfoolery to European festival juries and discerning U S audiences in the early 1950s now just seems quaintly pleased with itself.
  41. Little Man
    I laughed at the Wayanses' movie, and I don't even hate myself for it.
  42. You, Me and Dupree
    Unofficially, You, Me and Dupree is a companion piece to last summer's "Wedding Crashers," a movie whose lunacy is desperately needed this summer.
  43. Changing Times
    Another gorgeous and immensely satisfying reminder that there are few better directors than Téchiné when it comes to capturing the vagaries of the heart.
  44. The Oh in Ohio
    It's a thrill to watch Posey incorporate, at last, some true emotion into her exuberant screwball wit.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Time to Leave
    Time to Leave is an unintended litmus test for lovers of foreign films.
  46. Edmond
    In Mamet's understanding, straight white maleness is the most powerful weapon such men have. It can also be illusory, which is why the last scenes of Edmond are so touching.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Gabrielle
    The catch in Gabrielle is that the audience pays as well.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
    A noisy and lazy stopgap movie that goes absolutely nowhere and takes 2 1/2 hours to get there.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    A Scanner Darkly
    There's conspiracy here, as there is in all of Dick's books, and it wraps the film up with a moving but somewhat neat bowtie.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Beowulf & Grendel
    The film is very near a comedy, and I'm not sure that's on purpose.
  51. Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos
    The movie is only so-so, borrowing a little from the VH-1 school of popumentary but lacking the snazzy production values.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Heading South
    Cantet does something that educated, upscale audiences may find exasperating in the extreme: He takes a tinderbox of racial and sexual exploitation, pours gasoline all over it, and refuses to light the match.
  53. The Devil Wears Prada
    While the picture isn't brilliant, it is, at its most entertaining, a kicky, surprisingly astute throwback to bygone Hollywood social comedies.
  54. The Blood of My Brother
    Combines an insider's perspective with what can only be described as gutsy cinematography.
  55. The Great Yokai War
    A big, silly party.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Superman Returns
    A generally thrilling entertainment that's not quite the grand slam you want it to be.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Motel
    Kang balances the uproariously comic with the profoundly sad, and the two tones amplify each other with subtlety.
  58. Strangers with Candy
    Still comic, but bigger isn't better.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Who Killed the Electric Car?
    The only question his movie doesn't ask is "What do you want your next car to run on?" That's up to you.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Wassup Rockers
    The main characters may be refreshingly cliché-free, but almost everyone they meet in Beverly Hills is a stilted cartoon.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Click
    If it doesn't quite represent the new, improved Adam Sandler, it shows him almost desperately trying to figure out who that might be.
  62. Waist Deep
    Waist Deep is a cynical excuse for the writer and director (and talented actor) Vondie Curtis-Hall to sock some money away for the kids' college tuition. It's as if he watched "Get Rich or Die Tryin' " and thought, "It needs more palm trees."
  63. The Hidden Blade
    Enormously enjoyable.
  64. The Road to Guantanamo
    The film's insistence on the men's innocence is matter of fact. But it's also an urgent corrective to the suspicious eye the movies so often cast on Arabs and Islam.
    • 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.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man
    Australian rocker Nick Cave talks of how discovering Cohen during his small-town youth "just changed things." Bono calls the singer "our Shelley, our Byron."
  67. The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift
    The F&F series is the 21st century's beach movie, one for some beachless future world where the kids are crowning 25 and seem capable of living off of hair gel and exhaust fumes.
  68. Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties
    Though Murray and Curry gamely deliver some chuckle-worthy one-liners along the way, they're mostly leashed to material as moldy and uninspired as the "Jeffersons" theme song.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Lake House
    How deeply silly is The Lake House? As silly as a movie about two letter-writing lovers separated by a wrinkle in time can be. How much sweet, dumb fun is it? More than you might want to admit.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Nacho Libre
    Very broad and very silly, it's a doodle of a comedy -- a one-joke idea (fat guy goes luchador) padded out to feature length by Black's willingness to do anything for a laugh.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Lower City
    Everyone involved in the film seems better than the material.
