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. Russian Dolls
    Meandering, overlong digital soap opera.
  2. Bolt
    Though every frame is great to look at, Bolt's script - by the co-writers of "Mulan" and "Cars" - lacks the wit of its closest Pixar relative, "The Incredibles." Rhino and some goofy pigeons provide the few laughs once the tale goes cross-country.
  3. In Search of Mozart
    The overall effect is that of a deferential video you might find at a Mozart museum: educational, but not exactly inspiring.
  4. Elevate
    One of the many beautiful things about this affecting, informative doc is the opportunity it gives to see the American college sports world through different eyes.
  5. T2 Trainspotting
    Sequels are tricky things, and decades-late followups are the trickiest. T2 Trainspotting almost pulls it off, too, bringing back the original’s hallucinatory style, jolting musical choices and charismatic cast.
  6. This Is the End
    It's no minor accomplishment to make one of the most indulgent projects in Hollywood history. But with This Is the End, Seth Rogen and his pals have indeed achieved this dubious goal.
  7. The Door in the Floor
    That Williams occasionally comes close to the author's layered spirit is a tribute to his passion. But the film fails on a number of levels. First, it is what it is: the prologue to a story that covers four(!) decades.
  8. Sound of My Voice
    Despite some tough-to-take moments, this challenging, smart movie is worth the trip.
  9. Steel City
    A shaky but promising debut, Brian Jun's downbeat family drama is likely to make you feel a whole lot better about your own life.
  10. Fellini: I'm a Born Liar
    It's the many thoughtful, eloquent interviews with Fellini himself that serve as the heart of the film.
  11. Stir of Echoes
    Little internal logic and too many signposts. It's easy to see who in the neighborhood knows more than they're letting on, even without X-ray vision or ESP.
  12. Fahrenheit 9/11
    The information here isn't necessarily new, but it is packaged in an acid-tongued way along with powerhouse visuals that drive home the filmmaker's nakedly political views.
  13. Mondovino
    If you have a serious interest in wine and the ­patience for this kind of rangy, undisciplined filmmaking, you'll learn something. But you'll have more fun at a winetasting.
  14. Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles
    Most tales come from the inimitable mouth of the man himself, who could make ordering dinner sound like Shakespeare. He had a life to match. Workman covers all of his subject’s years, even if very few of them truly belonged to Welles.
  15. Synecdoche, New York
    Hoffman, Morton and Jon Brion's aching score somehow capture the all-too-human need to get things right. If you're in a certain frame of mind, those moments make up for all the stagecraft.
  16. Charlie Wilson's War
    Of all the Middle East-theme movies this season, Mike Nichols' Charlie Wilson's War is the least political and most entertaining. That doesn't mean it's great, just that it's unimportant.
  17. Canvas
    Though Harden has the showier role, a subdued Pantoliano is the movie's real star. Sometimes, the quietest performances are the most powerful.
  18. The Take
    The story does feel a little threadbare, and much of the pacing is far too slow for a suspense thriller. But Perez and Leguizamo make an entirely believable couple.
  19. Garbage Dreams
    The film isn't easy to watch, but its portrait of perseverance and ecological commitment is enlightening.
  20. Ip Man 2
    With action this strong, the script just needs to be serviceable - and that's exactly what it is.
  21. The Stanford Prison Experiment
    Director Kyle Patrick Alvarez’s film underserves its cast of up-and-comers (Thomas Mann, Ezra Miller, Tye Sheridan), allows the usually solid actor Michael Angarano to go astray with a scenery-chewing role and buries Crudup in fretting and sanctity. Worse, the experiment’s inherent drama is exacted with a tin ear and a cheesy style.
  22. Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare
    This impassioned documentary is well-intentioned and admirable in its aims, but overreaching and therefore lacking impact.
  23. The Armstrong Lie
    There’s so much more to this story — as any number of articles about the people he wronged attest — but this time, Gibney never really gets in gear.
