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. Hamlet
    Some of the contemporary winks are questionable, but others are undeniably sharp.
  2. Batman Begins
    What you get out of Batman Begins depends on what you bring to it. It is the most faithful to the origins of the comic strip and it sets up a series very different from the four made by Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher between 1989 and 1997.
  3. Who the #$&% Is Jackson Pollock?
    Though the film does have the modest, human-interest feel of a "60 Minutes" segment, it grows stronger as it goes along.
  4. Earth Days
    Even with all the inconvenient truths exposed, Stone's film is still, sadly, inescapably crucial.
  5. The Last Circus
    Before going off in conventional directions, "Circus" is terrifically weird, funny and garish. Bozo and Clarabelle it ain't.
  6. Bird People
    The best moments in Bird People soar to such heights that you almost want to forgive the parts that amount to mere droppings.
  7. Standard Operating Procedure
    Morris mixes piercing sit-downs with disturbing evidence. Though soldiers, including the notorious Lynndie England, express remorse, it's haunting to hear how several prisoners were "nice guys" or known to be innocent, yet no connection is made between those remarks and the images of torture.
  8. I Love You, Man
    The central love story, platonic though it may be, is entirely between the men. Their connection - and I’m determined to avoid the word “bromance” - saves this film from becoming just another Apatowian wanna-be.
  9. Ushpizin
    Gentle and affecting, it offers an introduction to a mostly unfamiliar world while touching on issues recognizable to all.
  10. The Barbarian Invasions
    A deeply felt celebration of the life force, as embodied in Girard's fierce performance as a man who may not have done all he could, but had an enviably great time on the way.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Dior and I
    Made in the spirit of similar docs, such as “Valentino: The Last Emperor” and “The September Issue,” this film contains intimate moments and scenes of high pressure. The emotional highs and lows make the designer’s success seem satisfyingly hard-won.
  12. Maidentrip
    Director Jillian Schlesinger’s documentary does a terrific job countering everyone’s assumptions. Maidentrip is a clear-eyed chronicle of Dekker’s record-breaking voyage. Think “All Is Lost,” but real, and with a teenage girl instead of Robert Redford (plus a very different ending).
  13. Friday Night Lights
    Rousing, action-packed.
  14. The Cup
    Could well end up on the coming Oscar ballot for best foreign language film.
  15. Shadow Boxers
    Savvy, unflinching, often bloody documentary.
  16. Narc
    What could have been a run-of-the- mill story becomes a superb policier in the hands of writerdirector Joe Carnahan.
  17. Galaxy Quest
    No masterpiece, but in a season dominated by films as heavy -- and about as time-consuming -- as brain surgery, a little brain candy is sweet.
  18. Swimming Pool
    Whether the movie leaves you confused or angry, you will be stimulated to long discussion afterward. How often does that happen these days?
  19. Sweet and Lowdown
    Penn hasn't attempted much comedy since "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," but he's masterful here.
  20. The Broken Circle Breakdown
    This movie has one of the finest final scenes in a movie this year and, if there were justice, Baetens would break out as an international star.
  21. Passione
    It can sometimes be hard to sit through, but another song is coming soon, and anyway, close your eyes and imagine you're on vacation, sipping vino in a piazza, soaking in the street life.
  22. Vicky Cristina Barcelona
    There are two stormy performances from Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz that elevate Allen's melancholy thoughts on love and relationships.
  23. Public Enemies
    You see the spark of 'this is cool!,' but you don't sense a purpose. The underconceived Public Enemies suffers from that lack of drive, though Johnny Depp is so urgent and charismatic as John Dillinger, he provides enough firepower to make the film legit.
  24. Tsotsi
    Tense, fiercely optimistic movie.
  25. Lost Embrace
    Director Daniel Burman examines the ways people cope with the passing of time, whether it's weary mall employees, a broken family or the diminishing Argentinean-Jewish community.
  26. Countdown to Zero
    There are suggestions to help us sleep more easily, but the point is to wake us up.
