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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  1. Tickled
    By the end of Tickled the realm of superficial giggles has long been left behind. Though his lighthearted tone has difficulties keeping up with each new sinister discovery, Farrier has exposed in the least likely setting the network of power and money that preys on the weak with impunity.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Lucy
    It’s all ridiculous and enjoyable, and at the movie’s center is an actress creatively guessing at what omniscience might feel like.
  3. Mongolian Ping Pong
    In Mongolian Ping Pong the point is to look under the majestic vistas and see value in ordinary things -- ping-pong balls included.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    News of the World
    News of the World is a satisfying movie without ever becoming a great one.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
    The new film is a juicily enjoyable crowd-pleaser that works hard at expanding to fit the size of its ambitions and that wants to give the audience a high old time while slipping in reminders of how low some people may sink in the pursuit of power.
  6. The Shape of Things
    The cast helps enliven what could otherwise come off as a treatise. All four actors played these roles during the play's off-Broadway run.
  7. Manito
    Because Manito is really just an opera without the violins or Viking hats, you probably don't need to have everything spelled out. Its Spanish-English script is secondary to the universal language and timeless drama of family, community, dreams made and dreams dashed.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
    Second verse, same as the first, a little bit shorter and a little less worse.
  9. Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser
    Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser doesn't make the mistake of trying to oversell Monk as a colorful personality. It doesn't have to. It simply stands back and allows his genuine originality and unorthodoxy to make their own impressions. [13 Oct 1989, p.37p]
    • Boston Globe
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Agronomist
    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.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Karate Kid
    The one thing that should have been changed but hasn’t is the title, which makes no sense at all in a movie about kung fu.
  12. Happy Times
    Shares many things with ''Not One Less'' and ''The Road Home,'' among them a grass-roots sensibility that ultimately puts a premium on hope and simple kindnesses, while acknowledging the seductive power of money and superficial success.
  13. Unlocking the Cage
    Hegedus and Pennebaker do solid work presenting Wise’s arguments. It’s a tricky narrative challenge to shift from inherently compelling wildlife scenes to abstract courtroom debate, but the film manages it capably, even spicing things up with one justice’s admonition that Wise needs to cut his slavery analogies.
  14. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
    The group’s thematically, comedically broad inversion of the source material is consistently entertaining, and squeezes in some nicely played character growth to boot.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Hitchcock/Truffaut
    It’s largely successful, if by nature all over the map.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Pete Seeger: The Power of Song
    So there's a hole at the center of "Pete Seeger" that the movie fills with loving remembrances, testimonials, and new interview footage of the singer at his hand-built cabin in upstate New York.
  17. My First Mister
    Risks seeming too earnestly therapeutic for its own good. But what makes My First Mister a successful feature directing debut for Lahti is the emotional veracity it summons.
    • Boston Globe
  18. Bolt
    This stuff is clever, in the reflexively satirical, self-aware way that many animated films are. It's not until the dog is accidentally shipped off to New York City that the movie lets you in on an altogether more interesting idea: It doesn't want to be that cool.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Bull
    Bull is one of those quiet heartland indie dramas that can serve as a tonic after a steady diet of blockbuster. It’s about human connection, which is much on people’s minds in these days of global pandemic. And it’s about rodeo bull riders, a group of people I’ve always thought should have their heads examined.
  20. Joy Ride
    It's a snazzy, smartly made, and even hip little scarefest. As a jump-start to Halloween, it's all you could hope for.
    • Boston Globe
  21. Rumble in the Bronx
    Kinetic, fizzy, delivering more bounce to the ounce than anything out there right now, "Rumble in the Bronx" is my kind of mindless fun. [23 Feb 1996]
    • Boston Globe
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Fido
    Andrew Currie's stylish satire falls into the narrower niche of zombie farce, as pioneered by "Shaun of the Dead ," "Slither," Robert Rodriguez's half of "Grindhouse."
  23. The Cat's Meow
    Could have been -- and should have been -- richer and more resonant. It's Hollywood Babylon Lite, only TV movie-deep. But at least it's tangy.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Girls Rock!
    How are girls supposed to behave in a culture that tells them they're Disney princesses for the first 12 years and sex toys after that? Girls Rock! has one answer: Strap on a Fender and rage against the machine.
  25. Cold Souls
    The movie turns what could have been a tedious meta-movie exercise into a sincere dour farce.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Crude
    So, yes, something needs to be done, and if it takes Sting reuniting the Police in-concert to sing “sending out an SOS’’ on behalf of the plaintiffs (among other worthy causes), so be it.
  27. Ocean's Twelve
    The film Soderbergh's made is about promiscuous stargazing. And you don't need a brain for that, just two eyes and a mammoth appetite for heavenly bodies.
  28. A Love Divided
    Solid, balanced period piece that focuses on a specific place and time yet resonates with universal themes.
    • Boston Globe
  29. Yves Saint Laurent
    Frustratingly elusive and seductively louche, Lespert’s “Yves” probes a cryptic myth and a fragile soul, penetrating neither, but conjuring up a taste of Saint Laurent’s suffering, genius and style.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    My Little Sister
    My Little Sister comes from an unusual creative team: Stéphanie Chuat and Véronique Reymond, Swiss friends from childhood who write and direct films together. Their fourth feature, it combines a fluid visual realism — there are some astonishing sequences of Alpine parasailing — with an emotional intimacy that’s its own form of jumping off a cliff. This time, they’re collaborating with an actress willing to take a blind leap and bring us with her. It’s a bracing trip, a work of daredevil nerve that serves as its own reward.
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