Boston Globe's Scores

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:
7947 movie reviews
  1. Like the great Iranian filmmakers, Rasoulof has no use for the artificiality of heightened drama.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Serves up some caustic laughs before fizzling out.
  2. Though it plays fast and loose with several details, The Burial remains true to its focus on race, class, and how capitalism exploits both regardless of a person’s color or financial means. The message is not subtly delivered, but it’s still effective.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    It's a bit of a mess but strong stuff nevertheless -- a mournful, often wickedly funny religious satire that suggests what Kafka might have come up with had he been raised Catholic.
  3. The entire movie is pitched at a scream. But the screaming is more Janis Joplin, Axl Rose, or Mary J. Blige than Jamie Lee Curtis. All the tears I shed were hard-earned. So were all the laughing and clapping and eye-covering. In each case, it was involuntary.
  4. You want the movie to stir your soul, push your intellect, or at the very least, break your heart. But it's such a repetitive and thinly constructed piece of filmmaking that the scope and complexity of Sampedro's case are turned to porridge.
  5. Has everything you want in a supernatural thriller except thrills.
    • Boston Globe
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Some of the most honest and tender observations come from Basquiat's girlfriend at the time, Suzanne Mallouk.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Parents will while away the time in moderate boredom until the film unexpectedly springs to life in its midsection, then just as abruptly goes back to sleep.
  6. Director Penny Marshall's choreography encompasses emotional as well as physical ebbs and flows. Awakenings lives up to its title. [11 Jan 1991]
    • Boston Globe
  7. Ramsey is close to a force of nature, equally skilled at conveying Birdy’s curiosity, humor, orneriness, and not-infrequent bewilderment. In other words, she’s a 14-year-old.
  8. Resonates with intelligence and a poignancy made more sorrowful by what happened to all of us, but especially to New Yorkers, on that terrible day.
    • Boston Globe
  9. This is classic Disney in the traditional mold - cute, but also pushing into dark territory, fueled by elemental passions. [21 June 1996, p.47]
    • Boston Globe
    • 74 Metascore
    • 100 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    It's one of the small, pitch-perfect treasures of the movie year.
  10. One of the best things about Nolan as a director is that he’s not self-conscious. His movies unfold and fold in on themselves without the strain of labor or flash. But that lack of self-consciousness is also Nolan’s downside.
  11. For folks like me, who missed "Firefly," the short-lived TV show on which the movie's based, watching Serenity is like showing up for a big lecture course at the end of the semester. And yet, after an hour of intense disorientation, the movie's arch sarcasm becomes oddly entertaining.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Computer Chess is deeply strange and occasionally impenetrable, yet it’s also surreally funny, with touches of science fiction that bedevil the proceedings with outré possibilities.
  12. The Last King of Scotland joins the ranks of nightmarish innocents-abroad movies, from "Midnight Express" to "Hostel," where the disillusioned hero fights to return to civility.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    After Innocence isn't bravura filmmaking, and it doesn't have to be -- this is one of those documentaries where the subject is compelling enough to do the legwork.
  13. The film's most remarkable achievement, in this culture of clamor, simply may be its decision to keep the volume down, drawing us in as opposed to pummeling us, as most films do.
    • Boston Globe
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Tomboy is as visually beautiful as its 10-year-old heroine is defiantly plain.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    It's a bizarre, provocative story and a moving one, but it doesn't access the richer levels and themes of the film the publicity campaign obviously wants you to think of: 2006's "The Lives of Others."
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Orphanage gets by on mood and a mournfulness that's not easily soothed. Sadness and loss, it says, are the threads connecting the spirit world and our own, and women, who bring life into the world, understand that far better than men ever will.
  14. Everything is leaden, solemn, portentous. When the writing’s not wooden, it’s clumsily demotic.
  15. Plympton will be cheated if Cheatin’ doesn’t at least get nominated for a best animated feature Oscar.
  16. Kusama’s handling of point of view is diabolically shrewd. She maximizes the terror potential of the vapidly ostentatious modernist mansion without fetishizing it. She intensifies the monstrosity of some of the characters by making them all too human. And as for guessing the ending — good luck.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Unearths the expected footage from the crypt -- including a hilarious live video of the band arguing onstage over what to play next. The anecdotes are pungent and revelatory.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Primarily a one-man show for Darroussin, and the actor, a longtime pro in the French film industry, comes through with a scarifyingly believable portrayal.
  17. It's slick, sleek, and stylish, and if it doesn't quite redefine cool, it certainly offers a snazzy update.
    • Boston Globe
  18. While uncertainty remains about Tenório’s horrible fate, it’s never in doubt how much he was beloved. “They Shot the Piano Player” is a tribute to the musician and to those who knew him best. See it more than once, and hope the theater plays it loud.

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