The New York Times' Scores

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For 20,311 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: 9,399 out of 20311
  2. Mixed: 8,446 out of 20311
  3. Negative: 2,466 out of 20311
20311 movie reviews
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  1. Raaz 3: The Third Dimension
    The film world setting could be better exploited and Shanaya's jealousy made less mechanical, but Raaz 3 delivers other goods: some horror thrills, some true-love-versus-evil thrills and some unusually steamy bits.
  2. Dark Skies
    Dark Skies certainly parades textbook genre trappings...But those elements are employed with consummate dexterity.
  3. Six Million and One
    It is an emotional journey for these grown children, now in their 40s and 50s, who engage in sometimes heated conversations, several taking place on the actual sites where Joseph and other prisoners endured unimaginable suffering.
  4. My Life as Abraham Lincoln
    The accessible and appealing Ms. Luft is a strong anchor. And Ms. Berman can be funny (especially with a black-and-white Ingmar Bergman send-up). It's intriguing to imagine what she could do with a tighter, more linear script.
  5. Dear Mandela
    Following the efforts of a South African housing rights group, the documentary Dear Mandela illustrates how fresh injustices have succeeded the inequality once enforced by apartheid.
  6. Decoding Deepak
    "Decoding" ultimately becomes Gotham's gentle tribute to Dad, who shall probably provide handsomely for his heirs. It is also a tacit endorsement of Chopra Inc.
  7. Fat Kid Rules the World
    This adaptation of K. L. Going's 2003 young-adult novel about a rejuvenated overweight teenager takes a humble, heartfelt approach, until sentiment loses out to message sending.
  8. Janeane from Des Moines
    With Ms. Wilson's rare talent for staying in character as the media circus swirls around her, Janeane From Des Moines is actually a commentary on the immense gap between a desperate citizen and the politics she had hoped might help her.
  9. In My Mother's Arms
    In My Mother's Arms takes a distressing snapshot of an ongoing struggle.
  10. My Father and The Man In Black
    No one in this complex and haunting documentary feels fully explained.
  11. Photographic Memory
    The connections made in Photographic Memory are more tentative than those found in Mr. McElwee's earlier films, which also seek answers in roundabout ways while maintaining an acute eye for light, color, space and atmosphere.
  12. An Affair of the Heart
    An agreeable documentary about the pop singer Rick Springfield and his legions of female fans.
  13. Split: A Deeper Divide
    Even political foes agree here on today's parlous state of disagreement, leaving you keen to vote but feeling a little defeated already.
  14. Saving Mr. Banks
    The best parts of Saving Mr. Banks offer an embellished, tidied-up but nonetheless reasonably authentic glimpse of the Disney entertainment machine at work.
  15. Question One
    Some viewers will be frustrated by the film's determination to be evenhanded, but with this same battle likely to be fought repeatedly in the coming years (the issue is again on the 2012 Maine ballot), Question One stands as a pretty good primer in how referendums are won and lost.
  16. Ant-Man
    This film is a passable piece of drone work from the ever-expanding Marvel-Disney colony. It provides obligatory, intermittently amusing links to other corporate properties, serving essentially as a sidebar to the “Avengers” franchise.
  17. The Family
    The movie has holes galore. It has abrupt tonal shifts, an incoherent back story and abandoned subplots. It doesn’t even try for basic credibility. But buoyed by hot performances, it sustains a zapping electrical energy.
  18. Sleep Tight
    Mr. Balagueró is so overtaken by his villain that he becomes like César, displaying an eagerness to play the role of tormentor, which kills both the movie's pleasure and its flickering political subtext.
  19. Orchestra of Exiles
    Orchestra of Exiles aspires to a level of primary research that other historical documentaries could take a page from.
  20. Oldboy
    If you have seen the earlier version, you can occupy yourself with point-by-point comparisons. If not, you may find yourself swerving between bafflement and mild astonishment, wondering how a movie that works so hard to generate intensity and surprise can feel so routine and bereft of genuine imagination.
  21. A Liar's Autobiography - The Untrue Story of Monty Python's Graham Chapman
    It's a colorful patchwork of family high and low points, schoolboy days, professional triumphs and assorted epiphanies (including sex with women followed by sex with men).
  22. Ride Along
    The plot twists are easily guessed, and the film goes on for one predicament too long, but there are some good laughs.
  23. Citadel
    This spare first feature from the Irish filmmaker Ciaran Foy (drawing on his own experiences) has an atavistic pulse, evoking a decaying society where elevators fail and bus drivers cower behind mesh grills.
  24. Lunch
    Low-key and low-tech, Lunch coasts on the earned wisdom of pros who know how to work a room. Right up to the arrival of their separate checks.
