New York Daily News' Scores

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For 6,911 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 42% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 55% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 8.2 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 57
Highest review score: 100 Fruitvale Station
Lowest review score: 0 The Fourth Kind
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2,885 out of 6911
  2. Mixed: 2,801 out of 6911
  3. Negative: 1,225 out of 6911
6911 movie reviews
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  1. Scary Movie 5
    Luckily, folks like Snoop and good sports like Sheen and, yes, Lohan, break up the monotony. Until, like an undead beastie, the boredom and dumb jokes come roaring back.
  2. The Angels' Share
    The setting and themes are pure Loach, and he’s handled comic scenarios with skill before. But he and his longtime screenwriter, Paul Laverty, have added a lighthearted buoyancy — enhanced by a spirited if obvious soundtrack — that might lead some to call this a feel-good crowd-pleaser.
  3. Disconnect
    The fine cast pushes beyond the script’s limits, even if some, like Hope Davis as Ben’s mom, are mostly wasted.
  4. American Meat
    There’s a good chunk of info for those eager to know how the sausage gets made, as well as the facts of life and death surrounding what we consume. You just have to pluck the PR feathers and find the good parts.
  5. It's a Disaster
    Berger’s got some clever ideas, but he does not push far in exploring them. And aside from Cross, there is virtually no one to like among these self-involved suburbanites. After an hour alone with them, we can’t help wishing The End would just arrive.
  6. To the Wonder
    It feels like a high-end perfume ad.
  7. 42
    Boseman is watchful, winning and confident, but never saintly. Yet he keeps Robinson’s moral spine aligned with his skill and self-respect, showing how he needed all of those to succeed.
  8. 6 Souls
    Along with Moore, all of them deserve some kind of credit for committing to a movie barely six souls will ever even see.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Eddie: The Sleepwalking Cannibal
    The holes in the plot, not in Eddie’s diet, are the real joke.
  10. Trance
    A frisky, feisty heist flick with brains and charisma, the movie may make a few errors, but they’re forgotten in the blink of an eye thanks to all the twists, turns and close shaves.
  11. Simon Killer
    Sort of “An American Psycho’s European Vacation,” this indie dramatic thriller mixes sex and violence and still winds up dull.
  12. Upstream Color
    Upstream Color is weird, but it’s worth the time.
  13. The Company You Keep
    Though consistently engaging, Redford’s latest directorial endeavor does feel like a plea. You can almost hear him coaxing us to learn from the past, even as we rush into the future.
  14. Evil Dead
    Though Alvarez keeps us watching, he takes no real chances. Buried under all those enthusiastically mangled bodies is the comfort of familiarity. He may have intended to remake a single film, but we’ve seen this movie countless times before.
  15. Somebody Up There Likes Me
    The actors hold our attention, and there’s something to be said for the guys’ pathological disconnect. But the movie itself is too disconnected to say it.
  16. Blancanieves
    We’re not in Disney’s world. Berger knows his Grimm, and he suffuses his entrancing fairy tale with a moving sense of melancholy.
  17. Mental
    The cutesy energy is just too much in this Aussie comedy that’s overly bemused by its quirkiness.
  18. Room 237
    What Room 237 is really about is how movies inspire passion. Which is a great thing, even if it comes out in wack-job ways.
  19. Welcome to the Punch
    Unfortunately, the rest of writer-director Eran Creevy’s film just shows that the Brits, too, make good-looking but empty thrillers, just like in Hollywood.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Tyler Perry's Temptation
    The mixed tones don't quite meld; While Smollet-Bell is fine, the broad comedy is so sporadic it feels out of place.
  21. Family Weekend
    Despite the promise Epps and Turner show in their film’s finest moments, we’re still talking about a movie that tries to wring jokes from puppet therapy.
  22. The Place Beyond the Pines
    The poetry in The Place Beyond the Pines can be elusive, but also easy to get lost in.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Renoir
    Unfortunately, for all the beauty, director Gilles Bourdos goes no further than simply observing surfaces.
  24. The Host
    Watch closely and you might even spy a better film inside, straining to break free.
