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 film at times genuinely touches on the bittersweet magic of first love.
  2. As a suspenseful true crime story, 24 Days succeeds. As a warning against the ever present dangers of anti-Semitism, it is eloquent and disturbing. It’s in combining the two that Arcady mishandles the case.
  3. The Forger wants to be many things: gritty crime thriller, heist picture, domestic drama. Family bonds get “forged,” too, right? Director Philip Martin, who’s mainly done British TV work, is best known for “Prime Suspect 7.” Martin keeps things moving a little too briskly, perhaps. Scenes generally feel underdeveloped, and transitions abrupt.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    This big, brawny historical drama feels more personal to its maker as both an artist and an Australian. For better and for worse, the movie’s a labor of love and of national identification.
  4. A sometimes clever but ultimately clichéd comedy.
  5. The film is so bizarre, contrived, manipulative, and meretricious that anything is possible.
  6. It’s an awkward balancing act. The result is more Benigni than Bertolucci, and though Diliberto achieves moments of poignancy and touches on insightful psychological truths, it doesn’t look like he’ll be winning any Oscars soon.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    True Story, which leads with its chin from the title on down and which turns a startling tale of true crime and false identities into a heavy-breathing drama that, ironically, fails to convince.
  7. New rule: All Disneynature films must be narrated by Tina Fey.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    A note of paranoia creeps in that nods to classic film noir on one hand and baroque misogyny on the other. Or maybe this is just Garland’s dank idea of what men do when they’re left to their own devices: Create dream mates from the flayed skin of their fantasies.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    A meditation on fame, acting, aging, and acceptance, “Clouds” is a multilayered rapture on the subject of woman, performing. Not only does the film demand repeat viewings, it rewards them.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The new film is a return to form after that sagging midsection, and the coterie of Hartley admirers still paying attention will find frustrations, rewards, a few darkly intelligent laughs, and an ending that unexpectedly haunts.
  8. When the two veteran actors team up in Vermont writer-director Jay Craven’s wry, uneven Northern Borders, adapted from Howard Frank Mosher’s novel, they mesh so well they almost hold the rest of the movie together. But their nuanced performances underscore the weakness of the rest of the cast, and Craven’s erratic tonal shifts from the whimsical to the sentimental trip up the episodic plot.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    What saves the movie are those sequences of massed animals running riot through Budapest, overwhelming squadrons of police sharpshooters, and taking over a student performance of Liszt’s “Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2.” Hardly subtle, yet the scene yields one shot — of dogs glaring down from the box seats of a fancy concert hall — that’s nearly worthy of Buñuel.
  9. An Australian crime yarn with a solid cast and tone, but not enough freshness — or enough of Pegg’s waggishness — to be memorable.
  10. It tries to bridge the gap between pop culture and cultural elitism, between high art and the common commodity that everyone else buys tickets to see. A worthy goal, but it results in a movie that has none of the virtues of either.
  11. There are unexpected things in “Magician,” such as Puck’s presence. Welles’s first screen test, from 1937, and an appearance on “I Love Lucy” are others. But even the expected things, such as the numerous Welles clips, are consistently unexpected.
  12. Though programmatic in its plotting, “Effie” does aspire to obliqueness in its imagery. In “Mr. Turner,” Leigh evokes the painter of the title in the film’s stunning visuals. In “Effie,” the pseudo-medieval lushness and literalness of the Pre-Raphaelites permeates much of cinematography by Andrew Dunn.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Baumbach has something of an evil genius for casting. If Driver — the mercurial Adam of “Girls” — and Seyfried are solid as the incoming kids, Charles Grodin (the original “Heartbreak Kid”) ruthlessly represents the boomers refusing to cede the stage.
  13. Finally, a movie with at least some coherence despite its sadly challenging circumstances.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The production design is swank, the score impassioned. We should be riveted. Instead, you may feel you’ve seen this movie before, and, in a sense, you have: Woman in Gold plays remarkably like 2013’s “Philomena” with a change of cast and a different historical outrage.
  14. Jim Parsons brings his own irrepressible energy to DreamWorks’ 3-D animated Home, segueing from almost-alien misfit Sheldon Cooper on “The Big Bang Theory” to alien misfit, period.
  15. Whether or not Hawke got any answers to his questions about the purpose of being artist, seeking them under the guidance of a teacher like Bernstein resulted in this work of art.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Danny Collins leaves absolutely nothing to chance. The cast is full of sharp little turns by Melissa Benoist — the girlfriend in “Whiplash” and a future Supergirl — and Josh Peck and Katarina Cas, the latter playing Danny’s bubblehead user of a fiancée.
  16. The young cast comes through with appealing, naturalistic performances. But Weber’s programmatic, preachy story and emotional manipulation is so blatant that it verges on the fatuous.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    A slow-burner — deadpan and mysterious, funny and sad — about a young Japanese woman obsessed with a pot of gold no one else knows is there. The fact that it doesn’t really exist has no bearing on the matter.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    It must have looked great on paper. On screen, it’s a soapy mess that even Joan Crawford in her delusional late-period prime couldn’t save.
  17. Audiences are going to want to brace themselves, too – for a movie that refuses to recognize when it’s going too far, with its wince-eliciting jokes about jailhouse rape in particular.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Subtle, it’s not. But it is effective. The days when Al Gore could mobilize a nation with wonky charm and a PowerPoint presentation are over. As Marc Morano says, “keep it short, keep it simple, keep it funny.”
  18. It would violate a taboo to relate how this movie magic, masterfully orchestrated by Weinstein and Measom, is done. Their film is as smooth as Randi’s patter and demonstrates how the documentarian’s camera is quicker than the eye.

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