Boston Globe's Scores

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For 7,946 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: 5,228 out of 7946
  2. Mixed: 1,553 out of 7946
  3. Negative: 1,165 out of 7946
7946 movie reviews
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  1. 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.
  2. The Truth About Charlie
    The closer you get to sorting out the truth, the less likely you are to believe it, let alone comprehend it. The latter half of this movie is as outlandish as a Mexican soap opera.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Paid in Full
    The only victims in Paid in Full are the dealers and their families -- and the only word for that is one this paper can't print.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    All or Nothing
    Grueling, heavy-handed, and surprisingly insight-free. For once, a gaggle of Leigh characters hasn't jelled beyond the level of its cast's conceits.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Roger Dodger
    Mines laughs from the ways in which its antihero's reductive philosophy consistently goes kerflooey in his face, but there's a weary sadness to it as well.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Ghost Ship
    Pureed, predictable conflation of ''Alien'' and ''Titanic'' and ''The Shining.''
  7. Fidel
    Unabashed Fidel worship.
  8. Le bossu
    The story is a mess. But On Guard was directed by the reliable Philippe de Broca, who imbues the whole affair with high-calorie silliness.
  9. The Business of Fancydancing
    Shot in digital video, Fancydancing feels a bit like a racy after-school special. Performances are amateurishly uneven.
  10. Naqoyqatsi
    A movie that seems to have been made mostly on the hard drive of a Power Mac G4. But whatever, we get it: Technology destroys everything.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Real Women Have Curves
    I have seen the future of Hollywood movie stardom, and its name is America Ferrera.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Abandon
    Abandon is this CLOSE to being good, juicy, bad-movie fun.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Grey Zone
    Should be seen: It's a worthy ordeal, with flaws that, ironically, make grist for later arguments.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Auto Focus
    Uplifting? Not bloody likely. Mesmerizing? Very, thanks to Greg Kinnear's eerie performance as Crane and director Paul Schrader's lucid depiction of the character's happy-go-lucky descent into hell.
  15. The Ring
    The unworthy new Hollywood remake of Japan's horror phenomenon, ''Ring,'' has packed on a definite article and a whole lot of hooey.
    • 23 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Formula 51
    Bloody and bloody funny, and Jackson and Carlyle make the best salt-and-pepper team since Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte knocked heads in ''48 HRS., '' but ultimately the movie can't find a way out of its own dead end.
  17. Comedian
    lluminating and exceptional docu-portrait.
  18. Brown Sugar
    Brown Sugar fails to produce an image of hip-hoppery as fascinating and complex as the moment when Halle Berry set her tongue wagging during a ghetto-fabulous grind with Warren Beatty in ''Bulworth.''
    • 25 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Pokémon 4: The Movie
    Harmless in the extreme and it'll mute your kids for nearly 80 minutes, but why not just treat the little yard apes to the real deal and take them to ''Spirited Away''?
  20. Knockaround Guys
    Likable performances are critically wounded by implausible scenarios and derivative-minded direction referencing everything from ''Reservoir Dogs'' to ''Fargo.''
  21. Below
    With more character development this might have been an eerie thriller; with better payoffs, it could have been a thinking man's monster movie.
    • 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.
  23. The Transporter
    The best movie Steven Seagal never made. Except that Statham, while just as marked for death, is harder to kill.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Punch-Drunk Love
    It's a honey of a performance: controlled, achingly human, and funny in the deepest ways.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Safe Conduct
    Essentially a dramatic reenactment of a generation's coping strategies.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Tuck Everlasting
    These actors offset the modern-day ordinariness of the leads -- Jackson, especially, seems as if he's just driven over from a mall tour -- and so, ultimately, does the exquisite moral dilemma of Tuck Everlasting.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    White Oleander
    The people who've made White Oleander appear to have spent a lot of time worrying about the audience. They should have told the story and let us take care of ourselves.
  28. Bowling for Columbine
    Moore's roving essay feels even more urgent now than it did when the jury had to make up an award to honor it at the Cannes film festival in May.
  29. Swept Away
    At its best, Swept Away is like a scrapbook of postcards starring two lovebirds with great tans.
  30. Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie
    The movie's heart is in the right place, but all its messages of tolerance might resonate better if the Spanish-accented pirate didn't get drawn with a gold tooth and the turban-wearing Khalil wasn't an opportunistic rug merchant.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Heaven
    It's maddeningly chowderheaded, simplistic, pretentious, and not a little silly. You can't take your eyes off it.
  32. Welcome to Collinwood
    At some point we're flashed a junkyard billboard telling us that Collinwood is the ''Beirut of Cleveland'' - yes, but here, it's by way of Looney Tunes.
  33. Bloody Sunday
    The film is conducted in a delirious cinema-verite style; most of what you see has a brutal, you-are-there immediacy. You're not merely watching history, you're engulfed by it.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Red Dragon
    As Hopkins's Lecter is concerned, it's official: He's Freddy Krueger.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Just a Kiss
    It's coherent, well shot, and tartly acted, but it wears you down like a dinner guest showing off his doctorate.