  72. The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green
    The strip is now a cartoonish sitcom pretending to be a romantic comedy about a drama queen and his adventures in lust. The movie might have gotten away with it, were it interested in romance or comedy.
  73. Only Human
    A dinner-from-hell comedy about a pretty Jewish Spaniard who brings a nice Palestinian guy home to her outspoken Madrid family.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Wordplay
    Sweet, indulgent, and surprisingly soft in the center; the most minor entry in the brainiac-doc genre to date, it's nevertheless a perfectly entertaining hour and a half for crossword adepts.
  75. A/k/a Tommy Chong
    This isn't a great piece of nonfiction filmmaking, but it has its moments.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Cars
    The movie wins you over through crack comic timing and an awareness that the point of driving isn't how fast you get there but what you see on the way.
  77. A Prairie Home Companion
    Kline's combination of pratfalls and urbanity is funny, but it rubs against the rest of the movie's effortless rustic charm. He's like Errol Flynn on a hayride.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Heart of the Game
    It's a wrenching, ennobling essay on teamwork and the hard struggle to change one's life.
  79. The Omen
    It's a terrible sign for a movie when the sole reason for its existence is a satanic opening date.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Break-Up
    The biggest unresolved question here is why we're paying $9.50, plus popcorn, for something we can presumably get at home for free.
  81. District B13
    Like its stunt work, the movie is both ridiculously hyperactive and a muscular feat of absolute confidence. I don't expect to have a more adrenalizing time at the movies this summer.
  82. The War Tapes
    Really the film is a deft first-person character study with a war zone for a background.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Puffy Chair
    Ostensibly a road-trip farce, Chair really depicts the highway to man-child hell: The laughs come from the gulf between how mature the characters think they're being and what emotional toddlers they are.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Peaceful Warrior
    The film's biggest miracle is the straight face Nick Nolte maintains in his role as Socrates.
  85. X-Men: The Last Stand
    The happiest news about the third (and final?) X-Men movie is actually quite sad: headstones. Yes, The Last Stand brings the lamentable deaths of several major characters.
  86. An Inconvenient Truth
    In an eco-horror show that politely masquerades as a documentary, the former vice president effectively warns of man-made cataclysm.
  87. La Moustache
    Comes on as both a rebuke to male vanity and a chic metaphor for midlife panic.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Da Vinci Code
    An acceptable but uninspired simulacrum: an overly faithful multiplex translation of a very, very popular airport novel.
  89. Over the Hedge
    There is actually an occasional moment of inspiration, but as an experience, the movie doesn't hog much shelf space in the memory.
    • 17 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    See No Evil
    Generic teen dice-and-slice with interior design by way of ''Saw." The movie's tight and reasonably well shot, though, and there are flashes of nasty invention between the ritual guttings.
  91. The King
    In James Marsh's The King, the usually wonderful Gael Garcia Bernal is all wrong for the role of Elvis Valderez.
  92. Lemming
    The score is the most effective thing about the film. Sometimes it's a suspicious, mischie-vous distraction from the reality that not enough of this makes sense.
  93. Twelve and Holding
    Cuesta prizes curiosity and perception over conflict resolution. He likes the way kids take their cues from adults and the ways they revolt against them. Even as the kids do the ugliest things, the film stays cool without ever being cold.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Poseidon
    Maybe it's the era we're living in, but the new film is as much fun as a shroud.
  95. Just My Luck
    This mangy comedy only demonstrates that Lohan's star power is too bright for falling into mounds of mud, rooting around in cat litter for a contact lens, and getting punched out by a roughneck jailbird, as she does here.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Goal! The Dream Begins
    Handsomely shot and with a likable lead in Kuno Becker, it also suffers from a script so outrageously generic you could buy it at Costco.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Giuliani Time
    Giuliani Time has an ax to grind and wields it with dull-edged force.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Keeping Up with the Steins
    To paraphrase the old ad for Levy's rye bread, you don't have to be Jewish to love "Keeping Up With the Steins," but it helps.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Russian Dolls
    The film isn't especially deep, but it's mostly delightful.
  100. Mission: Impossible III
    Only theoretically, though, is this exciting. Mostly, it all feels like a lateral move that keeps alive a franchise without breaking new ground.
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