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. Irina Palm
    Doesn't deliver on a lot of fronts. But then again it gives us full-on Faithfull, who manages to bare herself completely without ever actually getting undressed.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Elsa y Fred
    Elsa & Fred does graze against an interesting idea: that the vitality of our youths lives on in the prison of aging bodies.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    A Secret
    A structural mess that turns contrived just when it should be hitting home.
  4. Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story
    If there were a liberal equivalent to Fox News (no, not MSNBC, which is so much milk-fed veal to Rupert Murdoch's steak tartare), Boogie Man is the sort of programming it would thrive on.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Under Our Skin
    Heartbreaking stories of patients suffering life-shattering illness make Under Our Skin compelling. It would have been an even better movie if the filmmakers had been more diligent in following the money.
  6. My One and Only
    The movie has a jolly, half-remembered quality, as though it were adapted from a particularly rose-colored memoir.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Second Skin
    This is a well-made film that will seem revelatory to moviegoers unfamiliar with the huge, worldwide gaming culture. They’re going to be pretty hard to find, however.
  8. Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
    If we learn nothing else about Krasinski as a filmmaker, it’s that he thinks more is more.
  9. The Little Traitor
    The mix of mawkishness and polemic is naive. Children, though, will probably leave with a lot of good questions. A better movie would leave them with more.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Ten9Eight: Shoot for the Moon
    If Ten9Eight brings NFTE to the attention of you, your child, or your school administrator, that’s probably all that matters.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The New Daughter
    Buried under a mound of haunted house cliches is a creepier, more sophisticated movie about the sexual power of teenage girls, and their fathers’ inability to comprehend, clambering to get out.
  12. Terribly Happy
    The characters are intended to be slightly stupid, but the writing isn’t necessarily smarter.
  13. Dancing Across Borders
    Well-meant though it may be, the movie has an advertorial gloss.
  14. The Last Song
    A more convincing star could make this a degree more tolerable, although in Cyrus’s defense not much more.
  15. The Sun Behind the Clouds: Tibet's Struggle for Freedom
    While never heavy-handed about its politics, the film makes no effort to disguise its strong anti-Chinese bias.
  16. 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.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Greatest
    The filmmaker’s uncertainty shows itself in drably functional camerawork and an over-reliance on Christophe Beck’s tasteful piano-and-violin score.
  18. Breaking Upwards
    The film gets stronger and more involving as the drama gets heavier and the couple’s rift grows.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    When You're Strange
    The man inside that legend has yet to come into focus 40 years on. Morrison wanted the world and he wanted it now, and he got it. What When You’re Strange can’t admit is that he had no idea what to do next.
  20. The Misfortunates
    The movie has to twist your arm to get you to feel for these people. But you wouldn’t be wrong to think it’s been broken.
  21. The Cartel
    Actually, everything in Bowdon’s rant about America’s woeful public school system is important, including Bowdon.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Kenny Chesney: Summer in 3D
    In occasional vignettes voiced over home movies and old photos, Chesney talks with humble conviction of reaching people in the cheap seats.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Harry Brown
    After a long run of baroquely plotted crime dramas like "Layer Cake'' and "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels,'' it's a little depressing to come across a vigilante drama whose sole twist is its protagonist's advanced age.
    • 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.
  25. Perrier's Bounty
    Perrier’s Bounty is all stock material, full of characters that deserve more than the cliched shootouts and showdowns that befall them. Even the movie’s most natural impulses seem to come from a can.
  26. The Sorcerer's Apprentice
    A flavorless family-friendly action-adventure that doubles as memory exploitation. It has nothing to do with either the Mickey Mouse broom sequence of the same name from 1940's "Fantasia'' or the 213-year-old Goethe poem that inspired it.
  27. The Adjustment Bureau
    Whether this movie works for you largely depends on whether you're willing to work for it. To which I say: Bring your gym clothes.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Last Exorcism
    There may once have been a good and a bad film fighting for the soul of The Last Exorcism, but in its final moments, cinema's dark forces triumph emphatically.
  29. Grown Ups
    In Sandler's movies, men don't cry; they urinate. So the scene in which the stars empty their bladders and change the color of a swimming pool's water might be the weepiest of the year.
  30. Buried
    Buried works better as an evocation of "Twilight Zone'' eeriness. Even then, it's silly and gimmicky.
