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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    • 25 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    A Cinderella Story
    Deeply, proudly average..."Mean Girls" it's not; a plastic butter knife has more edge. But sometimes it's nice to know your kids won't cut their fingers.
  2. You Got Served
    Part soap opera and part thriller, and it has the unique characteristic of being both undeveloped and overwritten.
  3. 40 Days and 40 Nights
    The film's biggest problem, however, is its naive inability to understand that sex comedies, to amuse, must be about more than sex.
    • Boston Globe
  4. Beyond the Sea
    Had Spacey made Beyond the Sea 10 or 15 years ago, it might have been close to transporting.
  5. Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason
    The director, Beeban Kidron, handles the proceedings with an episodic aimlessness on par with Bridget's.
  6. City of God
    Full of action, but no soul.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Chronicles of Riddick
    Like everything in this humorless new genre, "Chronicles" comes with its own snap-together mythology.
  8. The Day After Tomorrow
    Emmerich does know his way around an action scene -- there's an exciting sequence in which Sam and his buddies run from wolves while looking for meds inside the huge ship that pulls up alongside the library. But he's a master of disaster with no people skills. The characters in The Day After Tomorrow are fantastically stupid.
  9. Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights
    Bland though it is, "Havana Nights" could be the start of a globe-bettering franchise -- and across history, too: "Dirty Dancing: Monticello Mornings"; "Dirty Dancing: Gaza Strip Afternoons."
  10. Flight of the Phoenix
    Silly to the last drop of rationed water.
  11. Freddy Got Fingered
    His (Green) new gross-out comedy is crude and stupid, but just as often rudely funny. It doesn't so much push the envelope as shred it.
    • Boston Globe
    • 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.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Polar Express
    Zemeckis and Hanks really seem to think they’re giving us a Christmas movie for the ages and a technology that will change cinema forever. They’re wrong on both counts. The Polar Express is merely a marvelous toy that has somehow become convinced it has a soul.
  14. Say It Isn't So
    There are laughs here and there, and Graham and Klein aren't nearly as grating as what surrounds them. But there's no getting around the fact that far from seeming a labor of love, Say It Isn't So seems merely labored.
    • Boston Globe
  15. Raise Your Voice
    The movie's enthusiasm is as indelible and shiny as the lip gloss its star wears to bed.
  16. The Sea Inside
    You want the movie to stir your soul, push your intellect, or at the very least, break your heart. But it's such a repetitive and thinly constructed piece of filmmaking that the scope and complexity of Sampedro's case are turned to porridge.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Benji: Off the Leash!
    Has a raggy charm, like the dogs, and a solid moral ending. For a late-summer children's film, it does the job.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Code 46
    What this dystopia doesn't do is shock. In truth, Code 46 traffics in notions of speculative social fiction that are so familiar by now as to feel disconcertingly normal.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself
    Wants to be as shocking as its title, but it doesn't have the nerve.
  20. Wimbledon
    Wimbledon is refried "Notting Hill" with a Teen People glaze. The latter movie also gave us an American star cheering up some tired British guy. Wimbledon is blander and far less worth rooting for.
  21. Touch of Pink
    An hour and a half of cultural and sexual headaches only barely leavened by MacLachlan's performance.
  22. Bubble Boy
    There's always been room for rudeness in humor. In fact, it can be invigorating. But Bubble Boy goes through the motions of being outrageous when all it's really got is a rage to conform to formula.
  23. Cheaper by the Dozen
    Martin puts a thankless gloss on the antic role he played in "Parenthood." As his wife, Hunt is the movie's saving grace.
  24. Fat Albert
    In the end, it's hard to see a real reason for the movie's existence. We already have Muppets.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    I, Robot
    A stylish, watchable, very familiar future-cop action thriller. What was once original is now almost completely derivative.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Troy
    At its intermittent best, Troy suggests a primitive pro-wrestling smackdown with epochal consequences. At its worst, it's a throwback to the ham-fisted sword-and-sandal international coproductions of the early 1960s: "The 300 Spartans" with better sets. Barely.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
    The film's meta-fey title alone is an example of why some people adore Anderson and why he drives others absolutely crazy.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Blade: Trinity
    One of the prime laws of the multiplex states that any action or horror movie series will devolve into ritualized violence, self-mocking camp, and egregious silliness by part three. Blade: Trinity is right on schedule.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Meet the Fockers
    What a waste.
