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. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
    Muppetmaster Jim Henson has done a good job of translating the Turtles - and their 4-foot-tall rat guru, Splinter - into animatronic form. [30 Mar 1990, p.28p]
    • Boston Globe
  2. Snitch
    Snitch gets a decent amount of drama (and action, of course) out of the argument that there’s paying for a crime, and then there’s overpaying.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Project Power
    Project Power is the kind of action/sci-fi bone-cruncher where the cast is better than the material, the characters are more interesting than the premise, and the dialogue chugs along in the middle. It’s on Netflix and is worth a few hours if you’re in a B-movie state of mind.
  4. She's All That
    In short, the film isn't afraid to wear its heart on its sleeve and bring conviction to its focus on feelings. It's written with enough dexterity and wit to make you buy into it. [29 Jan 1999, p.C4]
    • Boston Globe
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Skyscraper
    You’ve seen almost all of this before, with more wit and a better villain.
  6. Aquamarine
    Unique because it's the rare movie that fiercely respects the altruistic loyalty that bonds girls to one another.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Trial by Fire
    Powerful stuff, but unpowerfully told.
    • 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.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Face of Love
    The result isn’t a great movie, but it is an excellent guilty pleasure.
  10. God's Pocket
    Best, probably, to appreciate the movie for what Slattery, Hoffman, and the cast do most effectively: craft a pervasive atmosphere of tired people trudging through tired circumstances that only seem to grow more, well, tiring.
  11. Everyone's Hero
    Everyone's Hero is sincere and heartwarming; sometimes it's funny.
  12. The Gods Must Be Crazy II
    No less than the first film, this new effort is both disarmingly sweet and politically appalling. [13 Apr 1990, p.48p]
    • Boston Globe
  13. Irreversible
    Noe's summation is an ideological sucker-punch from a filmmaker who gets off on abusive relationships. He may as well have thrown a big ''whatever'' up on the screen.
  14. Risen
    As played by Fiennes, who has the aquiline face and piercing eyes of Max Van Sydow, Clavius is no pushover. You believe his disbelief, so when it wavers, yours might as well.
  15. Transporter 3
    The thrill of the ridiculousness is gone. So is all the mystery that made Statham so appealing in the first place.
  16. Saint Ralph
    As predictably uplifting movies go, Saint Ralph isn't completely charmless.
  17. DysFunktional Family
    More vulgar than funny.
  18. The Road to El Dorado
    Less than memorable.
  19. What Lies Beneath
    Ford and Pfeiffer deliver craftsmanlike work, but the film steadily unravels as Zemeckis tries to ratchet up the suspense.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Nobody Walks
    Sensitively written, nicely shot, expertly acted, and intelligently ambiguous, Nobody Walks still manages to send you out with a shrug.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Casino Jack
    Glib, fast-paced entertainment that barely leaves a mark - which, given the subject, is just plain wrong.
  22. The Grinch
    The result is a reworking that feels both unnecessary and uninspired, even if it’s too genial and visually captivating to be flat-out off-putting.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    That Demon Within
    There’s a half-realized, half-haunting Hitchcockian psychodrama buried somewhere within That Demon Within. What’s on the surface plays more like Wong and Lam simply forgot to take their meds.
  24. Poison Ivy
    Poison Ivy isn't that much of a film. But part of its charm is that it doesn't pretend to be. It is, however, a great showcase for Drew Barrymore, as bad-news jailbait. [26 Jun 1992, p.29]
    • Boston Globe
    • 51 Metascore
    • 12 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Finding Amanda
    Finding Amanda, unfortunately, is one vast, irritating surface.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Dumbo
    Dumbo flies! The movie, sadly, never soars.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Rough Night
    What’s nice about this movie, actually, is that you can get a few shameless laughs out of it and then forget you saw it at all.
