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. Come Undone
    Achingly slow, at times bleak and, in the end, frustratingly and regrettably, rather pointless.
  2. Lumumba
    Structural shortcomings and all -- gives a neglected giant of African independence his due.
    • Boston Globe
  3. The Princess and the Warrior
    Nowhere near as dynamic as the title implies. It's hard not to think of it as ''Sleepwalk Lola Sleepwalk.''
    • Boston Globe
  4. Dr. Dolittle 2
    It's warmer and fuzzier than the first film, though every bit as tedious.
    • Boston Globe
  5. The Fast and the Furious
    Turbo-charged wallbanger with the IQ of a tire iron. But it jumps off the screen with the mindless panache of a good bad movie.
    • Boston Globe
  6. Life and Debt
    Employs both eloquent and down-to-earth methods to explain the complex reasons why so many of the world's developing countries remain caught in an economic quagmire that prevents them from becoming self-sufficient.
  7. The Adventures of Felix
    In this engaging, understated comedy, it is the journey and not the destination that matters.
    • Boston Globe
  8. Songcatcher
    Somewhat sanitized but gorgeous Americana, with another impressive turn by McTeer.
    • Boston Globe
  9. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
    As cumbersome as most films in this subgenre, Angelina Jolie makes it watchable.
    • Boston Globe
  10. Une journée d'Andrei Arsenevitch
    If there is any message in Tarkovsky's work, although as a poet he would never stoop to anything as banal as a message, it is that life is an internal affair, played out in one's soul, not in public.
  11. Sexy Beast
    Slightly misshapen and unbalanced, with a few loose ends, a few extraneous dream sequences. But there's something going on all the time.
    • Boston Globe
  12. Atlantis: The Lost Empire
    For all its handsomeness, the movie reveals a few cobwebs beginning to gather at the conceptual edges of the Disney animations.
    • Boston Globe
  13. Evolution
    It's a ponderous but not unenjoyable comedy.
    • Boston Globe
  14. Bride of the Wind
    Botches the chance to delve into the personality of a complex, alluring, and free-spirited woman.
    • Boston Globe
  15. The Anniversary Party
    Isn't what you'd call a probing film, but it's a slick and savvy one.
    • Boston Globe
  16. Erleuchtung garantiert
    Likable, go-with-the-flow comedy.
    • Boston Globe
  17. Swordfish
    A high-impact, high-powered mess that raises the bar for over-the-topness.
    • Boston Globe
  18. Divided We Fall
    The film's triumph - and it is a triumph - in the end rests on the ability of Hrebejk and his actors to convince us that they never stop being normal people.
    • Boston Globe
  19. A Love Divided
    Solid, balanced period piece that focuses on a specific place and time yet resonates with universal themes.
    • Boston Globe
    • 59 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Big Eden
    It's a refreshing alternative to hipper-than-thou moviemaking.
    • Boston Globe
  21. Rape Me
    You won't feel raped by it, but you well may feel that it's too ideologically earnest for the porn crowd and too hard-core for serious audiences.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    The Animal
    Through it all, Rob Schneider comes off as a jackass in The Animal.
    • Boston Globe
  23. What's the Worst That Could Happen?
    Supposed to be a cheeky little lark but instead runs a narrow gamut from labored to aimless.
    • Boston Globe
    • 73 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Himalaya
    Valli's touch as an artist is too light, and his dramatic sense too timid, to make the film much more than a collection of pretty pictures.
    • Boston Globe
  25. The Man Who Cried
    The imagery is lush, but the story is pretty cornball, with an ending that can only be called pure Hollywood. Only the marvelous Cate Blanchett transcends stereotype.
    • Boston Globe
  26. The Road Home
    As luminous as the star presence at its center. It's at once a touching teacher movie and an even more touching love story.
    • Boston Globe
  27. Pearl Harbor
    The film never quite hits a sure-footed stride. The fictional love story stays fictional. But ''Pearl Harbor'' delivers the main event.
    • Boston Globe
  28. Fast Food Fast Women
    A warmhearted, hardworking little comedy that owes a lot of its charm to its modesty.
    • Boston Globe
  29. Angel Eyes
    Lopez is not yet the actor Caviezel is. Still, she fills her performance with conviction, does a couple of her own stunts, and has enough star presence to fill the big screen.
    • Boston Globe
  30. Moulin Rouge!
    The film musical is at the moment an even more devitalized art form than the Broadway musical. But Moulin Rouge doesn't revive it. It only rearranges the bones.
    • Boston Globe
  31. Shrek
    Suggests a summit meeting between ''The Princess Bride'' and ''Bridget Jones's Diary,'' it has a decided charm of its own.
