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. The Last September
    A gorgeous autumnal period piece that catches a vanishing proprietary class on the eve of its extinction in Ireland in 1920.
  2. Gossip
    Owes less to any film genre than to TV soap operas offered with far fewer pretensions on any given afternoon.
    • Boston Globe
  3. U-571
    Never lets down, even if depth of character always takes second place to depth charges.
  4. Croupier
    It's brilliantly precise in its detailing, stylishly jagged and sensual by turns, and utterly unpredictable.
  5. The Virgin Suicides
    From start to finish there's a shimmer of discovery about it - our discovery of it, Coppola's discovery of how much she can do.
  6. Love & Basketball
    The cinematic equivalent of a high, arching rainbow of a three-pointer from midcourt.
  7. Where the Money Is
    The film never drags, but one of the enjoyable things about it is its way of taking its time letting us get to know and savor the characters.
  8. East Is East
    This engaging ensemble comedy that could have been called ''Father Doesn't Know Best.''
    • Boston Globe
  9. American Psycho
    In both senses of the word, American Psycho wastes its women.
    • Boston Globe
  10. Return to Me
    If Return to Me is ultimately too bland and safe, it'll nevertheless serve as a calling card for Hunt's future directorial projects.
  11. Southpaw
    There's an engagingly homegrown quality to much of the footage.
  12. Me Myself I
    A comic vehicle for that valuable Australian export, Rachel Griffiths.
  13. Rules of Engagement
    Strenuously as it tries, and pulse-poundingly successful as the embassy rescue scene is, Rules of Engagement never engages us.
  14. Est - Ouest
    Isn't always easy to sit through, but it repays patience. It's an honorable film, and it earns its undertow of poignancy derived from.
    • Boston Globe
    • 82 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    The Filth and the Fury
    This is a warts 'n' all portrayal - there's no dodging the feelings of both disgust and amusement.
    • Boston Globe
  16. Ready to Rumble
    Likable performances from its young cast and a better-than-average script add spark to this formulaic fairy tale and make the wrestling mania watchable.
  17. Price of Glory
    Stumbles over its own clumsiness until it goes down for the count.
  18. The Road to El Dorado
    Less than memorable.
  19. The Skulls
    Plummets into the realm of ludicrous failure.
  20. High Fidelity
    Sad, funny, brilliant.
    • Boston Globe
  21. X
    It doesn't tap deeply enough into any of the characters to compel us to identify with one or another.
    • Boston Globe
  22. The Color of Paradise
    The story is spun forth ravishingly, tenderly, and urgently, with a captivating mix of beauty, spare sophistication, and profound humanity.
  23. Here on Earth
    Maudlin script mars teen love.
    • Boston Globe
  24. Whatever It Takes
    Pretty lame stuff. Already it seems to be passing with the speed of light into the limbo of utterly forgettable "who-will-I-take-to-the-prom?" movies.
  25. Such a Long Journey
    While no individual plot strand is vividly compelling, their interplay makes for a hearty and humanistic mix, carried by the performances.
  26. Waking the Dead
    It's too fragmented and diffuse to ever bring its parts together in any really satisfying manner.
  27. Winter Sleepers
    Angst-ridden, yet graceful, stylish, and optimistic allegory about swerving off one road and finding your way back via another.
  28. Romeo Must Die
    The reason to sit through its uninspired, formulaic moves, however, is its half-dozen spectacular fight sequences.
  29. Erin Brockovich
    Roberts and Erin Brockovich have Oscar contender written all over them.
  30. Final Destination
    Starts by cheating death and ends by cheating us.
  31. Beyond the Mat
    Wrestling gets in America's face and Blaustein gets in wrestling's face. It's a fascinating tango.
    • Boston Globe
    • 50 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Deterrence
    There is a palpable edge-of-the-seat tension and a number of complex ethnic issues that linger after the movie ends.
  33. Mission to Mars
    There are times when it moves into the guilty pleasure zone.
  34. The Ninth Gate
    A supernatural thriller that is neither super, natural, nor thrilling.
  35. The Next Best Thing
    Never having decided whether it wants to be comedy or a sentimental hand-wringer, it tries to be both and winds up being neither.
  36. Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai
    Best when it's playful, toying with the fact that the Mafia has in a single generation been transmogrified from myth to joke.
  37. Drowning Mona
    Executed on a pretty broad level, but if characterization is slighted, the ensemble is so rich, with such depth, that every few minutes another juicy turn keeps coming our way to divert us.
  38. What Planet Are You From?
    The film is almost as shaky as the science, but Nichols knows how to get the most out of what amounts to a one-joke comedy, and Bening works virtual miracles.
  39. Judy Berlin
    It isn't often that lives of quiet desperation are served up with such pearly restraint.
  40. Mifune's Last Song
    The liveliest, most original family values film of the year so far.
  41. Reindeer Games
    The end is a long time coming in Reindeer Games and the dialogue is mostly slush.
  42. Wonder Boys
    A sweet screenful of quirky chaos.
  43. The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg
    While it preserves his baseball feats, it looks beyond them to clarify Greenberg's place in American culture.
  44. Beautiful People
    It's a spirited and essentially optimistic film, but it's also simplistic.
    • Boston Globe
  45. Boiler Room
    Derivative and flawed. But it does throw off a few sparks.
  46. Hanging Up
    A flimsy sister act.
  47. The Whole Nine Yards
    Light on its feet and reveling in its deviousness, it stays one step ahead of us .
  48. Not One Less
    In style and story line, the film is daring in its simplicity.
  49. Pitch Black
    The B-movie is still very much with us.
  50. Snow Day
    Takes a vacation from quality.
  51. The Tigger Movie
    If a long, chilly afternoon needs to be filled, The Tigger Movie won't hurt. But neither will it enchant.
