Boston Globe's Scores

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For 7,945 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: 5,227 out of 7945
  2. Mixed: 1,553 out of 7945
  3. Negative: 1,165 out of 7945
7945 movie reviews
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  1. From Justin to Kelly
    They have the chemistry of step-siblings, so a movie that has them make out is, as the one of the few girls in the theater exclaimed, "so gross."
  2. Manito
    Because Manito is really just an opera without the violins or Viking hats, you probably don't need to have everything spelled out. Its Spanish-English script is secondary to the universal language and timeless drama of family, community, dreams made and dreams dashed.
    • 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.
  4. The Nazi Officer's Wife
    One of the most compelling films the Holocaust has yet produced.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Jet Lag
    As a credible love story, though, the film never leaves the runway. If you're a fan of these actors, you may want to look up Jet Lag when it comes out on video, or catch it on an Air France flight while flirting with the passenger in the next seat.
  6. The Heart of Me
    The first half of The Heart of Me is just that sort of hoot. You know where it's all headed, and you can't wait for it to get there, as the cheap, cruel ironies pile up almost farcically.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Hollywood Homicide
    One of the most lazily scripted, poorly structured, smugly stereotyped star vehicles in recent memory. Bizarrely, this seems to be the point.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Rugrats Go Wild
    Slapstick and potty humor for the kids, sly allusions and famous voices for the adults, and a light coating of aren't-we-lucky-to-have-each-other schmaltz at the very end - yep, Nickelodeon has the family-flick formula pretty much down.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Tycoon: A New Russian
    Despite its ambitious depiction of post-Soviet economic woes, Tycoon is an uneven political thriller that suffers mostly from a highly convoluted story line.
  10. Herod's Law
    Incisive, highly entertaining political farce.
  11. Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd
    Yes, I've seen Dumb and Dumberer, so you don't have to. As good deeds go, this is about as significant as getting a cat out of a tree, but believe me, you're better off at home, alphabetizing your old comic books, talking to your parents, or watching paint dry.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Love the Hard Way
    The film's final scenes are among its silliest, unfortunately.
  13. The Eye
    Like the horror-flick hacks who infest Hollywood like termites, the Pangs don't build suspense, they assault the senses with twitchy photography and Danny's editing.
  14. Wattstax (re-released)
    Wattstax is a disorienting and ironic moviegoing experience. It's a film about the curative powers of rhythm-and-blues music that sets out to frustrate your sense of rhythm in its insistence on the blues.
  15. 2 Fast 2 Furious
    Regardless, it's sad that Singleton is taking Diesel's sloppy seconds.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Whale Rider
    Like last year's Inuit sensation ''The Fast Runner,'' the Maori drama Whale Rider is based on a folk myth, and it's told with an elemental timelessness that feels like a swan dive into prehistory.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Weather Underground
    Essential viewing for anyone who wants to know the roots -- and perils -- of modern political dissent.
  18. Together
    The film doesn't amount to an emotionally palpable experience. Most of the stops it attempts to pull out are rusty. The movie ends with a gigantic lump in its throat, one that would take a tall glass of Barbara Stanwyck to wash down.
  19. The Italian Job
    Norton is unapologetic and unflappable in his part. Slimy and vaguely nerdy, he's become the thinking man's thug, even if this character's Armani-wear is better tailored than his psychology.
  20. Wrong Turn
    As perfectly bad horror movies go, Wrong Turn is something new: a gore-splattered workout flick.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Capturing the Friedmans
    As the Friedmans split apart like fissile neutrons, their story becomes five stories, none of which is remotely like the others.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Finding Nemo
    Pixar is so good at what it does that every other kiddie-entertainment purveyor -- including parent company Disney -- flounders in comparison.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The In-Laws
    Perhaps the biggest disappointment is that The In-Laws was directed by Andrew Fleming, who delivered the fizzy Nixon-era comedy ''Dick'' a few years back and who also had a hand in ''Grosse Pointe,'' the wicked, briefly-lived WB parody of TV teen dramas. The man obviously knows from satire, but not on the evidence of anything here.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Grazia's Island
    If you prefer your domestic clashes sunnier and more strenuously poetic, Respiro may be your respite. If nothing else, it's a reminder of how severely underutilized Valeria Golino is as both actress and cinematic glory.
