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. What on Earth?
    It's the film's geometrists who enthrall most, revealing that many of the shapes - one of which famously made the cover of a 1990 Led Zeppelin album - hold entirely new answers to Euclidean problems.
  2. When Harry Tries to Marry
    Producing smarm at the high level of When Harry Met Sally requires special talent, and when you fall short all you're left with is garden-variety smarm.
  3. Stake Land
    This unusually taut sophomore feature from Jim Mickle is more abnormal than most in that its creatures are capable not only of evolving but also of embracing religious fanaticism.
  4. Dumbstruck
    The writer and director, Mark Goffman, sticks to a no-frills style that makes the film feel longer than its 1 hour 24 minutes.
  5. Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen
    It's generally fun to watch Mr. Yen move and not much fun to watch him act, and Legend of the Fist is no exception.
  6. The Bang Bang Club
    Why, then, do we care not one bit when Pulitzers are won and bullets unsuccessfully dodged? The answer lies partly in Mr. Silver's refusal to elucidate the racial politics or engage with the world outside the film's incoherently chaotic bubble.
  7. Beautiful Darling
    Beautiful Darling, James Rasin's touching documentary biography of Candy Darling, the transsexual Andy Warhol "superstar," is a sad, lyrical reflection on the foolish worship of movie stars.
  8. Children of Hiroshima
    Mr. Shindo's world is sad and inspiring in familiar ways, but what makes it so memorable is that it is also gorgeous and strange.
  9. African Cats
    At one point the lions make a meal of a lovely young zebra they've just killed. That spelled the end for the little boy sitting next to me. "I'm too scared," he said, and he dragged his mom out of the theater. Sorry, kid, it's a jungle out there, even in Disneynature.
  10. Water for Elephants
    Short-circuits the novel's quirky charms and period atmosphere by its squeamish attitude toward gritty circus life and smothers the drama under James Newton Howard's insufferable wall-to-wall musical soup.
  11. POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold
    Even more amusing than "Super Size Me," the documentary that put Mr. Spurlock on the moviemaking map in 2004.
  12. Incendies
    Mr. Villeneuve tells Nawal's story in a way that is both subtle and emphatic, and Ms. Azabal, portraying Nawal from hopeful youth to despairing middle age, gives a performance that is all the more powerful for the restrained, unshakeable sense of dignity she brings to it.
  13. Fly Away
    Taking a coolheaded approach to hot-button issues, Fly Away overcomes its neatly bow-tied ending with strong performances (including Greg Germann as a sensitive neighbor) and a spare, intelligent script.
  14. Square Grouper
    The film mixes period footage with visually unappealing contemporary interviews. If you're expecting voluble, outsize personalities with colorful war stories, you'll be disappointed.
  15. Phillip the Fossil
    That the movie remains consistently watchable is largely a tribute to Brian Hasenfus, a Needham, Mass., contractor making his acting debut as Phillip.
  16. Footprints
    From its "once upon a time" beginning to the anticlimactic end, Footprints remains fatally lodged in La-La Land.
  17. The First Beautiful Thing
    Comedy and poignancy weave together in Mr. Virzì's hands, but the maudlin meter only occasionally goes into the red zone. And Ms. Pandolfi gives such an exquisitely understated performance that you don't realize until the very end that the film was as much about her character as it was about Bruno and Anna.
  18. Scream 4
    The central conceit of the characters' fates being determined by the "rules" of horror movies feels irredeemably tired; a clever idea that was worth one movie.
  19. The Imperialists Are Still Alive!
    If The Imperialists Are Still Alive! doesn't go much of anywhere despite its peripatetic characters, that stasis seems intentional.
  20. Rio
    This animated feature effort is a significant step forward from the studio's "Ice Age" films, in the richness of its cast, the exuberance of its music and the vibrance of its palette.
  21. A Screaming Man
    It's a modest film, if only in scale and apparent budget, about some of the greatest questions in life, like the existence of God, our capacity to see beyond our own vanity and the legacies of fathers, both blood and state.
  22. Armadillo
    The achievement of this film is to forestall and complicate easy judgment. You emerge shaken and bothered, which may sound like a reason not to see the movie. It is actually the opposite.
  23. The Double Hour
    The best movie of its kind since the French director Guillaume Canet's hit from 2006, "Tell No One."
  24. The Princess of Montpensier
    The French director Bertrand Tavernier deploys some smart ideas in this film, a period story about wars on the battlefield and those closer to home, but there's something a bit goatish in his attention to some female charms.
  25. The Conspirator
    The few glimpses we catch of the Ford's Theater production of "Our American Cousin" are unfortunately the liveliest and most convincing moments in this well-meaning, misbegotten movie.
  26. Winston Churchill: Walking with Destiny
    Winston Churchill: Walking With Destiny is a handsomely produced, television-scale documentary with a split personality.