  27. The Nice Guys
    As summer popcorn-style entertainment, The Nice Guys gets the job done.
  28. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
    Benjamin never questions his fate and ­never actually gets to enjoy being a kid. At least there's a thoughtful middle part, where the enigmatic Blanchett comes alive and Benjamin seems haunted by life -- someone we recognize, and not just a vessel tossed about by time.
  29. Girlfight
    Uplifting and moving in a traditional Hollywood way, while also seeming as raw and unfiltered as cinema vérité.
  30. Devils on the Doorstep
    Jiang's razor-sharp conclusions are less about the Japanese army or the Chinese government than about simple human nature.
  31. Owning Mahowny
    Hoffman is a fine actor in a rut, working on a string of socially alienated characters who are variations on the same theme. That's too bad, because the story being told around his static presence is amazing.
  32. Out of the Blue
    As sensitive to its subject as it is stark in its rendering.
  33. Blank City
    Danhier backs all the memories with a collection of great clips, and it's extra fun to spot familiar faces (hi, Steve Buscemi!).
  34. Late August, Early September
    The film, written and directed with an intimate, hand-held camera by Assayas, is notable for the details how love that is ended sometimes flares up in little brush fires, only to be banked down again; how lovers awkwardly balance the push and pull of new relationships; how things neither start nor end with any punctuality or precision. [07 Jul 1999, p.38]
    • New York Daily News
  35. Blockade
    The film makes you squirm as well as empathize, but it does need narration.
  36. Casting By
    A look into one of the most invisible, and crucial, of cinematic disciplines. Using the seminal casting director Marion Dougherty as a subject, the film walks us through the intricacies of casting, with insight from Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, Robert Redford and others.
  37. Big Fan
    The movie gets repetitive, and when it calls an audible and goes somewhere unexpected, it pulls back quickly. Too bad.
  38. House of Sand
    This epic tale of survival, love and adjustment covers a 59-year period - from 1910, when a band of urban émigrés arrives to start a settlement, to 1969, when only one of them remains.
  39. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
    Parents, take note: For all its heart, this is a tougher, more morally complex movie than its predecessors. Young kids carrying their miniversions of Cap’s famous shield may be in for a jolt.
  40. Kadosh
    A poetic and somber film that underscores the bum deal women usually get in any restrictive society.
  41. Thirteen
    One of the most honest and harrowing depictions of female adolescence ever put to film.
  42. The Emperor's New Groove
    Freewheeling and mindless.
  43. Personal Velocity: Three Portraits
    The first two stories are so well-drawn you hate to leave them. But Miller's femaleempowerment anthology carries a smart whiff of other literary looks at ordinary, extraordinary women, such as Grace Paley's "Enormous Changes at the Last Minute."
  44. Freaky Friday
    An unexpected delight.
  45. Millennium Actress
    Although we never feel any true connection to the enigmatic actress, there's no denying the inventiveness of Kon's homage to the possibilities of cinema.
  46. Prisoner of Paradise
    Gripping documentary.
  47. Sleep Tight
    A great many New Yorkers are rightfully indebted to doormen, but Jaume Balagueró's nasty little thriller offers a decidedly darker perspective.
  48. Merry Christmas
    You can't go wrong with an uplifting, anti-war story like this, but director Christian Carion trowels on the schmaltz, and the movie's emphasis on Christian values actually seems to spell doom for solving today's conflicts with the Middle East.
  49. Heartbeats
    The emotions veer from bawdy to sweet and then to obvious, though the film is stylish, and Dolan's artfulness helps when the movie loses focus.
  50. eXistenZ
    David Cronenberg is one of the most intellectual film makers around.
    • New York Daily News
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sun Don't Shine
    Amy Seimetz's richly textured debut is assured in every choice, from first frame to last.
  52. Gunner Palace
    Provides an intimate, nonpoliticized, uncensored and totally unappealing look at the lives of U.S. soldiers serving during a grim and uncertain period of insurgency.
