Boston Globe's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. Romeo Is Bleeding
    One of the big problems with Romeo Is Bleeding is its voiceovers. Gary Oldman, as the crooked cop protagonist, drowns in them like quicksand. [4 Feb 1994, p.54]
    • Boston Globe
    • 50 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Super
    Smart, sick, and subversive, Super gives you what you want only to make you wonder why you want it.
  3. French Kiss
    French Kiss is a French miss. It's got the settings, but it has little magic, less charm and almost no chemistry between Meg Ryan's heartsick American innocent and Kevin Kline's shady Frenchman. [5 May 1995, p.57]
    • Boston Globe
  4. Always
    You expect virtuosic technique from Spielberg, and it's there, in spades. What you don't expect is heartfelt romanticism. But that's there, too... Always is a terrific-looking throwback to those large-scale '40s cinematic stews of romantic longing. [22 Dec. 1989, p.43]
    • Boston Globe
  5. Disenchanted
    How much you enjoy yourself depends on whether you’re a fan of the original, or of Amy Adams.
  6. Kung Fu Yoga
    The movie’s best bits come when Tong’s script eases up on banter and clunky Indy homages and instead simply indulges in random zaniness.
  7. Life with Mikey
    Life with Mikey is awfully easy to take, thanks mostly to Fox's breezy charm. [4 June 1993, p.51]
    • Boston Globe
  8. Kill the Irishman
    The best thing about the picture (unless you like exploding cars, in which case the rest of the movie is just so many interruptions between getting to see all these big old '70s boats going boom) is its proudly hammy supporting cast.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    City by the Sea
    The movie will be remembered primarily for the huge, emerging talent of James Franco, who plays De Niro's troubled son.
  10. Cadillac Man
    Cadillac Man isn't perfect, but it's got enough peppy lowlife turmoil under its hood to pass most of what's on the road these days. [18 May 1990, p.77p]
    • Boston Globe
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    True Story
    True Story, which leads with its chin from the title on down and which turns a startling tale of true crime and false identities into a heavy-breathing drama that, ironically, fails to convince.
  12. I Give It a Year
    Though Mazer’s ambition is laudable, he has not yet integrated the comedy of manners into the comedy of no manners.
  13. Maze Runner: The Death Cure
    Where we hoped for a narrative rebound, we get instead another pedestrian, overlong post-apocalyptic entry that fails to capitalize on some decent character dynamics.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Happy Feet Two
    Little kids, of course, will swallow it whole without thinking twice.
  15. The Shadow
    The Shadow is more a triumph of window-dressing than cinema. It's dress-up, not drama, but it's a pile of style. [01 Jul 1994, p.49]
    • Boston Globe
    • 50 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Water Diviner
    This big, brawny historical drama feels more personal to its maker as both an artist and an Australian. For better and for worse, the movie’s a labor of love and of national identification.
  17. Final Destination 5
    Stabs at the dramatic don't amount to anything that makes us care, even for Bell, who has been solid on AMC's "The Walking Dead'' and in the chairlift chiller "Frozen.'' But genre fans who have been thirsting for gore via acupuncture needles or a LASIK machine should get their giddy fill.
  18. The Marvels
    DaCosta, who helmed the much-maligned 2021 reboot of “Candyman,” keeps the plot moving so quickly that I had little time to question much of it.
  19. No Strings Attached
    The film is also packed with enough sharply scripted screwiness from Adam's roommate (Jake Johnson), Emma's roomie (Greta Gerwig), and others to keep viewer impatience to a minimum.
  20. Young Guns
    Fusco's script undercuts whatever freshness it may have brought to its view of Billy the Kid with a steady stream of howlers, most of which involve Kiefer Sutherland, as the sensitive member of the gang. [12 Aug 1988, p.24]
    • Boston Globe
  21. Closed Circuit
    Instead of all-seeing, it’s more like seen it all before.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    A.C.O.D.
    Scott’s probably the perfect actor for this, since he’s too likably lightweight to suggest any emotion more crippling than exasperation.
  23. For Colored Girls
    It's too much too-much. The audience I saw it with didn't seem to know whether to clap when it was over or start taking Lipitor.
  24. Spare Parts
    Aside from the clever punning of the title, Spare Parts ends up as jury-rigged and programmatic as Stinky, the robot in the movie. And, unlike Stinky, it is dead in the water.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Armored
    A movie like Armored has been done better in the past. But it has also been done much, much worse, and Antal knows enough not to mess with the sturdy bones of the thing.