  24. The Ambassador
    His outlandish story feels only half-told - though still twice as fascinating as most.
  25. Melancholian 3 huonetta
    Consistently moving but never quite coalesces into a strongly coherent whole.
  26. The Family Fang
    The Family Fang has a nasty little bite to it — and thank heavens for that.
  27. 2 Days in Paris
    Delpy wrote the dialogue that gives the film its forward thrust, and "2 Days" is a wonderful first feature.
  28. Last Days
    It's like a walking tour inside the head of a deeply troubled, deeply talented young man, where most of the systems have already shut down.
  29. Life and Debt
    This is a sophisticated and unsettling documentary marred only by a voice-over taken from the writings of Jamaica Kincaid.
  30. Cremaster 3
    Barney's cinematic art inspires both awe and revulsion, often simultaneously.
  31. Better Luck Tomorrow
    The crime isn't that the movie's message is amoral, but that it goes totally unexamined, as if the recess bell rang too early.
  32. A Decade Under the Influence
    Whether you lived through the period and will have fond memories jostled, or are scouting for future DVD pleasures, the surest way to see a good movie in a theater this week is to see one about them.
  33. Young Adam
    There are movies that are important, and then there are movies that simply look and act as if they're important. With its arthouse cast, hipster credentials and ominous atmosphere, Young Adam never bothers to reach for real significance.
  34. Finding Neverland
    Delightful and moving - although fanciful.
  35. The Business of Strangers
    A claustrophobic psychodrama.
  36. 16 Acres
    It's been a long, not always linear path to the opening of the new tower, planned for 2014. Yet, as one observer says here, the project has helped heal New York in a very New York way - acrimonious, messy and loud.
  37. Haywire
    Haywire, clean and no-fuss as it is, needs more action scenes to match Carano's game.
  38. Kink
    There’s a surprising lack of provocation to this determinedly positive portrait. As a result, the movie often feels like a full-length ad for a great workplace, which just happens to stash whips and chains in the stationery closet.
  39. Mrs Palfrey at The Claremont
    The movie pulls off the trick of blurring the distinctions between romantic and platonic attractions across the generations.
  40. The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie
    It won't cure the ills of the world, but it doesn't need to. The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie is adorable in its own spongy way.
  41. Open Range
    A flawed but highly entertaining B Western blown up to John Ford scale.
  42. The Flower of Evil
    While it's not quite as satisfying as Chabrol's underappreciated "Merci pour le chocolat" (2000), it's still nasty fun at the expense of the upper middle class.
  43. The Ninth Day
    Earnest but ambling drama.
  44. The Ides of March
    He's (Clooney) got the makings of a great movie here: one that represents our politically surreal times with keen insight and appropriate cynicism. It's only when he veers off the path, suddenly worried he'll lose our attention, that he falters.
  45. Guinevere
    Polley, the paraplegic incest victim in Atom Egoyan's "The Sweet Hereafter," gives a mesmerizing central performance.
  46. A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints
    The framing sequences with Downey and the climactic scenes between father and son are a mess. Downey, at 41, is too old to be playing a character who can be no more than 31 or 32, and 50-year-old Eric Roberts is an even greater distraction as Montiel's imprisoned friend Antonio.
  47. Watermarks
    As documentaries go, Watermarks is nothing special. But the women who inhabit it are sensational.
  48. Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
    There are so many balls in the air in the cheerfully violent Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, you'll want to wear a helmet for fear they'll all come crashing down.
    • New York Daily News
  49. Flow: For Love of Water
    Flow makes you thirsty for more information.
  50. The Perks of Being a Wallflower
    Lerman is suited to the title role in that he plays Charlie as wide-eyed and rather unmemorable. Watson doesn't seem entirely relaxed as an American teen, though she does serve as a lovely first crush. Among the adults making brief but notable appearances is Paul Rudd, as a sympathetic English teacher.