  30. Mission: Impossible
    It'll be a test of whether Cruise's star power and De Palma's ability to seduce audiences with visual style can compensate for a fundamental hollowness at the center. Mission: Impossible plays like a project trying to become a movie and not quite making it. [22 May 1996, p.63]
    • Boston Globe
  31. Mrs. Winterbourne
    The script is a little too clunky to serve Ricki Lake well, and Richard Benjamin's direction is a bit too sluggish to disguise her limited range as he crams this romantic fairy tale a little too forcefully into its predetermined mold. [19 Apr 1996, p.53]
    • Boston Globe
  32. Grumpy Old Men
    The trouble with Grumpy Old Men is the patronizing attitude -- ageism, really -- that takes a too-broad approach to their geriatric world and renders it plastic. It is too cute and sanitized to allow its performers much in the way of opportunity.
    • Boston Globe
  33. 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
  34. I Love You to Death
    while not without pleasures, I Love You to Death essentially seems a film in search of a tone. [06 Apr 1990]
    • Boston Globe
  35. Green Card
    Despite its lush photography, Green Card has the texture of peanut butter. It's more romantic than comedic, but there isn't an abundance of either. [11 Jan 1991]
    • Boston Globe
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    An Officer and a Gentleman
    An Officer and a Gentleman has so many echoes that it never finds its own voice. [29 Jul 1982]
    • Boston Globe
  37. Against All Odds
    It begins promisingly.... But the film has no center, succumbs to drift, and gets away from Hackford. [03 Mar 1984]
    • Boston Globe
    • 94 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Stop Making Sense
    But as good as it is, the film falls short of translating the exaltation and near-gospel music feel of the band in full flight. [2 Nov 1984]
    • Boston Globe
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Something Wild
    After an hour of biting charm, Something Wild turns into something else. In a twist that turns the movie into a silly story of violence, Demme surrenders his style to a stupid plot. [7 Nov 1986]
    • Boston Globe
  40. The Hudsucker Proxy
    The movie seems destined to win a place in the nocturnal-cityscape-hell hall of fame. Its externals are brilliant, but The Hudsucker Proxy is virtually nothing but externals. [25 Mar 1994, p.52]
    • Boston Globe
  41. High Heels
    Mostly it's Paredes' imperious - then surprisingly generous - high-handedness that carries High Heels. [20 Dec 1991]
    • Boston Globe
  42. Jefferson in Paris
    But despite the vibrancy of its images and the exquisiteness of its craftsmanship, Jefferson in Paris doesn't often light a fire under its material. [07 Apr 1995]
    • Boston Globe
  43. M. Butterfly
    Cronenberg's direction is technically impressive, but he's better suited to stories based on surges of feeling between killers, not lovers. This M. Butterfly never takes wing. [08 Oct 1993]
    • Boston Globe
  44. Naked Lunch
    Cronenberg hasn't so much filmed Naked Lunch as tamed it, turned it into entertainment, with oozy rubber bugs, big and little, that look left over from David Lynch's movie of "Dune," or the intergalactic dive from "Star Wars." [10 Jan 1992]
    • Boston Globe
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Body Heat
    Lawrence Kasdan's Body Heat--an homage to film noir--gets off to a nice start before it becomes entangled in its convoluted and somewhat uninteresting plot machinations.