  26. Now and Then
    Sweet, but slight. [20 Oct 1995, p.52]
    • Boston Globe
  27. Hit and Run
    Put Christian Bale behind the wheel, and Hit & Run would make a billion bucks - except then there'd be no room for Shepard, and that movie would hardly be worth watching.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Freeheld
    At the end, under the closing credits, Freeheld shows us photos of the real Hester and Andree, and we sense an immediacy the rest of the film lacks. These are the people we want to watch and not a movie simulacra, no matter how capably performed and earnestly felt.
  29. Eat Pray Love
    Is it a romantic comedy? Is it a chick flick? This is silly, since, in truth, it's neither. It's simply a Julia Roberts movie, often a lovely one.
  30. Elektra Luxx
    Does a lot of winking and teasing.
  31. Shaft
    With Jackson leading the way, Shaft has style, punch, and street cred. It's a hot cool update.
  32. Planet of the Apes
    It's too psychically flat and dramatically inert. Instead of reinvigorating a Hollywood classic, Burton only takes it to camp.
    • Boston Globe
    • 50 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Rules of Attraction
    If there's one thing Avary gets right, it's the brutal use-or-be-used approach to interpersonal relations that Ellis laid out with numbing detail, and James Van Der Beek is down to the challenge as Sean Bateman: horndog, cokehead, ceramics major, and all-around jerk.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Constantine
    One thing's clear: R.J. Reynolds won't be showing Constantine at the company picnic any time soon.
  35. Hoffa
    For all the care and craftsmanship that have gone into Hoffa, it's a superficial film. [25 Dec 1992]
    • Boston Globe
  36. A Good Person
    If nothing else, Braff gets good to great performances out of his cast. The standouts are Pugh and Freeman: She’s a violent slash of petulance, while he remains a master of barely concealed wrath. Both actors are willing to plumb the depths of desperation, but their hard work is wasted in a film unworthy of their talents. A Good Person is a mediocre movie.
  37. Jurassic World Rebirth
    The true stars of “Jurassic World Rebirth,” the dinosaurs, are often left unidentified; we’re not sure if they’re real or some genetically engineered, made-up monstrosity. The film is so disinterested that it simply throws them onscreen with occasional bits of human beings stuck between their teeth.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Hunt
    A clever, gory, often very funny piece of genre junk — a B+ movie — that carries a hidden warning: When we turn other people into cartoons of our worst fears, the only thing left to do is kill each other.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Little White Lies
    Of the two French films opening in the Boston area today - "Beloved" is the other - Little White Lies is the less ambitious, more watchable, and ultimately more annoying.
  40. Quest for Camelot
    Quest for Camelot is easy to sit through and reasonably entertaining. Certainly it should satisfy its target audience. But Warner really needs to journey more boldly toward a personality of its own and offer a real alternative. [15 May 1998, p.D5]
    • Boston Globe
    • 50 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    No Reservations
    The movie's pleasant and light, though, and its emotional crises are the crust on an acceptably edible crème brulee.
  42. The Equalizer 2
    Save for a couple of crisp standalone segments incorporated as tone-setters, Washington’s first-ever sequel is a narratively and visually muddled disappointment, one that regularly confuses numbing brutality with vicariously thrilling righteous vengeance.
  43. Introducing the Dwights
    Nothing about this movie works, not the title (it used to be called "Clubland "), not Blethyn's attempt to inject comedy into her rickety stereotype of a character.
  44. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
    It's mostly flat, despite being presented in 3-D, and the writing is so unimaginative that at one point a character yells out "yabba dabba doo!"
  45. Dedication
    Unlike most of what Moore has been in, Dedication is unlikely to delight retirement homes on movie night. But it's not imaginative, lively, or true enough to speak to its intended audience of American Apparel shoppers, either. It's a slog.
  46. Snow White
    This movie is bad in all sorts of ways, none of which has to do with the fact that Disney cast a Latina actor as Snow White. In fact, that actor, Rachel Zegler, is the film’s saving grace.
  47. The Brothers
    What saves the film is the charm and earthy humor the actors wring from the spectacle of these four guys getting an early jump on their midlife crises.
    • Boston Globe
  48. Flawless
    A smartly crafted throwback to the gritty Manhattan crime melodramas of the '40s .
  49. The Iron Ladies
    The same underdog formulas and sunny disposition that turned it into an unexpected Thai box-office hit should win it friends here, too.