  52. The Beach
    It's "Beach Blanket Bingo" revisited, but with a Eurocast and more exotic locations.
  53. Gun Shy
    The bathroom jokes in Gun Shy wear thin.
    • Boston Globe
  54. Scream 3
    A lame little flat liner.
  55. The Cup
    A small film and, ultimately, a satisfying one.
  56. Eye of the Beholder
    Never brings its potentially intriguing plot strands into focus.
  57. Isn't She Great
    A surprisingly warm and engaging entertainment - brassy, schmaltzy, funny.
  58. The Big Tease
    What saves it is that it's lighter than mousse and is animated by a handful of engaging performers.
    • 13 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    Down to You
    Prinze charming, but can't save movie.
  60. The Boondock Saints
    (Duffy) navigates the twisted collision of religious faith and the thrill of the kill, altruism and brutality, with an ingenious mix of humor, horror, mysticism, and just plain hipness.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    My Dog Skip
    The film's vintage setting is as much a character as any other. Some of the best moments evoke the best parts of easygoing small town life in a bygone era.
  62. Next Friday
    The action is mostly witless and predictable. One measure of its desperation and lack of respect for its audience is the frequency with which it labors to wring humor from flatulence and excrement gags.
  63. Fantasia 2000
    A solid two-bagger, not a home run.
    • Boston Globe
  64. The Hurricane
    (Washington's is) an astonishing performance, partly because it's so devoid of histrionics, and it has Oscar nomination written all over it.
    • Boston Globe
  65. The Third Miracle
    Takes on provocative and stimulating subject matter, but can't bring it into satisfying dramatic focus, stranding three strong actors who are superior to their material.
  66. Play It to the Bone
    Isn't going to be a contender
  67. Titus
    A brilliant production of a mediocre play.
  68. Galaxy Quest
    A clever, affectionate, and entertaining holiday snack for sci-fi fans. Falling somewhere between slick and cheesy.
  69. The Talented Mr. Ripley
    A slick, twisty, top-of-the-line crime thriller with gorgeously sensual textures and a screenful of wickedly faceted performances.
  70. Snow Falling on Cedars
    The kind of richly layered film that Hollywood seldom attempts, much less brings off. But it's more than brought off here in grand, solid style and beautifully crafted detail.
  71. Angela's Ashes
    While the film dutifully reproduces many incidents from the book, it lacks the spirit and vitality of its source. And - no small problem - it lacks McCourt's voice knitting the vignettes together.
  72. Any Given Sunday
    Far too long, but its rambunctiousness is engaging, propelled by Stone's virtuosic quick-cutting.
  73. Man on the Moon
    Remains a frustratingly opaque study. There's something missing, namely Kaufman.
  74. Girl, Interrupted
    There's too much control in it and not enough danger.
  75. Jing Ke ci Qin Wang
    As savage and as epic as film gets.
  76. Onegin
    A confident and promising directorial debut, one that has the feel of an experienced director to it, from the hypnotic unfolding of scenes to the finely observed character details.
  77. Bicentennial Man
    Few actors apart from Williams could bring it off.
  78. Stuart Little
    The new Stuart Little is OK, but it's never so charming that you forget you're watching a manufactured object.
  79. Topsy-Turvy
    In the end, it's the snatches of music, mangled as it is, and the mechanics of staging it, in the absence of Leigh's usual raw, urgent psychic collisions, that keep Topsy-Turvy from seeming merely a gorgeous wax museum.
  80. Anna and the King
    A big, handsome throwback to star-powered historical costume movies.
  81. Magnolia
    Magnolia is "Short Cuts" with hope. It's my kind of mess.
  82. The Cider House Rules
    It's filled with vivid characters and action. Beneath its modesty of gesture, it's one of the year's richest, most humane films.
  83. Cradle Will Rock
    Brings the '30s vividly to the screen.
  84. Miss Julie
    Figgis's film doesn't match its reach.
  85. The War Zone
    In all respects, from choice of material to fullness of execution on every level, The War Zone is an extraordinary piece of work.
  86. Diamonds
    Sadly unworthy of Douglas.
  87. Stir of Echoes
    Needs less down-to-earth flavor and more unearthly force.
  88. The Green Mile
    There's almost too much there, but the three-hour-plus film permits the kind of detailing that not only brings the storytelling to life, but sometimes persuades us we're breathing to its rhythms.
  89. Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo
    Schneider's mild-mannered fish-lover is genuinely likable, and a good-natured foil to the crude jokes.
  90. Agnes Browne
    There's nothing really wrong with Agnes Browne, except a tendency to take a few easy, convenient outs.
  91. Holy Smoke
    In the end, Holy Smoke crashes and burns.
    • Boston Globe
  92. The End of the Affair
    The immaculately crafted film that just sits there and refuses to come to life.
  93. Sweet and Lowdown
    Agreeable eye candy and ear candy, but it's too slight to reach as deep as it thinks it wants to reach.
  94. A Map of the World
    Gives three first-rate actors a chance to stretch, and they do.
  95. Flawless
    A smartly crafted throwback to the gritty Manhattan crime melodramas of the '40s .
  96. Tumbleweeds
    You'll care what happens in this film with more than enough freshness and originality to avoid succumbing to girls-on-the-run cliches.
  97. End of Days
    It seems endless. It's also unusually crude and stupid, even for an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.
  98. Ride with the Devil
    It's one of the few films that persuades you that it went out to meet the war and bring it to us with verisimilitude.
  99. Toy Story 2
    Everything you could want in a sequel. It satisfyingly regenerates the characters and qualities that made the first film so popular. And then it moves them forward into newer, fresher, more elaborate, more involving territory.
  100. The World Is Not Enough
    This 19th Bond installment is passable, but only just.
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