  27. Meeting Spencer
    Isn't quite savvy enough to compete with the slyest entries in that genre or madcap enough to run with the zaniest.
  28. Mysteries of the Jesus Prayer
    The most consistent and useful thread running throughout this enervating travelogue is the value of silence as a path to inner peace, a notion to which any Manhattan dweller can surely attest.
  29. The Elephant in the Living Room
    Fair to a fault, "Elephant" omits what could be considered crucial voices - like lawmakers, the Humane Society (which helped finance the film) and mental-health professionals - in its attempt to understand those who believe their particular beast is as harmless as a kitten. At least until it rips someone's face off.
  30. Kati with an I
    Buoyed by a fully integrated soundtrack, Kati With an I delivers a lovingly personal observation of young people at a crossroads. The film's sound is not always crisp, but no matter: Kati's story is written in every vital, vérité frame.
  31. The Family Jams
    The low-key, hand-held Family Jams may not ever attain the stature of, say, a concert film like D. A. Pennebaker's "Don't Look Back." But it should, as a record of musicians in youthful flower, sharing a loose, heartfelt camaraderie and lack of pretension.
  32. Born to Be Wild
    The women's efforts have already had a fair amount of publicity, so the attraction here is the cinematography, and it makes good use of Imax and 3-D technology, with lovely aerial views and startling close-ups.
  33. Soul Surfer
    As a portrait of a spirited, resilient athlete, the movie succeeds best, unafraid to face its heroine's daunting challenges directly.
  34. Meet Monica Velour
    This is Ms. Cattrall's movie all the way. Photographed more cruelly than a tabloid victim, she gives Monica a grubby dignity that her "Sex and the City" alter ego, Samantha Jones, would wholeheartedly applaud.
  35. American: The Bill Hicks Story
    An oddly sterile documentary inspired by a particularly fecund imagination, American: The Bill Hicks Story recounts a bright-burning life while leaving us mostly in the dark.
  36. To Die Like a Man
    For all its melodrama To Die Like a Man is a not a tearjerker. Its gaze into the void is as unblinking as that of the H.I.V.-positive 60-year-old hustler in Jacques Nolot's even more hard-headed film, "Before I Forget."
  37. Henry's Crime
    Its mood is so muffled and point so submerged, it's difficult to see why Mr. Reeves and the rest of the cast pooled their talents to make a movie about a nowhere man going no place in particular in Buffalo.
  38. Ceremony
    In its mixture of the quirky and the downbeat, Ceremony aspires to be a hybrid of Noah Baumbach's "Margot at the Wedding" and Wes Anderson's "Rushmore" but falls far short.
  39. Your Highness
    May be better enjoyed in an herb-enhanced condition. Getting stoned is, after all, a running joke in this comedy, which is as thin as rolling paper and just as ephemeral.
  40. Arthur
    The star does his patented shtick, supported by a handful of blue-chip supporting performers, as the story lurches through contrived, seminaughty comic set pieces toward a sentimental ending.
  41. Meek's Cutoff
    Meek's Cutoff is as unsentimental and determined as Ms. Williams's character, its absolutely believable heroine. It is also a bracingly original foray into territory that remains, in every sense, unsettled.
  42. Hanna
    In the end there might not be much to this tale other than titillation, but there's plenty to be said for Ms. Ronan, who was the best thing about "Atonement" and holds her ground against forceful screen presences like Ms. Blanchett and Mr. Bana.
  43. They're Out of the Business
    What was sometimes charming and funny in "Turnaround" is almost uniformly dreary in "Business," a result of tired humor, a monotonous pace and Mr. Schaeffer's inexpressiveness as an actor.
  44. Blank City
    Ms. Danhier manages to conjure a glorious and grungy bygone past without fetishizing it as a golden age. A bunch of people got together and did some stuff, and this is what it looked like.
  45. Two Gates of Sleep
    The intent is perhaps some kind of dark tone poem, and the cinematography (by Jody Lee Lipes) is lovely. But oh, the tedium.
  46. Wretches & Jabberers
    The film is maddeningly vague about how the two men made their initial breakthroughs, but it certainly is proof that even those who are written off as children can find a voice.
  47. Trust
    The mantle of social relevance can be a heavy one, but Trust, a smooth drama about a girl's seduction and rape by a middle-aged Internet predator, is neither preachy nor hysterically overreaching.
  48. Circo
    Circo offers a touching chronicle of a dying culture harnessed to ambitions that remain very much alive.
  49. Super
    Super rides on the carefully bent performances of its stars.
  50. Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead
    Fat, Sick may be no great shakes as a movie, but as an ad for Mr. Cross's wellness program its now-healthy heart is in the right place.