    • Boston Globe
  50. Red Trousers: The Life of the Hong Kong Stuntmen
    Fills you with a healthy respect for the men and women gladly risking their lives for your entertainment. The film itself works best with its into-the-camera reminiscences and on-the-set mishaps.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Afternoon Delight
    The results feel a little life lesson-y but also well-earned and well-observed, and Hahn takes advantage of a rare lead role to locate both the ugliness and beauty in her character.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Hot Frosty
    Every scene featuring these bumbling cops is painful.
  53. Tombstone
    Tombstone is a big Christmas pudding of a neo-Peckinpah Western that doesn't quite hang together and is a bit too self-conscious about its looks. [24 Dec 1993, p.23]
    • Boston Globe
  54. Don McKay
    The only person in Don McKay having a better time than Shue is Melissa Leo, who plays Sonny’s insinuating housemate. She’s too much by half, in an Agnes Moorehead sort of way.
  55. Fat Man and Little Boy
    Visually, Fat Man and Little Boy is almost obscenely beautiful. But while Joffe's eye is magnificent, his dramatic instincts are flaccid. [20 Oct 1989, p.79p]
    • Boston Globe
  56. Septien
    A microscopic piece of shoestring weirdness-slash-hipster regionalism that the actor Robert Longstreet delivers into some odder, funkier, altogether mysterious place. I don't know what he's doing or what he's going for. But unlike the rest of the movie, his bizarreness seems authentic rather than forced or put on.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga
    A bad dopey Will Ferrell comedy – overlong, underwritten, as strained as its title, and running on schtick and storylines that are practically rims.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course
    The downtimes are so flat that it makes you wonder whether director John Stainton and writer Holly Goldberg Sloan made them intentionally bad, just so we'd look forward to seeing Irwin again.
  59. Duplex
    The result is a cheap and cloying contraption that doesn't know when to stop smirking.
  60. Marebito (The Stranger from Afar)
    It's actually a pretty lousy thriller.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Going in Style
    The 1979 film was both more casual and much darker about the realities and infirmities of old age, and it had one of George Burns’s better performances. It was a funny, touching experience, and it was a bitter pill. The new movie is a placebo, with Hallmark emotions put over by a cast of solid-gold professionals.
  62. Passenger 57
    As Die Hard clones go, it's easier to take than most. [06 Nov 1992, p.38]
    • Boston Globe
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Prom
    That Prom plays as pleasantly and inoffensively as it does is due to the performances, particularly McDonell as the rebellious Jesse.
  64. Last Night
    It's the sort of movie that thinks cutting between two different stories makes it art. Usually, it feels like an exercise in art. There's a lot of calisthenics but very little beauty or truth or whatever it is the movie is going for.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Zero Theorem
    Orwellian paranoia doesn’t die, it just gets fresh trimmings, and while The Zero Theorem is as messy and overstuffed as Fibber McGilliam’s closet, its sorrow and anger and demented humor strike just enough fresh sparks to keep this career alive.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    How to Talk to Girls at Parties
    Throw out any expectations you might have of coherent narrative structure or directorial control, and you might have a pretty good time.
  67. Racer and the Jailbird
    Perhaps that is Roskam’s ultimate point: volition and individuality are illusory; only love and death matter. That truth comes through with somber clarity in the film’s eloquent coda, which almost makes up for the silliness that precedes it.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Guilt Trip
    The movie's silly, predictable, and surprisingly sweet - the sort of thing you can and probably should take your mother to.
  69. All Dogs Go to Heaven
    All Dogs Go to Heaven" has the right spirit, and its warmth will offset what for small kids might be some scary moments. But it does seem skimpy and warmed over. [17 Nov 1989]
    • Boston Globe
    • 50 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Nine 1/2 Weeks
    This rather simple story, played with stunning conviction by Rourke and Basinger, achieves its apex through director Adrian Lyne's steamy direction. Yet, it's not nasty enough. [14 Mar 1986, p.11]
    • Boston Globe
  71. 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.
  72. Jungle Cruise
    With Johnson’s arrival, “Jungle Cruise” enters “Raiders of the Lost Ark” territory. It’s not just the cascading action adventure in an exotic setting. It’s also James Howard Newton’s score sounding so much like John Williams that Williams should get royalties.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Management
    Sometimes a cute-stalker movie can win the audience's heart. Management only makes you ponder the line between true love and a restraining order.
