Boston Globe's Scores

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:
7946 movie reviews
  1. Oasis is that rare miraculous whirlwind romance that moves from attempted rape to reverence without kicking up a lot of dust.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    I don't usually make recommendations of this kind, but if you or your kids have gone to a burger joint in the last few weeks, you really do need to see this movie.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    We haven't had a good Frankenstein, Dracula, or Wolf Man movie in a long time, so here's one where the whole gang shows up. One catch: It's not good.
  2. The movie's no good: It's written, directed, performed, photographed, edited, and marketed on a fifth-grade reading level; despite that and its twin stars' saucer eyes and ropy limbs, it's no Muppet movie either.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 100 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Unfolds with the serenity of a fable but underneath it draws intelligent, deeply troubled connections between the personal, political, and spiritual.
  3. There's not much of a script. The direction is the pits, and stars Pierce Brosnan and Julianne Moore, playing dueling divorce lawyers who fall in love, are lousy, too.
  4. What an amazing presence Gorintin has. Never mind her hunched back and white hair, she's no crone. She makes Eka needy for happiness but susceptible to heartbreak. It's a great performance, full of both joy and the quiet, disappointing parts of being alive that come with knowing change is part of life.
  5. Godsend makes swill of religion, science, family, and morality. It has the sensitivity of a cactus, the ingenuity of a square wheel, and the integrity of a CEO.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 12 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    A weirdly airless disaster, a turkey so insistently DOA that the dialogue serves as its own epitaph.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    This is an old-fashioned sports hagiography of the sort that Gary Cooper used to star in while Teresa Wright sat smiling and worried on the sidelines, and, amazingly, it engages your attention and even respect while trotting out every clubhouse cliche in the book.
  6. Maddin's movies are easy, too. Point your eyes at the screen; the magic follows.
  7. The movie is always entertaining and frequently smart about the new ground one girl will break to humiliate another.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Smartly filmed (aside from a few distracting editing fripperies), but it's so dazzled by its subject and saddened by his martyrdom that it never moves past the heroic politics of dissent.
  8. MC5 is everything a rockumentary should be and usually isn't. Then again, MC5 was everything a rock band should be and usually isn't.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    In the end, promotion, as good as it may be, doesn't make for a real documentary. Faster is a kind of bone-crushing fun, but there's little drama and certainly no insight.
  9. Man on Fire is ponderous and bloated, dragging the Bible and Giannini into its swirling cesspool. Scott can't give the movie any real emotional weight. And Washington gives his first lifeless performance.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The anti-"Kill Bill." This is an old man's movie in all the good ways: gentle, humanistic, rich with observation, quietly aware of all that can't be solved by the sword.
  10. It's looking for comedy and romance in the obvious places.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Morlang is a repressed creep whose worst crime, as far as the audience is concerned, is dullness.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Turns out to be one of the finer peeks into the creative process of staging a play. Granted, that's a tiny genre, and the film's core audience -- theater majors and the people who love them -- is narrow. The lessons, however, are big.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The result is insanely good, and the best time I've had at the movies in ages.
  11. The movie is as grim and grave as the comic book. But it lacks atmosphere. It's often illogical and drubs you numb with its single dimension: noisy retribution.
  12. The movie's queer delight is contagious. You'll exit lip-synching.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Unfolds with an absolute minimum of dramatic highs and lows, and it's so disaffected that it prompts laughter at the wrong moments.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    A textbook example of how a director can strip away plot, motivation, character, and meaning and still leave arrant pretension standing tall.
  13. Comes up short when things get serious, resorting to cliches and a whole lot of hooey about "moral fiber."
  14. Not as desperate, unfunny, and nonsensical as its title. It's worse. Worse than you can imagine. Unless, of course, you've imagined 90-something minutes of bloopers and outtakes that congeal into a story -- much the way a scab is formed.
  15. Watching it is like being lost in somebody's richly moody campfire story -- it's so good, in fact, that only once it's over do you realize you've been holding your marshmallows too close to the flame.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The real struggle in The Alamo is between historic revisionism and Hollywood notions of sacrifice, and it's not much of a contest: Hollywood wins, as it did in John Wayne's sprawling, factually spurious 1960 film.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The producers of Ella Enchanted probably assume, correctly, that many more kids haven't read the book than have, and they're out to give that audience a slick, shallow good time.

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