  28. Peter Rabbit
    If the freneticism gets repetitious, the target audience won’t mind, at least not judging by a preview crowd’s delirious reaction to a recurring electrified-doorknob gag.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Wild West Comedy Show: 30 Days & 30 Nights - Hollywood to the Heartland
    The movie's amiable, impulsive, intense, and scattershot, and since those are qualities associated with Vaughn himself, in the end it's a fair representation.
  30. Doomsday
    Marshall reveals himself to be a terrific showman of chaos and comic savagery. This is Baz Luhrmann's "Mad Max."
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Hard Word
    Wonderful characters, these three, and The Hard Word never figures out what to do with them.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Johnny English
    Adding to the general air of ''What the hell?'' is Australian pop singer Natalie Imbruglia as Lorna, the beautiful superspy who falls for our hero. With Lorna's help, Johnny discovers that Sauvage is plotting to take over the British throne -- the Battle of Hastings wasn't good enough, it seems.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    White Irish Drinkers
    All the good intentions in the world can't save White Irish Drinkers from playing like the baldest of retreads.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Where'd You Go, Bernadette
    Mishandles Maria Semple’s best-selling comic novel into a clattery mess. There are deftly human moments to be found, but you have to dig for them like potatoes.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Woman in Gold
    The production design is swank, the score impassioned. We should be riveted. Instead, you may feel you’ve seen this movie before, and, in a sense, you have: Woman in Gold plays remarkably like 2013’s “Philomena” with a change of cast and a different historical outrage.
  36. The Promotion
    A good, occasionally insightful workplace comedy.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    My Bloody Valentine
    Lussier stages his movie not so much around nail-biting moments as novel ways to fling entrails at his viewers. But if you take pleasure in such mindless gore, there must be worse ways to spend 100 minutes.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Savage Grace
    A chilly inquest into very bad behavior, Savage Grace is presented to us like an entrée at a five-star French restaurant. It's decadence under glass.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Creation
    There are good performances and fleeting moments of exquisite moviemaking, but the experience as a whole is an evolutionary dead end.
  40. Father of the Bride
    Martin is lots of friendly fun, proving once again that he is an actor with untapped range and style. Without him, the movie would deflate. [20 Dec 1991, p.54]
    • Boston Globe
  41. Look Who's Talking
    Before long, it runs out of steam, playing like the pilot for a TV sitcom called "Baby Knows Best." [13 Oct 1989, p.37]
    • Boston Globe
  42. A Man Called Otto
    As with so many foreign films that get the Americanized treatment, A Man Called Otto is completely defanged, eliminating the dark humor that made the original successful enough to command a remake.
  43. Me Before You
    What’s somewhat unique about Jojo Moyes’s weepie, which the writer scripted from her 2012 bestseller, are the provocative dilemmas it explores to coax those tears.
  44. Free Zone
    A minor movie on a major subject, a drama with an almost unbearable lightness.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Fountain
    A noble, shipwrecked folly.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Moog
    For every insight, there are a half-dozen meandering conversations and unguided reminiscences.
  47. Karate Kid: Legends
    Even at a mercifully short 94 minutes, this movie is exhausting. That would be fine if it weren’t also overly sincere, familiar, and dull.
  48. All the Little Animals
    Involvingly acted, surehandedly crafted.
  49. Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
    Sequels and fun don't often coincide, but this time they do.
    • Boston Globe
    • 51 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Accountant
    The Accountant keeps you hanging on all the way to the looney-toon ending, well past the point where your higher brain functions have called it a night. It’s not a good movie but it’s not a bad way to kill a few hours.
  51. Trolls World Tour
    Fatiguing for grown-ups, “TWT” may well scare, or at least unsettle, kids under 6. And kids much over 6 are likely to tire of the unrelenting cutesiness.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    My Blueberry Nights
    Music and nostalgia are what fuel all this filmmaker's movies, though, even a half-baked translation like this one.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    White Bird in a Blizzard
    Only Jane, as the cop who knows exactly what Mrs. Collins’s wayward daughter needs, has the sense of threat the movie is seeking. His and Woodley’s scenes together are dirty and alive.
