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. The Matrix
    Snazzy visuals, of which she (Moss) is one, carry The Matrix past its klutzy script.
  2. My Favorite Martian
    Even the presence of Walston himself, as the government heavy in charge of tracking Lloyd's zany Martian, does little to alter the inescapable conclusion that this My Favorite Martian reincarnation is more likely to find favor with the undemanding than the nostalgia-minded. [12 Feb 1999, p.E5]
    • Boston Globe
  3. She's All That
    In short, the film isn't afraid to wear its heart on its sleeve and bring conviction to its focus on feelings. It's written with enough dexterity and wit to make you buy into it. [29 Jan 1999, p.C4]
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  4. Playing by Heart
    It plays something like Robert Altman Lite. It's saved from writer-director Willard Carroll's increasingly forced linkages and made watchable by the resourceful acting of its ensemble, some of whom get more to work with than others. [22 Jan 1999, p.D4]
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  5. Mighty Joe Young
    Karmic influences or not, the new "Mighty Joe Young" works. This is one remake that isn't trying to make us forget the original, but seems rather to embrace it and bring it into the present in solidly crafted, family-friendly fashion. [25 Dec 1998, p.C9]
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  6. Down in the Delta
    Down in the Delta, Maya Angelou's film-directing debut, strongly establishes her ability to command emotional authenticity and fashion-rich, beautifully wrought images that tap into the stabilizing dignity of family life. [25 Dec 1998, p.C7]
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  7. You've Got Mail
    Warm, smart, and funny!
    • Boston Globe
  8. The General
    The General is a gravely beautiful film (in wide-screen black and white) by John Boorman about an Irish career criminal who was an antiauthoritarian folk hero, a warm family man to a menage a trois, and also a dangerous psychopath.
    • Boston Globe
    • 40 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Jack Frost
    The most amazing thing about Jack Frost may be that it took four writers to come up with a film as insubstantial as tinsel and as leaden as fruitcake. Then again, perhaps none of the writers wanted to bear the blame alone. [12 Dec 1998, p.C4]
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  10. Babe: Pig in the City
    Miller is going to take some heat for making this new film inhabit a cruel world. But better that than sugarcoating the story. He's found a way to recycle a popular film - choppily perhaps, episodically perhaps, but provocatively. [25 Nov 1998, p.C1]
    • Boston Globe
    • 36 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    Belly
    This sickeningly violent film, starring a bevy of rap stars, marks the feature debut of hot video director Hype Williams, and while there are hints of his trademark trippiness, this is basically an utterly joyless endeavor. [04 Nov 1998, p.E6]
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  12. The Cruise
    Perhaps a little more back story would have given Levitch some dimension and given us a bit more incentive to commiserate with him. As it is, a little Levitch goes a long way. [20 Nov 1998, p.C4]
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  13. The Last Days
    Powerful as the archival material is, the most loaded footage is of these survivors back on the pain-drenched turf of their Hungarian origins and the blood-drenched soil of the former concentration camps they outlived. Given the moral authority of their presence, the film doesn't need extraneous drama, and wisely avoids it. [26 Feb 1999, p.D4]
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  14. Slam
    With the charismatic Williams and Sohn leading the way, "Slam" electrifyingly moves beyond wishful thinking to hot immediacy, and, yes, earned optimism. [23 Oct 1998, p.D4]
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  15. Flowers of Shanghai
    Hou Hsiao-hsien is one of the masters of world cinema, and Flowers of Shanghai represents a shift for him. Stunning and hypnotic, it's his first period piece. [07 Apr 2000]
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  16. Permanent Midnight
    In short, Permanent Midnight is about what you would expect from a mild-at-heart movie that wants to titillate with a fallen artist story that has a wholesome outcome. [18 Sep 1998, p.D9]
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  17. Without Limits
    Without Limits gives us the achievement, gives us Prefontaine'sflaws alongside the considerable appeal, makes us feel his loss. It's miles beyond the previous biofilm about him, Prefontaine. It works because it makes running a subset of being maniacal - and nothing works better in a movie. [13 Sep 1998, p.N25]
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  18. The Eel
    The Eel careens all over the stylistic map, from irony to slapstick. But it's chaos in the service of rebirth and redemption, a rich screenful of zigzagging. [16 Oct 1998, p.C5]
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  19. The Governess
    The sheer intelligence and independence of spirit in Driver's busy eyes almost carry The Governess past its structural limitations. [07 Aug 1998]
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  20. Hands on a Hardbody: The Documentary
    Bindler's recognition of the rich and intense human drama boiling away beneath the laconic surfaces and underplayed verbalizations turns Hands on a Hardbody into a surprisingly affecting metaphor for American life as an ongoing exercise in endurance. [30 Jul 1999, p.D7]
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  21. I Went Down
