Boston Globe's Scores

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For 7,950 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 1 point 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: 5,231 out of 7950
  2. Mixed: 1,554 out of 7950
  3. Negative: 1,165 out of 7950
7950 movie reviews
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    • 55 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Love Actually
    Charming, if terribly overstuffed, vision of romantic London gridlock.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Two Brothers
    Honors the power and beauty of these beasts even as it underscores the cultured savagery of the men who are crowding them out.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Woodsman
    An honest, honorable indie chamber drama that, if anything, errs on the side of caution. It benefits from a scrupulously observed performance by Kevin Bacon.
  4. Swept Away
    At its best, Swept Away is like a scrapbook of postcards starring two lovebirds with great tans.
  5. Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle
    Alan Rudolph's beautifully burnished, heartache-filled evocation of Dorothy Parker and her Algonquin Round Tablemates bites off a bit more than it can spew. But a couple of things make it special. [23 Dec 1994, p.45]
    • Boston Globe
  6. Flashdance
    Flashdance makes liberal use of jump cuts, strobe lighting and hard-edged, post-punk chic in its dance sequences, it registers as the end product of energy being released by an essentially lyrical temperament. It charms us, makes us want to refrain from scrutinizing it too closely. [31 Jul 1983, p.1]
    • Boston Globe
  7. The Dead Zone
    It never really chills you, but then it never insults you, either, and it's more affecting than you expect any film based on a Stephen King novel to be. [22 Oct 1983]
    • Boston Globe
  8. Scanners
    The film is more interesting as a phenomenon than as a movie. [27 Feb 1981]
    • Boston Globe
  9. Poetic Justice
    While it's altogether smaller in its ambitions and achievements than Singleton's terrific "Boyz N the Hood," it at least allows Janet Jackson to emerge as a sympathetic presence, more credible than most pop singers making movie debuts. [23 July 1993]
    • Boston Globe
  10. Silverado
    Silverado plays like a big-budget regurgitation of old Westerns. Whatkeeps it going is the generosity that flows between Kasdan and his actors. It's got benevolent energies, but not the more primal kind needed to renew the standard Western images and archetypes. [10 Jul 1985, p.26]
    • Boston Globe
  11. 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
  12. The Quick and the Dead
    The Quick and the Dead is a sly, savvy Hollywood sendup of Sergio Leone Westerns with Sharon Stone playing the Clint Eastwood righteous avenger role and Gene Hackman the heavy. You'd call it a spaghetti Western, but the budget is too high. Maybe we'd better think of it as Hollywood's first angel-hair-pasta Western. [10 Feb 1995, p.47]
    • Boston Globe
  13. Risky Business
    Risky Business is the sleeper of the summer. It's a refreshing change from the usual dumb teenage ripoffs, the slickest American film since "Trading Places" and "War Games," and a strong directorial debut for Paul Brickman, who knows his way around teen fantasies. [05 Aug 1983]
    • Boston Globe
  14. Last Action Hero
    Last Action Hero is a spectacularly uneven movie. Its action is hectic, but scattershot and mostly pretty empty. On the other hand, it is entertaining in surprising ways. [18 Jun 1993, p.41]
    • Boston Globe
  15. Disclosure
    Disclosure is a classic guilty pleasure. You won't be proud of yourself in the morning for having watched it, but you won't be able to take your eyes off it while you do. [9 Dec 1994, p.53]
    • Boston Globe
  16. Sixteen Candles
    Screenwriter John Hughes, making his directing debut, is at his best when he empathizes with the sensitivity in the ugly-duckling Ringwald and Hall characters. [04 May 1984]
    • Boston Globe
  17. Boomerang
    The result is a megabudget "House Party" -- amiable, colorful, filled with glamour and style. [01 Jul 1992]
    • Boston Globe
  18. Renaissance Man
    It's a little too long, a little too corny, a little too packaged, but its warmth and regenerative energies make it a winner. [03 Jun 1994]
    • Boston Globe
  19. Traveller
    Traveller is a little too rosy and pat, but it clambers its way to entertainment value all the same. [2 May 1997]
    • Boston Globe
  20. Southie
    Juicy acting and an intense individual and communal commitment that seems to boil up from the streets carry Southie past its structural and technical limitations. [28 May 1999]
    • Boston Globe
  21. Coming to America
    The romantic stuff is tepid. Luckily, his onscreen buddy, Hall, never strays far. Coming to America is at its best when they're playing off each other, and not just as the prince and his buddy. [29 Jun 1988, p.69]
    • Boston Globe
  22. Empire of the Sun
    Empire of the Sun is an imperfect film, but at its best it's grand and haunting in ways that only a movie can be. [11 Dec 1987]
    • Boston Globe
    • 53 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Metroland
    Bale and Watson make most of the film more interesting and watchable than it might otherwise be, finding flesh and blood in a script that isn't always equal to their talents. [23 Apr 1999]
    • Boston Globe
  24. Lethal Weapon
    The skies are thick with whizzing bullets and strings being pulled by Shane Black's crude script and Richard Donner's cement-mixer direction. Predictably, the chicks-and-ammo stuff is punctuated by TV cop show repartee. [6 Mar 1987, p.36]
    • Boston Globe
  25. Wall Street
    Oliver Stone's Wall Street plays like "Platoon" in civvies. It's a good bad movie, unable to muster the moral firepower of the earlier film, but entertaining on the level of a big, bold, biff-bam-pow comic strip that likes high-profile high-rolling more than it perhaps realizes. [11 Dec 1987, p.45]
    • Boston Globe
  26. Twins
    The attempts to supply heart are never more than synthetic, but Schwarzenegger, as the good guy with the good genes, and his goofy sweetness lift Twins into the win column. [9 Dec 1988, p.33]
    • Boston Globe
  27. Red Heat
    There's always something touching about the diligence with which Schwarzenegger soldiers through his assignments. There's a play of intelligence and decency in his eyes that exists quite independently of his bashing. Of the Hollywood tribe of virile fists, he's the one who seems most sensitive. [17 Jun 1988, p.31]
    • Boston Globe
    • 81 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Little Shop of Horrors
    Obviously, it wasn't the plot that has given Little Shop such a long life. In the case of this film, it's the music, the sets and the comic sketches that make this remake mostly successful. [19 Dec 1986, p.77]
    • Boston Globe
  29. A Chorus Line
    Richard Attenborough's film version of the long-running Broadway musical hit A Chorus Line not only avoids the disaster that many had predicted for it, but is often surprisingly effective and enjoyable, transcending its troubled history. [20 Dec 1985]
    • Boston Globe
    • 67 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    North Face
    It’s a literal cliffhanger and the next worst thing to being there.
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