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. Big Eyes
    Trying to do Margaret justice, Mr. Burton can’t prevent himself (and Mr. Waltz) from upstaging her.
  2. Return to Nuke 'Em High Volume 1
    Mr. Kaufman’s talent can be debated, but his love for his job is stamped on every garish, oozy frame.
  3. The Cut
    Too many scenes feel routine or clichéd, sometimes even those depicting extreme experiences.
  4. The Suspect
    At 137 minutes, the film overstays its welcome with multiple concluding flourishes (and exceeds the sentiment threshold).
  5. The Theory of Everything
    Yes, The Theory of Everything has a different emphasis. But like so many cinematic lives of the famous, it loses track of the source of its subject’s fame.
  6. Tusk
    The result is so out there that you can imagine Mr. Smith and his collaborators rolling in the aisles at their own preposterousness. If you can find your inner 16-year-old, you might just join them.
  7. Unbroken
    What the movie ends up in desperate need of is a sense of life made real and palpable through dreadful, transporting details, not a life embalmed in hagiographic awe.
  8. A Walk in the Woods
    It is unexpectedly moving and occasionally delightful to spend time with these titans of cinema as they walk and sometimes wobble, delivering words that become meaningful because they’re lucky enough to be spoken by Mr. Redford and Mr. Nolte.
  9. Finding Fela!
    The behind-the-scenes component, juiced with razzle-dazzle excerpts from the “Fela!” production, is sound, in theory. But — like many sequences — it’s not so tightly executed, and this strand tends to knock the documentary off balance.
  10. Laggies
    This is a nice movie. It’s frisky and cheerful, even when tears are on the way. But it isn’t a very good movie, mainly because, like its heroine, it’s reluctant to make up its mind about what it wants to be.
  11. White Bird in a Blizzard
    Its elements don’t really cohere.
  12. The Hateful Eight
    Maybe I’m repeating myself: The Hateful Eight is a Quentin Tarantino movie. But Mr. Tarantino is also repeating himself, spinning his wheels here in a way he has rarely done before. None of his other films venture so far into tedium or manage to get in their own way so frequently.
  13. Low Down
    Low Down stumbles into the pitfalls of both addiction narratives and observer-style autobiography, even if Ms. Albany’s memoir suggests even rougher times. But it still catches in-between moments of closeness that aren’t always seen or heard.
  14. Camp X-Ray
    Despite the movie’s gripping performances and the verisimilitude of many elements, I simply don’t believe the story.
  15. Infinitely Polar Bear
    In Infinitely Polar Bear, Ms. Forbes hasn’t made a movie about her father’s illness; she’s made one about her father, who, through hard and weird times, clearly helped give her what she needed so that one day she could tell this story.
  16. Towheads
    The movie is a watchable collection of images that never quite come together.
  17. On My Way
    Because Ms. Deneuve, 70, is in almost every scene, On My Way feels like Ms. Bercot’s loving character study of a star who has always stood above the fray, a symbol of resilient Gallic femininity.
  18. The Art of the Steal
    Matt Dillon and Kurt Russell may not make the most convincing half-brothers, but The Art of the Steal is a fairly amusing heist film with some sibling tension helping the story along.
  19. Teenage
    A lot of intriguing ideas are floated in Teenage... But the film takes a point of view that leaves all of them underdeveloped.
  20. Oculus
    A derivative but efficient chiller that cribs from “Solaris,” “The Shining” and “The Amityville Horror” yet also shows glimmers of imagination.
  21. Cat People
    Miss Kinski and Mr. McDowell are most effective - eerie and damned -and Mr. Heard is stalwart and self-effacing as the mere human who stumbles onto the truth and forever guards the secret.
  22. Breaking the Frame
    Breaking the Frame is a tantalizing teaser for a story that still needs to be told.
  23. Crimson Peak
    The film is too busy, and in some ways too gross, to sustain an effective atmosphere of dread. It tumbles into pastiche just when it should be swooning and sighing with earnest emotion.
  24. The Rover
    There is both too much story and not enough. The contours of this desolate future are lightly sketched rather than fully explained, which is always a good choice. But that minimalism serves as an excuse for an irritating lack of narrative clarity, so that much of what happens seems arbitrary rather than haunting.
  25. Someone Marry Barry
    There’s nothing sophisticated or groundbreaking here, but the movie is a moderately good entry in the bro-grows-up genre.
  26. Mars at Sunrise
    This setup is simple, but what follows is less so: an impressionistic battle between imagination and brute force that too often veers from enlightening to exasperating.
