Boston Globe's Scores

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For 7,964 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: 5,240 out of 7964
  2. Mixed: 1,556 out of 7964
  3. Negative: 1,168 out of 7964
7964 movie reviews
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  1. Jurassic Park III
    What makes it worth sitting through is the chance it offers to catch up on the technical advances since the last installment.
  2. Made
    Amusing Made doesn't quite measure up to expectations.
  3. Legally Blonde
    There's always Witherspoon, swimming upstream and never letting it slow her down. Blindingly purposeful, she's a perky blond tornado. Marilyn Monroe would not only have cheered her on. She'd have learned something.
  4. Bully
    Nothing new to say, and, in the end, no real point to make.
    • Boston Globe
  5. The Score
    Nobody's going to think of The Score as trail-blazing, but there's nothing small-time about its dramatic and acting payoff.
  6. Adanggaman
    The film's disturbing images are presented matter-of-factly, which makes them more powerful, not less.
  7. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
    Despite its conceptual shortfall, is worth seeing, if only to update yourself on what can emerge from a keyboard these days.
  8. Everybody's Famous!
    A likable satire on celebrity, Flemish-style, it is no less pointed than its American counterparts, just a lot less pompous.
  9. Kiss of the Dragon
    What goes on when Li isn't fighting the bad guys isn't worth discussing; it's that stupid.
    • Boston Globe
  10. The Vertical Ray of the Sun
    Made of a serene dynamite that's all but unknown to American film audiences.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Jump Tomorrow
    The movie feels padded. And Hopkins's deft touch as a writer and director leaves him when it comes to casting.
  12. Cats & Dogs
    The effects are so showy, and so relentless, that they call attention pretty quickly to the fact that there is not much else to Cats and Dogs.
  13. Scary Movie 2
    Just a bunch of spotty sketches slapped together that will satisfy no one except the diehards.
  14. The Closet
    Perhaps not the most uproarious of Veber's farces, but entertaining and emotionally satisfying all the same.
    • Boston Globe
  15. The Crimson Rivers
    The Crimson Rivers could teach many an American thriller a thing or two about sophisticated creepiness.
  16. Pootie Tang
    The movie's comic powers are often marred by silliness and stereotypes. Pootie tanks.
  17. Crazy/Beautiful
    To have been the film it could have been, crazy/beautiful needed to be messier.
  18. A.I. Artificial Intelligence
    Spielberg has said that in their collaboration, cut short by Kubrick's death, Kubrick had opened his heart as never before. Although the fingerprint of each is upon A.I, there are times when the prints are blurred and merged. And this film will blur the hitherto distinctive profiles of each.
    • Boston Globe
  19. Come Undone
    Achingly slow, at times bleak and, in the end, frustratingly and regrettably, rather pointless.
  20. Lumumba
    Structural shortcomings and all -- gives a neglected giant of African independence his due.
    • Boston Globe
  21. 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
  22. Dr. Dolittle 2
    It's warmer and fuzzier than the first film, though every bit as tedious.
    • Boston Globe
  23. 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
  24. 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.
  25. The Adventures of Felix
    In this engaging, understated comedy, it is the journey and not the destination that matters.
    • Boston Globe
  26. Songcatcher
    Somewhat sanitized but gorgeous Americana, with another impressive turn by McTeer.
    • Boston Globe
  27. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
    As cumbersome as most films in this subgenre, Angelina Jolie makes it watchable.
    • Boston Globe
  28. 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.
  29. 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
  30. 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
  31. Evolution
    It's a ponderous but not unenjoyable comedy.
    • Boston Globe
  32. Bride of the Wind
    Botches the chance to delve into the personality of a complex, alluring, and free-spirited woman.
    • Boston Globe
  33. The Anniversary Party
    Isn't what you'd call a probing film, but it's a slick and savvy one.
    • Boston Globe
  34. Erleuchtung garantiert
    Likable, go-with-the-flow comedy.
    • Boston Globe
  35. Swordfish
    A high-impact, high-powered mess that raises the bar for over-the-topness.
    • Boston Globe
  36. 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
  37. 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
  39. 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
  41. 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
  43. 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
  44. 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
  45. 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
  46. Fast Food Fast Women
    A warmhearted, hardworking little comedy that owes a lot of its charm to its modesty.
    • Boston Globe
  47. 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
  48. 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
  49. Shrek
    Suggests a summit meeting between ''The Princess Bride'' and ''Bridget Jones's Diary,'' it has a decided charm of its own.
    • Boston Globe
  50. 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
  51. The King Is Alive
    Sinks under the weight of its ever more inescapably apparent contrivance, and its forced parallels to ''Lear.''
    • Boston Globe
  52. The Trumpet of the Swan
    The film is gentle and carries a simple moral.
    • Boston Globe
  53. 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
  54. 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
  57. Under the Sand
    Mesmerizing and unforgettable.
  58. 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
  60. 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
  61. 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.
  63. Rat
    Rat may be lightweight, but it's never cheesy.
    • Boston Globe
  64. 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
  66. The Golden Bowl
    What Merchant, Ivory and Co. arrive at is a sort of handsomely illustrated Cliffs Notes version of the novel.
    • Boston Globe
  67. 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
  68. The Luzhin Defence
    Watson's character grows in importance until she eclipses the recessive Luzhin.
    • Boston Globe
  69. 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.
  70. Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles
    A sequel whose time has come - and gone.
    • Boston Globe
  71. Harry Is Here to Help
    A sleek little poison pill of a movie.
    • Boston Globe
  72. 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
  73. 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
  74. Lakeboat
    Feels a bit flat and underdeveloped.
    • Boston Globe
  75. 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
  76. 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
  77. Josie and the Pussycats
    Mindless glitz-o-ramas don't get any snazzier.
    • Boston Globe
  78. Kingdom Come
    In the end, it's simple warmth and sincerity that make this ensemble piece so disarming.
    • Boston Globe
  79. Chopper
    Too quick to uncritically and unthinkingly accept its subject's rollickingly self-mythologizing take on himself.
    • Boston Globe
  80. Joe Dirt
    We have to endure 93 minutes of this torture, with only a few high points.
    • Boston Globe
  81. The Girl
    Somewhat overstylized and deliberately enigmatic, The Girl won't appeal to everyone. But its ambition and beauty ultimately triumph over pretense.
  82. Just Visiting
    It's hard to believe anyone would think importing a French comedy was a good idea.
    • Boston Globe
  83. 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.
  84. Along Came a Spider
    Efficient, but in the end quite pedestrian.
    • Boston Globe
  85. Pokémon 3: The Movie
    This predictable, uninspired addition to the endless saga won't win over nonbelievers.
    • Boston Globe
  86. 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
  87. 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.
  89. 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
  90. 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
  91. Someone Like You...
    There are three main reasons for seeing Someone Like You - Ashley Judd, Ashley Judd, and Ashley Judd.
    • Boston Globe
  92. Spy Kids
    Wacky enough and gadget-driven enough to appeal to bored kids looking for fresh energies.
    • Boston Globe
  93. 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.
  95. 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
  96. 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
  97. 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
  98. 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.
  99. 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
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