    I Went Down is an offbeat Irish gangster movie that overcomes its meandering nature with engaging performances, an avoidance of formula, and, above all, its characters' way of making us take everything personally - as they certainly do. [1 July 1998, p.F4]
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  22. Henry Fool
    Writing ignites miracles in Henry Fool, and Hartley's exquisite control over his compositions and pacing makes the outrages, biological and otherwise, funnier than you might believe. [01 Jul 1998]
    • Boston Globe
    • 67 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Edge of Seventeen
    More than any other teen movie of recent memory, Edge of Seventeen captures the uncertainty, awkwardness, and pains of adolescence, further complicated when grappling with questions of sexual identity. [02 Jul 1999]
    • Boston Globe
    • 24 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    Dirty Work
    There isn't a single glimmer of intelligence in Dirty Work. It's a must-miss movie. [13 Jun 1998, p.C6]
    • Boston Globe
  25. Mr. Jealousy
    The ensemble quality is high and likable, even if Baumbach's inventiveness as a writer falters after the film's sweet, savvy beginning. [12 June 1998]
    • Boston Globe
  26. The Last Days of Disco
    Stillman has become a master at escalating the laughter by waiting an extra beat and then understating something devastatingly funny, as when someone looks Chris Eigeman's club manager, Des, in the eye and says, "I consider you a person of integrity - except, you know, in the matter of women."
  27. Clockwatchers
    Clockwatchers may not be perfect, but it's on to something. [22 May 1998, p.D5]
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  28. Quest for Camelot
    Quest for Camelot is easy to sit through and reasonably entertaining. Certainly it should satisfy its target audience. But Warner really needs to journey more boldly toward a personality of its own and offer a real alternative. [15 May 1998, p.D5]
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  29. Wilde
    Stylish, sad, opulent, brilliant, and clear-eyed, Wilde does justice to its complex subject. It should stand as the definitive biofilm for years to come. [05 Jun 1998, p.D6]
    • Boston Globe
  30. Les Misérables
    August's production, while not on a level with either of those memorable predecessors, is solid nonetheless. Its strengths are its handsome amplitude and the intelligent clarity with which the various strands of the novel are advanced by a smoothly meshed international cast. [01 May 1998, p.D4]
    • Boston Globe
  31. Sliding Doors
    You're hooked enough to keep watching, even if the characterizations veer toward the two-dimensional.
  32. The Big Hit
    The last word in good-time mayhem.
  33. Nightwatch
    Nightwatch quickly declines from creepy to silly. [17 Apr 1998]
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  34. Sonatine
    Sonatine is less stylish and affecting than Fireworks. Its deadpan satire becomes indistinguishable from numbing slack as the waiting game is played out.[17 Apr 1998, p.F7]
    • Boston Globe
  35. The Spanish Prisoner
    It's a treat to encounter the deadpan light-handedness with which Mamet goes about his business.
  36. Mercury Rising
    Every time the kid looks at a field of numbers and symbols that start jiggling across a screen to clicky music, but not jiggling as fast as his brain, he's exiling the kind of hero played by Willis to the scrapheap of history. [3 Apr 1998, p.D10]
    • Boston Globe
    • 44 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Barney's Great Adventure
    The film is too long for some toddlers and too dull for some older children, and anyone over 12 will likely find it as much fun as a 75-minute root canal. [03 Apr 1998, p.D9]
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  38. Wide Awake
    Daring to be low-key and even a little old-fashioned, Wide Awake is a well-intentioned film that steers clear of cheap sentimental miracles and reassuringly holds out a vision of growth and healing measured in small steps. [27 Mar 1998, p.D8]
    • Boston Globe
  39. Fireworks
    Fireworks is anything but the usual cop thriller. It's a piercing meditation on mortality, with a heartbroken tough guy at its center. [20 Mar 1998, p.C8]
    • Boston Globe
  40. The Big Lebowski
    The Big Lebowski isn't quite up to the level of the Coen brothers' best films - "Miller's Crossing," "Fargo" and "Barton Fink." But second-level Coen brothers can be funnier than first-level almost everybody else. [6 March 1998, p.D5]
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  41. Dangerous Beauty
    Dangerous Beauty is a costume drama that hasn't quite decided whether it wants to exist on the level of serious historical drama or trashy entertainment. [20 Feb 1998, p.C6]
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  42. Nil by Mouth
    Nil by Mouth is a scaldingly invigorating filmaking debut. [06 Mar 1998, p.D7]
    • Boston Globe
  43. Blues Brothers 2000
    There's some terrific music in "Blues Brothers 2000," but you have to sit through a lot of tedious overkill to hear it. [06 Feb 1998, p.F5]
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  44. Fallen
    Fallen is a more than usually ambitious but ultimately failed attempt to merge a supernatural thriller and cop-chase movie. [16 Jan 1998, p.D6]
    • Boston Globe
    • 18 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Mr. Magoo
    Since a film like Mr. Magoo relies - literally and figuratively - on sight gags, they ought to be hilarious and razor-sharp. But the film's gags couldn't work their way through melted butter. [25 Dec 1997, p.C6]
    • Boston Globe
  46. As Good as It Gets
    Nicholson, Hunt, and Kinnear will win you over as they turn the film into a valentine to New York's walking wounded.