  27. Brick Mansions
    Brawny, dumb and preposterous, it nonetheless comes tantalizingly close to being a high-impact allegory of race, class and real estate in a postindustrial, new-Gilded Age America.
  28. Perfect Sisters
    Ms. Breslin and especially Ms. Henley are quite good, elevating a film that seems like an oft-told tale.
  29. Haunt
    The shocks are short and sharp, the acting is strongest where it counts, and the director of photography, Adam Marsden, washes everything in a swampy green that makes spooks pop.
  30. Two Lives
    Two Lives is an absorbing, well-acted, moderately suspenseful mystery, although its time line of events is fuzzy to the point of impenetrability.
  31. The Cold Lands
    The Cold Lands feels as if it were just taking hold when it reaches the end of the road.
  32. Gunday
    Gunday, directed by Ali Abbas Zafar, may be preposterous, but it’s rarely dull. And when Mr. Khan and Ms. Chopra are on screen it’s something more. It’s downright enjoyable.
  33. River of Fundament
    River of Fundament is often a commanding, engaging and certainly challenging experience. Nevertheless, by the end of the piece I felt deliberately alienated, and to a nearly infuriating degree.
  34. The Den
    Almost every image in this movie — from webcams, websites and laptop cameras — appears on a monitor. Scenes pulse with the Internet’s speed and sprawl, aided by clever editing that pops. The effect is insular, off-putting and disconcertingly familiar.
  35. Xingu
    The movie covers almost three decades choppily. But Mr. Camarago and Mr. Miguel convey the stubborn commitment that made the brothers so revered by the tribes.
  36. The Hidden Fortress
    This is not to say that the action is not vivid, exciting and tense, or that Kurosawa's camera is any less graphic than it usually is. This is simply to say that The Hidden Fortress is essentially a superficial film and that Kurosawa, for all his talent, is as prone to pot-boiling as anyone else.
  37. Blumenthal
    Sharp yet overdetermined, Blumenthal doesn’t breathe naturally — it’s a comedy in a box. Just not a box that everyone will want to open.
  38. Jews of Egypt
    Mr. Ramses’s admirable eagerness to tell a good tale seems to have favored excitement over facts.
  39. Greencard Warriors
    At first, there is something a little too straightforward about the characters and their dialogue. But gradually, a group of strong, sure performances and the script’s twists... take hold, and we are fully involved.
  40. Alien Abduction
    Matty Beckerman’s Alien Abduction repackages ancient legend for modern audiences in a found-footage story of streamlined efficiency.
  41. The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden
    The Galapagos Affair would be a much stronger film were it not padded with the dull reminiscences and speculation of the settlers’ descendants.
  42. More Than the Rainbow
    Mr. Wechsler’s film might be loose to a fault, but Mr. Weber’s work yields its share of gratifying, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it New York moments.
  43. Proxy
    Employing scaled-down sets and low-budget audacity, Mr. Parker, an intelligent and boundary-testing filmmaker, proves less concerned with logic than with how far he can push his characters.
  44. Blood Glacier
    Sometimes genre-based filmmakers don’t know how to make their material fun without making fun of their material, but that’s not a failing of Mr. Kren’s.
  45. Beneath the Harvest Sky
    Beneath the Harvest Sky reaches a dramatic climax that is so rushed and confusing, you are left scratching your head. But for all its missteps, the film feels authentic. Through thick and thin, it stubbornly maintains a thorny integrity.
  46. Evergreen: The Road to Legalization
    This record of Washington State’s battle over Initiative 502, which legalized possession of small amounts of recreational marijuana in 2012, is predictably loaded with rancor. The battle isn’t over whether pot should be legalized, but to what extent.
  47. Hank and Asha
    Though not very ambitious, this winsome, whisper-thin tale shimmers along with the charming urge to connect and reveal yourself that links its two correspondents.
  48. Kid Cannabis
    The film’s main distraction, oddly, is the voice-over through which Nate annotates the action. A voice-over is standard procedure for the wistful-look-back genre, but here it’s forced and unfunny. This wild story sells itself, no narration needed.
  49. If I Stay
    The director, R. J. Cutler, whose previous work has mostly been in big- and small-screen documentaries, has a way of underplaying large feelings and amplifying subtle shifts of mood.
  50. Soft in the Head
    From a dramatic standpoint, the movie can be unconvincing... From a formal standpoint, though, the movie impresses, maintaining a sense of anxiety through tight shots and a sound design that favors overlapping voices and constant clatter.
  51. Visions of Mary Frank
    There’s a loose, bohemian quality to Mr. Cohen’s sketch of a film.
  52. Home, James
    A small, gentle riff on the eternal tug of war between small towns and big dreams.
