Boston Globe's Scores

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For 7,947 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: 5,229 out of 7947
  2. Mixed: 1,553 out of 7947
  3. Negative: 1,165 out of 7947
7947 movie reviews
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    • 30 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Hangover Part III
    This third go-round for the "Wolf Pack" doesn't bother to Xerox the original 2009 hit comedy, as 2011's witless "Hangover 2" did. Instead, the new movie heads in different, if utterly formulaic, directions. So it's not terrible. It's just bad.
  2. 21 and Over
    Among the ingredients “21” is missing: the infectiously random silliness of a Zach Galifianakis, the smug hunkiness of a Bradley Cooper, and any sort of Vegas-y gloss whatsoever.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Carrie
    The new Carrie is a thoroughly dispiriting remake — “retread” is the appropriate word — that could have been directed by any proficient Hollywood hack.
  4. For Greater Glory
    Some bad movies can make you feel awful for the people who made them and worse for the audience that shows up. The actors, the script, the camera: There's nowhere good they can go. For Greater Glory is that kind of bad movie: a total embarrassment.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Deadfall
    Wilde is stuck with the harder job of simultaneously playing sexy, innocent, conniving, and heartsore, and the effort appears to give her a headache. "This is kind of like an old movie," Liza says to Jay in one scene. Lady, don't you wish.
  6. Starbuck
    Bertrand does his jelly-belly best to keep Starbuck a comedy. But even the broadest shtick can’t prevent a movie that features a Busby Berkeley-style group hug from becoming a male weepie. Or a testimonial to Planned Parenthood.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Need For Speed
    All that’s missing is Clyde the orangutan from Clint Eastwood’s “Every Which Way But Loose,” which, trust me, this movie could have used.
  8. Klown
    It can seem sometimes that Hollywood has a monopoly on stupid, obnoxious comedy. Anyone who sees Klown will learn otherwise. Comedy can be just as stupid and obnoxious in Danish.
  9. Planet of Snail
    The Korean documentary Planet of Snail is spare and unemphatic - too much so - with an abiding sweetness of spirit.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Runner Runner
    When it’s time for the hot sex scene between Timberlake’s ambitious Richie Furst and Rebecca (Gemma Arterton), his boss’s luscious second-in-command, the encounter is as charmless and chemistry-free as the wooden banter that has led up to it. I’ve had dentist’s appointments that were sexier.
  11. Samsara
    The result is like an issue of National Geographic gone mad.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Ambassador
    A sociopolitical prankumentary in which the prank blows up in the filmmaker's face, exploding-cigar style.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Stand Up Guys
    We get it: Stand Up Guys is supposed to be cutesy criminal magic realism. But Stevens, an actor turned director, never finds the right vibe, and the movie's genuinely creepy misogyny sours the attempts to go sentimental in the final act.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
    Jackson has marched the modern fantasy-action epic into a thundering blind alley; the movie exhausts your senses without ever engaging your imagination.
  15. Backwards
    The neatness of the plotting becomes almost comical after a while. Construction is one thing; contrivance is another.
  16. Hitchcock
    This is all a long way of saying that the best way to better understand the man who made those and dozens of other movies is simply to see them. There's no case to be made for a mangy shortcut like Hitchcock. It's all surface and formula.
  17. The Purge
    The problem with high concepts like this is cooking up a story and characters to go along with it.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III
    The actor/walking disaster known as Charlie Sheen gives a perfectly credible performance here. It’s the rest of the film that tries your patience.
  19. A Place at the Table
    As morally engaged as the movie is, it’s also argumentatively slack. Precisely because it’s so easy to agree that hunger is bad, it’s hard to agree what to do.
  20. Baggage Claim
    “You don’t need a man to define you!” Very true, and so much for feminism. The rest of the film takes a long, convoluted, predictable, and mostly unfunny route to prove that the opposite is the case.
  21. Back to the Future Part II
    The sequel goes down the tubes by spreading itself across four time zones and inviting comparison to the original by spending most of its time back in 1955, where another mess must be set right. [22 Nov 1989, p.35]
    • Boston Globe
  22. Kafka
    Despite its good looks and expertly turned performances, it trivializes Kafka and his work. The simplistic optimism behind it is more terrifying than anything we actually see on screen. Sitting through Kafka is like watching somebody staff a suicide hotline by telling callers to just lighten up. [21 Feb. 1992, p.28]
    • Boston Globe
    • 62 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    About Last Night
    Despite a frisky soundtrack that starts off with James Brown’s “Sex Machine” — trust me, it’s downhill from there — this is the visual equivalent of Muzak. You don’t have to see it to have seen it.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Jupiter Ascending
    Dazzling to behold yet puny of imagination, the movie takes the “Star Wars” formula — hero myths nicked from Joseph Campbell, cutting-edge visual effects, comic-strip dialogue, goofy-looking aliens — and reduces it to generic Big Box shelf product.
  25. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
    "Star Trek VI" is one of the weaker additions to the Enterprise enterprise. It merely goes through the motions, including requisite moments that feel obligatory and uninspired. There's nothing gravely wrong here - no embarrassing scenes or egregious plot gaffes. There's simply nothing new, and certainly nothing fresh or reinvented. [6 Dec. 1991, p.53]
    • Boston Globe
    • 49 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    One Direction: This Is Us
    The problem is that the movie offers no way of differentiating between them beyond their hairstyles.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Girl Most Likely
    One doesn’t really want to beat up on Girl Most Likely, because it means well and everyone in it appears to be having a good time. But so many things are wrong with the film, from a script that’s bright but never sharp to the editing that leaves scenes hanging flaccidly in the breeze.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    A Million Ways to Die in the West
    It’s clear what MacFarlane is shooting for — nothing less than the chance to be both the Bob Hope and the Mel Brooks of his generation. Be careful what you wish for.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Labor Day
    The movie’s a somber affair, but if you see it in the right frame of mind, it’s the guilty-pleasure hoot of the season.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Diana
    Hirschbiegel and Watts don’t have the nerve for camp. Even a scene of a rejected Diana back at Kensington, forlornly playing Bach at her piano while mascara streams down her face, is played gloomily straight.
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