  53. The Skin I Live In
    Almodovar makes some missteps in his icky mélange of melodrama and mischief, but the end result is playfully devious.
  54. Curse of the Golden Flower
    Chinese director Zhang Yimou has made some of the most beautiful movies of the last 20 years, and with his latest, Curse of the Golden Flower, he has also made one of the most deliciously nutty.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Post Tenebras Lux
    The ending of Carlos Reygadas’ drama is set in a wooded Mexican landscape. That’s where Regadas (“Silent Light”) overdoes everything in a self-indulgent presentation of trite fantasies masked as memories.
  56. Sunshine Superman
    An informative, if not engrossing, history of a sport.
  57. How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (and Enjoy It)
    Angio's film is an excellent introduction, but it won't be long before you realize that his subject is too complex to be contained in a single admiring tribute. When you want to know more - and you will - you'll be glad there's somewhere else to go for a bigger picture.
  58. Elling
    There is a little of all of us in their awkwardness, fears and neuroses, and we root for their success in the mundane as if they were ascending Everest. Elling is still in the running for 2002's most uplifting movie.
    • New York Daily News
  59. Elephant
    A ­movie that takes impartiality to new places artistically. The film is infuriating.
  60. The Science of Sleep
    The result is a charming, inventive, ambitious, surreal mess.
  61. Love Songs
    So French you may have to buy your ticket in euros, Christophe Honoré's musical trifle feels ready-made for emotionally woozy undergraduates.
  62. The Syrian Bride
    The result is both tragic and darkly comic - in this complex environment, blame and sorrow are locked in a partnership of absurdity.
  63. Meet the Patels
    Funny and fascinating documentary that pulls off an amazing trick: Everyone will be able to relate to Patel’s struggle, despite the specifics of his case as a 21st-century Indian-American.
  64. A Brave Heart: The Lizzie Velasquez Story
    She's inexhaustible, seemingly everywhere at once and, throughout director Sara Hirsh Bordo's unblinking, well-directed film, she is absolutely and fearlessly herself. Which is exactly as it should be -- the world needs Lizzie Velasquez.
  65. Doubt
    Directing the film of Doubt, Shanley is able to put an even finer point on his Tony-and Pulitzer-winning play about suspicion and guilt at a Bronx Catholic grade school in 1964.
  66. The Hoax
    It's hard to get a fix on what Hallstrom had in mind. The first half of the movie plays like a frenetic caper comedy...The second half turns psychologically dark.
  67. Who Killed the Electric Car?
    In a sad twist of technological birth and infanticide, General Motors - with assists from the oil industry, the Bush administration, cowardly California energy officials and apathetic consumers - doomed the future car to the literal scrap heap of history.
  68. Outsourced
    Josh Hamilton gives a marvelously engaging performance in this fish-out-of-water comedy.
    • New York Daily News
  69. Pauline and Paulette
    Plumbs the issue of sibling love and family responsibility in quietly powerful ways, and the performances of the two stars surpass convincing to reach a level of biographical realism.
    • New York Daily News
  70. Yom Yom
    Though the results are only moderately compelling, the film's problems stem not from a lack of ideological thrust, but rather from a protagonist who is so phenomenally unlikable.
  71. Pellet
    Could easily serve as an instructional video for repressive regimes who have not yet learned you can get more with honey than with vinegar.
  72. Audition
    Possibly the sourest revenge movie ever, Audition starts off as a sweet, low-key romance, then abruptly turns into a grisly, sadistic thriller.
  73. Tosca
    For the broader audience, this seems both suffocating and confusing -- True opera buffs, however, are more likely to feel thrilled, as if they're privy to a private production of the highest caliber.
  74. Our Father
    Haroun is deft at handling the joys and pain of childhood. He neither condescends nor ­­over-sentimentalizes. It is a story of separation anxiety (for Amine) and coming of age (for Tahir) and it's universal.
  75. Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry
    Does an excellent job of telling Kerry's side of it.