  54. Broadway Idiot
    This movie doesn’t make the case. In fact, had they upped the absurdity a notch, it would rival the comedy of Christopher Guest’s let’s-put-on-a-show mockumentary, “Waiting for Guffman” (1996). As it stands, it plays like an infomercial.
  55. Fear
    Fear is a formulaic thriller that is like "Cape Fear" meets "Fatal Attraction," or "Splendor in the Grass" on crack, but without a hint of those movies' psychological complexities and camp moments. [12 Apr 1996]
    • Boston Globe
  56. Yves Saint Laurent
    Frustratingly elusive and seductively louche, Lespert’s “Yves” probes a cryptic myth and a fragile soul, penetrating neither, but conjuring up a taste of Saint Laurent’s suffering, genius and style.
  57. A Little Chaos
    The film is engrossing and entertaining if sometimes trite and manipulative and totally bogus.
  58. Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace
    Good enough, but only just. It's got the hardware, but neither the characters, the imagination, nor the resonance one had hoped for.
  59. Popcorn
    Popcorn is a "Phantom of the Shlopera" - the kind of corny B-movie midnight campers can sink their plastic fangs into. [01 Feb 1991, p.21]
    • Boston Globe
  60. Predators
    Antal is a professional who respects your dollars. In a season where the blockbusters are as flat as month-old soda, that’s the most romantic gesture a commercial filmmaker can make.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Hotel for Dogs
    Hotel for Dogs is agreeable Saturday afternoon multiplex piffle - friendly, formulaic, completely harmless.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Just Wright
    Just Wright is as formulaic as they come, but at its core is a surprisingly tender romantic drama.
  63. Morning Light
    A fluffy piece of Disney nonfiction.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Program
    The Program is much better than its limited commercials suggest. There are so many ways this film could be awful, a minefield of potential trite plot lines and character-development lapses. Director/co-screenwriter David S. Ward evaded most like a punt returner weaving through would-be tacklers. [24 Sept 1993, p.49]
    • Boston Globe
  65. The Broken Hearts Club: A Romantic Comedy
    It plays like a pilot for what I imagine will be network TV's first all-gay sitcom.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Assassination Tango
    Since its maker is one of the least vain of Hollywood actors, it's one that is worthy of indulgence and respect.
  67. The Transporter
    The best movie Steven Seagal never made. Except that Statham, while just as marked for death, is harder to kill.
  68. My Mother Likes Women
    We do learn that love heals and that the movie's title makes a terrifically lewd little rock song. (Thank you, Sol.) But that's about it.
  69. Ender's Game
    It comes down to this: Which is more important, the innocence of a child or the survival of the species? And if the race survives, will it just become like the enemy aliens that must be destroyed to do so?
  70. Indian Summer
    It's not hard to take, but neither does it go anywhere really interesting, nor do the characters much involve us. The curious thing is that it had every reason to register as something more detailed and specific than the flatly generic thing it is. [23 Apr 1993, p.50]
    • Boston Globe
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Holy Rollers
    Even the portrayal of the Hasidic community comes to feel like window-dressing, welcome for its exoticism but never truly understood.
  72. Breakfast with Scot
    This is territory previously covered in the French film "Ma Vie en Rose," which took a relatively more sophisticated view of both a child's self-expression and adults' discomfort over it.
  73. Sister Act
    There's no comic edge at all to Sister Act. It's all Whoopi and the three sisters, battling plastic writing and chintzy production values, convincing you that filmmaking this pedestrian ought to be declared the eighth deadly sin. [29 May 1992, p.34]
    • Boston Globe
  74. The Gentlemen
    It’s a diverting if slightly undercooked throwback that could offer more genuine intrigue, but that’s still worth it to see the cast gamely chuck out the window manners and vanity.
  75. The Expendables 2
    As it stands, The Expendables 2 is lazily satisfied with repeating the first movie's formula, shortcomings and grisly strengths alike.