  25. Bruce Almighty
    Bruce Almighty would rather go runny and bland, mostly where Aniston's Grace is concerned.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Sea
    You may have to be from Iceland to take dialogue like ''You can't freeze love like a gutted fish'' with a straight face.
  27. Cinemania
    What Christlieb and Kijak do so well is keeping these folks from not seeming like loons.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    L'Auberge Espagnole
    The movie also rather sweetly suggests that the apartment being shared is Europe itself. There's a reason this warm, stylish human comedy was a big hit all across the Continent: It conveys a new generation's conviction that borders no longer matter.
  29. Secret Lives: Hidden Children and Their Rescuers During WWII
    These children are indeed the faces of war. It's just harder to recognize them because they're the ones someone cared enough to save.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Pokémon Heroes
    Any richness in the drawing of the backgrounds only underscores the weirdly flat, affectless renderings of the characters moving through them.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    A Woman Is a Woman
    The most playful film to come out of the French New Wave, it's also the last time Jean-Luc Godard appeared to have any fun.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Sweet Sixteen
    Compston's performance and the downer milieu, presented with appropriate paint-peeling profanity, are more than enough to keep an audience riveted and ultimately moved close to tears.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Matrix Reloaded
    The thrill isn't gone from the sequel, but the surprise is, and it hurts more than you'd think.
  34. Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary
    Guy Maddin is a scholar, poet, prankster, and ferociously devoted classicist who likes to resurrect dead cinemas and deader directors and make them vital all over again.
  35. Only the Strong Survive
    The movie is the product of his (Friedman) big, shiny love of forgotten soul legends whom superstardom (and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, I might add) has eluded.
  36. The Trip
    Uses lots of stock footage and takes looks back at America's big transitional period as though the era came in a can.
  37. Man on the Train
    There's the air of sadness and worry all over this movie, and sometimes it's heavy. But it's air all the same.
  38. Daddy Day Care
    The Daddy Day Care business model appears to be the 1983 Michael Keaton vehicle ''Mr. Mom,'' put on an unstoppable sugar high.
  39. The Shape of Things
    The cast helps enliven what could otherwise come off as a treatise. All four actors played these roles during the play's off-Broadway run.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Down with Love
    This is all far beyond silly, of course - the most inconsequential sort of winking, meta-movie in-joke.
  41. X2: X-Men United
    It's scenic, confidently directed and performed, dutiful, faithful, revelatory, informative, and largely involving. Rarely, however, is it any <I>fun</I>.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Dancer Upstairs
    Far from perfect but completely unique, the film could best be described as a paranoid South American metaphysical political thriller -- you heard me -- and whatever its failures, they're not ones of nerve or imagination.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Owning Mahowny
    Hoffman confessed he was drawn to the role because ''this was a guy who didn't know how to feel, and I found that fascinating.'' His challenge is our frustration
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Blue Car
    It's that central dance between teacher and student that makes the movie both hard to watch and worth your attention - a subtle waltz of power in which it's difficult to tell who's leading until too late.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Lizzie McGuire Movie
    So who am I to carp that the film trades in the amiable realism of the show for just another watered-down pop star fantasy? Heck, it beats the Olsen twins. But not by much.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Spellbound
    At its most unsettling level, Spellbound asks us to consider what words are for and what childhood should be. It's as profound as anything you'll see this year, and, yes, it should have won the Oscar.
  47. Marooned in Iraq
    As full of joy as pain, it's a perspective we need to see more often.
  48. The Real Cancun
    Not so much a documentary as it is a bald-faced party movie.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    City of Ghosts
    It's an actor's film, all right -- peppered with rich supporting performances but unconvincing in the telling.
  50. A Decade Under the Influence
    The movie star Julie Christie turned 62 last month, and anyone under the impression that she merely floated through her prime heedless of the age in which she worked should catch her in A Decade Under the Influence.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Confidence
    Run the game, bow to the movies that did it better and before, keep the dialogue on the line between hard-boiled and hokey, and throw one last curveball before the lights come up. It's a con in itself, but the reward's in the playing.
  52. Identity
    It's an exasperating exercise in B-movie hokum and screenwriter's gimmickry.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    It Runs in the Family
    It's ''Hannah and Her Sisters'' with all the emotions and half the artistry.
  54. Medea
    Medea works on von Trier's own imagistic terms. There are shots and sequences in this movie that feel unique.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Winged Migration
    If it were any more real - if it were Imax, say -- the audience would be molting.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Holes
    Holes functions as a film, but just barely: Readers familiar with the book may negotiate the film's antic crosscutting, but newbies will need to pop a Dramamine before the lights dim.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Lilya 4-Ever
    Doesn't derive its power from the turning wheels of plot suspense but from the simple act of looking and not blinking.
  58. Malibu's Most Wanted
    Kennedy doesn't take the character any deeper than a caricature of rich, nonblack fans of hip-hop culture. But as a caricature, he's fantastic.
  59. Love and Diane
    fully devotes itself to painting a family portrait seldom allowed such rich cinematic detail.
  60. A Mighty Wind
    Full of redeeming throwaways.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Bulletproof Monk
    Indeed a rip-off - a rehash of Hong Kong superstar Chow's greatest celluloid moments with an overlay of Hollywood action cliches, youth-flick silliness, and ah-so stereotypes.
  62. Chasing Papi
    Just as you're ready to give up on Chasing Papi, Paul Rodriguez shows up, and the movie goes from plotless to wildly overwritten in just one scene.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    XX/XY
    A blandly filmed and subtext-heavy talkathon that wastes a game cast on a group of characters about whom it's almost impossible to care. If this were a cocktail party, you'd be back home with a good book already.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 100 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Ghosts of the Abyss
    It's a unique trip that flirts with hokeyness at the surface but that grows more compelling, awe-inspiring, and tragic the deeper you go.
  65. Anger Management
    The most dispiriting thing about Anger Management is that its cameos seem like leftovers.
  66. DysFunktional Family
    More vulgar than funny.
  67. The Man Without a Past
    It's a quiet little gag homage both to Boris Karloff and to the set up of shelf-loads of pulp novels and films noir. And Peltola, with his flat, serious face and damp, oil-black hair, happens to look, at times, like Richard Widmark and Kirk Douglas.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Phone Booth
    Short, suspenseful, funny, and profane, the film's a throwback to the neat little B-level thrillers the entertainment industry used to crank out by the dozen in the post- World War II era and the early days of TV.
  69. What a Girl Wants
    It's not that What a Girl Wants is dreadful; it's merely slapdash, wildly inconsistent in tone and style, and mind-numbingly predictable in character and plot.
  70. Levity
    Freeman and Hunter are both overqualified for material this ponderous, but she plays along, while he appears to have made a minimal emotional investment in the oncoming avalanche of coincidences and cliches.
  71. A Man Apart
    Directed by F. Gary Gray and written by Christian Gudegast and Paul T. Scheuring, the movie isn't even worthy of former NFL linebacker turned straight-to-video action figure Brian Bosworth.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Cowboy Bebop the Movie: Knockin' on Heaven's Door
    If you want state of the art anime that comes within spitting distance of escaping the limits of its genre, this might be your cup of bootleg sake.