  25. Price Check
    Once Price Check darkens, it loses its comic footing, along with its nerve, and becomes a wishy-washy potpourri of elements that fail to mesh: backing away from its satirical potential, it sputters toward an evasive and unsatisfying ending. Ms. Posey, however, blithely sails above the fray.
  26. Turning
    Onstage the Johnsons perform Mr. Hegarty's agreeably lush, intimate and often melancholy piano-based songs, accompanied by a string section.
  27. What a Man
    It may hit all-too-familiar notes, but its sureness of tone makes Mr. Schweighöfer a talent to watch.
  28. Ex-Girlfriends
    It is cleverly conceived, well acted and seasoned with blips of mildly acidic wit.
  29. My Brothers
    If the actors playing the brothers show little fraternal similarity, their performances are convincingly natural.
  30. Love, Marilyn
    The intelligence and dynamism of Ms. Garbus's approach could hardly fail to make you appreciate Monroe's growth as an actor.
  31. Silent Night
    This brisk reimagining of the 1984 slasher "Silent Night, Deadly Night" delivers the seasonal goods with admirable efficiency and not a little wit.
  32. I Do Bidoo Bidoo: Heto nApo sila!
    An exuberant if creaky Filipino musical that never lets story get in the way of its songs.
  33. Black Rock
    The male characters here are too thinly developed for this to be a top-notch survival thriller, but Ms. Aselton knows how to get the pulse pounding.
  34. Wagner & Me
    In the documentary Wagner & Me, the actor Stephen Fry, an ardent admirer of the music of Richard Wagner, wrestles with a longstanding problem for Wagner fans: how to reconcile that composer's musical genius with his racism.
  35. The Sheik and I
    Poking the bear of repression has consequences beyond Mr. Zahedi's immediate artistic goals, as this layered, intermittently fascinating documentary makes abundantly clear.
  36. To the Wonder
    The fine intentions of To the Wonder pave a road to puzzlement, not awe.
  37. Welcome to the Punch
    There are good movies and plenty more bad ones and many, many more that fall somewhere in between. And then there are enjoyable absurdities like Welcome to the Punch, which contain evaluative multitudes and which, scene by scene, register as not bad, pretty good and flat-out ridiculous.
  38. Hors Satan (Outside Satan)
    Despite its pictorial intensity and the extremity of some of its scenes, the film proceeds in a mood of detachment, turning the suffering physical beings under its scrutiny into abstractions.
  39. The Last Exorcism Part II
    At least this movie, like its predecessor, has Ashley Bell as Nell. An actress who suggests religious piety, carnal fire and satanic aggression with equal dexterity, Ms. Bell provides a pulse an audience can connect with amid the standard-issue atmospheric accouterments.
  40. Stolen Seas
    A documentary that yearns to be an adventure movie, Stolen Seas can't resist drowning its invaluable insights in thundering, drum-heavy music and flashing visuals. Magnificent in its thoroughness and nuance, this dense, multifaceted study of Somali piracy really needs to settle down.
  41. Birth Story: Ina May Gaskin and The Farm Midwives
    A granola ode to natural childbirth that makes you want to hop into a tub of warm water and start pushing.
  42. Happy People: A Year in the Taiga
    Some limitations of adapting secondhand material show through in the uneven visual quality and diminished control over mood. Yet Mr. Herzog is openly inspired, as ever, by the rugged independence of these resourceful trappers, who seem stoic about everything but their faithful dogs.
  43. Yossi
    What began as a reasonably hardheaded look at profound and rapid cultural change turns into a feel-good fantasy of salvation.
  44. Koch
    Like Walt Whitman, another hard-to-classify embodiment of the spirit of New York, he is contradictory and multitudinous. The hour and a half Mr. Barsky provides might be enough time for a lesser figure. Mr. Koch...needs more.
  45. Trance
    For all Mr. Boyle’s labors Trance principally comes off as a showcase for his brio, a spirit that animates all his choices, visual and otherwise.
  46. Somebody Up There Likes Me
    It’s all kind of cute. Maybe a little too cute, but it does have a nice circle-of-life ending. And along the way, Mr. Byington shows a knack for observational humor, slipping in sly jokes that force you to keep paying attention despite the slim plot. Droll and interesting; just not very substantial.
  47. Porfirio
    Vividly depicting the indignities of the flesh, Porfirio offers a harshly sensual portrait of a man imprisoned by paralysis and the callousness of the state.
  48. David
    Rather than being a star- or song-driven showcase (despite a notably eclectic soundtrack), David zigzags tonally and visually thanks to Mr. Nambiar, an eager student of flair.
  49. The Underneath
    The Underneath is too chaotic to work as a thriller. The suspense kicks in too late and blends uneasily with the rest of the film. But the movie has other sorts of appeal. At heart, it is not a lurid, noir story but a study of characters caught in an emotional disaster.