  47. Tomorrow Never Dies
    Tomorrow Never Dies works too hard to keep the James Bond franchise going, sacrificing Bond's signature light comedy and stylish playfulness to become just another hectic action movie. [19 Dec 1997]
    • Boston Globe
  48. Titanic
    Titanic is a big-budget spectacle and director Cameron brings it off with high-tech bravura, placing us aboard the ship in real time.
  49. Scream 2
    I'm not sure that I really want to see "Scream 3,'" but Craven, Williamson, and the screamers certainly bring this one off by not only slapping all their cards on the table, but insisting we admire the way they play them.
  50. Good Will Hunting
    First and foremost, Good Will Hunting is a film riding young, exuberant energies.
  51. Sick: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist
    Those who can endure it will find Kirby Dick's film provocative and surprisingly touching. [14 Nov 1997, p.D11]
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  52. Happy Together
    An abundance of style and an almost total lack of substance make Wong Kar-wai's Happy Together a visually arresting but ultimately unrewarding excursion. [31 Oct 1997]
    • Boston Globe
  53. Telling Lies in America
    It's a surprisingly sweet underdog immigrant coming-of-age story set in 1961. [24 Oct 1997]
    • Boston Globe
    • 58 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Year of the Horse
    Jarmusch captures all this in Super 8 Hi Fi 8 video, which gives a gritty, dirty feeling. Maybe it's fake authentic, but it feels right. [24 Oct 1997, p.C8]
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  55. Gang Related
    The schizoid Gang Related is too heavy to be light and too light to be heavy. [8 Oct 1997, p.F3]
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  56. The Edge
    The Edge is mostly corny macho mano-a-mano stuff, made watchable by spectacular scenery and a lot of understatement in Anthony Hopkins's performance and David Mamet's screenplay - until an overwrought ending brings it down. [26 Sep 1997, p.D7]
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  57. Nenette and Boni
    It's a powerful depth charge of a film about reinvented family values. In Denis's hands, this urgent, loving brother and sister act is lyrical, exhilarating, flecked with mystery. [24 Oct 1997, p.C6]
    • Boston Globe
    • 57 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Going All the Way
    Going All the Way is a familiar story told with daring and unsentimental eloquence. At a time when it is rare for exceptional books to become exceptional films, Pellington's debut arrives as a pleasant and welcome exception. [10 Oct 1997, p.C5]
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  59. A Self-Made Hero
    Ingeniously rising above the ongoing culture war between France and the United States, Jacques Audiard's A Self-Made Hero piquantly offers a distinct subtext for each country. [3 Oct 1997, p.D7]
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  60. She's So Lovely
    When the chemistry isn't there - and it mostly isn't - the actors and film seem merely self-indulgent, despite the obvious devotion with which She's So Lovely was made. [29 Aug 1997, p.C3]
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  61. Leave It to Beaver
    The humor in Leave It to Beaver is doggedly bland, with a conventional story line that's no more inventive than watching four episodes of the TV show scrunched together and interwoven. [22 Aug 1997, p.F6]
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  62. Career Girls
    Career Girls is a film that knows how wounding and complicated life can be, yet still believes in, and convincingly renders, the healing power of friendship. [15 Aug. 1997, p.D4]
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  63. Good Burger
    It's a neighborhood comedy for kids that squanders the high energy of a group of young actors on a stubbornly unimaginative script. [25 July 1997, p.C5]
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  64. Star Maps
    Miguel Arteta's Star Maps is an uneven first feature, but what's good in it is very good. It's got invigorating rawness to spare, making its low budget work in its favor. [22 Aug 1997, p.F5]
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  65. Hercules
    There's no dust on this snazzy new Hercules. It's got lots of muscle and lots of lift. [27 June 1997, p.C1]
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  66. The Pillow Book