  25. G.I. Joe: Retaliation
    The G.I. Joe team is back, and most of their sophomore movie adventure, G.I. Joe Retaliation, is as bland as their name and as subtle as an exploding tank.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Gimme the Loot
    Director Adam Leon, 31, has slyly and reverentially crafted a perfect New York movie, including the class tensions, relentless hustling and spontaneous connections that best define the exuberant strain of the city. The soundtrack, filled with mostly soul oldies, somehow feels exactly right for the sweaty New York summer of this scrappy kid-venture.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Croods
    The Croods are not meant to be beauties — they are, after all, a family of Neanderthals. But is the animation meant to be ugly, too?
  28. Olympus Has Fallen
    Perhaps every generation gets the movie stars it deserves. “Olympus” has quite a bit to say about the current state of our country. Intentions aside, not all of it is entirely flattering.
  29. Admission
    The bad news about Admission is that this thin envelope of a comedy checks all the boxes for being a phoned-in, phony, padded rom-com.
  30. Love and Honor
    Hemsworth has presence, but he also represents this film’s biggest problem: It feels like a bunch of good-looking kids putting on a show.
  31. Starbuck
    A high-concept goof that’s hard-pressed to surmount its twee preposterousness.
  32. Dorfman in Love
    Brad Leong’s “quirky” romantic comedy retreads ground that is already so well worn, everyone just slides right through.
  33. Hunky Dory
    Enthusiasm carries the day in this paint-by-numbers period tale, which is just charming enough to coast on its own clichés.
  34. Everybody Has a Plan
    It’s not easy to play twins (in another language, no less), without relying on showy mannerisms to define them. But Mortensen pulls it off. Your move, Franco.
  35. Stars in Shorts
    None of the seven shorts here is worth a single, well-made feature. But there are a few amusing moments to be found.
  36. The Call
    No one’s winning any awards for The Call. But at least the award winners know how to make it worth our while.
  37. K-11
    Points for niche audaciousness, but that’s all.
  38. From Up on Poppy Hill
    Even with no wood sprites, witches or spells, there’s plenty of magic in this coming-of-age charmer.
  39. My Amityville Horror
    Lutz, who was a boy when his family fled the Long Island home, is full of belligerence in this chronicle of his family’s alleged run-in with a ghoulish home where a murder had occurred.
  40. If I Were You
    Hardworking Oscar winner Harden and beguiling Spanish star Watling do nothing for this haphazard film, which belatedly decides it wants to be a stage satire as the women lark into a ridiculous avant-garde production of “MacBeth.” Bloody awful.
  41. Reality
    There is enough here — including the gifted Arena’s barely believable backstory — to keep your head spinning.
  42. Philip Roth: Unmasked
    Philip Roth turns 80 next week, and what better way to celebrate than to serve as the hero of his own story? It’s too bad, though, that this dully conventional biography doesn’t do justice to its subject.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Reincarnated
    Director Andy Capper crafts a surprisingly moving story, particularly in Snoop’s reactions to the deaths of Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur.
  44. The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
    Like a creaky Vegas act desperate to please, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone is so eager you can’t help wanting to like it. But you also can’t help wondering if something better is playing in the theater next-door.
  45. Upside Down
    Its compelling conceit is immediately weighed down by leaden execution.
  46. Spring Breakers
    So often not in his element — his turn in “Oz the Great and Powerful” is evidence of that — Franco is in freako mode here, and walks a line between spaced-out caricature and just plain Out There.
  47. Language of a Broken Heart
    Nothing terribly special here, but perfectly played and a spiritual cousin to such early ’90s indies as “Naked in New York” and “Ed’s Next Move.”
  48. Beyond the Hills
    The deliberate pace Mungiu employs in this incredible work is so engrossing and quietly heartbreaking that its philosophical ending may come as a shock.
  49. The We and the I
    Most of the performances are as unpolished as they are heartfelt, which is both endearing and distracting.
  50. Dead Man Down
    Before it devolves into typical American-style action, there’s an intriguing, European-style complexity to Dead Man Down.
  51. Electrick Children
    This material could so easily have tipped over into false sentimentality, but everyone works with a steady hand. Rebecca Thomas makes an assured debut as both writer and director, the gifted Culkin is excellent as always, and Garner finds lovely shades of nuance in Rachel’s innocent faith.
  52. Emperor
    Director Peter Webber (“Girl With a Pearl Earring”) fills the film with conciliatory emotion and jarring vistas of post-atomic landscapes. Unfortunately, Emperor needs more good ol’-fashioned swagger.
  53. Oz the Great and Powerful
    Don’t be fooled by the smoke and mirrors. There is nothing here that is great, or powerful. Worst of all, there’s nothing here that even feels like Oz.