    • Boston Globe
  46. Jacob's Ladder
    The strength of Jacob's Ladder is that we never know what the next scene will be. But that's also its weakness. We don't feel involved with the characters here. We just feel jerked around. Jacob's Ladder, finally, is bummer theater. [2 Nov 1990, p.73]
    • Boston Globe
  47. Girl 6
    The enormously appealing Randle holds the screen even when the thinness of Suzan-Lori Parks' script becomes inescapably apparent. There isn't much vigorous narrative pulse, complexity or even faceting of Randle's character, and the arbitrary ending seems both forced and inconclusive. [22 Mar 1996, p.53]
    • Boston Globe
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    First Blood
    Ted Kotcheff's First Blood is a cute, slick anti-Vietnam war film carefully treated to go down for the pro-war constituency it's made for. [23 Oct 1982]
    • Boston Globe
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Deathtrap
    Deathtrap is slick enough that you can't disengage from it without missing something. [19 Mar 1982]
    • Boston Globe
  50. The Man with Two Brains
    The Man with Two Brains has moments, but they aren't inspired. [04 Jun 1983]
    • Boston Globe
  51. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
    In short, when Buffy starts getting fangy, it stops being tangy. It gets all serious and earnest and flops as a teen-age love story and as a vampire thriller and even as a parody. It's not even a "Fright Night," much less a "Near Dark," and only hints at a "Lost Boys" ambience. [31 Jul 1992, p.38]
    • Boston Globe
  52. 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
  53. Vampire in Brooklyn
    Vampire in Brooklyn isn't a disaster. In fact, it has some funny moments. But it's a long way from being the comeback movie Eddie Murphy needs. [27 Oct 1995, p.57]
    • Boston Globe
  54. The Fan
    The Fan isn't a strikeout, but it doesn't exactly knock the cover off the ball, either. It's more like a soft pop fly, taking its time before settling very predictably into a waiting fielder's glove. [16 Aug 1996, p.D3]
    • Boston Globe
  55. The Unbelievable Truth
    While Hartley, who made this movie on a shoestring budget, has avant on his mind, he's not nuanced enough to quite pull it off. [03 Aug 1990]
    • Boston Globe
  56. Falling Down
    Slickly directed by Joel Schumacher, who sees that each and every button in this unabashedly manipulative film is pushed hard, Falling Down could have been deeply disturbing if it weren't so cartoony, so determined to glibly escape the moral consequences of the vicarious white-rampage fantasies to which it caters. [26 Feb 1993, p.25]
    • Boston Globe
  57. The Distinguished Gentleman
    The film is content to remain at the level of the mildly entertaining, with no real surprises and not much sass. [04 Dec 1992]
    • Boston Globe
  58. Far and Away
    Far and Away is a throwback to the handsome but stodgy historical romances Hollywood used to make, and it can at least be said that it's more ambitious than most of what we'll see this summer. [22 May 1992]
    • Boston Globe
  59. Hoffa
    For all the care and craftsmanship that have gone into Hoffa, it's a superficial film. [25 Dec 1992]
    • Boston Globe
  60. Hamlet
    It's acceptable Shakespeare - no more arbitrary than most stage productions, especially the willfully anachronistic ones, or the ones with political agendas thrust upon them. [18 Jan 1991]
    • Boston Globe
  61. Quick Change
    As a performer, Murray moves through the film with a lovely doomed aplomb. And his quick verbal wit is almost enough to pull Quick Change off. But as a director, his inexperience costs him. His camera isn't as quick as his tongue. [13 Jul 1990, p.29]
    • Boston Globe
  62. The Graduate
    The Graduate is not subtle in its writing off of the parental generation as hopelessly corrupt. [Review of re-release]
    • Boston Globe
  63. 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
  64. 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
  65. Harlem Nights
    The best thing about the film is the way it allows Richard Pryor to rise above the demeaning buffoon roles he's been playing for the last few years and finally play a character with dignity and style. [17 Nov 1989, p.89]
    • Boston Globe
  66. The Governess
    The sheer intelligence and independence of spirit in Driver's busy eyes almost carry The Governess past its structural limitations. [07 Aug 1998]
    • Boston Globe
  67. 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
  68. The Adventures of Ford Fairlane
    The Adventures of Ford Fairlane is a nonstop gross-out contest of absolutely no socially redeeming value at all, unless you happen to value laughter. Ford Fairlane is funny garbage. [11 Jul 1990, p.41]
    • Boston Globe
    • 29 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Somewhere in Time
    Somewhere in Time is a glossy, flossy and intermittently interesting piece of kitsch which, with more sensitive craftsmanship, could have been one of the more dazzling screen romances of the year. It's too bad that it's held down by its more overt commercial impulses. [7 Oct 1980, p.1]
    • Boston Globe
  70. Salt
    Jolie doesn't seem entirely bored with the routine. She has a laugh or two at her bionic image: Evelyn is a woman who uses a maxi pad as a bandage.
  71. Jonah Hex
    The only thing sadder than Jonah Hex is what appears to have happened to his movie.
  72. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse
    These movies are more about the experience of hearing girls and women who should know better holler at the screen. They could just as well be at a concert.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Killer Inside Me
    The film is crisply shot, expertly paced, solidly acted, and it gets a goose when Bill Pullman shows up in the late innings as a good-old-boy lawyer. (By contrast, it’s never convincingly explained what stake the union official played by Elias Koteas has in the drama.) All that’s missing is a reason.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
    Stitched together from so many other movies that it plays like an attack of multiple déjà vu. Stray bits of “Star Wars,’’ “Pirates of the Caribbean,’’ “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,’’ and “Robin Hood’’ pass by like flotsam, and the overwhelming tone is good-natured but alarmingly generic.