  31. 8: The Mormon Proposition
    A deeply felt, and numbingly partisan, documentary about how the Mormon Church both bankrolled and masterminded passage of the initiative.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Wild Grass
    In its refusal to connect the dots, Wild Grass is playful unto tediousness, and between Azéma's overly cutesy performance -- all Harpo Marx hair-frizz and popped eyes -- and Mark Snow's painfully (purposefully?) banal lounge-jazz score, the movie functions as a theoretical irritant rather than a film.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    South of the Border
    Three minutes into the film, we feel the sharpness of Stone's ax to grind. It's dull to be told what to think.
  34. Kisses
    What the writer and director, Lance Daly, means as some kind of transporting urban adventure for them is a disenchanting slog for us.
  35. Ramona and Beezus
    Ramona and Beezus the movie, should not be confused with "Beezus and Ramona'' the book.
  36. Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel
    One wants to find enlightenment - or at least entertainment - in this reconsideration of Playboy and of Hefner. But it's tainted.
  37. Countdown to Zero
    An earnest, alarmist new docu-plea for nuclear disarmament, concludes with an orgy of such destruction. Mushroom clouds. Infernal white light. Obliterating energy blasts. It's all here, and mostly beyond the pale.
  38. Halloween II (2009)
    The copious violence, as always, is an assault - even aurally, as every thudding knife strike is made to sound like a boulder dropping on the theater.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore
    Stands to delight small children while probably causing their parents' heads to cave in.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Extra Man
    Everyone in the film is an uninteresting grotesque.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Sicilian Girl
    Ends with a curious whimper instead of the bang it has been pointing toward; the filmmaker's reverence for his heroine seems to bind his hands.
  42. Cairo Time
    Cairo Time is a kind of bourgeois delusion. It's authentically aggravated but bogusly conceived.
  43. 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).
  44. Nanny McPhee Returns
    The initial close-up of Thompson - all sourly snaggletoothed and begoggled - is as funny as anything in the original. And just that one quick glimpse would have been perfect.
  45. The Switch
    The romantic comedy has never had a star as depressing as Jennifer Aniston. It's not the movies - well, it isn't simply the movies.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    RED
    "The Expendables" trotted out the concept this summer, and it was good dumb fun - a nudge-nudge wink-wink '80s movie on steroids. RED is more self-consciously wacky, more stridently in your face, and more disappointing.
  47. The American
    The film is overripe with erotic symbols.
  48. You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger
    Shopworn to the bone.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Howl
    Well intentioned on every level, the movie is successful only on some, and it falls flat when trying to visualize the innards of the poem itself.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Life as We Know It
    Life as We Know It gives bland and predictable a good name.
  51. Due Date
    A rather pat, occasionally desperate road comedy.
    • 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.
  53. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
    The Dawn Treader, like its predecessors, has no real struggle or drama. We're dealing with kids for whom everything comes too easily for us to care.
  54. TRON: Legacy
    Tron: Legacy gives us a dud stud named Garrett Hedlund as Sam Flynn, the hero of this petrified sequel to 1982's "Tron." None of what he sees impresses. The feeling is mutual.
  55. Somewhere
    I can't say why Coppola wanted to spend time with this man. It's like following someone on Twitter who fails to generate many compelling tweets.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Green Hornet
    It's off-putting, rude, misshapen, and more often than not hysterically funny. The second half, sadly, is an ear-splitting train wreck.
  57. Blue Valentine
    All the movie's good style goes to waste on a not terribly compelling conceit and loosely sketched characters.
  58. Heartbreaker
    This is a movie whose cynicism in the name of idealism might have appealed to Billy Wilder.
  59. The Romantics
    It's hard to care about people this generic - even when they're naked.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Fair Game
    Fair Game takes one of the more shameful sub-chapters in modern US politics - and turns it into a strident, condescending Hollywood melodrama.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Next Three Days
    Haggis finally finds the movie's groove late in the game, and the escape sequence itself is hectic, suspenseful, and enjoyably ridiculous.
    • 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.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Leaving
    The only reason to see Leaving - and it's not a bad reason at all - is for the sight of Kristin Scott Thomas in a rare happy mood.
  64. Red Dawn
    As a combat action spectacle, the movie takes a straightforward, gritty approach that makes for mostly solid viewing.
  65. The Warrior's Way
    While the movie seems designed to be a breakout for Jang, it's Lee whose work actually makes an impression.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Tempest
    A comparison to Baz Luhrmann is useful: Where Taymor self-consciously aestheticizes pop vulgarity, a movie like "Moulin Rouge!" just dives right in.
  67. The Tourist
    A slow and silly action-comedy romantic-thriller.
  68. Country Strong
    Paltrow makes the part look natural. She's not impersonating an actual singer, so she seems merely like a twangy, alcoholic version of herself. She should be stopped from dancing in enormous arenas, but her thin voice is rather pretty.
