Boston Globe's Scores

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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:
  1. Positive: 5,240 out of 7964
  2. Mixed: 1,556 out of 7964
  3. Negative: 1,168 out of 7964
7964 movie reviews
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    • 57 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    Ragtime
    Except for the evocative sets and Randy Newman's upbeat musical score, Ragtime is better read than seen. [18 Dec 1981]
    • Boston Globe
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Body Heat
    Lawrence Kasdan's Body Heat--an homage to film noir--gets off to a nice start before it becomes entangled in its convoluted and somewhat uninteresting plot machinations.
    • Boston Globe
  3. Scanners
    The film is more interesting as a phenomenon than as a movie. [27 Feb 1981]
    • Boston Globe
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Popeye
    One of the major problems facing Hollywood today is the lack of will and energy to make movies that can charm youngsters without boring their parents. Popeye is an important contribution toward the solution. It's not a sophisticated film. But it's a gratifyingly engaging one. [12 Dec 1980, p.1]
    • Boston Globe
    • 58 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    Flash Gordon
    If you enjoy laughing at a movie, rather than with it, then you might get a few chuckles. [18 Dec 1980, p.1]
    • Boston Globe
  6. The Visitor
    The Visitor arrived at the height of a sci-fi and horror film revival, when “serious” directors... embraced genre conventions and made them their own. Paradise stole from them all. But unlike these directors, his ambition was coupled with delusional ineptitude.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Raging Bull
    The film that many consider the finest of its decade, Raging Bull, has aged well, and not just because it was filmed in black and white.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Somewhere in Time
    Somewhere in Time is a glossy, flossy and intermittently interesting piece of kitsch which, with more sensitive craftsmanship, could have been one of the more dazzling screen romances of the year. It's too bad that it's held down by its more overt commercial impulses. [7 Oct 1980, p.1]
    • Boston Globe
    • 86 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Ordinary People
    Moore's conception of the character is compelling. She rivets us. She's assisted by the superb performances Redford has elicited from her co- stars, Sutherland and Timothy Hutton, who plays Conrad, the guilt-ridden surviving brother of the dead boy. [26 Sep 1980]
    • Boston Globe
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Big Red One
    There are sequences in The Big Red One that you can't forget, and every one of them could have been made better with a bigger budget and a realism that was beyond Fuller's grasp at the time.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Outsider
    The "troubles" in Northern Ireland would seem to be an excellent dramatic vehicle: tension, violence, a people torn apart by religious, political, and economic differences. But writer-director Tony Luraschi turns it into a polemic. Speeches replace action and the dialogue is wooden. [14 Feb 2014, p.G31]
    • Boston Globe
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Shining
    When you sit down to The Shining, you sit down with normal expectations of being diverted, perhaps even being gripped, but not being undermined. But the film undermines you in powerful, inchoate ways. It's a horror story even for people who don't like horror stories - maybe especially for them. [14 Jun 1980, p.1]
    • Boston Globe
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Black Stallion
    Generations from now, when people talk about horse movies, they won't be talking about "National Velvet" or "My Friend Flicka," they'll be talking about the majestic beauty of Carroll Ballard's The Black Stallion. [07 Feb 1980]
    • Boston Globe
    • 77 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Monty Python's Life of Brian
    "No God and no religion can survive ridicule," wrote Mark Twain, but for once the sage of Hannibal was wrong.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    North Dallas Forty
    Nick Nolte electrifies the football-cum-drugs saga with a remarkable performance as Phil Elliott, a pot smokin', beer swillin', cocaine sniffin' tight end for the North Dallas Bulls. But the erratic direction of Ted Kotcheff and the wayward script are strictly second-string. [10 Jun 2014, p.G15]
    • Boston Globe
    • 89 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Alien
    What's most unusual about the original 24 years later, though, is its elegant minimalism.
  17. The China Syndrome
    This thoroughly stripped-down thriller simmers in a way that's still unsettling 25 years later. [24 Oct 2004]
    • Boston Globe
    • 38 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    King of the Gypsies
    Eric Roberts, making his movie debut, shines as a Travolta-ish hero who wants to surmount his family origins. [19 July 2015, p.N]
    • Boston Globe
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Watership Down
    The animation techniques are sophisticated but the story tends to get bogged down in pop philosophy. [01 Mar 2015, p.N]
    • Boston Globe
  20. Grease
    The screen Grease seemed at the time a big, overblown version of the sassy, gritty stage musical. Now the differences seem less important. What the two versions share are sizzle and a refusal to ignore the sexual energy of an exuberant cast. Grease seems kickier now than it did 20 years ago. [27 Mar 1998, p.D6]
    • Boston Globe
  21. Sorcerer
    Perhaps the elusive, uncanny soundtrack of Tangerine Dream brings this about, or maybe it’s Friedkin’s juxtapositions of close-ups and stark long shots of the tiny trucks lost in jungle or desert landscapes, but Sorcerer eventually seems to be happening someplace not of this world. Not hell, exactly; maybe Limbo.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Tentacles
    Fonda, who looks as if he's trying to hide through half the picture, was paid $ 500,000 to look like a convincing victim. It doesn't seem worth it. Even the corny special effects are better than his stilted, walk-through performance. [03 Dec 1989, p.B45]
    • Boston Globe
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope
    Star Wars is, quite simply, one of the best family entertainment buys you can make this summer. It’s a gorgeous, fantastic toy, a marvelous science fiction film that anyone can enjoy, sci fi fan or not.
  24. Rabid
    A characteristic early offering from horror icon David Cronenberg, rough production values and all. [30 May 2004]
    • Boston Globe
  25. The Food of the Gods
    H.G. Wells's tale of nature's little critters turned steroidal gets cheesy screen treatment from director Bert I. Gordon, a veteran of the ginormous creature genre of the '50s. [09 Sep 2007, p.N32]
    • Boston Globe
  26. Grey Gardens
    Truly, there is no looniness like looniness with lineage.
  27. The Day of the Locust
    Exquisitely painful look at how Hollywood turns its hopefuls into whores. [03 May 1992, p.B35]
    • Boston Globe
  28. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
    Nobody ever placed brilliance in the service of silliness quite the way the Python gang did. Monty Python and the Holy Grail is stuffed with both.
    • Boston Globe
  29. Harry and Tonto
    Has a pleasantly freewheeling, European art film feel to it, a welcome reminder of the New Hollywood of the '70s. [04 Sep 2005]
    • Boston Globe
    • 92 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Chinatown
    It's my favorite movie...Chinatown is a complex reminder of how movies were made when filmmakers held the cards - before product placement, marketers, and agents assumed control of the business. Before movies had to be sold to studios on the basis of zippy one-liners. I dare say that the movie wouldn't stand a chance of getting the green light today unless Julia Roberts was interested in playing Jane Gittes. [5 Nov 1999, p.D5]
    • Boston Globe
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