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. Domino
    His [Director Tony Scott's] pornographic lust for bloodletting, gunplay, and out-of-control camerawork far exceeds his abilities to tell a story.
  2. Elizabethtown
    Audiences of a certain hipster disposition, in fact, will see Elizabethtown and pine for Zach Braff's ''Garden State," the movie to which Elizabethtown bears an unfortunate and inferior resemblance.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Fog
    This new Fog floats in on the fumes of the 1980 John Carpenter original, but the surprise is that it's arguably better.
  4. Where the Truth Lies
    An erotic thriller. It is also an Atom Egoyan picture, which means any claims either to actual eroticism or conventional thrills are theoretical at best.
  5. North Country
    It infuriated me. It broke my heart. It convinced me that Caro, who's from New Zealand, is a strong, clear-voiced filmmaker
  6. Finding Home
    Finding Home is well meant and earnest but is stretched to almost twice what would have been a comfortable length.
  7. Innocent Voices
    Not a happy time at the movies. It bears the distinction of bringing to the screen a dark nugget of history.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Loggerheads
    Slow, unadorned, compassionate, and earnest, Loggerheads is a low-fi throwback to the independent films of the 1980s and '90s.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Nine Lives
    Not all of Nine Lives clicks, but at its best it finds an inarticulate sisterly solace that makes you want to see what this director could do with one life per film.
  10. The President's Last Bang
    Writer-director Im Sang Soo's coolly stylized political satire doesn't provide a lot of answers, unfortunately, but it does show how the future of a nation might turn on a few drunken insults thrown around at a high-level dinner party.
  11. Henri Langlois: The Phantom of the Cinematheque
    A sound piece of profiling that has miles of archival footage of the affable, pop-eyed Langlois enthusing.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Good Night, and Good Luck.
    A puzzle: a hermetically sealed period piece so intensely relevant to our current state of affairs that it takes your breath away.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Gospel
    A heartfelt but muddled melodrama.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    In Her Shoes
    Entertaining enough, but it's more pat than provocative -- this is what makes it a bona fide audience pleaser while keeping it from drawing real blood.
  15. Two for the Money
    It's as if a version of Oliver Stone's movie has been frozen in some fraternity house beer cooler since 1987 and thawed for the age of plasma screen TVs.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Waiting...
    Teenage boys will be in heaven. All others: Check, please.
  17. Before the Fall
    Unusually compelling, even if it's treacly enough to be "The Chorus" in goose step.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Squid and the Whale
    This is one cinematic novella that stays with you for quite a while.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
    Even more than "Chicken Run," Were-Rabbit is a tiny plasticine masterpiece.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Capote
    Richly provocative entertainment, as heady as a cocktail party with the Manhattan literati and as vaguely troubling as the morning after.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Greatest Game Ever Played
    What's missing here is the one thing any duffer knows you need: Focus. The Greatest Game Ever Played works so hard to convince you of the truth of its title that it never settles down to address the ball.
  22. Into the Blue
    Into the Blue is as much a mesmerizing aquatic expedition as it is a reasonably suspenseful action adventure.
  23. Serenity
    For folks like me, who missed "Firefly," the short-lived TV show on which the movie's based, watching Serenity is like showing up for a big lecture course at the end of the semester. And yet, after an hour of intense disorientation, the movie's arch sarcasm becomes oddly entertaining.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    MirrorMask
    Aggressive visual invention is rarely its own reward, and this movie does nothing to better the odds.
  25. The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio
    Anderson is the rare filmmaker who doesn't want to use the actress as an instrument or to exploit her independent-movie cachet. She has freed Moore to be what she hasn't been with many directors: credibly human.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The War Within
    Hampered by a mopey leading man.
  27. A History of Violence
    The film has the perverse intelligence of Cronenberg's other movies. It's not his best, but it is certainly his most accessible, least stagy work, obeying the laws of chronology and serving up characters whom we recognize as people.
  28. Flightplan
    Doesn't have its heroine's conviction. It'd be better if it had.
  29. Roll Bounce
    This nostalgic licorice whip of a movie assumes there's still an audience for a straight-faced, family-friendly salute to the 1970s heyday of competitive roller disco.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Dear Wendy
    Taking wobbly aim at our country's complicated love affair with guns, the movie's the very definition of a cheap shot.
  31. Dorian Blues
    Even if the story is hackneyed, it's hackneyed in a warm and universal way.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Oliver Twist
    The result is an expertly made, very watchable film that's curiously lacking in impact. By Polanski standards that has to be a disappointment.
