Boston Globe's Scores

For 7,964 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:
7964 movie reviews
  1. The turbulence of the life and the wondrousness of the talent are an irresistible combination. Striking a balance between the two isn’t easy, but at its conclusion Respect finds a way to bring together woman and artist in a way that does justice to both.
  2. The addition of Gunn, like the addition of a definite article to the title, means more of the same: a baroquely nasty, flauntingly mean two-plus hours of superhero action that is also (a much greater sin) noisily tedious.
  3. Last year’s biggest animated feature was Pixar’s Soul. The best thing about it was a rare feeling for music, an ability to express jazz visually and rhythmically. At times, Vivo does the same even better for Latin music.
  4. Maybe the most inexplicable thing among the movie’s many inexplicabilities is the near-complete waste it makes of an actress as gifted as Cotillard.
  5. With Johnson’s arrival, “Jungle Cruise” enters “Raiders of the Lost Ark” territory. It’s not just the cascading action adventure in an exotic setting. It’s also James Howard Newton’s score sounding so much like John Williams that Williams should get royalties.
  6. Most of the movie feels like an interlude. Pacing, velocity, and flow don’t interest Lowery. He knows the effects he wants and, skilled as he is, knows how to get them. But are they worth getting? A film that’s consciously laborious is still laborious. In a world where nothing is more real than magic, its absence is sorely felt.
  7. The quality of the acting makes it easy to overlook how increasingly leaden Stillwater becomes — but not easy enough.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Old
    Old is a fiendish idea only partially realized.
  8. The movie’s heart is completely in the right place, which, frankly, can make it a bit of a chore to watch. Moral righteousness makes the world a better place, but filmic it’s not.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The movies have a long history of “kids putting on a show.” Summertime belongs to that tradition even as it expands its boundaries into the heartsore world offscreen.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Pig
    Pig is a thoughtful, well-made movie for an audience primed for junk: It’s pearls before swine.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    If you miss Anthony Bourdain — and for many, the celebrity chef’s death in 2018 felt like the loss of a close and troubled friend — Morgan Neville’s Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain is a salve.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    It’s fiery. It’s big. It’s deafening. It’s dull.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Summer of 85, the latest from the prolific director of Swimming Pool (2002) and By the Grace of God (2018), looks like a sunny, sybaritic gay coming-of-age story along the lines of Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name (2017), but it turns out to be something darker and more ambiguous, less about sexuality than self.
  9. The best thing in the movie is Pratt. Firmly established in not one but two franchises — Guardians of the Galaxy and the Jurassic Park reboot — he’s come a long way from Parks and Recreation. He alternates here between charming wise guy and sensitive family man: Peter Quill domesticated.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    I Carry You With Me is an act of memory, of romance, and of friendship all in one — a movie that takes the kind of undocumented immigrants’ saga we think we know and recasts it in a dreamy, bittersweet light.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 100 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Summer of Soul captures a moment of the past that was launching itself into the future in a way that feels wholly relevant and inspirational to the present. The movie is a gift.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    No Sudden Move is a terrific movie — an unflashy near-masterpiece of professionalism on both sides of the camera.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    A cautionary tale for the fleet-fingered social media generation, Zola explodes off the screen in a burst of emoji confetti.
  10. A predictable, semi-shameless, yet not-unsatisfying action drama.
  11. Usually loud and almost always ridiculous, F9 is action-packed enough to make your carburetors seize up.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Now “the best British band to ever come out of America” gets the documentary treatment from director Edgar Wright, himself a cheeky bugger (Sean of the Dead, Baby Driver), and it is superbly entertaining whether you love Sparks, hate them, or just have never heard of them.
  12. The most remarkable thing about Brendan J. Byrne’s documentary — for anyone who’s followed Bill Bulger’s career it’s shocking, really — is the degree of cooperation Byrne got from the Bulger family for this joint portrayal of the two brothers. It started out as a profile of Bill, Byrne says, but he quickly realized he couldn’t tell the story of the younger brother without also telling the story of the older.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Siberia is a Freudian wallow made by a New York street fighter of a Fellini, and it is nothing if not authentic in its stress-fractured machismo.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Almost as generic as its title, Fatherhood is made real enough to matter by the strength of its performances and the sincerity of its makers.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Luca has energy to spare and it’s certainly easy on the eyes, if not as visually outrageous as, say, the recent Coco. The moral lessons — be true to your friends, overcome your fears — are tidy and shopworn, fresh to young audiences but lacking the jolts of originality that make classic Pixar films an all-ages proposition.
  13. The humor is crass when it isn’t forced. The violence, which barely pauses for reloading, feels even more mechanical than it does mindless, and it’s very mindless. How can a movie so full of action feel so tired?
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Well, there are worse ideas for movies and certainly worse casts, and Michael Lembeck’s genial, predictable comedy rolls along on well-worn tracks elevated by the class and commitment of actors who’ve earned our affection over decades of work.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Like a cool lemon ice on a blistering summer day, In the Heights feels like a reward.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Heading straight to streaming platform Paramount+ without the embarrassment of appearing in theaters first, the movie is both blissfully incoherent and weirdly generic, as if it had been assembled from the spare parts of other movies and glued together with stuntwork.

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