The New York Times' Scores

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For 20,280 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 46% higher than the average critic
  • 5% same as the average critic
  • 49% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 4.2 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 61
Highest review score: 100 Short Cuts
Lowest review score: 0 Gummo
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9,381 out of 20280
  2. Mixed: 8,435 out of 20280
  3. Negative: 2,464 out of 20280
20280 movie reviews
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  1. Mammuth
    A wearisome mix of miserableness and dark humor.
  2. The Swell Season
    What emerges is a poignant commentary on the uneasy commingling of love and fame.
  3. Buried Prayers
    The film would be stronger if it told us a little more about what the survivors have been doing since the camp was liberated by the Soviets in 1944, but their reactions to revisiting the camp are wrenching to watch.
  4. Laredoans Speak: Voices on Immigration
    A rich opportunity is squandered with Laredoans Speak, a documentary of laudable aspirations suffering from its pronounced sympathies.
  5. Kinyarwanda
    Dry but thoughtful drama.
  6. Under Fire: Journalists in Combat
    Well made, and for once the talking-heads format is satisfying.
  7. A Warrior's Heart
    A Warrior's Heart is factory-issue jingoism, yielding no surprises and frightfully few insights.
  8. Grandma, a Thousand Times
    Warmhearted and defiantly unsentimental, Grandma, a Thousand Times gains lightness from Teta's tart observations.
  9. Chronicle
    Mr. DeHaan, whose vulnerability and physical awkwardness here can evoke the young Leonardo DiCaprio in "What's Eating Gilbert Grape," is invaluable. Mr. Russell and Mr. Jordan are as likable as their characters, but it's Mr. DeHaan who pulls you uneasily in.
  10. Richard Garriott: Man on a Mission
    The most expensive home movie ever made, is one man's genial account of his trip into outer space.
  11. Journey 2: The Mysterious Island
    This kind of movie is all about the special effects. They start out great - cool helicopter crash, very convincing giant lizard - but grow more amateurish as the film goes along, with a flight sequence on giant bees proving particularly clunky.
  12. Private Romeo
    Much better to focus on the tempestuous Mercutio (Hale Appleman, a standout), whose increasing volatility forms the perfect counterpoint to Mr. Doyle's beaming Juliet and Seth Numrich's sensitive Romeo. Punctuated by eerily static shots of empty basketball courts and deserted hallways, Mercutio's blustering menace is as timeless as the romance he seeks to derail.
  13. Return
    In this stratum of Middle American society during wartime and hardship, the movie suggests, life is tough and challenging. You admire these characters for their considerable resilience while understanding that even the best-intentioned people can break under the stress.
  14. Chico & Rita
    Sexy, sweet and laced with a sadness at once specific to its place and time and accessible to anyone with a breakable heart, Chico & Rita is an animated valentine to Cuba and its music.
  15. The Dish & the Spoon
    This wisp of a movie doesn't pretend to be more than a series of disconnected vignettes in a moody story that sometimes seems invented on the spot. The boy, for all his eccentricities, is a healing spirit who, without realizing it, gives Rose the fortitude to face her problems and resume her old life, for better or for worse.
  16. The Vow
    When they are on the screen together here, there is enough physical charm and emotional warmth to distract from the threadbare setting and the paper-thin plot. But those defects ultimately get in the way of the stars and leave you wondering: Is this a romance about neurological impairment or a neurologically impaired romance?
  17. Bonsai People: The Vision of Muhammad Yunus
    The result is a movie that feels more like a free-market sales pitch than like a critical look at one weapon in the poverty-fighting arsenal that may or may not offer long-term hope.
  18. The Turin Horse
    The movie is too beautiful to be described as an ordeal, but it is sufficiently intense and unyielding that when it is over, you may feel, along with awe, a measure of relief. Which may sound like a reason to stay away, but is exactly the opposite.
  19. Safe House
    Essentially and very effectively a rollicking smash-and-crash chase movie that happens to be surprisingly well acted.
  20. The Pruitt-Igoe Myth
    This history is too recent to seem dry, and the film gets an added emotional punch from interviews with former tenants, whose memories mix fondness with anger and loss.
  21. The Miners' Hymns
    An elegant, elegiac found-footage work from Bill Morrison, best known for his silent-film reverie "Decasia."
  22. Crazy Horse
    Mr. Wiseman's particular genius has always been to convey, through judicious editing and dogged filming, the tedium, busyness and quiet intensity of group labor.
  23. Windfall
    Urgent, informative and artfully assembled documentary.
  24. Bad Fever
    Mr. Defa and his cinematographer, Mike Gioulakis, are united in their disdain for information over mood: as the camera skitters spastically around its troubled schlub, the film becomes a muddy, minimalist moan of desperation.