  36. The Tuxedo
    The jokes are as fresh as rotten eggs and the direction stoops to the occasion.
  37. Skins
    Maybe the redemptions offered are simplistic in the context of this place, but they make for a dramatic (if heavily foreshadowed) conclusion.
  38. Shanghai Ghetto
    May not be as dramatic as Roman Polanski's ''The Pianist,'' but its compassionate spirit soars every bit as high.
  39. The Man from Elysian Fields
    Somewhere in this movie, amid the ponderous exchanges and unfortunate O. Henry-style coincidences, there's American tragedy.
  40. Siddhartha (re-release)
    Apologies to Conrad Rooks, but the only reason his 1972 film, Siddhartha, is getting a 30th-anniversary rerelease is the appeal of seeing Sven Nykvist's amazing cinematography restored to its full splendor.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Sweet Home Alabama
    Isn't just lame; it's neutered.
  42. Moonlight Mile
    The first half of Moonlight Mile feels like the runaway trailer for a movie that can't wait to jerk your tears. But to quote Joe in a moment of epiphany, there's a ''truth enema'' out there, and, boy, it really brings this movie around.
  43. The Trials of Henry Kissinger
    In ''Trials,'' Hitchens is almost endearing, stalking Kissinger from one event to the next like a bleary-eyed Michael Moore.
  44. Invincible
    Is a mellowed Herzog to be believed?
  45. Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever
    Banderas slums through this dollar-bin action flick wearing the same look of wiped-out exasperation that Danny Glover's Sergeant Murtaugh sports in each installment of ''Lethal Weapon.'' And like Murtaugh, Banderas might be too old for this, too.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Four Feathers
    Still as moth-eaten as a Bengal tiger rug on the floor of a London men's club.
  47. The Banger Sisters
    The Banger Sisters so frequently features Hawn running around in revealing attire, tossing instructions at exhausted people that I'm inclined to think of it as a workout video.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Trapped
    Bacon makes an appropriately detestable villain; unfortunately, he's the most interesting character here. As for Love, well, this puts her one career rung closer to ''Hollywood Squares.''
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Ignorant Fairies
    It's a soapy, simplistic, but surprisingly affecting ambisexual melodrama that plays a little like Pedro Almodovar without the surreal frills.
  50. 8 Women
    Even if some of the references are inscrutable, a lot of 8 Women is a riot. Here and there Ozon finds the key to a level of farce that would have amused Bunuel himself.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Secretary
    Love hurts in Secretary -- but not too much. It's not impossible to imagine adventurous young couples seeing this movie and rushing home to try out the handcuffs and paddles.
  52. Lawrence of Arabia (re-release)
    Lawrence is back on the big screen, and it simply demands to be seen. Yes, again.
  53. Spirited Away
    Delivers chunks of ''Yellow Submarine'' and ''The Phantom Tollbooth'' -- a vividly timeless oddity suitable for many children and most stoners.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Ciao America
    Eventually blossoms into a snappy piece about understanding yourself by listening to the personal triumphs and defeats of the past.
  55. The Experiment
    This cacophonous ending may serve to reinforce the filmmakers' cynical themes, but it leaves viewers trying desperately to remember the part of the film that had brains, wit, and so much promise.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Elvira's Haunted Hills
    She's like Bob Hope with fake breasts and a wig. Now, that's scary.
  57. The Children of the Century
    No one around this beauty-first rendition of these addled artisans and their brief, obsessive affair really understands the attraction, so most people just get out of the way.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Igby Goes Down
    Across the board, the performances testify, often hilariously, to the pain these characters feel and inflict but are incapable of expressing.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Barbershop
    A broad, very funny, unexpectedly graceful comedy of character and community.
  60. Alias Betty
    Miller is certainly faithful to the spirit of Rendell's psychologically probing, class-dissecting novels, even if his probing doesn't go nearly as deep and his storytelling isn't as compelling.
  61. Stealing Harvard
    Had Stealing Harvard merely been a stupid movie about people stuck in a string of silly moments, it could have gotten by on charm. As written by Peter Tolan and directed by Bruce McCulloch (''Kids in the Hall'') it's a stupid movie about stupid people.
    • 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.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    In Praise of Love
    At one point in ''Praise,'' Godard mentions that the Bois de Boulogne, the Parisian park, is all that's left of the French forests from the time of the Roman conquest. In Praise of Love, glowing like an ember, is all that's left of genius.
  64. Mad Love
    Like an ''Afterschool Special'' with costumes by Gianni Versace, Mad Love looks better than it feels.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Red Satin
    More than a predictable self-discovery yarn about the caterpillar that turns into a beautiful butterfly.
  66. Undisputed
    There are moments when Hill and Giler dare to turn Undisputed into an episode of ''Oz'' - albeit an insipid, belligerence-, and sex-free episode.