    The Pillow Book is Peter Greenaway's most stunning and accessible film since "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover." Dense, gorgeous and inexorable - once you give yourself over to its logic - it's a boldly erotic explosion of Asian chic, taken to places no film has gone before. [20 Jun 1997]
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  67. La Promesse (The Promise)
    Hurtling from the screen with a vigor and importance that are all but absent from contemporary film, it's a deeply moving social drama, raw and gritty in style, shining with moral purpose as it delivers a scathing take-it-into-the-streets critique of feral capitalism and racism. [18 July 1997, p.D1]
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  68. Fathers' Day
    Robin Williams and Billy Crystal don't quite hit a dream team level of hilarity in Fathers' Day. They don't send you home empty-handed, either. [9 May 1997, p.C7]
    • Boston Globe
  69. Nowhere
    In short, Nowhere needs more humor, more wildness. Its pandemonium is only on the surface - which could have been the premise of a really humorous take on teen chaos. But it doesn't push the envelope as much as Araki's previous films. Although it gives his pop sensibility a vigorous workout, Nowhere is Araki's Mallrats. [06 June 1997, p.D6]
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  70. Irma Vep
    Olivier Assayas's Irma Vep is a spicy, propulsive, invigorating paradox - a French film of great gusto about the exhaustion of French film culture. Written in 10 days and shot in four weeks with a very busy Super 16mm camera, it looks and plays as breathlessly as its on-the-fly circumstances. [27 July 1997, p.C8]
    • Boston Globe
  71. Traveller
    Traveller is a little too rosy and pat, but it clambers its way to entertainment value all the same. [2 May 1997]
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  72. Love and Other Catastrophes
    Filled with fun, style, and ensemble give-and-take, the peppy Love and Other Catastrophes restores one's faith in sex, lies, and videotape. [11 Apr 1997, p.C7]
    • Boston Globe
    • 62 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Cats Don't Dance
    With its bonus points for campy fun, Cats Don't Dance is an all-around winner for all ages. [26 Mar 1997, p.D8]
    • Boston Globe
  74. Love Jones
    It's funky and funny, not just sleek, riding witty repartee that makes it seem an extension of the fizzy, romantic comedies of the '30s (as well as the Harlem Renaissance, invoked by its poetry club scenes). [14 Mar 1977, p.C1]
    • Boston Globe
  75. Jungle 2 Jungle
    Jungle 2 Jungle is surprisingly bearable. [07 Mar 1997, p.D5]
    • Boston Globe
  76. The Watermelon Woman
    Although Watermelon Woman is at times rudimentary and slight, it's saved by its humor and its way of tweaking political correctness. [9 May 1997, p.C6]
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  77. Touch
    The playfulness and high spirits bubbling from the pages of Leonard's novels are squelched by Schrader's earnestness. Schrader's touch with Touch isn't light, and it costs him. [14 Feb 1997, p.D9]
    • Boston Globe
  78. Mother
    Mother has a slyly subversive premise and a terrific and commandingly comic role for a woman - which immediately sets it apart from most other American films - and Debbie Reynolds pounces on it with such savvy and self-assurance that it reminds us how funny self-possession can be in the right hands. [10 Jan 1997, p.C3]
    • Boston Globe
  79. Metro
    For all its propulsion (when it isn't slogging through would-be love scenes), Metro is unable to avoid seeming like yet another of the vanity movies that got Murphy into the career trouble from which he just extricated himself. Murphy vulnerable is more appealing than Murphy as supercop. [17 Jan 1997, p.D6]
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  80. Thieves
    There's a grim fatalism in Les Voleurs, with more than a few pangs of resignation and a melancholy respect for the problematic nature of life. But it's also bold and powerful and totally unpredictable as it draws its narrative strands together to conclude that the human heart can be the biggest thief of all. [17 Jan 1997, p.D5]
    • Boston Globe
  81. My Fellow Americans
    In short, My Fellow Americans is too much like the bland, numbing political campaigns of which we're still trying to clear our heads. [20 Dec 1996, p.E6]
    • Boston Globe
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Bastard Out of Carolina
    Huston's direct style and subtle touch keep Bastard from becoming a sociological treatise. Not for a moment can we forget that these are people hurting people. [13 Dec 1996, p.C28]