  25. Splinters
    A real-life examination of competitive surfing in Papua New Guinea, the film derives tension from the proverbial big tournament but also from how the event helps foster a worthy morality.
  26. Big Miracle
    Big Miracle gets off to a shaky start, but once revved up, it becomes an involving work-against-the-clock-and-the-odds action movie.
  27. Kill List
    That assured style is the spackle that holds Kill List together: when the plot doglegs into insanity, and the characters follow suit, this brutal fever dream refuses to fall apart.
  28. Perfect Sense
    The love story doesn't quite work. Mr. McGregor and Ms. Green make an attractive couple. But the movie's notion of two self-centered people ill suited to each other, shedding their defenses and clinging together, feels forced and sentimental.
  29. Carol Channing: Larger Than Life
    A preternatural self-confidence and buoyancy infuse every syllable out of Ms. Channing's mouth in this entertaining film.
  30. W.E.
    The upshot is that instead of a film about a love that conquered a king and nearly undid a kingdom, Madonna has come up with a female friendship movie, which would be fine if she weren't busy trying to prove her art-film bona fides.
  31. The Innkeepers
    Luke and Claire are guilty, above all, of being dumb and bored. Even their interest in the ghost that may dwell in the dark corners of the Pedlar seems tepid and lacking in conviction. The movie, clever and rigorous though it is, feels that way too.
  32. The Woman in Black
    Less gore is more here, and what a relief. The Woman in Black isn't especially scary, but it keeps you on edge, and without the usual vivisectionist imagery.
  33. One for the Money
    An attempt to inaugurate a new movie franchise, something that might appeal to women and mystery fans. This is a perfectly sound ambition, but the movie, directed by Julie Anne Robinson from a script by Stacy Sherman, Karen Ray and Liz Brixius, is so weary and uninspired that it feels more like an exhausted end than an energetic beginning.
  34. All's Well Ends Well
    No one is winning points for creativity here, but nice reflections on class and culture are in the mix, and the strong, playful acting knows this genre, even when flirting with broadness.
  35. After Fall, Winter
    The lovebirds' dialogue has the sophistication of a junior high school romance, and Mr. Schaeffer appears to have pasted his story together from the button-pushing plotlines of other films.
  36. Five Time Champion
    Deliberately small-scale, Five Time Champion has tough-minded moments but too often veers toward the sweet and even the treacly. It's pleasant enough, but too careful to be very involving.
  37. Man on a Ledge
    Rarely has a film exhibited a bigger disconnect between urban realism and utter ludicrousness.
  38. Declaration of War
    For all its quirks and tangents, Declaration of War feels entirely alive. This story of two people who transform fear into action is inspiring.
  39. The Grey
    It's a fine, tough little movie, technically assured and brutally efficient, with a simple story that ventures into some profound existential territory without making a big fuss about it.
  40. How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr Foster?
    Mr. Goldberger's words are among the more substantive in a film that at times seems ready to levitate from the screen on puffy clouds of praise.
  41. Grey Matter
    There are no emotional fireworks here, just smoldering, quiet, lonely agony.
  42. The Viral Factor
    The Viral Factor wants to be both an action movie and a soap opera. But the merging of the two genres by Dante Lam, a director based in Hong Kong, is clumsy, and so is the film.
  43. Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos
    The widescreen canvas is an improvement over television's limited expanse. But if you're not among the indoctrinated, don't bother.
  44. Ultrasuede: In Search of Halston
    Lost in all this is Halston, who comes through only in dribs and drabs. If you're curious about him, skip this film. Read about him - you'll learn far more on his Wikipedia page - and look at his clothes. And if you're a filmmaker, go out and make a decent movie about him: he deserves it.
  45. Scalene
    While occasionally unpleasant, the film never crosses the line from bearably chilling to unbearably gruesome, keeping its characters credible and its events explicable.
  46. Watching TV with the Red Chinese
    The film nicely captures the grad-student vibe: beer-fueled bull sessions about science, religion, probability and destiny; fragile, self-absorbed egos preening even as confidence wavers.
  47. The Front Line
    A movie that reserves its final sickening wallop for a grueling half-hour that leaves you as emotionally battered as the soldiers are forced to return to hell for one last senseless round.
  48. Miss Bala
    A first-rate art-house thriller, Miss Bala tells the strange, seemingly impossible story of a Mexican beauty queen who becomes the accidental pawn of a drug cartel. It's an adventure story that could be called a contemporary picaresque if it weren't so deadly serious.
  49. Red Tails
    To say that this live-action comic book lives up to Mr. Lucas's description is not a wholehearted endorsement. Are teenage boys as naïve today as they were 60 or more years ago? And much of the dialogue is groaningly clunky. But so it was back then.
