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. Down to Earth
    A little too shipshape, too eager to please, not quite as anarchic as the best comedies.
    • Boston Globe
  2. Sweet November
    It's a small film, and a far from perfect one, but it allows her (Theron) to extend her range as no previous role has done.
    • Boston Globe
    • 70 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Bad Company
    As a tale of adolescent sexuality warped by passion, though, Bad Company is less compelling and more exploitative than its makers think.
  4. Hannibal
    ''The Silence of the Lambs'' was a classic; Hannibal is only a good movie of its type.
    • Boston Globe
  5. Signs & Wonders
    Has extraordinary depth and insight about the limitations and follies of human beings.
  6. Saving Silverman
    The kind of comedy that takes the fun out of stupidity.
    • Boston Globe
  7. The Taste of Others
    A civilized delight.
    • Boston Globe
  8. The Invisible Circus
    A fatally insubstantial film.
    • Boston Globe
  9. Valentine
    A flagrantly retro example of a tired genre that would vanish in a puff of smoke if anger management classes were to enter the picture, or if it would ever occur to any one of its endless stream of victims to reach for a light switch before proceeding into a spooky place.
    • Boston Globe
  10. Head Over Heels
    A lame romantic comedy that is neither romantic nor comedic.
    • Boston Globe
  11. Nico and Dani
    The film is rightfully carried by Nico and Dani and under Gay's artful helmsmanship it's carried with remarkable sympathy and believability.
    • Boston Globe
  12. Trolösa
    Ullmann's film is an achievement of heart and consequence, as full of integrity as Bergman, yet demonstrating more mercy.
    • Boston Globe
  13. Sugar & Spice
    Isn't as dark as ''Heathers'' or as witty as ''Clueless,'' but it's at least pointed in that direction.
    • Boston Globe
  14. The Wedding Planner
    The unevenness of what surrounds the star couple is indicative of the script's inability to muster anything more than intermittent sophistication.
    • Boston Globe
  15. The Pledge
    In its dark, relentless, devastatingly ironic way, The Pledge is an exhilarating movie, partly because it isn't afraid to be genuinely challenging.
  16. Snatch.
    One could argue that ''Lock, Stock'' and Snatch are essentially the same movie - crime comedies marked by an outlandish visual style. Which raises the question of whether Ritchie has the range to do anything else.
    • Boston Globe
  17. Zheng hun qi shi
    A subtly comic, ultimately moving film about modern adult relationships.
    • Boston Globe
  18. Antitrust
    An example of a film that begins with a provocative idea and then runs itself into the ground with clumsy structuring.
    • Boston Globe
  19. Double Take
    Gallo has delivered a clever suspense comedy that, thanks to a taut script, creative direction, and first-rate performances from its leads, gives Double Take more weight than one would expect from a genre crowd-pleaser.
    • Boston Globe
  20. Save the Last Dance
    The most traditional of Hollywood romances, in that it's resolutely about nice people with nice problems.
  21. Chunhyangdyun
    It's sweeping yet intimate, stately yet impassioned, stylized yet immediate.
    • Boston Globe
  22. The Claim
    Stark, haunting, epic, and mournful, The Claim is a mountain of a film.
    • Boston Globe
  23. Shadow of the Vampire
    He's (Dafoe) the stuff bad dreams are made of. He's also the best movie vampire since Schreck's original. He deserves a bloody Oscar.
  24. Traffic
    It's the best drug-busting movie since ''The French Connection.''
  25. All the Pretty Horses
    To paraphrase Andre Malraux, it invokes but it doesn't always supply, doesn't course strongly enough with the book's themes of blood and earth and dislocation.
    • Boston Globe
  26. Thirteen Days
    It turns the nerve-fraying Cuban missile crisis into a big pop myth with the grip of a vise.
    • Boston Globe
  27. An Everlasting Piece
    A slight but diverting series of set pieces.
    • Boston Globe
  28. Before Night Falls
    Most of all it's the emotional and spiritual arc of an exile, in all its terrible isolation, that gives ''Before Night Falls'' its power.
    • Boston Globe
  29. The House of Mirth
    There was little mirth or innocence in the world that Wharton was able to write her way out of (she was much happier living in Paris), and Davies and his leading lady lift the silks to reveal it as the minefield it was.
    • Boston Globe
  30. Miss Congeniality
    She (Bullock) has a way of landing on her feet and remaining simpatico no matter how cheesy the script is. That's what happens here.