  51. Wrecked
    Information leaks into the film via the radio and a few flashbacks, but Wrecked is mostly free of dialogue - and, unfortunately, suspense.
  52. Cat Run
    An incoherent hybrid of buddy movie, "Girls Gone Wild" episode and James Bond spoof that employs cheap cinematic tricks like multiple split screens for no apparent purpose.
  53. Queen to Play
    In small but significant ways, Queen to Play defies expectations. It dangles the possibility of an affair between Hélène and Kröger in games that the film likens to courtship rituals in a classic screwball comedy.
  54. Rubber
    While it can be seen as an environmental horror movie (if you must), Rubber doesn't dig down but instead merrily rolls on, as Mr. Dupieux plays with narrative and form. In one wonderful cinematic coup the tire spots a crow and shifts toward the bird so that it's framed in the tire hole, an angle that turns the tire into a camera. Point. Click. Explode.
  55. In a Better World
    Everything about In a Better World feels just a little too easy: a better movie might have let in more of the messiness of the world as it is. This one falls into cheap manipulation, winding up the audience with foreboding music and the spectacle of blond children in peril.
  56. Hop
    Hop is innocuous, though occasionally annoying and also, less expectedly, occasionally funny. Both types of occasions are mostly provided by Russell Brand, who specializes in collapsing the distinction between the exasperatingly silly and the charmingly naughty.
  57. Source Code
    In crucial ways, Source Code, written by Ben Ripley, recalls "Moon," Mr. Jones's accomplished feature debut about a solitary astronaut played by Sam Rockwell. Source Code is bigger, shinier, pricier.
  58. Insidious
    The strongest analogue for the second half of Insidious is one that the filmmakers probably weren't trying for: it feels like a less poetic version of an M. Night Shyamalan fairy tale.
  59. The Four Times (Le Quattro Volte)
    There is something startling, even shocking, about the angle of vision Mr. Frammartino imposes by juxtaposing apparently disparate elements and lingering on what seem at first to be insignificant details. You have never seen anything like this movie, even though what it shows you has been there all along.
  60. One Hundred Mornings
    Leavening the rather grim atmosphere with luminous earth tones (photographed by Suzie Lavelle) and a smidgen of wry humor, this low-budget beauty draws you in.
  61. Bal
    It has no musical soundtrack (and barely any dialogue), only a quiet, unforced, organic rhythm. And those spellbinding images. Like the viewer, Mr. Kaplanoglu is quite happy to let nature do the talking and cast a lyrical, mysterious spell.
  62. I Travel Because I Have to, I Come Back Because I Love You
    Coming in at a tight 75 minutes, this strikingly original travelogue glides on the lovely lilt of Mr. Santos's Portuguese narration.
  63. Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2: Rodrick Rules
    About the most you can say for it is that it's inoffensive.
  64. Drawing with Chalk
    Screaming "vanity project" from every hackneyed frame, Drawing With Chalk is yet another example of midlife American males doing all they can to avoid acting their age.
  65. Korkoro
    Korkoro (the word means freedom in Romani) has an unexpectedly leisurely quality as it shows the texture of Gypsy life - the music-making, the intense bonds with horses and the natural world - and its awkward fit with modernity.
  66. White Irish Drinkers
    Because Mr. Thurston and Mr. Wigdor lack the hard shells necessary to make their characters credible, White Irish Drinkers feels synthetic. Mr. Lang and the older cast members fare better, but they can't save a movie that runs on clichés.
  67. Potiche
    You suspect, before long, that there is no strong reason for this production to exist, but it is reasonably good fun all the same.
  68. Miral
    To say that Mr. Schnabel's film is innocuous is not to say that it's any good. Like so many other well-intentioned movies about politically contentious issues, it is hobbled by its own sincerity and undone by a confused aesthetic agenda.
  69. Illegal
    One problem is that while Mr. Masset-Depasse frames Tania's status in vague political terms, he doesn't make an argument. Instead he creates heroes and villains in what is, by turns, a prison flick, a psychological thriller and a maternal melodrama.
  70. Mia and the Migoo
    Trying to parse meaning in "Mia" is secondary to its main point, which is its look, created with 500,000 hand-drawn frames. That's impressive in an age in which most mainstream animation is done with computers.
  71. Peep World
    A family circus of dysfunction that's so familiar you may feel tempted to place bets on how everything will shake out.
  72. Sucker Punch
    There is nothing here to enjoy, beyond the tiny satisfaction in noting that the movie lives up to its name.
  73. My Perestroika
    My Perestroika gives you a privileged sense of learning the history of a place not from a book but from the people who lived it. Watching it is a little like attending a party in an unfamiliar city and discovering the place's secrets from the guests.
  74. The Gift to Stalin
    Immersed in the alien beauty of the Kazakh steppe, "The Gift to Stalin" moves slowly but engages thoroughly.