  53. Llyn Foulkes One Man Band
    The filmmakers are blessed and cursed with a subject who seems to lack the usual filters. We in turn witness Mr. Foulkes in action, at length — revamping his works, railing against the art world and speaking his neurotic mind.
  54. Marvin Seth and Stanley
    Marvin, Seth and Stanley aims to be a deadpan travels-with-my-wacky-dad story, but the father in it is almost an afterthought. It still has sublime moments, but it leaves you wanting more of them.
  55. 2 States
    2 States is an effort to go beyond formula while also embracing formulaic elements, including some nice song-and-dance sequences. The mix isn’t right yet. But that ambition provides its own tensions and energies, which help 2 States from feeling becalmed.
  56. Grand Slammed
    Amid the overheated, sometimes amateurish histrionics — Mr. Nizzari shoots a lengthy father-son blowout in a single, theatrical take — Grand Slammed contains inklings of a serious point about immobility in America.
  57. Trust Me
    As the movie picks up speed and undergoes sudden, confusing plot reversals, it loses its satirical edge.
  58. The One I Love
    Mr. McDowell manages and massages the mystery, even while he forgets to do much with the camera except periodically have it chase after someone. He can be frustratingly inattentive to the visual possibilities offered by the story.
  59. Paths of Glory
    Mr. Kubrick has made it look terrific. The execution scene is one of the most craftily directed and emotionally lacerating that we have ever seen. But there are two troubling flaws in this picture, one in the realm of technique and the other in the realm of significance, which determine its larger, lasting worth.
  60. For a Woman
    The 1980s sequences, with their tears and epiphanies, are less vivid and less convincing. An inviting sense of mystery hangs over the events of 1947, Ms. Kurys’s origin story.
  61. A Short History of Decay
    Despite Mr. Maren’s own ample experience as a writer, the references to book culture don’t feel vivid enough to act as more than scene-setting, and the film’s strength lies in the family relationships.
  62. The Life and Crimes of Doris Payne
    The Life & Crimes of Doris Payne has an embarrassment of riches in Ms. Payne’s story, and it’s often a ripping good yarn, but, as a film, it lacks the nimbleness and resourcefulness of its subject.
  63. Cold Bloom
    Cold Bloom, in its tightly controlled moods, comes to feel like a smaller and more tentative film than it might have been, despite an admirably frank ending.
  64. Rigor Mortis
    Applying ghoulish special effects and atmospheric slow pacing, the film also maintains a dark palette of blacks, browns and ash grays, the better to serve as a backdrop when the blood starts spattering.
  65. Winter Sleep
    Mr. Ceylan performs this particular operation with rigorous solemnity, technical virtuosity and precision tools — his lapidary visual style rises to the challenge of the natural environment — yet there’s something missing from the very start, namely the spark of breathed-in life.
  66. Jimmy's Hall
    The screenplay is vague not only about politics but also about the history of Jimmy’s unconsummated relationship with his former sweetheart, Oonagh (Simone Kirby), now married, whose wide Susan Sarandon eyes express a wistful sadness.
  67. In the Name of My Daughter
    Mr. Téchiné ’s methodical storytelling covers more narrative ground than the drama requires, sapping the film’s energy.
  68. Alien Nation
    Eventually, though it happens later rather than sooner, the conventional aspects of Alien Nation overwhelm the novelty.
  69. Baby Boom
    Baby Boom isn't much more than a glorified sitcom, but it's funny, and it's liable to hit home. The reason: a devilishly good performance by Diane Keaton.
  70. Before You Know It
    There’s much sympathy but little tension in P J Raval’s new documentary.
  71. Nothing in Common
    As long as the story stays with David's wooing of the big Colonial Airlines account and the company president's tough-minded daughter (Sela Ward), a good time is to be had. But in the last half-hour, everybody starts to slobber.
  72. Timecop
    Years of tireless persistence have begun to work in Mr. Van Damme's favor. It's hard not to enjoy his energy, even if his acting gifts still leave a lot to be desired. The fact is that he looks good, behaves affably and kicks with gusto, which is quite enough to satisfy the demands of Timecop.
  73. Filmistaan
    Teetering somewhere between audacious and offensive, the stylistically voracious Filmistaan only intermittently reveals any sense of danger in its comedy.
  74. Holiday
    The action sequences mostly have tension and punch, even if the movie is old-school long — 2 hours 41 minutes — and the plot doesn’t bear too much scrutiny.
  75. Straight Outta Compton
    The partying is as bland as any all-purpose music video and feels more like another script signpost (and audience-pandering) than a serious attempt to get out what it means to be young, black, gifted, fabulously wealthy and much desired. Mr. Gray does far better when the story edges into heavier, more dappled realms.