  74. The Boss Baby
    At least a plot point about “secret formula” is sort of clever. The rest comes across as gibberish.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Nothing Like the Holidays
    Both despite its familiarity and because of it, Nothing Like the Holidays brings it home for Christmas.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Murder by Numbers
    For much of its length, the film is plausible, if predictable and ponderous. Its strongest assets are its actors.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
    You can bet your parrot "Pirates" will be back, even if "At World's End" hasn't the foggiest idea when to quit.
  78. Madea Goes to Jail
    There is, however, Viola Davis, who might win an Oscar tomorrow for her one scene in "Doubt." Her part here - a minister combing the street for crack-whores to rescue - is about three times as large.
  79. How About You ...
    It's all terribly sentimental without being truly terrible.
  80. Boundaries
    Character quirks know no limits in the indie dramedy Boundaries, a multi-generational road-trip movie that gives both Vera Farmiga and Christopher Plummer richly drawn roles to play.
  81. The Stoning of Soraya M.
    Director Nowrasteh seems to think the only way to save lives is to sensationalize death. You could trek to the theater and have this movie whack you upside the head. You could also just mail a check for $10 to the human rights group of your choice.
  82. Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus
    In theory, there's nothing wrong with this unorthodox approach to Arbus -- attempting to explain her from the inside out. (In its way, Harmony Korine's freakfest "Gummo" is a better Arbus movie.) The trouble is that Shainberg and Wilson don't connect their conceit to anything artistically enlightening, erotic, or truly deviant.
  83. Champions
    Champions wants to be a clone of the 1976 sports movie classic “The Bad News Bears,” right down to giving us a Tatum O’Neal-style toughie, Cosentino (Madison Tevlin). While Tevlin is very funny and convincing, Harrelson fails to plumb the depths of unlikability in his character that Walter Matthau brought to Coach Buttermaker.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Campaign
    It's just another happily idiotic Will Ferrell comedy, ably directed by Jay Roach ("Meet the Parents," "Dinner for Schmucks") and tossing its bawdy jokes at the side of the barn.
  85. Ticket to Paradise
    Ticket is automatic-pilot smooth and formulaic familiar. It’s a romantic comedy, yes, and a star vehicle. But the category it most belongs to is airline movie — as in, a pleasure to watch in flight but less so on the ground.
  86. Storytelling
    Cleverly mocks the modern chronicler, raising questions that linger long after the film is finished.
    • Boston Globe
    • 50 Metascore
    • 25 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Garage Days
    The overall tone is one of mild Sex Pistols excess combined with Monkees-era high jinks.
  88. Twins
    The attempts to supply heart are never more than synthetic, but Schwarzenegger, as the good guy with the good genes, and his goofy sweetness lift Twins into the win column. [9 Dec 1988, p.33]
    • Boston Globe
    • 50 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Letters to Juliet
    The larger problem is that the central duo is just plain dull.
  90. 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.
  91. Lottery Ticket
    There are some amusing looks at the elation - and panic - that come with winning big, from the praise-Jesus swooning of Kevin's grandma (underutilized Loretta Devine).
    • 50 Metascore
    • 25 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Ten
    The Ten is a virtually snicker-free exercise in audience pain. It's less a movie than an endurance test.
  93. You People
    Director Kenya Barris, who also co-wrote the script with Jonah Hill, intended to make an edgy, race-based cringe comedy; the result is afraid of its own shadow. This Netflix release commits an even bigger sin by wasting the considerable comedic talents of former “Saturday Night Live” castmates Eddie Murphy and Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    My Salinger Year
    My Salinger Year isn’t much, but it isn’t phony.
  95. My Super Ex-Girlfriend
    Runs out of fresh ideas about how to make its heroine look nuts.
  96. Step Up 2: The Streets
    The current, much better Canadian movie "How She Move" has a more realistic grip on the racial politics of hip-hop-dance.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Welcome to the Rileys
    All three actors come at this gloomy, borderline-preposterous tale from different directions; that they meet up at all - and they do - is a tribute to sincerity and craft.
  98. My Mother's Wedding
    My Mother’s Wedding neatly juxtaposes its subplots with the joyous event that serves as its centerpiece.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Deterrence
    There is a palpable edge-of-the-seat tension and a number of complex ethnic issues that linger after the movie ends.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Home on the Range
    Even older kids will understand that Pixar does it so much better, not because of their computers but because of an intelligent attention to script and character and craft. If the people running Disney don't understand that much anymore, maybe they should turn out the lights and go home.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »