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. Fun with Dick and Jane
    Writers Nicholas Stoller and Judd Apatow remake is more devilish, hitting its targets with the reckless glee required for a round of Whac-A-Mole.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    Bella
    In this bilingual morality movie about love, family, and fate, however, the unpredictability turns out to be highly predictable.
  3. Sgt. Bilko
    Martin makes Bilko's roguishness endearing, and entertaining enough to carry the film even if it is essentially an overextended half-hour sitcom episode. [29 Mar 1996, p.105]
    • Boston Globe
    • 47 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Cote d'Azur
    A broad, bawdy, silly French farce set on the Riviera in high season, it's a diversion at best and a strained souffle at worst, but it rings enough Gallic changes on the old family-summer-gone-horribly-wrong genre to deliver some unexpectedly sharp laughs.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Accepted
    Low of brow and pure of heart, the movie plays like "Animal House" extra-lite, and as such it's decent indecent fun.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Before the Rains
    The competent, at times suspenseful Before the Rains orbits us along a trajectory of innocence corrupted, domesticity infested by politics, and local tradition messed with by a powerful Westerner. Unfortunately, that trajectory feels routine.
  7. Josie and the Pussycats
    Mindless glitz-o-ramas don't get any snazzier.
    • Boston Globe
  8. What Women Want
    Disappoints.
  9. The Guru
    The movie offers up too many airy spiritual lessons in the hope of crossing from farce to sentiment.
  10. Better Than Sex
    There are many things that Better Than Sex is better than, although sex is not among them. It is better than a root canal, an IRS audit, or a rained-out ballgame.
  11. Brother
    Cool killers - Kitano's stock in trade - do not necessarily make for cool movies.
  12. Chaplin
    Richard Attenborough's Chaplin is little more than an illustrated crash course on Charlie Chaplin. But, while superficial, it at least avoids disgrace. [08 Jan 1993, p.25]
    • Boston Globe
      • Posted Jun 30, 2017
    • 47 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    In the Cut
    It might even work if In the Cut was remotely convincing as a thriller, but Campion can't help wrinkling her nose at genre.
  14. Dancing Across Borders
    Well-meant though it may be, the movie has an advertorial gloss.
  15. Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore
    It’s a happy task to report that Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore is a marked improvement on “Crimes.”
  16. Regarding Henry
    Nichols is a director who cleanly sculpts his scenes, leaving no intention or action vague. Maybe he should have allowed for a little more ambiguity. [10 July 1991, p.51]
    • Boston Globe
    • 47 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    A Good Year
    A shamelessly enjoyable retread, an ode to la belle vie that has been well turned on a factory spindle.
  18. The Box
    The Box is the work of a visionary flirting with commercialism after having so grandly flouted it with “Southland Tales.’’ He doesn’t give in completely. Several trips to the megaplex might be required for The Box to make complete sense.
  19. RED 2
    A sequel that has some snappy interplay, typically courtesy of Malkovich, but mostly feels like a cast working to manufacture what came naturally the first time.
  20. Secret Headquarters
    Secret Headquarters is uneven but consistently lively. There are moments of real wit (when was the last time you saw a movie use Pig Latin?), though not enough to compensate for the fairly tired, somewhat confused action sequences.
  21. The Whole Nine Yards
    Light on its feet and reveling in its deviousness, it stays one step ahead of us .
  22. Railroad Tigers
    It’s only the first week of January, but it will be hard to beat Hong Kong director Ding Sheng’s Railroad Tigers for the best opening credit sequence of the year.
  23. Failure to Launch
    The movie brings to mind the more polite parts of "Wedding Crashers." Failure to Launch, while totally exuberant and appealingly made, is not nearly as randy.
  24. Pee-wee's Big Adventure
    Pee- wee's Big Adventure is a shrewdly observed, deftly executed looney tune. [9 Aug 1985, p.42]
    • Boston Globe
  25. Simon Magus
    An odd but original, at times even poetic, film about a vanished world.
  26. What to Do in Case of Fire
    Like Schumacher, director Gregor Schnitzler is more preoccupied with his characters' looks than their behavior. You might not buy the ideas. But you'll definitely want the T-shirt.
  27. The Girl Next Door
    Comes up short when things get serious, resorting to cliches and a whole lot of hooey about "moral fiber."
  28. Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb
    Seeing Ben Stiller, the late Robin Williams, and their magically roused gang together again, this time in London, is initially all about indulgent, nostalgic smiles rather than new wows. But then comes the movie’s exceptionally clever and fresh final act, which delivers genuine surprise along with many laughs.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    He's Just Not That Into You
    Good comfort food for most of its running time, thanks to a cast of attractive, unchallenging pros and Ken Kwapis's smooth direction.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Matrix Revolutions
    Revolutions, the final installment in the trilogy, parcels things more neatly. You get 45 minutes of the Wachowskis' patented theosophical bong water, followed by an hour of the most muscular, hard-core special-effects rama-lama yet to hit the screen. Only then does Jesus show up.
  31. In the Land of Women
    In the Land of Women sounds like a piece of cheap science fiction about the last man on earth. If you're the lovelorn mother and daughter in Jonathan Kasdan's first movie, a grating romantic drama, that's painfully close to the truth.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    In the Heart of the Sea
    In the Heart of the Sea plays as if the joke was real and everyone on the production had caved in. The result, as a movie, is a joke.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Jennifer's Body
    Jennifer’s Body falls into the dispiriting category of dumb movies made by smart people, in this case a glibly clever writer and a talented director who think a few wisecracks are enough to subvert the teen horror genre.
  34. Bad Teacher
    You don't want to think, what would Preston Sturges or Alexander Payne do with this material? But there is a seed of satirical cynicism in this movie that a smart, clear mind could have finessed. Jake Kasdan is not that director. He doesn't appear to know what to do.
  35. 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.
  36. Lions for Lambs
    It does not feel good to report that a movie with Robert Redford, Meryl Streep, and Tom Cruise makes the eyelids droop. But that's what Lions for Lambs does.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    The Architect
    Perhaps urban-planning solutions are too much to expect from a Friday night at the movies, but in a film this ambitious, the evident lack of thought put into the problem is disappointing. As any architect knows, it's easier to tear down than to build up.
  38. By Hook or by Crook
    Not particularly good -- meaning navigable, remotely entertaining, pleasing to the eye -- it does, rather nobly, want to hip its audience to gender fluidity.
  39. Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde
    Witherspoon is a professional, demanding we give ourselves over to her carbonated pluck.
  40. Heartbreakers
    Cries out for the brisk pacing of a Sturges or a Wilder. As is, it's too lumpish, languid, and lukewarm to hit even the guilty pleasure zone.
    • Boston Globe
  41. Flight of the Phoenix
    Silly to the last drop of rationed water.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Ladder 49
    Predictable, square, and honorable all at once.
  43. Burlesque
    It's entertaining enough, like watching a celebrity workout film with a plot. But never once is it believable.
  44. A Cure for Wellness
    It is at least 10 movies in one, some of them ingenious parodies, but all adding up to a cluttered, confused anticlimax.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Restless
    A torpidly precious love story about death-obsessed adolescents, the film's becalmed and embalmed in its own sensitive self-pity.
  46. Jack Reacher: Never Go Back
    It all makes for competent but routine suspense.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Flyboys
    The movie's straightforward and ingratiating, and as pretty-boy history lessons go, it's a lot less obnoxious than "Pearl Harbor."
  48. The Dressmaker
    Aussie Rosalie Ham’s quirky gothic novel is too tonally erratic to be completely satisfying. But we do get two Kates for the price of one, in a sense, as this crazy quilt of a movie allows her to play both entertainingly vampy and vulnerable.
  49. Swing Vote
    Swing Vote is a satire that's afraid to satirize.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Choke
    Disappointing not for what it is but what it could have been.
  51. Wish
    Though the visuals are often quite stunning, you’ll wish that “Wish” had a better story. Not even Magnifico is powerful enough to make you forget.
  52. Coming to America
    The romantic stuff is tepid. Luckily, his onscreen buddy, Hall, never strays far. Coming to America is at its best when they're playing off each other, and not just as the prince and his buddy. [29 Jun 1988, p.69]
    • Boston Globe
  53. 1492: Conquest of Paradise
    Although 1492: Conquest of Paradise is a classier failure than Christopher Columbus: The Discovery, the glum truth is that both are lost at sea. [09 Oct 1992, p.85]
    • Boston Globe
  54. Where the Truth Lies
    An erotic thriller. It is also an Atom Egoyan picture, which means any claims either to actual eroticism or conventional thrills are theoretical at best.
  55. The Shipping News
    The Shipping News is good news, but not as good as it could have been.
    • Boston Globe
  56. Sordid Lives
    It's heady in the beginning, chaotic throughout, and numb with the suddenness of the Internet economy's plummet at the end.
    • Boston Globe
  57. The Legend of Bagger Vance
    It offers pleasures of a kind that fewer and fewer films even seem to remember, much less aspire to.
  58. The Last Shot
    Any movie that would think Calista Flockhart to be the sort of high-strung basket case who'd hurl obscenities down at a dog kennel outside her apartment is worth sitting through.
  59. Luther
    The film winds up stranding us in a desperate wilderness of collapse and betrothal.
  60. Shall We Dance
    Gere is a pleasure, smiling and spinning and high-fiving his two classmates -- played by Bobby Cannavale and Omar Miller -- and the movie is happy and extremely likable.
  61. Halloween (2007)
    As with Zombie's two previous schlock horror features, "House of 1000 Corpses" and "The Devil's Rejects," the atmosphere here isn't so much tense and jolting as unnervingly weird and gory, but it's effective.
  62. Young Guns II
    Young Guns had no vision at all. Young Guns II at least tries for poetry and irony and epic scale. And it finds humor in such things as the outlaws' keen appreciation of media exposure and image-making. But its chronicling of the gang's downfall just slogs. [01 Aug 1990, p.63p]
    • Boston Globe
  63. Reno 911!: Miami
    This low-rent, nonsense cop business filled me with a nostalgic twinge. I didn't know I wanted the "Police Academy" series resurrected with a lot more hilarity, but I'm glad somebody did it.
  64. The Lost City
    The Lost City is Andy Garcia's ballad to Havana during the Cuban revolution. You'll have to forgive the penthouse view, though -- it's the only one Garcia can seem to find.
  65. I Saw the Light
    Tom Hiddleston puts in a performance as Williams that ranks with that of Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash in “I Walk the Line.” And Hiddleston gets to do it in a better movie.
  66. The Hitman's Bodyguard
    Even by the junk-food standards of summer action comedies, The Hitman’s Bodyguard is overlong, over-violent, and over the top.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Wild
    How's the movie? Technologically incredible, aesthetically pretty hideous, and narratively lumpy: Kids who aren't cynics (i.e., 9 and under) will roll with it.
  68. 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.
  69. 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.
  70. Nine Months
    Grant is surrounded by terrific comic performances from Robin Williams, Tom Arnold and Jeff Goldblum. Director Chris Columbus bolsters them with lively, robust pacing, turning Nine Months into a comedy of pregnancy that tests positive. [12 July 1995, p.41]
    • Boston Globe
    • 47 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Sunlit Night
    Taken as a whole, The Sunlit Night is fey and inconclusive, and whether something of more substance got cut in the post-Sundance re-edit or was never there to begin with is at this point moot. The movie’s up a most beautiful creek without a paddle.