  50. The Lords of Salem
    Considerable care goes into establishing the premise, but the film eventually abandons psychological subtlety for hallucinatory garishness, which is too bad.
  51. Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb
    It’s a chronically underachieving movie, but relatively amusing in its quaint wish fulfillment.
  52. Gray's Anatomy
    This direction is more ambitious than apt, since it calls attention to the artifice that Mr. Gray otherwise conceals so well. Cuts and scene changes become distractingly blunt, as do the star's efforts to suggest spontaneous enthusiasm.
  53. One Life
    The latest production from the BBC Natural History Unit is a typically eye-catching, years-in-the-making chronicle of animal life that is tainted by the urge to anthropomorphize.
  54. No Place on Earth
    The bare facts of the feat seize the imagination, even if Ms. Tobias’s competent documentary doesn’t quite rise to the challenge.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hunky Dory
    Pop memories are short. If the world conjured by Hunky Dory is sweetly appealing, it has all the pertinence of a dream half-remembered from long ago.
  56. The Way, Way Back
    The Way, Way Back has the charm of timelessness but also more than a touch of triteness. Its situations and feelings seem drawn more from available, sentimental ideas about adolescence than from the perceptions of any particular adolescent.
  57. The Sweeney
    Simon Dennis’s photography is glossy and crisp, and a lengthy foot chase — making excellent use of the National Gallery — is inventively choreographed. And if the villains are little more than fireplugs in balaclavas, the violence they provoke is satisfyingly vicious.
  58. Gut Renovation
    An alternate title for Gut Renovation, Su Friedrich’s cranky, sarcastic documentary polemic about the gentrification of a Brooklyn neighborhood, might be “The Rape of Williamsburg.”
  59. Electrick Children
    Electrick Children is well acted and refreshingly nonjudgmental, but its narrative continuity is tenuous at best. As it jounces along toward a pat, unsatisfying ending, it leaves essential questions unanswered. But the movie’s underlying sweetness leaves a residual glow.
  60. The Angels' Share
    Watching it is like receiving a hard slap in the face from someone who expects you to laugh it off, even though the sting lingers.
  61. Populaire
    The best scenes are the contests in which the competitors hammer away, executing the kind of grand flourishes with each return of the carriage that Liberace exhibited at the piano.
  62. Resident Evil: The Final Chapter
    The movie percolates enough that even when, at its climax, it shamelessly recycles a grisly punch line from 1987’s “RoboCop,” it’s kind of endearing, not least because Mr. Anderson and company make it work.
  63. The Source Family
    Unearthing a decent sample of these former members, as well as a wealth of archival film and photographs, the directors elicit testimony that’s diversely sharp, spacey, nostalgic and heartbreaking.
  64. Ain't Them Bodies Saints
    Strong emotions — desperation, dread, desire — are indicated but not really communicated, and everything happens in a hazy atmosphere of humorless homage and exquisite good taste.
  65. Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain
    Fans will love it; their main complaint may be that it ends too soon. Amateur psychologists in the audience, meanwhile, may be asking why such a successful guy seems so defensive.
  66. Black Nativity
    Ms. Lemmons has a tough time finding her tone. From scene to scene, the actors are good and then less so, while the direction wavers from assured to unsteady.
  67. Clip
    Cheerless and voyeuristic, Clip (which was banned in Russia) seems a sincere attempt to portray a lost and disaffected generation. But the film’s brutally honest parade of callous behavior and casual, almost cruel sex has a depressing prurience that wears you down.
  68. Everybody Has a Plan
    Mr. Mortensen keeps you watching, even when the movie’s storytelling underwhelms. But Everybody Has a Plan is less about story than about texture and atmosphere. They stay with you, as does the haunted visage of Agustín, drifting on the delta waters.
  69. Smyrna: The Destruction of a Cosmopolitan City - 1900-1922
    A sobering study in how individual human beings can become afterthoughts in the face of broad movements like nationalism, a phenomenon that is still much in evidence almost a century later.
  70. Stars in Shorts
    Its most consistent pleasures derive more from its performances than from storytelling.
  71. Desperate Acts of Magic
    Despite the preachiness, however, they have still made a moderately enjoyable film, thanks to some engaging performances.
  72. Beverly Hills Cop II
    The new film has at least some of its predecessor's appeal. But it can't match the first film's novelty, or recapture the excitement of watching a great comic character like Axel Foley as he first came to life.
  73. We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks
    For all its faults, “We Steal Secrets” reminds us that despite the potential of WikiLeaks, its project of truth and consequences remains treacherous and complicated in practice.
  74. Dog Pound
    Kim Chapiron, proves an excellent choreographer of brutality...But without a strong political point (unlike its source material), Dog Pound feels hollow and hopeless.