  50. Haywire
    Once the talking stops and the action begins, her professionalism is very much in evidence and exciting to watch. And yet, somehow, it cannot quite relieve the tedium of a movie that is too cool even to pretend that there is anything worth fighting about.
  51. Loosies
    There are a couple of movies, or rather a couple of story ideas, tucked in Loosies, an amorphous, laugh-flecked drama about a New York City pickpocket that mostly comes across as a feature-length advertisement for its likable star and writer, Peter Facinelli.
  52. Robinson in Ruins
    An exaltation of life counters the intimations of extinction, trumping the polemical despair.
  53. Toll Booth
    Though speckled here and there with uneasy comedy, Toll Booth is a psychological pressure cooker that could blow its lid at any moment.
  54. Don't Go in the Woods
    The actors are all natural, but no character is developed enough for you to care who is killed next. There's not much suspense, no inventive pacing, no wink-wink irony, no cinematic gimmicks, not much mystery and no awful gore.
  55. Albatross
    Niall MacCormick's direction, while unfocused, locates a sweet center in the bonding of the two young girls, effortlessly capturing the way unexpected friendship, like first love, can completely alter the look of the world.
  56. Domain
    You really can't hang a drama on a mathematical theory and expect it to serve as a shortcut for storytelling.
  57. The Divide
    We wait, from one cringe-inducing, hide-your-face-from-the-screen act after another, to see how much worse the behavior will become.
  58. Lula, the Son of Brazil
    A conventional, rather shallow up-by-your-bootstraps drama, but with a difference.
  59. Sing Your Song
    The revelations keep coming in Sing Your Song and it's hard not to go googly eyed when, for a 1963 CBS special, you see Mr. Belafonte discussing the march on Washington with some fellow marchers, Mr. Poitier, Marlon Brando, James Baldwin, Charlton Heston and the film director Joseph L. Mankiewicz.
  60. Joyful Noise
    A lower echelon of musical comedy hell (or heaven, if you love the hoariest musical comedy clichés).
  61. Contraband
    The absurdity of the story in the largely thrill-free thriller Contraband, its hairpin twists and outrageous coincidences, may keep even hungry action fans away. That's too bad because the story doesn't matter. (It rarely does.)
  62. The Devil Inside
    The scariest thing about The Devil Inside is that a major studio like Paramount Pictures, which is distributing it, may be able to squeeze more profit out of a tedious, tediously exhausted subgenre that was already creatively tapped out when "The Blair Witch Project" spooked audiences more than a decade ago.
  63. Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same
    Photographed in crisp black and white by Nat Bouman, this enormously likable movie keeps sexual politics on the back burner and the universal search for connection front and center.
  64. Beneath the Darkness
    Someone involved with Beneath the Darkness has either watched too many horror movies or not enough. There is not an original thought in this story, written by Bruce Wilkinson, or in the way it is directed by Martin Guigui.
  65. Roadie
    One problem is Jimmy and his mother's dialogue, which continues in the same clichéd vein as the opening scenes of him alone yelling and yammering into his cell.
  66. Norwegian Wood
    The film has the loose narrative structure of a quasi-poetic personal journal that is more a series of reflections than a cohesive story.
  67. It's About You
    Because Kurt Markus's Super 8 camera is the cinematic equivalent of a single microphone, the film's look matches the scratchy quality of its ancient (by rock 'n' roll standards) sound. The crudeness brings out the elemental quality of music that digs deeply into the soil of working-class American life in songs that express the defiance, despair and nobility of people who refuse to go down without a fight.
  68. The Hunter
    The clammy chill that pervades The Hunter, the fourth feature film by the Iranian director Rafi Pitts, seeps under your skin as you wait for its grim, taciturn protagonist to detonate.
  69. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
    A metaphysical road movie about life, death and the limits of knowledge, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia has arrived just in time to cure the adult filmgoer blues.
  70. Angels Crest
    Although the movie captures the solidarity and the beauty and peril of a rustic mountain town whose residents are necessarily interdependent, its individual subplots don't connect. Despite several solid performances, the characters are too hazily sketched and too loosely linked to form a meaningful chain.
  71. A Separation
    It is a rigorously honest movie about the difficulties of being honest, a film that tries to be truthful about the slipperiness of truth.
  72. The Iron Lady
    You are left with the impression of an old woman who can't quite remember who she used to be and of a movie that is not so sure either.
  73. Pariah
    At its heart is an incandescent performance by Ms. Oduye, who captures the jagged mood swings of late adolescence with a wonderfully spontaneous fluency.