    • Boston Globe
  32. 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
  33. The King Is Alive
    Sinks under the weight of its ever more inescapably apparent contrivance, and its forced parallels to ''Lear.''
    • Boston Globe
  34. The Trumpet of the Swan
    The film is gentle and carries a simple moral.
    • Boston Globe
  35. Bread and Roses
    The reason Bread and Roses works as well as it does is that as didactic as it sometimes gets, its heart is always bigger than its ideology.
    • Boston Globe
  36. A Knight's Tale
    A Knight's Tale, will either repel you or win you over. It won me over.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    About Adam
    In a moralistic time, About Adam is something of an anomaly, as it airily sticks to its pro-naughtiness agenda.
    • Boston Globe
    • 59 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Man Who Bought Mustique
    Becomes a creepy yet amusing look at how he tries to take control of the film being made about him.
    • Boston Globe
  39. Under the Sand
    Mesmerizing and unforgettable.
  40. Eureka
    Quiet, powerful, contemplative, respectful of stillness, Eureka is the first film this year in which there is obvious greatness.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    Time and Tide
    A desperate, cynical self-parody.
    • Boston Globe
  42. The Mummy Returns
    If you liked the earlier ''Mummy,'' you'll probably like this one. In fact, at many points you'll probably think you are watching the earlier one.
    • Boston Globe
  43. A Question of Faith
    Writer and director Tim Disney raises a provocative point about how radical and inconvenient true faith can be.
    • Boston Globe
    • 16 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Deuces Wild
    Just about the only things that remotely redeem this movie are the solid acting performances by the principals, who make the most of the one-dimensional material given them.
  45. Rat
    Rat may be lightweight, but it's never cheesy.
    • Boston Globe
  46. One Night at McCool's
    Neither as rollicking nor as wild as one had hoped, but Tyler's tongue-in-cheek noir goddess transcends cliche and the screenplay's other shortcomings terrifically.
    • Boston Globe
    • 29 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Driven
    When the film predictably limps across the finish line, you're left with the impression your time would have been better spent sitting in traffic.
    • Boston Globe
  48. The Golden Bowl
    What Merchant, Ivory and Co. arrive at is a sort of handsomely illustrated Cliffs Notes version of the novel.
    • Boston Globe
  49. Town & Country
    Starts out as a somewhat weary farce of infidelity, but turns into something a lot more gratifying, namely a comedy of mercy.
    • Boston Globe
  50. The Luzhin Defence
    Watson's character grows in importance until she eclipses the recessive Luzhin.
    • Boston Globe
  51. The Low Down
    Captures the ensemble quality it was after and the provisional look and feel are perfect stylistic analogues to the lives - the male lives, anyway - that it's portraying.
  52. Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles
    A sequel whose time has come - and gone.
    • Boston Globe
  53. Harry Is Here to Help
    A sleek little poison pill of a movie.
    • Boston Globe
  54. 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
  55. The Center of the World
    Provoke us into examining whether the onus is on the man for turning it into a commercial proposition or the woman for agreeing to his offer.
    • Boston Globe
  56. Lakeboat
    Feels a bit flat and underdeveloped.
    • Boston Globe
  57. The Circle
    Such moral outrage, apart from the artistry in which it is embedded, tells us that the forces of change are stirring in Iran.
    • Boston Globe
  58. Bridget Jones's Diary
    The film not only works better than expected but gets the important things right, starting, of course, with Zellweger's Bridget and Bridget's mind-set.
    • Boston Globe
  59. Josie and the Pussycats
    Mindless glitz-o-ramas don't get any snazzier.
    • Boston Globe
  60. Kingdom Come
    In the end, it's simple warmth and sincerity that make this ensemble piece so disarming.
    • Boston Globe
  61. Chopper
    Too quick to uncritically and unthinkingly accept its subject's rollickingly self-mythologizing take on himself.
    • Boston Globe
  62. Joe Dirt
    We have to endure 93 minutes of this torture, with only a few high points.
    • Boston Globe
  63. The Girl
    Somewhat overstylized and deliberately enigmatic, The Girl won't appeal to everyone. But its ambition and beauty ultimately triumph over pretense.
  64. Just Visiting
    It's hard to believe anyone would think importing a French comedy was a good idea.
    • Boston Globe
  65. The Day I Became a Woman
    What you're not prepared for in Marziyeh Meshkini's astonishing debut film is the way its central image instantly leaps into the pantheon of world cinema with a rightness and an urgency that glue your eyes to the screen.
  66. Along Came a Spider
    Efficient, but in the end quite pedestrian.
    • Boston Globe
  67. Pokémon 3: The Movie
    This predictable, uninspired addition to the endless saga won't win over nonbelievers.