  75. Shrek Forever After
    To see this final installment is to know: It’s time.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    MacGruber
    All thing considered, MacGruber’ is a lot better than it should be. That still doesn’t mean it’s all that great.
  77. Date Night
    Date Night manages to live down to its store-brand title.
  78. The Joneses
    It’s cute and clever to a point -- especially if you don’t know much about the film’s premise going in -- but then the cleverness runs on like the one-note punch line of an interminable “Saturday Night Live’’ sketch, sponsored by Audi.
  79. The Back-up Plan
    Lopez smiles, whines, and blinks her way through this movie. She seems more relaxed than she ever has. And yet it seems like she’s hiding in romantic comedies, lest we discover that she doesn’t have a “Monster’s Ball’’ or even a “Blind Side’’ in her.
  80. The Losers
    The amusement it provides is cheap, disposable, and hardly worth the number of quarters you fed into the slot in a frenzy not to go home empty-handed.
  81. Eat This New York
    So, how's the food? The camera never even goes up close. That's the kind of restaurant documentary this is.
  82. Games People Play: New York
    Whitney's body of work doesn't suggest a filmmaker so much as an opportunist with a video camera. He makes a very specific sort of reality movie. It's called porn.
  83. Clockstoppers
    The film doesn't have enough innovation or pizazz to attract teenagers, and it lacks the novel charm that made ''Spy Kids'' a surprising winner with both adults and younger audiences.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    September Tapes
    The film eventually collapses under the weight of its no-budget arrogance, but it goes some interesting places beforehand.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Daybreak
    Involving and sometimes comically bleak but never fully convincing as drama.
  86. The Treatment
    The Treatment fails to do anything interesting with Jake.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Ta Ra Rum Pum
    A tasty diversion from the usual Hollywood fare.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Provoked: A True Story
    There's an interesting movie in here, too, about the isolation of Indian brides brought to a new country by strange new husbands and mistreated, but Provoked rarely ducks below its glossy surface to go there.
  89. Duck
    Writer-director Nic Bettauer can't decide whether to play Duck for tears or laughs.
  90. Being Human
    Being Human isn't totally devoid of the gentle Forsyth magic. But it doesn't have nearly enough of it. Even Williams can do only so much with an assignment that calls for him to mostly stand around looking bummed out - in quintuplicate. [06 May 1994]
    • Boston Globe
  91. Dr. Bronner's Magic Soapbox
    Alternately shows the elder Bronner as lovable and nutty, sinister and terrifying, victim and victimizer. Ultimately, those disparate elements never coalesce.
  92. Joshua
    Joshua is the sort of movie in which nobody does what you would do: like spank or demand an extra-strength time out.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    El cantante
    Ideally, it would give you a sense of an entire people knocking the planet off its axis with a shake of their hips. If only El Cantante were that movie. Instead, it's a curiously sludgy cross between a Doomed Star biopic and a J. Lo vanity project.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    O Jerusalem
    Alas, it aspires to be an epic drama but suffers from an acute identity crisis: It can't decide if it wants to be history, drama, or a cry for peace in the Mideast.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Duchess of Langeais
    The film's a minuet fetishistically repeated until either the audience or the lovers go crazy. I'd say it was a tie.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Unforeseen
    The film's case against overdevelopment needs to be, and could be, aggressive, airtight. It should play to the unconverted. Instead, The Unforeseen gives us . . . poetry.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Funny Games (2008)
    If this is daring in theory, it's a failure in practice. Exactingly well-made, the movie is grueling and unpleasant in the extreme - that's the point - but it's also working from a specious premise, that film-school Brechtian devices can bring on mass enlightenment.
  98. Smart People
    Mostly, Smart People is a failure of imagination.
  99. Deal
    Deal doesn't really care about the characters as much as it does the World Poker Championships, where Tommy and Alex end up. Once we get there the movie becomes interesting because Cates understands the game and its dramas a lot better than he understands people and theirs.
  100. The Tracey Fragments
    Formally, the effect is like watching really cinematic confetti.
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