  74. The Darkest Hour
    Really, how slovenly is it to use invisible aliens? If you're going to tease us with nothing but pinwheels of light for three-quarters of the film, you'd better have one heck of a reveal up your sleeve.
  75. Don 2
    If "Mission: Impossible" and "Ocean's Eleven" had a bombastic, funny and slick cousin, it might be Don 2.
  76. Miss Minoes
    It's a Christmas present for cat lovers. Miss Minoes, the tweaked title of a 2001 Dutch film by Vincent Bal, is being given an American theatrical run (dubbed into English), and it's a pleasantly quirky, family-friendly fable with lots of meowing.
  77. In the Land of Blood and Honey
    Both Ms. Marjanovic and Mr. Kostic are very fine (like the rest of the cast they deliver their dialogue in Bosnian) and they navigate the contradictions of their characters' feelings, the flashes of hate, the surrender to desire, with delicacy.
  78. Pina
    The cumulative effect is exhilarating and also a bit frustrating, since so many dances are included and woven together the audience does not have the chance to experience any single work in its entirety. But the power and intelligence of Bausch's approach, which at times seems more cerebral than sensual, is communicated.
  79. We Bought a Zoo
    Whatever the case, you may not buy his happy endings, but it's a seductive ideal when all of God's creatures, great and small, buxom and blond, exist in such harmony.
  80. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
    Yes, you may cry, but when tears are milked as they are here, the truer response should be rage.
  81. War Horse
    You may find yourself resisting this sentimental pageant of early-20th-century rural English life, replete with verdant fields, muddy tweeds and damp turnips, but my strong advice is to surrender.
  82. The Flowers of War
    Mr. Bale, turning in a respectable if oddly chipper performance under the circumstances, has the unfortunate task of playing a character who doesn't really add up.
  83. The Adventures of Tintin
    Like the screen Tintin, the movie proves less than inviting because it's been so wildly overworked: there is hardly a moment of downtime, a chance to catch your breath or contemplate the tension between the animated Expressionism and the photo-realist flourishes.
  84. Albert Nobbs
    Ms. McTeer's sly, exuberant performance is a pure delight, and the counterpoint between her physical expressiveness and Ms. Close's tightly coiled reserve is a marvel to behold. The rest of the film is a bit too decorous and tidy to count as a major revelation, but it dispenses satisfying doses of humor, pathos and surprise.
  85. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
    There are waves of brilliantly orchestrated anxiety and confusion but also long stretches of drab, hackneyed exposition that flatten the atmosphere. We might be watching "Cold Case" or "Criminal Minds," but with better sound design and more expressive visual techniques.
  86. Cook County
    What we need is for the writer and director, David Pomes, to wallow less in aimless dialogue and lowlife sordidness. What we need is a point.
  87. The Pill
    This might be more entertaining if any of the three main characters were at all likable.
  88. Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked
    No swear words here; just harmless fun.
  89. Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol
    Gets back to action basics with globe-trotting, nifty gadgets, high-flying stunts and less loquacious villainy.
  90. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
    There is a plot, but no real intrigue, mystery or suspense, and no inkling of anything at stake beyond a childish and belligerent idea of fun.
  91. Sleepless Nights Stories
    Mr. Mekas makes little attempt to smooth out his transitions between takes or scenes, which only reinforces the intensely personal, even handmade nature of the work.
  92. Carnage
    As a portrait of anxious, status-conscious Brooklyn parents living in a chiaroscuro of self-righteousness and guilt, Carnage misses its mark badly.
  93. Addiction Incorporated
    Straight-shooting, hard-hitting and fuming with contempt for the tobacco industry, Addiction Incorporated would be almost too exhausting to watch were it not for the folksy charm of its star witness.
  94. Ladies vs. Ricky Bahl
    Ladies vs Ricky Bahl has much to recommend it at first, not least its premise.
  95. Seducing Charlie Barker
    An intermittently interesting but fatally clichéd comedy of personal and professional suicide.
  96. Red Hook Black
    Red Hook Black crawls forward by means of stilted conversations and vacuous exchanges.
  97. Fanny, Annie & Danny
    Characters this nicely etched deserve a more complete conclusion.
  98. Knuckle
    While it's frustrating that Mr. Palmer doesn't dig deep into the complexities of the fights, one of the movie's strengths is the honesty with which he confesses his doubts about them.
  99. My Piece of the Pie
    Paints an alluring picture of a pan-European cosmopolitan culture whose characters hopscotch from one country to another with hardly a second thought in a lighthearted floating party.
  100. In Darkness
    It is suspenseful, horrifying and at times intensely moving. But the ease with which it elicits these responses from the audience feels more opportunistic than insightful.
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