  76. K2: Siren of the Himalayas
    Shedding light on the filmmaking process would have only enriched this well-wrought but limited extreme-sports portrait.
  77. Postman Pat: The Movie
    Viewers unencumbered by nostalgia will probably see this zippy, occasionally funny movie as no more frantic or pop-culture-addled than the average multiplex fodder.
  78. Road to Paloma
    The film’s loose naturalism and strong acting — Chris Browning, as a liaison between the F.B.I. and the reservation, is especially enjoyable — are slyly seductive.
  79. A Master Builder
    As both an actor and a playwright, Wallace Shawn, at his most audacious, goes for the jugular, but in sneaky roundabout ways.
  80. Web Junkie
    The film lacks either the immersive intensity that would galvanize emotions or a context that would provide enlightenment. Its brief tour of an unpleasant corner of reality feels less revelatory than voyeuristic.
  81. Underwater Dreams
    Modest yet meaningful, Underwater Dreams has a political point of view, shining light on underground Americans who deserve recognition.
  82. I'm the Same, I'm an Other
    The newer film’s picture of neglect and denial, with flashes of connection and empathy, is promising, if tough to inhabit.
  83. Silence
    The film’s solemnity is seductive — as is Mr. Scorsese’s art — especially in light of the triviality and primitiveness of many movies, even if its moments of greatness also make its failures seem more pronounced.
  84. Horns
    There are so many red herrings and plot twists, such a dense barrage of flashbacks and quick cuts, that you may find yourself as rattled and breathless as Ig himself. And a bit let down at the end, when all the noise, color and energy resolve into a basic whodunit decked out in weak special effects and spiritual swamp gas.
  85. Pump
    The movie goes beyond alarmism with solutions that on the surface would seem to find common ground between environmental advocacy and unfettered capitalism.
  86. Escobar: Paradise Lost
    Nick might usurp most of the screen time, but it’s Mr. Del Toro, face flickering from benevolent to vicious and body heaving with literal and symbolic weight, who seizes the film.
  87. Drunktown's Finest
    The screenplay tracing the characters’ struggles has a tidy, workshopped feel, and the dialogue and acting can be gratingly flat. But what gives the film a certain confidence is its cultural specificity and the fresh clashes and contrasts it presents.
  88. My Old Lady
    As the truth tumbles out, the dialogue and the carefully timed revelations make My Old Lady seem increasingly stagy. But the performances go a long way toward camouflaging the screenplay’s clunky mechanics.
  89. May in the Summer
    The hand-wringing and revelations are familiar from many wedding movies, but May in the Summer gains added potency from its cross-cultural tensions and the drama the characters face in reconciling tradition with modern life.
  90. The Maid's Room
    The Maid’s Room has much to recommend, including the versatile Mr. Camp (“Tamara Drewe,” “Compliance”) in a Machiavellian role. But it doesn’t marshal its twists toward a convincing or satisfying conclusion.
  91. 14 Blades
    While 14 Blades grinds on perhaps a half-hour too long, its ambitions and energies show that for a fresh take on the western, go east.
  92. The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them
    As a whole, it doesn’t quite work, but the parts — particular moments, observations and insights about the way people behave and perceive themselves — are frequently excellent.
  93. American Sniper
    Less a war movie than a western — the story of a lone gunslinger facing down his nemesis in a dusty, lawless place — it is blunt and effective, though also troubling.
  94. The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
    Mr. Ritchie tends to flaunt his wares like a store clerk, fawning over the clothes, chairs and cars, and his usual rabbity pace slows to a tortoiselike crawl whenever the actors deliver a lot of words, which gratefully isn’t often. His talent, as he proves repeatedly, is making bodies and cars crash through space.
  95. The Croods: A New Age
    Paradoxically, the movie’s energy ebbs as the proceedings turn more antic.
  96. McFarland USA
    Aims to be rousing rather than revelatory, and it mostly succeeds.
  97. Second Opinion: Laetrile at Sloan-Kettering
    Having a mild-mannered writer tell this story by sitting in a chair in front of some pretty art in a house museum and just talking seems lackadaisical, but Mr. Moss’s message is clear, shrewdly edited and peculiarly interesting.
  98. Life of Riley
    Life of Riley is neither especially profound nor riotously funny. An element of caricature is palpable in the performances but restrained.
  99. Thunder and the House of Magic
    The story is unremarkable, but its execution zings.
  100. The Nice Guys
    This is a dumb movie pretending to be smart, even as it wants you to believe the opposite. Still, dumb can be fun.
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