  72. High Spirits
    Neil Jordan's High Spirits wants to be a supernatural comedy. But it isn't super, it isn't natural, it isn't high, and it isn't spirited. [18 Nov 1988, p.33]
    • Boston Globe
  73. Oscar
    While visually handsome, Oscar is terminally sluggish. [26 Apr 1991, p.71]
    • Boston Globe
  74. Max
    These promising themes aren’t given much more than surface treatment, making for a movie as conveniently tidy as some coming-home schmaltz on basic cable.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Irresistible
    Irresistible is a movie of the moment. Unfortunately, that moment is 2015.
  76. 27 Dresses
    A sporadically entertaining cupcake of a movie.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Masterminds
    It’s weird-stupid more than good-stupid.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Time Traveler's Wife
    At its best, The Time Traveler’s Wife does suggest the preciousness of a life that’s too often beyond our control. At its worst, it’s more than a little nuts.
  79. Thunder and the House of Magic
    Thunder falls into the common mistake of many children’s films — it underestimates its audience.
  80. Project Almanac
    One of the advantages of time travel in a found-footage film is that it makes the chronology and causality so confusing that the problem of who’s shooting what becomes secondary. On the other hand, it doesn’t allow fast-forwarding through all the boring bits. For starters, I could have done with far less Lollapalooza.
  81. The Prince and Me
    This is a smart piece of revisionist fluff that dares to question what happens after the royal honeymoon is over.
  82. Man on Fire
    Man on Fire is ponderous and bloated, dragging the Bible and Giannini into its swirling cesspool. Scott can't give the movie any real emotional weight. And Washington gives his first lifeless performance.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Silver City
    As it is, the movie only shudders to life when Dickie Pilager's onscreen.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Herbie Fully Loaded
    Blandly noisy and inoffensively average.
  85. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
    The problem with “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” is the same as so many of these franchise-based films: They’re all soulless special-effects extravaganzas where CGI takes the place of character development, good writing, and emotional connection.
  86. The Game of Their Lives
    What the cast members lack in sharpened skill they more than make up for in raw gusto and athletic scrappiness (most of the actors have logged a lot of soccer in their pasts). These guys give a sport that is virtually nameless in the movies a good name in this one.
  87. Maniac
    This remake, like Frank’s horrible hobby, remains an exercise in empty repetition.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Heaven Is for Real
    While Heaven Is for Real asks a lot of questions, it ultimately has no doubt whatsoever about the answers. Take it on faith or not at all.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Giver
    The movie runs an hour and a half. Lowry’s book can be read in less than a day. It still gives anyone — child or adult — more than enough to wrestle with.
  90. Wyatt Earp
    Kevin Costner's epic Wyatt Earp literally and figuratively gives you more of the legendary lawman than any of the other famous movies about him. [24 Jun 1994, p.47]
    • Boston Globe
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Monogamy
    Monogamy sets up a nifty idea that it doesn't follow through.
  92. The Alto Knights
    When we’re not being fed warmed-over narration and editing tricks that remind us of the Scorsese-directed examples, we’re trapped with a visibly disinterested De Niro. He barely gives one performance, let alone two.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Blair Witch
    The upshot is that Blair Witch comes to the party very late and very tired, and it doesn’t improve from there.
  94. The Skeleton Key
    It has the wild, rancid atmosphere of a garbage bag that a raccoon has ripped open.
  95. Hotel Transylvania
    Some might say there isn't enough that's fresh here to recommend the movie in a big way, except that every generation of trick-or-treaters deserves its monster mash.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Rock of Ages
    The movie has its cheesy pleasures, and some of them are even intended. I'm just not sure whether Tom Cruise's impersonation of Axl Rose is one of them. 
  97. The X Files: I Want to Believe
    The truth is, indeed, still out there. And when Carter finds it, may he heed its wisdom: Let go.
  98. The Good Guy
    It’s network television drama, starring actors best known for their TV work and full of the petty gripes and mild worries of characters who really have nothing compelling to worry about.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Like Mike
    I don't want to sell Like Mike as something it's not. It's a cash-in, all right - just better written, more tightly edited, sharply performed, and a little more heartfelt than most.
    • 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.
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