    • 18 Metascore
    • 25 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Serving Sara
    How inept is Serving Sara? It makes even Elizabeth Hurley seem graceless and ugly.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Amy's Orgasm
    Julie Davis, tries desperately to fill (Woody)Allen's Coke-bottle glasses, but it fails. Miserably.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    How I Killed My Father
    Polite but emotionally devastating, How I Killed My Father throws such questions out like smart bombs, and they detonate long after the end-credits have rolled.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    S1m0ne
    What it is, distressingly, is a mess - a ragbag of promising ideas and failed narrative, of good acting and plain old bad filmmaking.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    One Hour Photo
    Thriller fans might remember a terrific 1987 B flick called ''The Stepfather.'' One Hour Photo is that film, directed by an art student.
  72. The Adventures of Pluto Nash
    Cosmic slop.
    • Boston Globe
  73. Mostly Martha
    If there's nothing here for romantics, there's even less for gourmands. Nettelbeck fails to produce a good food metaphor, let alone an impressive, palate-aching preparation montage
  74. Blue Crush
    Not the sanctioned wet T-shirt contest you might be anticipating. The Pacific is the hottest body here. And director John Stockwell handles the frivolous material with an integrity that I have to admit I found disappointing. The movie isn't nearly dumb enough to be much beach fun.
  75. Katakuri-ke no kôfuku
    If there's one image that sums up the filmmaking style of Takashi Miike, it's the close-up of a bubbling hot pot on the family dinner table.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    I'm Going Home
    Richly allusive and eloquently stylized.
  77. The Château
    No one here is prodding you to laugh. It just happens.
  78. Secret Ballot
    Ride it out, and you will find the rewards modest but meaningful.
    • Boston Globe
  79. xXx
    As Diesel says, ''I like something fast enough to do something stupid in.'' Mission accomplished.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    24 Hour Party People
    Just don't expect the truth. An extremely bent, highly amusing form of the truth, maybe, but not the truth. 24 Hour Party People shares with the current Robert Evans documentary ''The Kid Stays in the Picture'' an awareness that a good anecdote often trumps the facts, but here the cheats are cheekily laid bare.
  81. Blood Work
    Eastwood risks embarrassment flirting with material this naked in its mawkishness, then jumps right in. He seems to want the world to know: Inside the 72-year-old body of this icon of virility beats the heart of a Mexican woman.
  82. Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams
    Like a whacked pinata, it spills over with treasures - and one of the best things to fall out is Steve Buscemi, doing a riotously meek variation on the mad-scientist-with-cracked-lenses-and-lab-coat bit.
  83. The Good Girl
    Despite Aniston's hard work, Good Girl could be better.
  84. Martin Lawrence Live: Runteldat
    He doesn't just kill a good buzz. He bludgeons it.
  85. Full Frontal
    Studding your movie with friends, admirers, and sycophants is having a ball; it does not bring us to question the illusory power of cinema or the politics of entertainment.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    One Last Kiss
    More movies should be so funny and perceptive, with writing this sharp and acting this believable.
    • 12 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    The Master of Disguise
    Like criticizing the light fixtures on the Titanic. This ship was going down anyway.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Signs
    Its quirks are exactly what make Signs interesting, entertaining, and good.
  89. Merci Pour Le Chocolat
    The magic of their perfectly shaded performances is that you always have to wonder ... Is she really that bad?
    • 75 Metascore
    • 100 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Kid Stays in the Picture
    Implicitly acknowledges and celebrates the glorious chicanery and self-delusion of this most American of businesses, and for that reason it may be the most oddly honest Hollywood document of all.
  91. Swimming
    A rarity among modern movies: a coming-of-age tale without cliche or sentimentality. Bolstered by a luminous lead performance from Lauren Ambrose.
  92. I Am Trying to Break Your Heart
    To love Wilco is to believe in a certain rustic intelligence about popular music (and about yourself) and to embrace the Tweedy worldview that you need sarcasm and vagueness to cope with the pitfalls of sincerity.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    The Country Bears
    The music and the stars aren't enough to save the movie.
  94. Who Is Cletis Tout?
    Ladling in so much schmaltz that even his in-house critic says, ''This thing's worse than `Terms of Endearment.'''
    • 62 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Austin Powers in Goldmember
    The most consistently funny of the ''Austin Powers'' films.
  96. Happy Times
    Shares many things with ''Not One Less'' and ''The Road Home,'' among them a grass-roots sensibility that ultimately puts a premium on hope and simple kindnesses, while acknowledging the seductive power of money and superficial success.
  97. K-19: The Widowmaker
    A relentlessly serious action movie, characterized by, of all things, sorrow.
  98. 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.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Stuart Little 2
    Sure, go ahead and take the kids. But, for pity's sake, read them the book first.
  100. Tadpole
    Written in wisps and watery double-entendres by Heather McGowan and Niels Mueller, and the movie is so benign that its proceedings are beside the point.
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