  31. State and Main
    Good clean dirty fun.
  32. O Brother, Where Art Thou?
    A clever and satisfyingly abundant entertainment.
  33. Cast Away
    The film's most remarkable achievement, in this culture of clamor, simply may be its decision to keep the volume down, drawing us in as opposed to pummeling us, as most films do.
    • Boston Globe
  34. The Family Man
    Sitting through it is like waking up on Christmas morning to find a stockingful of styrofoam.
    • Boston Globe
  35. Finding Forrester
    A juicy and gratifying teacher movie (a genre to which I'm partial). The joy in performance shared by Connery and Brown is the big reason.
    • Boston Globe
  36. The Gift
    A solidly crafted, suspensefully written, powerfully acted little juggernaut.
    • Boston Globe
  37. Pollock
    Like its subject, Pollock is a messy creation, but one whose depth of commitment and high attack keeps it on track.
    • Boston Globe
  38. The Emperor's New Groove
    A lively, invigorating comedy: a near-perfect mix of fresh characters, well-cast voices, superb visuals, and a fast-paced, fantasy-adventure plot.
    • Boston Globe
  39. What Women Want
    Disappoints.
  40. Chocolat
    May not be deep, but it certainly is lip-smacking.
    • Boston Globe
  41. Vertical Limit
    Avalanches are nothing compared to the deadening touch of the stereotyping and audience-insulting simplicities in the scenic but brain-dead Vertical Limit.
  42. Dungeons & Dragons
    A mildly entertaining but tepid extravaganza more suited to television than the big screen.
    • Boston Globe
  43. Proof of Life
    It's absorbing, although draggy.
  44. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
    Watching it is a nonstop high.
    • Boston Globe
  45. Boys Life 3
    A mixed bag. With such a brief running time, there are not enough high points to recommend the five shorts that make up the film.
    • Boston Globe
  46. 102 Dalmatians
    It is Close's performance that gives the movie its oomph and will leave adults with smiles as wide as the kids'.
    • Boston Globe
  47. Unbreakable
    A film that begins with a train wreck and then, figuratively speaking, becomes one.
  48. Quills
    A witty yet fiery and, in the best sense, provocative play of ideas about freedom of expression.
  49. Bounce
    Something is missing in Bounce, the muted dynamic of which calls forth a perhaps inevitably muted reaction.
    • Boston Globe
    • 66 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    La bûche
    The film's invented Paris -- endless restaurants, boutiques, and impossibly large apartments, with a little artificial ''grit'' thrown in -- is pretty, and the neatly wrapped plot provides the comforting illusion that one's own family dramas can be as easily and amusingly resolved.
    • Boston Globe
  51. Rugrats in Paris: The Movie - Rugrats II
    Predictable and not terribly clever, but among the slim pickings of movies geared to the pre-school and grade-school set, it could be much worse.
  52. The 6th Day
    Puts the fun back into going to Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. He said he'd be back, and he is.
    • Boston Globe
  53. How the Grinch Stole Christmas
    With Carrey hitting a career peak, this Grinch doesn't steal Christmas; it restores the season by helping energize us enough to make it through the whole thing.
    • Boston Globe
  54. Red Planet
    The question in Red Planet isn't whether there's any life on Mars, but whether there's any life in the film. The answer is no.
  55. Men of Honor
    Just what Gooding needed to restart his stalled career.
  56. Little Nicky
    Hell itself is going to hell in Sandler's new comedy.
  57. You Can Count on Me
    Satisfying in every respect, it's a piece of blue-collar chamber music, never treating the characters cheaply, allowing them a complex entwinement of emotions.
  58. Me & Isaac Newton
    As each scientist chronicles his or her story, one is impressed by the place that unswerving motivation and determination has assumed in the work.
    • Boston Globe
  59. Kippur
    A story about the ravages of one war on a single man's soul and psyche becomes an eloquent plea for peace.
    • Boston Globe
  60. The Legend of Bagger Vance
    It offers pleasures of a kind that fewer and fewer films even seem to remember, much less aspire to.
  61. Charlie's Angels
    A babe-athon, pure and simple.
    • Boston Globe
  62. The Little Vampire
    Sweetly macabre charmer.
  63. A Time for Drunken Horses
    Deeper and richer in humanity than all but a handful of the American films released this year.