  33. Dangerous Men
    Just because Rad — who died in 2007 at the age of 70 — wasted 26 years bringing Dangerous Men to the screen doesn’t mean you should waste 80 minutes watching it.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Everything Is Illuminated
    Everything Is Illuminated hasn't been adapted so much as gutted, stuffed, and mounted.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Proof
    Proof is proof that you can drain most of the juice out of a play and still have an enjoyable night at the movies.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 25 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    HellBent
    A genre cheapie from its digital-video camerawork to its Casiotone soundtrack to its bland, buff cast, the movie is a cultural watershed in a dry gulch.
  37. Just Like Heaven
    Just Like Heaven suggests that a post-coma Elizabeth might understand what life is truly all about. Of course, if being alive means having to live in this movie, maybe she was better off the way she was.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Lord of War
    Lord of War is advocacy entertainment -- an act of mainstream provocation -- and, for the most part, it works unusually well.
  39. Corpse Bride
    Burton, who directed the film with animator Mike Johnson, has rarely been in brisker, friskier form.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    The Thing About My Folks
    It's a family comedy-drama that wants to pluck the heartstrings but keeps getting tangled in its own tinny sentiment.
  41. Stupid Boy
    Garçon Stupide was shot on digital video and is the rare piece of European sexual realism centered completely on a boy's awakening.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    G
    If the movie's not as bad as it sounds, it's not all that great, either.
  43. Venom
    If ridiculous, hackneyed, gratuitously violent slasher movies aren't your thing, don't go near Venom with a 10-foot snake pole.
  44. Separate Lies
    Fellowes is so desperate for us to like these people that, despite how guilty everyone seems, there's scarcely any pleasure in the film for us.
  45. The Future of Food
    Anyone looking for a more practical horror film than ''The Fog" should try The Future of Food.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Man
    Dreadful.
  47. An Unfinished Life
    Like most of Hallström's Hollywood movies ("The Cider House Rules," "Chocolat"), this one is excruciatingly tasteful.
  48. The Exorcism of Emily Rose
    The fun of these movies is that Linney often seems too refined for such greasy junk, but there she is anyway, hamming it down as it were.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Cote d'Azur
    A broad, bawdy, silly French farce set on the Riviera in high season, it's a diversion at best and a strained souffle at worst, but it rings enough Gallic changes on the old family-summer-gone-horribly-wrong genre to deliver some unexpectedly sharp laughs.
  50. Keane
    If Keane is a downer, it's a stupendously well-conceived one.
  51. Green Street Hooligans
    The movie, though, is nonsense. At its most credible, the story evokes fond memories of the adult drug narcs hiding among American high schoolers on ''21 Jump Street."
    • 67 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Music from the Inside Out
    Daniel Anker's Music From the Inside Out is so intent on divining the mysteries behind the creative act that it comes up frustratingly short on specifics.
  53. Transporter 2
    A sequel that makes it clear that the outrageous antics of the first movie had a one-time-only charm.
  54. A Sound of Thunder
    The movie fails to conjure the wonder of the Ray Bradbury short story that inspired it.
    • 19 Metascore
    • 12 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Underclassman
    Saved from total puff only by the obnoxiousness of its star, who seems to be laboring under the delusion that he's the next Eddie Murphy.
  56. Margaret Cho: Assassin
    Assassin is funnier and less awkward than her last concert film, 2004's ''CHO Revolution," but nowhere near as consistently gut busting as 2002's ''Notorious C.H.O." or (first and still best) 2000's ''I'm the One That I Want."
    • 82 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Constant Gardener
    A predictable conspiracy thriller that somehow ends up diminishing the real urgency of the West's humanitarian disconnect from Africa. If it sends audiences home to log on to the Amnesty International website, terrific -- but that still doesn't make it a very good movie.
  58. William Eggleston in the Real World
    The documentary is elliptical, with a slow, drifty rhythm. It presents an up-close but impersonal view of Eggleston.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Brothers Grimm
    An absurd mess that's more entertaining than it has any right to be.
  60. The Cave
    It's ultimately just a rigorous personal training film made by people who don't seem to like movies or the people who go to them.
  61. Undiscovered
    It doesn't belong at a megaplex. It should be playing on a Clear Channel station.
  62. The Baxter
    A self-consciously arch work of hipsterism that's more styled than funny.
  63. The Memory of a Killer
    Entertaining.
  64. Wall
    Coming and going through the wall's checkpoints is a tiresome and undignified process that makes US airport security look like a cocktail reception.
  65. The 40 Year Old Virgin
    A lot of the credit for what's right with 'The 40-Year-Old Virgin goes to the screenplay, which Carell and Apatow wrote. They like these characters and, when it matters, they dare to give them feelings, none truer than Andy's.
  66. Red Eye
    A one-trick action thriller that feels like a poor cousin of an episode of ''24." Call it ''12."
    • 45 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Valiant
    The top-secret message this pigeon is carrying reads ''Wait for the DVD."