  75. Superman IV: The Quest for Peace
    Threadbare as it's beginning to look, the Superman series hasn't lost its raison d'etre. There's life in the old boy yet.
  76. Code of the West
    This film from Rebecca Richman Cohen is a mostly dutiful documentary that drifts dangerously close to earnestness.
  77. Midnight's Children
    The film needs an injection of Bollywood’s unembarrassed, anything-goes, bigger-than-life spirit, which embraces willy-nilly — as does Mr. Rushdie’s novel — the vulgar, the fanciful and the frankly unbelievable.
  78. Venus and Serena
    Think of this movie as a greatest-hits package, with some good stuff to show but nothing very new to say.
  79. Eddie: The Sleepwalking Cannibal
    This witty first feature is a flawed but diverting meditation on finding inspiration while losing your soul.
  80. The Story of Luke
    When it works, the film serves as a modest reminder that the challenges of autism may sometimes be no more daunting or fearsome than those that face anyone in search of an independent life.
  81. Star Trek: Generations
    "Generations" is predictably flabby and impenetrable in places, but it has enough pomp, spectacle and high-tech small talk to keep the franchise afloat. And in an age when much fancier futuristic effects can be found elsewhere, even its tackiness is a comfort.
  82. Aftershock
    The violence is quick and occasionally inventive, with little of the attenuated nastiness that characterizes so many genre pictures, and the photography ranges from brightly sun-kissed to down-and-dirty.
  83. Pompeii
    Mr. Anderson displays his mastery as a director in the sword-fighting scenes... But the glares and eye rolls that bookend these scenes are what make this film both GIF-ready and campy fun.
  84. The Hunt
    The Hunt doesn’t know where to stop. It is undermined with a short, unsatisfying epilogue whose shocking final moment isn’t enough to justify its inclusion.
  85. Un Flic (re-release)
    The forcefulness and mystery of Mr. Melville's direction often generate an urgency that keeps the film from feeling vague. [30 Nov. 1979]
  86. Lovelace
    There’s a lot in this story about victimization and agency that Mr. Epstein and Mr. Friedman never satisfactorily address. It’s perhaps inevitable that they seem happier when nothing yet feels at stake, including during the production of “Deep Throat.”
  87. Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?
    Dutifully hitting its marks up to a point, this story of a married man struggling to stay closeted proves to have a maturity that eludes more overtly ambitious dramas on the subject.
  88. State 194
    This is certainly competent filmmaking, sort of like a long “60 Minutes” segment without the confrontational interview style.
  89. Sing Me the Songs That Say I Love You: A Concert for Kate McGarrigle
    As a musical experience, it is generous and moving. But as a documentary, “Sing Me the Songs” is an awkward hybrid of concert film and rock-star biography.
  90. Frankenstein's Army
    Narrative depth may be in short supply, but the energy, invention and humor are bracing.
  91. Becoming Traviata
    May not be fully satisfying as a documentary. But it has what any good movie needs: a star — the ever-game soprano Natalie Dessay.
  92. Kika
    Kika" is actually one of this film maker's more buoyant recent efforts, a sly, rambunctious satire that moves along merrily until it collapses -- as many Almodovar films finally do -- under the weight of its own clutter.
  93. Elemental
    The filmmakers behind Elemental might have done better to commit to a single portrait and been more fearless about avoiding familiar oratory, but small steps are progress too.
  94. The Best Man Holiday
    Mr. Lee’s film is more traditional than its sexually frank humor might indicate, with faith and charity ultimately given pride of place (right alongside human pettiness). But even if some of the crudeness and the drama feel forced, it’s hard to hate.
  95. Diana
    Anchored by Ms. Watts’s sympathetic performance, it humanizes the woman behind the smile, the helmet hair and the myth.
  96. A Field in England
    The actors are uniformly impressive, and Mr. Wheatley’s longtime cinematographer, Laurie Rose, shooting in black and white, combines stunning pastoral compositions with bursts of graphic violence punctuated by blazing flintlocks.
  97. Age of Uprising: The Legend of Michael Kohlhaas
    The severely beautiful film is painted in a dauntingly austere manner, as if lost in a war against itself, with confrontations underplayed and the rural landscapes making more of an impression than the detoured drama.
  98. Only Lovers Left Alive
    In many ways, Only Lovers Left Alive is among Mr. Jarmusch’s most voluptuous movies — full of rare and gorgeous images and sounds, heavy with wistful sighs and sprinkled with wry, knowing jokes — but it is also thin and pale, and perhaps too afraid of daylight for its own good.
  99. Free China: The Courage to Believe
    “Free China” is not news, and, however moving, it’s really not art. It’s advocacy. In that aim, it is ardently committed.
  100. Hey Bartender
    [A] tidy and ingratiating documentary ode to high-end mixologists.
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