  51. Tom at the Farm
    The movie can’t decide if it’s a drama about homophobia, a horror-tinged thriller or psychological surrealism. The cross-pollination makes for some nice-looking scenes. Ultimately, though, there’s a crop failure.
  52. London River
    The script, co-written by Bouchareb, is regrettably simplistic. But Blethyn and Kouyaté inhabit and expand the film's earnestly instructive intentions, leaving us with a deeply-felt experience rather than a naively-sketched lesson.
  53. Music from the Inside Out
    With a soundtrack that ranges from classical to jazz to bluegrass, this is not only an obvious choice for ­music lovers, but required viewing for anyone interested in the mysteries of creative inspiration.
  54. Ivansxtc
    It is both inside-baseball and self-parody, exposing a world that is just as ruthless and shallow as we've been shown it is in films like "The Player" and "Permanent Midnight."
  55. Garden State
    Sometimes veers off into preciosity. But it offers something rare in the bond between Andrew and Sam.
  56. The Green Prince
    More than just a morality tale, The Green Prince is a thrill-a-minute spy caper too strange to be real, though it is.
  57. Saint of 9/11
    Overly reverent but still immensely touching.
  58. The Myth of the American Sleepover
    The real problem is that this eager-to-please debut never quite achieves its own, more modest ambitions.
  59. Water Lilies
    With no adults to add melodrama, the sweet Water Lilies depends on the emotion in its young performers' faces to move forward.
  60. Schultze Gets the Blues
    Krause is very nearly too passive. Deadpan is one thing, an empty vessel is another.
  61. Alice's House
    The power of this plot comes from the drudgery of daily existence, not shocking revelations or dramatic encounters. Some stories, Teixeira is wise enough to realize, are best left unadorned.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Furious 7
    Furious 7 never even pretends to be a stand-alone movie. This is a fan event through and through, filled with references, inside jokes and a loyalty to continuity that may baffle newcomers.
  63. Brothers of the Head
    This is a very tender portrayal of young people caught up in a blisteringly fast and cynical world, and though their music is hideous, they are a compelling act.
  64. Patti Cake$
    Danielle Macdonald is irresistible as Patti Cake$, a dreamer with ambition and talent and visions so glorious, liberating and uplifting that they make her walk on air. The final moments were euphoric enough to make me float out of the theater.
  65. Death at a Funeral
    It takes a while for Frank Oz's ensemble black comedy Death at a Funeral to hit its deliriously nutty stride. But when it does, the laughs don't stop until the movie, like the subject of its family get-together, has taken its last breath.
  66. Yiddish Theater: A Love Story
    This is an important New York story, and Spaisman makes an inspiring subject.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
    The second "volume" of the open-ended franchise is simply not as charming as the original.
  68. Farewell, My Queen
    Whether accurate or not, it's certainly entertaining to watch regal intrigues through the eyes of lady-in-waiting Sidonie (Léa Seydoux). That Jacquot handles the action so lightly is a credit, considering that it takes place during some of the tensest moments of the French Revolution.
  69. Carol Channing: Larger Than Life
    Such a unique personality really deserves a more interesting tribute, but it's so nice to see this one-of-a-kind nonagenarian still going strong.
  70. Jealousy
    Quiet moments after big decisions are where the power lies in this absorbing French drama.
  71. Somewhere Between
    As this strong, moving documentary shows, for those who came to the U.S., reconnecting to their culture and blood relatives can result in a generation of young people who feel "somewhere between" Chinese and American. They're never fully one or the other, but in the best cases can feel part of both.
  72. Rosewater
    Rosewater is not about what isolates us, and part of the film’s terrific achievement is its recognition that staying connected is a daily show of strength.
  73. Stranger Than Fiction
    It has a nifty premise and outstanding performances from Ferrell, as the protagonist-in-progress, and Emma Thompson, as his blocked creator.
  74. Cairo Time
    Writer-director Ruba Nadda's film is ultimately like a summertime flirtation that never quite comes to anything.