  76. Teddy Bear
    Kold single-handedly carries the film, with his quietly powerful portrayal of a gentle soul in a giant's body.
  77. I Am Divine
    More than just a one-name star of pop culture’s alternative history, Divine’s story — terrorized by bullies, embraced by the outré, where he finds a home — stands for “all the outsiders,” as Waters says (between hilarious anecdotes).
  78. Only Human
    The slapstick gets a little too silly, and a rushed ending feels unsatisfying. But everyone whose family boasts an excess of opinions will relate.
  79. 21 Grams
    As darkness falls over the movie landscape comes the year's darkest and best movie of them all - Alejandro González Iñárritu's 21 Grams.
  80. Merchants of Doubt
    What the film doesn’t show enough of is how these people got their positions of power. We get much more of the other side, the legitimate scientists, and too much of a magician who pops up to describe cons and double-talk. But he shows how a bunko artist is a bunko artist, whether on a corner or on CNN.
  81. Queen to Play
    Kline, who has done a lot of chewy character roles after several stage ­triumphs, is as sly and leonine as ever. His performance here obliterates that phony accent he used in "French Kiss."
  82. Save the Green Planet!
    Will thrill those who prefer their violence graphic and their comedy surreal.
  83. Rampart
    Harrelson though, is in every scene, and seeing him burn up Rampart is positively arresting.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Your Friends & Neighbors
    Offers a brilliant raw look at sexual heeling. [19 August 1998, p. 35]
    • New York Daily News
  85. Sacco and Vanzetti
    Miller's film shows how quickly Americans facing perceived foreign threats are willing to ignore basic liberties. Sound familiar?
  86. Ginger Snaps
    It makes sly sense to link female hormonal bursts with the lunar cycle of the werewolf, but the movie's final act is the usual matted-fur chase.
  87. A Town Called Panic
    This little gem is best saved for those -- both young and old -- who prefer to find surprises under the tree.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Cimarron
    We can't describe the grandeur and the punch and the appeal of Cimarron. This is one picture you cannot afford to miss. It is 1931's first great contribution to the screen. We loved every minute of it!
  89. Contagion
    There's a sense of dread in Contagion, but it never spreads to us. When Day 1 is finally shown, it makes you want to eat better, which isn't the same as saying this is a great movie.
  90. Fido
    It's definitely the most fun you'll have with the undead this week.
  91. Adanggaman
    This one uses sweeping compositions of nearly solitary figures as a reminder of what individuals stood to lose, and an auction scene is horrifying -- some livestock and a basket of everyday items are exchanged for a man's future.
  92. Pieces of April
    As pat as some of its conclusions may seem, this low-budget effort has charm, fine acting and one of the few realistic screen depictions of the awkward dynamics of a family trying to circle its wagons.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Faults
    Mind control is a topic that should be fascinating, but it’s utterly forgettable in this disappointing, low-budget indie.
  94. Bad Santa
    "Ghost World" director Terry Zwigoff, working with a depraved script by John Requa and Glenn Ficarra, has fashioned the sickest -- and funniest -- black comedy in years.
  95. Waking Sleeping Beauty
    Watch for a cameo by young animator Tim Burton.
  96. It Might Get Loud
    Few of the parts harmonize ­properly, leaving us with provocative fragments rather than an electrifying whole.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Killing Them Safely
    This feels like a documentary about legal cases against TASER, not a documentary on the Taser.
  98. District B13
    Besson takes a few clumsy stabs at political relevance, but it's clear that grand themes are not his priority. That's okay: His charismatic leads are martial-arts masters, and their breathtaking stunts smoothly lift the movie every time it stumbles.
  99. Warlords
    The scope of director Peter Chan's military drama is impressive, though this sometimes-rousing depiction of strategy and loyalty in mid-1800s China pales next to recent, similar historical epics like "Red Cliff" and "Mongol."
  100. Fearless
    Li's performance is stronger here than it has been in previous films.
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