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  83. Jingle All the Way
    Jingle All the Way packs into its queasy bag everything we've learned to dread about the so-called holiday season. If it doesn't bring on an attack of Seasonal Affective Disorder, nothing will. [22 Nov 1996, p.E6]
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  84. Ridicule
    Loaded with heart, wit, originality, juicy performances and contemporary relevance, Patrice Leconte's Ridicule is one of the most rewarding costume dramas in years. [06 Dec 1996, p.C6]
    • Boston Globe
  85. Space Jam
    Exuberantly mixing live action and animation, it's a high-energy dream teaming that shrewdly takes advantage of the chance to goof on Jordan's temporary retirement from basketball and unsuccessful fling at baseball, and even more winningly exploits the antic wildness that always distinguished Warner Bros.' bouncy Looney Tunes. [15 Nov 1996, p.D1]
    • Boston Globe
  86. The Secret Agent
    Hampton's directorial inexperience shows, and the film remains curiously disjointed and devoid of suspense. [06 Dec 1996]
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  87. Set It Off
    Although perhaps inescapably derivative, the film rides its cast's warm and vibrantly meshed energies - to say nothing of its gender novelty. It's filled with heart and muscle as the women tired of being scammed, slammed and rammed deposit the exploitation film in new realms of payback. [06 Nov 1996, p.D1]
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  88. Larger Than Life
    Larger Than Life is a thin, disjointed road comedy that contains a few laughs despite itself. No matter how loosey-goosey and silly the script gets, and no matter how contrived the premise is, Bill Murray manages to sneak in a number of typically zany actions and reactions. [01 Nov 1996, p.E7]
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  89. Thinner
    Never quite scary, never funny for long, never enough over-the-top. It's never compelling plotwise, either, especially toward the sloppy ending, when Mantegna is inexplicably erased from the plot. [26 Oct 1996, p.F3]
    • Boston Globe
  90. Jude
    Jude is a modernized version of Hardy, but a handsome, fluid and red-blooded one that has no difficulty finding correlatives to the prejudice and hatred of wit and spirit against which Hardy, in his gimlet-eyed way, so passionately attacked. [25 Oct 1996]
    • Boston Globe
  91. Get on the Bus
    Shining with freshness and commitment, Get On the Bus is one of the far from overwhelming number of films you owe it to yourself to see in 1996. [16 Oct 1996, p.F1]
    • Boston Globe
  92. Trees Lounge
    Comically rueful, semi-autobiographical, warmly appealing. [25 Oct 1996, p.C8]
    • Boston Globe
  93. Microcosmos
    Microcosmos is a microspectacular. [08 Nov 1996, p.C6]
    • Boston Globe
    • 33 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Glimmer Man
    It's no surprise that the mountainous, pseudo-mystical actor stuck to his recipe for The Glimmer Man, an inoffensive cop-socky flick. [05 Oct 1996, p.C3]
    • Boston Globe
  95. Surviving Picasso
    Surviving Picasso is always intelligent and often entertaining, even when it perhaps inevitably takes on the character of an upmarket wax museum. [4 Oct 1996]
    • Boston Globe
  96. Fly Away Home
    Nobody does a better job of putting animals and people in the same movie than Carroll Ballard, and he does it again, humanely as ever, in Fly Away Home. [13 Sep 1996, p.D8]
    • Boston Globe
  97. The Trigger Effect
    The Trigger Effect is a smarter-than- average thriller that proves David Koepp can direct films as well as write them. [30 Aug 1996, p.F1]
    • Boston Globe
  98. A Very Brady Sequel
    A Very Brady Sequel is a little like the meatloaf prepared by Alice, the Bradys' maid - padded, but palatable. It walks a line between evoking the old TV show and kidding it and it's as surprisingly lively a sequel as the original was for a big-screen treatment of an old TV staple. [23 Aug 1996, p.F4]
    • Boston Globe
  99. Girls Town
    Jim McKay's funky, spunky "Girls Town" is a refreshing girls-who-fight-back film that succeeds in being political without ever being didactic. [30 Aug 1996, p.F4]
    • Boston Globe
  100. The Fan
    The Fan isn't a strikeout, but it doesn't exactly knock the cover off the ball, either. It's more like a soft pop fly, taking its time before settling very predictably into a waiting fielder's glove. [16 Aug 1996, p.D3]
    • Boston Globe
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