    • Boston Globe
  68. Shadow Magic
    Shadow Magic isn't interested in psychology or character study. It's a series of tableaux and on that level succeeds admirably.
    • Boston Globe
  69. Blow
    Blew its chance to be an epic drug opera. It's only nostril-deep.
    • Boston Globe
    • 53 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    Mau Mau Sex Sex
    If you are a devotee of sleaze, you'll salivate at the prospect of Mau Mau Sex Sex, a fond and fawning look back at exploitation, or grindhouse, movies from the 1930s through the 1960s.
  71. Amores Perros
    As bloody as any recent film. But it's shot through with a harsh, stony humor that's invigorating enough to be regarded as a slap back at death.
    • Boston Globe
  72. The Tailor of Panama
    Many spy capers lose their intended irony and wry black humor, but The Tailor of Panama stays stylishly on target in ways that would put a heat-seeking missile to shame.
    • Boston Globe
  73. Someone Like You...
    There are three main reasons for seeing Someone Like You - Ashley Judd, Ashley Judd, and Ashley Judd.
    • Boston Globe
  74. Spy Kids
    Wacky enough and gadget-driven enough to appeal to bored kids looking for fresh energies.
    • Boston Globe
  75. Tomcats
    Isn't as funny as it is crude, and isn't as crude as it is labored.
    • Boston Globe
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Faat Kiné
    The situation is comic and yet quite serious, as are the ways in which language is used.
  77. The Brothers
    What saves the film is the charm and earthy humor the actors wring from the spectacle of these four guys getting an early jump on their midlife crises.
    • Boston Globe
  78. 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
  79. 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
  80. Too Much Sleep
    There are moments when faltering levels of energy and inventiveness threaten to turn Too Much Sleep into a nonevent. But it signals the arrival of a promising filmmaker and is worth sticking with.
  81. Exit Wounds
    Its pile-driving succession of set pieces comes at you with numbingly relentless efficiency, presumably in the hope that you won't notice or care how dumb it all is.
    • Boston Globe
    • 63 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Keep the River on Your Right: A Modern Cannibal Tale
    Ynever seen a documentary quite like this one, and aren't likely to again.
    • Boston Globe
  83. Memento
    The most disorienting and trippiest data-retrieval caper in years.
    • Boston Globe
  84. Enemy at the Gates
    It's too circumscribed and polite for the story it's telling, curiously deficient in the unexpected.
    • Boston Globe
  85. The Dish
    Warm, wry, endearing.
    • Boston Globe
  86. Kissing Jessica Stein
    Small, sharply written, incisive comedy examines, with smarts and style and sexiness, the very nature of modern romance - gay, straight, and in between.
  87. Simon Magus
    An odd but original, at times even poetic, film about a vanished world.
  88. 15 Minutes
    In a season mostly given over to unwatchable movies being cleared off studio shelves, it's at least about something. And there's no denying the lurid urgency with which it jumps off the screen.
    • Boston Globe
  89. Get Over It
    Comes off more like a series of painful cliches than a comedy or a love story.
    • Boston Globe
  90. Blow Dry
    The characters, in short, are never given enough dimension, enough chance to develop the individual tics and eccentricities on which this kind of comedy thrives.
    • Boston Globe
  91. The Gleaners & I
    Varda's charmingly eccentric amble, wise in its seeming waywardness.
    • Boston Globe
  92. Hit and Runway
    A mildly diverting gay-straight odd couple comedy that has just enough bright one-liners to carry it past its plot structuring.
    • Boston Globe
  93. The Caveman's Valentine
    Dramatically speaking, The Caveman's Valentine is a dead end.
    • Boston Globe
  94. See Spot Run
    See Spot Run isn't solely responsible for the dumbing down of movies, but it's part of the dismal phenomenon.
    • Boston Globe
  95. The Mexican
    Isolated offbeat moments aside, The Mexican mostly fires blanks.
    • Boston Globe
  96. Series 7: The Contenders
    A gritty, immediate, down-and-dirty satire with a down-and-dirty look.
    • Boston Globe
  97. Monkeybone
    For all its antic grasping it lies flatter on the screen than its graphic novel source lies on the page.
    • Boston Globe
  98. 3000 Miles to Graceland
    An exercise in excess, but it's the best of the month's crop of mindless films, if only because it jumps off the screen with acertain pop and playfulness.
    • Boston Globe
  99. The Widow of Saint-Pierre
    A grand, dark, grave, severe piece of first-rate cinema.
    • Boston Globe
  100. Company Man
    It's not that the film is devoid of honestly earned laughs here and there. The problem is that there are too few of them and that the film can't connect them.
    • Boston Globe
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