  64. Vénus beauté (institut)
    It's all glossy urban fairy-tale stuff, laid on with style to spare, given added resonance by a mini-pantheon of French movie goddesses.
  65. Stardom
    Denys Arcand has satiric fun with the media's way of taking celebrity culture at face value and nothing but. Eventually, though, the film becomes what it's ridiculing.
    • Boston Globe
  66. Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2
    Berlinger has approached Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 with intelligence and even a bit of thematic heft. But, frankly, the cheap thrill is gone.
    • Boston Globe
  67. Lucky Numbers
    Despite a few tangy black comic moments, Lucky Numbers' is bummer theater.
  68. What's Cooking?
    This good-hearted but undersupplied ensemble piece is only appetizer-deep.
  69. Sound and Fury
    Riveting tale of family dynamics packed with as much drama, conflict, and poignancy as the best feature film.
    • Boston Globe
  70. The Yards
    By the end, we're left with a feeling of depletion rather than resolution, which may have been Gray's intention.
  71. The Legend of Drunken Master
    Intoxicating fun.
  72. Calle 54
    Filled with affection and verve and will do very nicely until the next shipment of Latin jazz comes along.
    • Boston Globe
  73. Pay It Forward
    The kind of film you've got to admire simply for the way it squares its shoulders and plunges into a message of unfashionable idealism.
    • Boston Globe
  74. Bedazzled
    The important thing is that Hurley looks smashing in her succession of red outfits.
    • Boston Globe
  75. Lost Souls
    Full of atmosphere and visuals, it's empty of anything that really matters.
  76. Dr T and the Women
    A comedy of chaos, an ensemble comedy, with characters swirling around one another unaware, in their uniform desperation, of how funny they are.
    • Boston Globe
  77. The Contender
    Wonderfully cast and slickly directed, but so crudely written.
    • Boston Globe
  78. Billy Elliot
    Bell is utterly persuasive as the boy literally yearning to leap beyond the oppressively apparent confines of his world.
    • Boston Globe
    • 22 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Ladies Man
    Overstays its welcome.
  80. Ratcatcher
    Fresh, original, and arresting.
    • Boston Globe
  81. Taboo
    The intriguing subject, unfortunately, collapses under too many talky scenes of the samurai discussing their feelings and gossiping about who loves whom.
    • Boston Globe
  82. Two Family House
    Worth staying with for the respect it pays to its characters' emotions.
  83. Bamboozled
    Ends with a fizzle, not a bang.
    • Boston Globe
  84. Get Carter
    A sodden-looking film.
    • Boston Globe
  85. Digimon: Digital Monsters
    A video game barely disguised as a movie. Violent, and the monsters are scary for younger children.
    • Boston Globe
  86. Meet the Parents
    Distress of Parents is a real pleasure.
  87. Requiem for a Dream
    It's two hours of slumming in a vision of hell hatched from bourgeois comfort. That, and not its unsavory subject matter, is what makes it bummer theater.
  88. Beautiful
    The tame, confused script eventually sinks the film, although Field shows skill directing actors.
    • Boston Globe
  89. The Broken Hearts Club: A Romantic Comedy
    It plays like a pilot for what I imagine will be network TV's first all-gay sitcom.
  90. Girlfight
    A terrific little uppercut of a boxing movie and close to a perfect one.
    • Boston Globe
  91. Remember the Titans
    Washington and the others score in this predictable but rousing film where the big victory is over attitudes.
  92. Barenaked in America
    Insights run more along the lines of which ''Sesame Street'' character each of them identifies with.
  93. Best in Show
    He's (Willard) a one-man storm of escalating inanity, and he's hilarious.
    • Boston Globe
  94. The Tavern
    A steadily engaging and winningly humane film that loves its characters.
    • Boston Globe
  95. The Fantasticks
    Although dated, it's not a bad musical.
    • Boston Globe
  96. Urban Legends: Final Cut
    Awful in ways that are just clever enough often enough to make it intermittently watchable.
  97. Woman on Top
    A romantic fairy tale that's light and in several ways seductive, if not exactly filling.
  98. Dancer in the Dark
    Leaves you questioning its intentions.
    • Boston Globe
  99. Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport
    Movingly recounts a hitherto untold story in the voices of the people who lived it.
    • Boston Globe
  100. A Piece of Eden
    The kind of heartwarming, well-intentioned film many audiences claim they want to see at their local theaters.
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