  73. Fellini: I'm a Born Liar
    Only loosely concerned with behind-the-scenes gossip and is squarely focused on the nature of Fellini's insatiability.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Good Thief
    The actor is magnificent -- ravaged, desperate, aware -- and no more so than in a scene toward the end when Bob's cardsharp cool finally breaks. It's a risky scene, the one note of corn, but Nolte brings it home. Too bad the movie doesn't.
    • 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.
  76. The Core
    The real core of The Core is the beautiful friendship between a highly emotive Eckhart and the sacrificial Karyo. Their bond is the best thing to happen to Franco-American relations since SpaghettiOs.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Head of State
    Gets better -- more rambunctiously astute -- as it goes, and its comic engine sputters into fitful life when Bernie Mac arrives on the scene.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Raising Victor Vargas
    The ''R'' rating is understandable, but absurd. This is a family film in the most complicated and, ultimately, most cheering sense.
  79. Basic
    Falls flat on two fronts: It's neither deep and interesting enough to be a brainteaser nor sufficiently thrilling to count as a mindless diversion.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Piglet's Big Movie
    If you've got some very small fry on your hands and 75 minutes to kill, this is as bright, colorful, and fuzzy as you're going to get.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Chuen jik sat sau
    Filmed with panache, wit, chic amorality, and an inexhaustible supply of Micro Uzi ammunition, ''Killer'' nevertheless represents a baroque dead end for the Hong Kong action genre.
  82. Boat Trip
    Even 007 is a big old queen. Yes, Roger Moore's on board as a lusty codger, who, unlike the rest of us, can't get enough of Sanz.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 12 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    View from the Top
    Who on earth is this embarrassment -- easily the worst film of the year to date -- aimed at?
    • 35 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Dreamcatcher
    The longer it takes for the eldritch glop to hit the fan, in fact, the less true the movie may be to King. For better and for worse, Dreamcatcher is true to King.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Japan
    This crudely powerful film is a throwback. Unfolding at an elliptical pace that feels like a revelation, or tedium, or both, Japon recalls the glory days of 1970s art-house filmmaking.
  86. Willard
    Wonderfully deranged.
  87. Under the City's Skin
    More a bleak docu-melodrama than an esoteric morality play.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Hunted
    Del Toro does remind you of Brando here; unfortunately, it's the Brando of ''Apocalypse Now,'' the one with the green face and puffy line readings. Jones fares better, even if he wears the same grieving-for-humanity expression throughout the film.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Agent Cody Banks
    The premise of Agent Cody Banks is more than a little bizarre.
  90. Spun
    Because Spun is so plotless it's almost avant-garde, we're meant to be delighted with its assortment of set pieces.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Bend It Like Beckham
    The film's most natural appeal is to adolescent athletes -- in particular, cleat-wearing young ladies who will bask in its hard-won girl-power message. This is a movie with bruised shins and a huge heart.
  92. Laurel Canyon
    Frances McDormand rescues this role from the throes of cliche. It's as though drippy dialogue and sappy rock were a small price to pay for a part that lets her flash her breasts, get stoned, and join in a three-way.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Nowhere in Africa
    The movie's strength is its refusal to offer easy answers.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Bringing Down the House
    There are about 15 minutes of genuine, bust-a-gut comedy in Bringing Down the House, and, surprisingly, they belong to Steve Martin, who hasn't been funny on film in years.
  95. The Safety of Objects
    The film leaves you dissatisfied, as though you'd just spent two hours with a menagerie of plastic white people.
  96. 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.
  97. Tears of the Sun
    The film would be just as powerful, if less likely to saturate suburban megaplexes and flatter its patrons, were its saviors -- I don't know - French.
  98. Ten
    The new Abbas Kiarostami film is called Ten, and in it something amazing happens: nothing.
  99. Cradle 2 the Grave
    This is a ride, a video game, a soundtrack -- unapologetic and clearly labeled as such. It has no middle speed.
  100. Horns and Halos
    The film means to provoke a closer look at the faces of good and evil. It questions whether we really live in a world that can be divided neatly into black hats and white hats.
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