  54. The Last Exorcism Part II
    Now Bell can break out of the genre. She's served her time.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Don't Stop Believin': Everyman's Journey
    It’s nice to watch the members marvel unendingly over their new find, while Pineda himself presents an ideal image of gratitude and hard work.
  56. 21 and Over
    How ironic (depressing? predictable?) that the week after we celebrate the best in movies, we are force-fed its very worst. 21 & Over is filmmaking by formula, and evidence of Hollywood’s assumption that appealing to viewers’ basest instincts will always pay off.
  57. Stoker
    Stoker is like the baby David Lynch and Tim Burton had, then left on the doorstep of the Addams Family. Full of heavingly gorgeous images that envelop a viewer before smothering them, its maddening elements eventually become too much to bear.
  58. The End of Love
    There is plenty of evidence that Webber has something significant to say, and the gifts with which to express himself. Once he’s ready to commit fully to his own vision, there’s no end to what he might accomplish.
  59. Future Weather
    The movie works best as a calling card for young Haney-Jardine, whom we can surely expect to see more of on the festival circuit.
  60. Hava Nagila: The Movie
    While the filmmakers never quite make the case that their chosen melody deserves its own full-length film, they do ensure that you’ll leave the theater happily humming it.
  61. A Place at the Table
    As important and eye-opening a documentary as you’ll see this year, A Place at the Table makes it impossible to think of hunger as merely another symptom of a shredded social safety net.
  62. Jack the Giant Slayer
    A director as talented as Singer (“The Usual Suspects,” “X-Men”) should be working to raise popcorn movies to a higher level. Instead, this uninspired effort feels like a colossal letdown.
  63. Dark Skies
    The pacing is so tedious and the action so unexciting that it's a real thrill when J.K. Simmons shows up as a wry alien expert — and a huge disappointment when he disappears a few minutes later.
  64. 11 Flowers
    Wang Xiaoshuai’s gently engrossing coming-of-age tale isn’t strikingly unique, but it does possess the heartfelt confidence that comes from autobiographical influence — and natural talent.
  65. Rubberneck
    The film works better as an uncomfortable character drama than as a murky family mystery, which Karpovsky deepens with some psychobabble. Still, a nicely sinister and shuddersome effort.
  66. Red Flag
    Owing a debt to Albert Brooks’ early comedies, Red Flag might be too much if it weren’t just right.
  67. Inescapable
    Muddled and inert despite the best intentions, this inescapably dull thriller plays like a Middle Eastern take on Liam Neeson’s “Taken.”
  68. Snitch
    Snitch is like watching an elephant on ice: inelegant, but you admire the effort.
  69. No
    The result was remarkable, but the story of it, while true to the moment, needed — ironically — much more dynamism.
  70. Saving Lincoln
    The movie’s gimmick is having the actors visually superimposed over sets created from actual Civil War photographs. But this collage effect, while striving for truthfulness, comes off like a View-Master version of a tale already told.
  71. The Jeffrey Dahmer Files
    All of that ends up making this movie — originally titled “Jeff,” in a telling bit of overpersonalization — feel like a late-night cable-news hack job.
  72. The Berlin File
    The story feels fairly perfunctory — not to mention unnecessarily knotty — but the well-connected leads do their best to ground it. And while this one falls far short of the “Bourne” films that serve as an influence, the intense action scenes consistently deliver some solid genre jolts.
  73. Like Someone in Love
    Newcomers may be disappointed by such a slender effort, but fans of revered Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami will find plenty to appreciate in his observant followup to 2010’s acclaimed “Certified Copy.”
  74. Shanghai Calling
    The movie wants to say something significant about the excitement and alienation of life in a strange — which is to say, new — place. The film never gets there, but its aims are honorable, and the lovingly shot Shanghai scenery does enhance the trip.
  75. A Good Day to Die Hard
    Ultimately, even more than 2007’s “Live Free or Die Hard,” “Good Day” never lets McClane be McClane. Gone is his taunting snark and quick-witted preparedness; instead he seems like a jerk with a thing for guns.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Safe Haven
    Duhamel is goofy and harmless, but unlike Ryan Gosling in “Notebook,” adds no texture or subtlety. Hough (“Footloose”), while photogenic, is similarly bland.
