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. 306 Hollywood
    A family portrait that plunges into what will strike many viewers as T.M.I. territory, the documentary 306 Hollywood makes for morbid, at times insufferable viewing. But its solipsism is part of its message.
  2. Viper Club
    Viper Club falters with mawkish flashbacks of the mother and son, and with its ham-fisted, repeated emphasis on the smarm of government officials. But it is mostly gripping.
  3. The Wind
    The movie’s most striking aspect, though, is Lyn Moncrief’s arresting cinematography, which turns the vast vacancy of the plains into both hostile observer and hellish metaphor. The story might finally slip its leash, but the baleful mood holds firm.
  4. Greta
    The point, and the fun, is the wild mischief of Huppert’s performance, which grows lighter and more joyful as Greta’s behavior slides from menacing to murderous.
  5. The Command
    The fine cast keeps us engaged, even if the film sometimes loses the narrative thread.
  6. Freaks
    Appealing, partly because it’s so unembarrassed by its genre's done-to-death social-injustice themes, this undercooked blend of science fiction and family drama virtually dares you to turn up your nose.
  7. Endzeit - Ever After
    Once Vivi and Eva are forced off the train and start wandering the countryside, the forest seems to fold its arms around them, and Endzeit modestly deepens into beguiling mystery.
  8. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
    Whether it’s the scene-setting blast of Donovan (“Zodiac”), the low-height Steadicam work (“The Shining”), the red-suffused hallways (David Lynch) or “Night of the Living Dead” playing at a drive-in, the movie takes from the best.
  9. Downton Abbey
    From its spectacularly detailed aesthetic to the characters’ march down well-worn personality paths, Downton Abbey argues insistently for the status quo.
  10. Call Her Ganda
    Call Her Ganda (“ganda” means “beautiful” in Tagalog) remains commendable for its focus on the case, and for its insistence that the crime against Ms. Laude not be forgotten.
  11. The Exorcist III
    This may sound like heresy, but The Exorcist III is a better and funnier (intentionally) movie than either of its predecessors.
  12. The King's Man
    Mainly, it has Ralph Fiennes to ensure that the center holds. As Orlando, Duke of Oxford and the spy agency’s founder, Fiennes might read more cuddly than studly, but he lends a surprising gravitas to this flibbertigibbet feature.
  13. Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis
    The running gags of the dual Living Dead chapters slow to a crawl after four hours, but viewers should discount the flaws of such low-budget, high-energy projects. These are scrappy installments that actually succeed in making the consumption of brains fodder for thought. [14 Oct 2005, p.E]
    • The New York Times
  14. Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare
    Mr. Englund, playing the Halloween favorite whom audiences love to hate, now delivers lines like this with the broadness of a latter-day Jimmy Durante. But he sustains Freddy's peculiar charm even when appearing without ghastly makeup in scenes of Freddy's early years.
  15. Never-Ending Man: Hayao Miyazaki
    It’s never boring but a trifle diffuse. If you’re a Miyazaki fan, you’ll want to see it anyway.
  16. Damien: Omen II
    Though it's as foolish as the first film, is rather more fun to watch and sometimes very stylish-looking.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Son of Kong
    This sequel to last season's hair-raiser is a low melodrama with a number of laughs that are loud and satisfying, although the comical intent of the producers is open to argument.
  18. Vice
    Vice offers more than Yuletide rage-bait for liberal moviegoers, who already have plenty to be mad about. Revulsion and admiration lie as close together as the red and white stripes on the American flag, and if this is in some respects a real-life monster movie, it’s one that takes a lively and at times surprisingly sympathetic interest in its chosen demon.
  19. Bikini Moon
    Bikini Moon is better in separate scenes than as a whole, where Manchevski’s overreaches and plot lapses become more glaring. In this film, the harshest truths — make that “truths” — are best served in small doses.