  76. Star Trek: Nemesis
    Fails to match the philosophical and acting bounties of 1996's ''First Contact.'' Baird has seen to it that the Enterprise's being under fire still amounts to the crew rocking back and forth, gripping the railings as the ship's phasers are down to 4 percent.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Birth
    Such a meticulously wrought piece of hokum that it's both easy to admire and impossible to warm up to.
  78. Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away
    It's better to see it on the stage... a moderately enjoyable film that lacks the awe-inspiring visual and aural aplomb of Montreal-based Cirque du Soleil's live shows.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Call
    You’ve seen pieces of this movie in “Psycho,” “Silence of the Lambs,” and 2004’s “Cellular.” Still, the early scenes in the Hive give The Call a needed novelty: It’s a workplace drama, and the work is responding to other people’s desperate worst-case scenarios.
  80. Free the Mind
    Though perhaps more suited to PBS or classrooms than to movie screens, the documentary is engrossing and just may encourage more people to look less to pharmacology for answers and more within.
  81. Going the Distance
    Going the Distance earns its R rating, often by daring to say what goes frequently unsaid by women in raunchy comedies. It's not a very good movie. The entire second half is a sitcom.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates
    Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates lopes along with bumptious likability but no real energy, urgency, structure, or wit.
  83. Lucía, Lucía
    Nicely shot and edited, but the movie is a narrative mess, which wouldn't be so bad if all it were up to was depicting Lucia's ups and downs. But the film takes too many illogical detours to be of much use.
  84. The Brown Bunny
    The Brown Bunny is certainly about how vain Gallo is. Yet rarely has narcissism produced such a handsome work of cinema.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Ellie Parker
    Eventually the energy of the original short runs out and the movie coasts on fumes, but it remains surprisingly enjoyable for all that.
  86. Day Shift
    Jamie Foxx is always interesting to watch. His latest movie isn’t. With “Day Shift,” reach for the garlic, not the remote.
  87. Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2: Rodrick Rules
    Credit Bowers and company, finally, for making some good calls about where to follow the leads furnished to them by the book and the first movie, and where to get creative.
  88. Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life
    The film’s lone strength is the fleeting dramatic scenes offering a little back story — and pathos — on Rafe’s home life with his sweetly understanding single mom (Lauren Graham, who you’d guess wouldn’t have bothered otherwise).
  89. 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.
  90. 21 Bridges
    Middling cop thriller, whose attention-grabbing city-on-lockdown premise is undercut by thin plotting and forced performances from the supporting cast.
  91. Lovelace
    Epstein and Friedman may have the best of intentions, but in the end they’re exploiting Lovelace, too.
  92. Hardcore Henry
    When the action is at its sharpest, such as with Henry’s mid-chase leap from a detonating truck onto the back of a motorcycle, it’s spectacular.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Parkland
    Bulging with period details and a large and busy cast, Parkland is well made and at times queasily fascinating. At others, it gives in to melodrama and the ticking off of facts.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    John Carter
    Against the odds, John Carter is itself pretty amazing - an epic pulp saga that slowly rises to the level of its best imitations and wins you over by degrees.
  95. Taken
    Taken? You bet.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    My Sister's Keeper
    A pall of disaster, in fact, hangs over everyone in this shapeless, hankie-wringing adaptation of the best-selling Jodi Picoult novel.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Step Brothers
    Take the kids at your peril. Mismarketing aside, Step Brothers is crudely funny, which means that sometimes it's crudely hilarious and more often it's just crude.
  98. Just an American Boy
    Earle's song introductions, like those of his mentors Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark, are as meaty, pointed, and touching as the tunes themselves, and his spoken words -- full of humor and humanity -- are the heart of the film.
  99. Anonymous
    The moviemaking is proficient, if unremarkable. I like the idea of an Elizabethan action movie apparently more than I enjoy watching one.
  100. Jack Reacher
    This movie is the height of by-the-book dullness.
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