  77. Beautiful Creatures
    Who could have predicted that one day we would long for the relative subtlety of “Twilight”? Richard LaGravenese’s Beautiful Creatures is so outrageously florid, Bella and Edward’s baroque courtship looks understated by comparison.
  78. Ferlinghetti: A Rebirth of Wonder
    Sadly, the film gets mired in traditionalism, something the man himself always railed against. But worth a look for seeing intellectual bravery (still) at work.
  79. Would You Rather
    With a bit less grisliness, it could have been a mystery dinner-theater performance.
  80. Lore
    Australian director Cate Shortland’s straightforward approach to the blinders worn by Hitler Youth creates a disconcerting and eerie film, made even more memorable since it’s seen through the prism of childhood’s end.
  81. Side Effects
    The movie respects a viewer’s intelligence, which should also serve as a warning; don’t be lulled into a stupor. Keeping sharp will allow all the fun and menace in this terrific thriller to seep into your head.
  82. Identity Thief
    The ensuing road trip should be hilariously chaotic, a classic misadventure between two ill-matched travelers. Instead of “Midnight Run,” though, we get another gloss on the recent “Guilt Trip,” in which the concept is all that counts.
  83. A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III
    Swan is so eager to be a trippy comic lark that it ends up resembling a clown trying to fit through a pea-shooter.
  84. John Dies at the End
    This is really the kind of movie that was made to be watched in a haze after midnight, at which point it would all, no doubt, make perfect sense.
  85. Sound City
    Grohl has a longstanding reputation as one of the nicest guys in rock. So it should come as no surprise that this may be the most positive music documentary you'll ever see.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Warm Bodies
    Hoult's genuinely awkward charm and Palmer's tomboyish wholesomeness disarm an audience overfamiliar with this story. The two ably communicate the primitive and irrational feelings of falling in love.
  87. The Last Gladiators
    He tells his story honestly, but with no great sense of self-awareness or insight.
  88. Girls Against Boys
    This pseudo-punkster hybrid of "Heathers" and "Thelma & Louise" loses its way almost immediately, veering from wannabe-shocking social indictment to stultifyingly obvious yawner.
  89. Bullet to the Head
    Like Stallone, director Walter Hill is also far from his heyday ("The Warriors," "48 HRS.," "Streets of Fire"), but the old-guy camaraderie behind the scenes is evident. Despite the movie being based on a graphic novel, no one adds extra flash here just to appease the kids.
  90. Koch
    The politician who almost pathologically asked the question "How'm I doin'?" clearly never needed a view outside his own. Which is as New York as it gets.
  91. Movie 43
    Despite the filmmakers' desperate attempts to scandalize us, the only real shock is that a movie this disastrous ever managed to get made.
  92. Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters
    Even if he's slumming, Renner gets it best: his dry delivery fully acknowledges the movie's ridiculousness. If you're planning on entering this fractured fairy tale, you'll want to follow his lead.
  93. Parker
    If you go in knowing what you're getting, you should come out relatively satisfied. Our hero vigorously beats up a parade of bad guys. Lots of bullets fly. There are a couple of decently plotted thefts. And to tell the truth, Statham's Southern accent is nearly worth the price of admission itself.
  94. Yossi
    You'll want to see Eytan Fox's acclaimed 2002 drama "Yossi & Jagger" before watching this intimate, often-moving sequel.
  95. Happy People: A Year in the Taiga
    There is indeed much beauty on display, from the icy Taiga landscape to the age-old trapping techniques passed on through generations. But this does feel like a lesser Herzog project (he joined on after it was shot). For viewers who don't share his awe, a short film probably would have sufficed.
  96. The Pirogue
    Every moment feels human and true, from the naive optimism of the trip's sendoff to its unsparingly realistic conclusion, which trades reckless hope for quiet honor.
  97. The Last Stand
    The script is a mess, built on lazy clichés, stilted jokes and easy payoffs. What the movie does have, though, is enthusiasm.
  98. LUV
    The first half of the movie is painfully tense, drawing us into a relationship that we desperately want to see work. But the screenplay lets its characters down, as it devolves into platitudes and melodrama.
  99. Mama
    If you're going to have a ghost in your movie, it might be a good thing to present a viable alternative to that ghost. Mama, however, presents a battle between two not very good options before crumbling like a sheet on a string.
  100. Broken City
    There is no urgency, and little honesty, to the convoluted goings-on unfolding here.
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