  20. Missing Link
    What’s missing from the movie, for all its technical skill, is simply inspiration — that extra touch of wit or imagination that might elevate it from a pleasant diversion to a rare sighting.
  21. Blue Steel
    It isn't necessary to believe Blue Steel fully to find it gripping all the way through, and to be both fascinated and frightened by its icy, gleaming vision of urban life. For the audience, it's both a sobering and invigorating experience. For Ms. Bigelow, it's a breakthrough.
  22. The Fox and the Hound
    One of the nicer things that can be said about The Fox and the Hound is that it breaks no new ground whatsoever. This is a pretty, relentlessly cheery, old-fashioned sort of Disney cartoon feature, chock-full of bouncy songs of an upbeatness that is stickier than Krazy-Glue and played by animals more anthropomorphic than the humans that occasionally appear.
  23. Swimming with Men
    Although the film has no grand cinematic ambitions, its unsensationalized focus on these aging bodies invites welcome kindness.
  24. Make Mine Music
    Vivid, motley, ornamental and just-a-bit questionable in spots.
  25. Melody Time
    Walt Disney has let his animators and his color magicians have free rein in his latest cartoon package-picture, Melody Time. And again, as in Make Mine Music! he has come up with a gaudy grab-bag show in which a couple of items are delightful and the rest are just adequate fillers-in.
  26. Robin Hood
    The visual style is charmingly conventional, as gently reassuring as that of a Donald Duck cartoon, sometimes as romantically pretty as an old Silly Symphony.
  27. Goyo: The Boy General
    Jerrold Tarog, the director, follows the same game plan as he did in “Heneral Luna,” with sweeping music and proud speeches (he wrote the script with Rody Vera). There are also some nice images of the lush Philippine countryside and of del Pilar’s troops.
  28. Brightburn
    The gore and the scares work pretty well.
  29. The Pirates of Penzance
    The Pirates of Penzance has been made into a cheerful movie, but it isn't nearly as deft or distinctive here as it was on stage.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    White Lightning
    A fairly awful movie that keeps producing good things—scenes, performances, moments of insight—that seem connected to better ideas than anything suggested in the film's larger intentions.
  31. The Secret Life of Pets 2
    Too scattered narratively to cohere, and yet somehow still funny enough to justify its existence, The Secret Life of Pets 2 makes for an entertaining trifle.
  32. Under The Wire
    While the movie is rightfully more interested in lauding her bravery than highlighting her sometimes abrasive personality, these small moments help to humanize a portrait that can at times seem more awestruck than enlightening.
  33. Cam
    Cam is more successful as an oddly feminist tale of gutsy self-reliance than as a fully developed drama.
  34. Ruben Brandt, Collector
    The movie is fun to look at without quite being exciting to watch. This is mostly because the story never fully lives up to the ideas, and the ideas themselves are fuzzy and scattered.
  35. Family in Transition
    Trainin’s film spends a good deal of its running time surveying the emotions that affect everyone here, including the Tsuk children. Yet there’s quite a bit left unexplored; after the start, the director rarely returns to examine Amit’s past or seek insights into Amit’s inner self.
  36. Hot Dog... The Movie
    It's a beach party movie, marginally better than the average, with snow taking the place of surf.
  37. Mischief
    IF Norman Rockwell had wanted to make ''Porky's,'' he might have come up with something like Mischief.
  38. To Dust
    You can see what this movie is after, something cockeyed but sincere, something in the neighborhood of Paul Mazursky, Elaine May or Alexander Payne. But the writing and filmmaking (Snyder directed) just aren’t quick enough.
  39. Perfect Strangers (Perfectos Desconocidos)
    This picture is well acted (one of the cast members, Manuel García-Rulfo, has a growing profile in Hollywood; he was seen last year in “Widows” and “Sicario: Day of the Soldado”) and maintains narrative interest without ever grabbing the viewer by the lapels.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Pumping Iron
    An interesting, rather slick and excessively long documentary about the small but intensely competitive world of body-building.