  75. Damsels in Distress
    Just as precise and self-consciously precious as predicted. Which doesn't mean it hasn't got moments of charming wit buried under all its archness.
  76. Nowhere Boy
    Johnson is convincing as a swaggering, jokey Lennon, but the photos of young John, Paul and George that end the movie ultimately have more punch than this bubblegummy montage.
  77. Zathura: A Space Adventure
    Jon Favreau's adaptation of Chris Van Allsburg's kid-lit adventure of the same name, more than fills the bill - though it's unlikely to draw anyone over the age of 11 (not counting baby-sitters).
  78. The Darjeeling Limited
    Wilson, Brody and Schwartzman have their charms, but the script gives them little to work with. Anderson and his co-writers have come up with an ordinary road movie.
  79. The Peanuts Movie
    It looks shiny enough to keep the kids engaged, but not so new and improved that it'll alienate nostalgic parents. The movie strikes that balance, adding a bell here, a whistle there.
  80. Barney's Version
    By the time Barney gets one final, heartbreaking chance to screw things up, this rich, satisfying film has you hooked.
  81. The Swenkas
    When these proudly strutting dandies glide through a grimy basement as if they didn't have a care in the world, their joy is irresistible, and Ronde's point is made.
  82. Over the Hedge
    The computer-animation is terrific, most of the slapstick gags are fun, and Wanda Sykes' voice performance as feisty Stella the Skunk is one that will be remembered - and not because it stinks.
  83. The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair
    The film leaves us wondering about all the war stories we haven't heard.
  84. The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me
    On film, and eight years after they were written, his urgent re-creations of an awkward first date, or a Village People obsession, feel both overly familiar and almost embarrassingly earnest.
  85. Too Much Sleep
    The film's slightly awkward self-consciousness is balanced by an appealing, gently deadpan performance from Palmieri.
  86. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
    A perversely enjoyable entry in that new genre, the biopic of the tawdry TV personality.
  87. Me Without You
    Tough, unsentimental British film.
  88. Cinemania
    Both compelling and disturbing, this tragicomic documentary follows five dreamers as they pursue romance.
  89. Hiding and Seeking: Faith and Tolerance After the Holocaust
    A poignant, deeply ­intimate history of one family.
  90. Hamlet
    As for Scott, his rather wry interpretation is competent, but neither daring nor insightful enough to arouse any great passion.
  91. Solaris
    A darkly brilliant sci-fi movie about emotions so deep, the story could be taking place within the chambers of the heart instead of an arid space station. At the same time, it is a coldly theoretical piece that could leave viewers unengaged.
  92. As Good as It Gets
    The material has no dramatic center, a problem pointed up by Brooks' failed solution to it -- his use of an ugly-cute little dog, Simon's pet.
  93. The Goebbles Experiment
    Ultimately, the project suffers from a nearly complete lack of contextualization. We could surely use some background on Goebbels' complicity in mass genocide while listening to him brag about his beautiful, healthy children and happy family life.
  94. Rudo y Cursi
    Luna and Bernal have amiability, but not enough to earn a recommendation for this clichéd movie.
  95. Fight Club
    Grueling and bleak, but not unintelligent...although it's hardly groundbreaking just because everyone's face gets pulpy.
  96. Outrage
    The primary response he's (Kitano) seeking seems best expressed by one typically ill-fated player: "What the hell … ?"
  97. This Is It
    The late King of Pop delivers.
  98. Somewhere
    Dorff and Fanning are perfect in their roles, and Coppola captures the draining narcissism of celebrity culture with the understanding of someone who"s witnessed it all her life.
  99. Frequency
    One of the most skillful, mesmerizing, tense and satisfying time-warp thrillers ever made.
  100. Barbershop: The Next Cut
    At times, the latest Barbershop might get too serious for some, but as far as the comedy goes, it remains a cut above the rest.
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