  69. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
    This native send-off is robotic enough to leave you eager to see what an artist might do with a reboot.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Four Lions
    Real satire must be savage, and Four Lions, for all its daring, finally doesn't dare enough.
  71. Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale
    Finnish filmmaker Jalmari Helander's dark-comic expansion on his cult Internet shorts, in which he crafts a back story for Santa that's as black as stocking coal.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Sanctum
    A muscular Australian B-movie down to the thin characters and boilerplate dialogue.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    I Am Number Four
    A well-made, reasonably diverting night at the multiplex that will seem overly familiar to everyone except teenage girls.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Sucker Punch
    It's a surprisingly joyless mash-up of every bit of fanboy flotsam floating around in its maker's cranium.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance
    Like a surly teen pilot, you, too, might find yourself bored and muttering, “Honestly, maybe the fate of humanity and the world isn’t important to me, either.’’
  76. The Mechanic
    An intermittently arresting, mostly standard action entry that deals death noisily more than cleverly - a lot like the original.
  77. Sacrifice
    Sacrifice wants to have it both ways. It's willing neither to give itself up to the goofy sincerity of genre conventions nor to make the demands on viewers that serious drama requires. The sacrifices Chen's characters make would signify that much more if he'd made a sacrifice or two himself.
  78. Priest
    Priest is based on a series of Korean graphic novels. What it's really based on, though, is other movies - a whole lot of other movies.
    • 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.
  80. Water for Elephants
    The camera, costumes, and art direction do everything right. Too much so. The movie strips away both the grand weirdness of the circus and the dire desolation of the Depression. Diane Arbus and Dorothea Lange are exchanged for Vanity Fair.
  81. Scream 4
    Scream 4 has a smart beginning, featuring Anna Paquin and Kristen Bell, and one well-delivered line at the end that would have brought down the house in a better movie.
  82. Arthur
    The new remake of Arthur is a thin copy of the 1981 original. But it has a few things going for it.
  83. The Dictator
    You're left with an inert, politically neutral movie, a satire that can't bring itself to properly satirize anything.
  84. Friends with Kids
    There's also new piety and self-righteousness about parenting. Comedies are nervous to find the real humor and wonder in having a family. It's usually tragedy or nothing.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
    To press the point, there is absolutely no need for a fourth Pirates of the Caribbean.
  86. The Eagle
    Part of the trouble is casting. This is a movie that needs a great or gonzo performer to give it depth or heft.
  87. Orgasm Inc.
    Canner is either overwhelmed by so much impressive access to so many alarming business opportunities or lacking the investigative rigor to drive home the moral problems of these drugs and the existential problems of these women.
  88. I Am
    Shadyac doesn't film how his change inspires more change, or showing him, say, starting a school for destitute orphans. All we see him give is this movie. It's not much of a contribution.
  89. Immigration Tango
    Neither the comedy nor the romance is strong enough in Immigration Tango to offer any improvement on Peter Weir's similar, and better, 1990 film "Green Card."
  90. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2
    This fifth and mercifully final installment features so much idle anticipation that it's unclear whether we're watching a movie or an Apple product launch.
  91. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1
    The movie is long and uniquely bad, the last of Stephenie Meyer's four books greedily tortured into two installments.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Lincoln Lawyer
    Formulaic enough to suggest that franchise would be B level at best, a TV series at worst. But it's also just good enough to make you want to watch it, anyway.
  93. The Beaver
    The most provocative thing about The Beaver is the adult-movie title. The film itself is alternately fascinating and dull, though mostly the latter.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Smurfs
    The bottom line: Any movie that gives Jonathan Winters work is doing something right.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
    It's an enjoyably demented meta-finale, the rivals showing what they could do if they ever bothered to actually do it.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Rubber
    The carnage is cartoonishly graphic, but the onlookers watching through binoculars from a nearby sandy bluff are impressed.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Conspirator
    An important film, on an important subject, that has had the life beaten out of it by Robert Redford, a man who should know better.
  98. Mr. Popper's Penguins
    This is a flavorless adaptation of Richard and Florence Atwater's 73-year-old children's book.
  99. Larry Crowne
    Larry Crowne isn't a movie for adults. It's a movie for adults who don't like things with screens and keyboards.
  100. Transformers: Dark of the Moon
    He concocts a climactic war that flattens downtown Chicago. Bay is such a little boy's director. You know he picked that city because it's the one with the best rock-'em-sock-'em street names. Wacker! Wabash!
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