  75. Making the Boys
    Captivating documentary about the creation of, and reaction to, the breakthrough play "The Boys in the Band."
  76. Lord of the Dance in 3D
    The excitement factor only intermittently carries from the arena to the screen.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Bill Cunningham New York
    If the film suggests that there's something bittersweet about a life dedicated to a single pursuit cultivated with an almost religious fervor, it also stands in awe of its subject's seemingly inexhaustible, self-abnegating capacity to remain attuned to the expression of others.
  78. Cracks
    In many ways Cracks is lurid and rickety. But its gripping ensemble performances lend it an emotional intensity that outweighs its shortcomings.
  79. Winter in Wartime
    Winter in Wartime turns into a moderately gripping thriller with predictable plot twists and reversals.
  80. Nostalgia for the Light
    The film's passionate insistence on remembrance lends it a moral as well as a metaphysical weight. Mr. Guzmán's belief in eternal memory is an astounding leap of faith.
  81. The Lincoln Lawyer
    There are modest pleasures in a familiar story told differently enough that you're happy to keep guessing and watching.
  82. Win Win
    Win Win goes a bit soft in places, protecting its characters from serious danger or tough moral reckoning. But the film's niceness is also central to its appeal, because nearly all of the characters are people you enjoy spending time with.
  83. Paul
    While Paul seems great conceptually, he's not particularly interesting or surprising.
  84. Limitless
    An energetic, enjoyably preposterous compound - it's a paranoid thriller blended with pseudo-neuro-science fiction and catalyzed by a jolting dose of satire.
  85. The Desert of Forbidden Art
    The filmmakers found an appealing collection of relatives and others who knew these artists and Savitsky to tell the story, but they also let the art do the talking, with loving, lingering shots of the brightly colored works.
  86. Kill the Irishman
    An extravagantly corny ode to the collapse of the Cleveland mafia in the 1970s.
  87. Mars Needs Moms
    It seems that it's time to admit that dressing actors in LED-studded catsuits, asking them to give performances on sterile white sets and handing the results to a team of computer animators is not a way to make a good movie.
  88. Brotherhood
    The script, by Mr. Canon and Doug Simon, eventually strains credulity - even frat boys aren't this dumb - but Mr. Canon, in his first feature, shows a great knack for keeping things moving. The gathering implausibility is dispelled by a nice ending twist.
  89. Black Death
    Here, excessive piety and rampant paganism are equally malevolent forces, the film's baleful view of human nature mirrored in Sebastian Edschmid's swampy photography. As is emphasized in a nicely consistent coda, the Lord's side and the right side are not necessarily one and the same.
  90. Elektra Luxx
    Elektra Luxx has some scattered witty notions, but it is not funny.
  91. 3 Backyards
    Mr. Mendelsohn's ability to evoke a child's-eye view of a suburban environment is the most seductive element in a movie whose primary attraction is an atmosphere so heady that you can almost taste it.
  92. Monogamy
    With modest resources, some nice digital camerawork and an appealing cast - the likable Ms. Jones draws you in easily - Mr. Shapiro keeps you engaged even when his story falters.
  93. Certified Copy
    The Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami's delicious brain tickler, Certified Copy, is an endless hall of mirrors whose reflections multiply as its story of a middle-aged couple driving through Tuscany carries them into a metaphysical labyrinth.
  94. Battle: Los Angeles
    As it lurches from Act II to Act III, Battle: Loss Angeles reveals itself to be a lousy movie.
  95. Foreign Parts
    People talk but don't say too much, and as curious and thorough as Ms. Paravel and Mr. Sniadecki are - Foreign Parts is the result of many months of patient filming - they are too polite to pry. But their tact adds to the richness of their film, which discovers a busy, complicated world within the space of few unlovely city blocks.
  96. Red Riding Hood
    My, what sharp teeth Ms. Hardwicke doesn't have: working from David Leslie Johnson's screenplay she takes on the story's grown-up themes of sex and death directly but weakly.
  97. Jane Eyre
    A splendid example of how to tackle the daunting duty of turning a beloved work of classic literature into a movie. Neither a radical updating nor a stiff exercise in middlebrow cultural respectability, Mr. Fukunaga's film tells its venerable tale with lively vigor and an astute sense of emotional detail.
  98. Ex Drummer
    As the not-so-comic violence and the violent, misogynistic sex pile up, it becomes the kind of black humor in which the joke is largely on the audience.
  99. I Saw the Devil
    A droll Nietzschean fable that's fully aware of its lapses into absurdity.
  100. Take Me Home Tonight
    What keeps the movie, directed by Michael Dowse, on a more or less even keel is its steady pacing and emotional kinship to John Hughes comedies like "Sixteen Candles" and "The Breakfast Club."
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