  68. El Crimen Perfecto (The Perfect Crime)
    If anyone is capable of pulling off a deviled screwball with cheeky panache, it's de la Iglesia, who's one of the world's great nutty directors yet to find the American following he so richly deserves.
  69. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance
    The violence in the final 45 minutes of Mr. Vengeance is tough to watch.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Reel Paradise
    An amusingly damning portrait of a man trying to impose his will on a world that, really, has better things to do.
  71. The Skeleton Key
    It has the wild, rancid atmosphere of a garbage bag that a raccoon has ripped open.
  72. Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo
    If all the first "Deuce" had going for it was a regular-guy approach to over-the-top humor, that's completely absent in this follow-up.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Four Brothers
    A faux-low-budget revenge thriller, pure and simple. There's nothing special about it, and that's what's refreshing.
  74. The Great Raid
    The Great Raid amounts to a noble failure. This is sad news for those of us who remain hopelessly partial to Dahl's mean streak. The failure we can live with. It's the noble part that will never do.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Asylum
    A classy unintentional hoot.
  76. The Goebbles Experiment
    Weirdly enthralling film.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Grizzly Man
    Timothy Treadwell was killed, along with his girlfriend, by a rogue bear in October 2003.
  78. Pretty Persuasion
    Isn't so much awful as it is self-conscious, overdone, shallow, and just not up to the level of its star.
  79. Pulse
    Where the average Japanese horror flick is petulant and nasty, Pulse is dolorous, shivery, and surreal.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Clean
    Clean has the same mixture of human tenderness and borderline-silly Eurochic that marks Wenders films like "Until the End of the World."
    • 63 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    A State of Mind
    It's a quietly wrenching eye-opener.
  82. The Dukes of Hazzard
    A cheap, greasy time at the multiplex. You leave annoyed at having been hungry enough to have ever wanted it in the first place.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Broken Flowers
    Exhilaratingly slow, which for many will simply mean SLOW... Those who can downshift appropriately, however, stand to be enraptured.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    2046
    The new film lives up to expectations and, indeed, pushes past them into virtually unmapped territory.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    My Date with Drew
    In this TV reality show masquerading as a movie documentary, Brian Herzlinger is a creepy voyeur, a run-of-the-mill loser who obsesses about living the celebrity high life but lacks the talent to pull it off.
  86. Saint Ralph
    As predictably uplifting movies go, Saint Ralph isn't completely charmless.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Duma
    An exquisitely filmed, emotionally transfixing epic about a white South African boy's journey to return his pet cheetah to the wild.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Junebug
    A textbook case of filmmakers who can't make up their minds about their characters; it's a failure of nerve disguised as dramatic ambiguity.
  89. Must Love Dogs
    While Lane is her typical winning self, the film is mawkish. The more we're cajoled to root for Sarah Nolan, the divorced preschool teacher she plays, the more Must Love Dogs stops resembling a movie and starts feeling like a greeting card.
  90. Sky High
    A squeaky clean, family-friendly comedy that merely sounds like an unreleased Cheech and Chong romp.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 12 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Stealth
    For a movie to pretend, in the face of the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi men, women, and children directly or indirectly caused by our presence there, that we can wage war without anyone really getting hurt isn't naive, or wishful thinking, or a jim-dandy way to spend a Saturday night at the movies. It's an obscenity.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Aristocrats
    The Aristocrats -- the movie, not the joke -- is a working demonstration of the pleasures of the profane.
  93. Tony Takitani
    The film itself is also a beautiful work of art, exquisitely framed and precisely envisioned.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
    In the end, it's a lovely little movie about very big things, and the smallness both illuminates it and keeps it from greatness.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Devil's Rejects
    A blood-smeared and almost completely scurrilous love letter to anyone who ever appeared in the junk movies of the '60s through '80s.
  96. Hustle & Flow
    Some will find it chicly inspired, recalling blaxploitation's heyday with its grimy urban realism. Some will rightly find it corny, absurd, and an insultingly limited presentation of options for the most disenfranchised African-Americans: I'm still waiting for the movie fantasy about the pimp who wants to get his GED.
  97. The Island
    Bay's strength as a filmmaker, the reason his superficial yet entertaining productions can never be completely ignored, is that he appears to lack shame. He'll blow anything up and run anybody over. The moral complexities don't matter to him. He just wants to stage spectacles, appreciate very good-looking people, and assert his cowboy aesthetic.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Bad News Bears
    The remake is stranded between pushing the scatological envelope and caving in to the formulas the 1976 movie established, and until the well-nigh foolproof ending, it comes up gasping for air.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    9 Songs
    It's a smart, provocative idea for a movie. I wish 9 Songs was that movie.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Edukators
    There's an evenhanded humanism flowing through The Edukators that may strike doctrinaire viewers on either side of the divide as mushy, but it's tough enough for the rest of us to chew on for a long time.
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