  41. Personal Best
    It's also full of lyrical slow-motion footage of women athletes' training - jogging, sprinting, running the high hurdles, throwing the shot, broad jumping and high jumping. These sequences are accompanied by not-great pop music that has been poured over the images in a way that suggests fudge sauce on top of fried chicken.
  42. Pink Floyd: The Wall
    His The Wall is a good-looking film, and it has no shortage of nerve. When he puts an entire schoolchildren's choir on a conveyor belt leading into a meat grinder as they sing, ''We don't need no education,'' he is being nothing if not bold. These effects, while some are individually powerful, are dwarfed by the towering selfimportance of The Wall and by its lack of focus.
  43. The Great Pretender
    Some of the details about female characters that Silver and the screenwriter Jack Dunphy choose to foreground...indicate that the filmmakers share with their male characters a strain of artsy-bro misogyny. The movie is nevertheless striking and stimulating in some respects.
  44. Pledge
    If you like your torture movies tight, twisty and decently executed, then Pledge is for you.
  45. The Wedding Guest
    The scenery, nicely shot by Giles Nuttgens and covering a wide swath of the country — Amritsar, New Delhi, Jaipur and Goa — is always great, and Patel and Apte’s chemistry approaches scalding levels as their characters grow closer.
  46. Triple Frontier
    Chandor handles the action scenes smoothly, making it easy to gloss over what the movie is saying, trying to say or accidentally saying. He maintains the kind of accelerated pace that gives your eyes a workout, and pads the story with an inviting camaraderie that brings you into the group.
  47. Junior
    Proceeds efficiently but never quite lives up to its own potential as a sight gag.
  48. Paris, Texas
    Paris, Texas begins so beautifully and so laconically that when, about three-quarters of the way through, it begins to talk more and say less, the great temptation is to yell at it to shut up. If it were a hitchhiker, you'd stop the car and tell it to get out.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Farewell, My Lovely
    It's as if someone had put pillow springs, power-steering and a tape deck into a classic racing-car. It is still handsome and it still goes, but it is a handsome mediocrity.
  50. Runaway Train
    What is well worth watching here, much more so than the train itself, is Jon Voight, who gives a fiery performance in an unusually hard-edged role.
  51. Genesis 2.0
    While the sights and sounds here are unique, the movie seems frustratingly torn about whether to buy the futurism and mysticism it’s selling.
  52. Brian Banks
    Brian Banks isn’t a great movie, but it is a worthwhile one. And if it’s indicative of a new direction for its director, you won’t hear any complaints from me.
  53. Ask Dr. Ruth
    A movie that feels more like an encomium than a thoughtful probe of a brilliantly mutinous mind.
  54. Lenny
    One-fourth of the film is so brilliant—and so brilliantly acted by Dustin Hoffman—that it helps cool one's impatience with the rest of the film, which is much more fancily edited and photographed but no more profound than those old movie biographies Jack L. Warner used to grind out about people like George Gershwin, Mark Twain and Dr. Ehrlich.
  55. Lionheart
    It is globally minded filmmaking that is also comfortingly familiar.
  56. Little Woods
    DaCosta is better at setting scenes than digging into them.
  57. What Is Democracy?
    Like democracy itself, the movie assumes such a broad mandate and has such noble intentions that indicating its shortcomings seems almost beside the point.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Solo
    The end result is a survival story that never quite sinks or swims, but rather drifts with the tide.
  59. Near Dark
    You might call this the scattershot school of film making... The result of being pushed and pulled through the confusing styles of Near Dark is simple exhaustion.
  60. Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga
    The makers of the Bollywood movie Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga have a touching, if slightly demented, belief in the transformative power of art. How to combat ugly stereotypes and entrenched beliefs? Put on a show!
  61. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
    Though hobbled by an obviousness that dampens any suspense, this sensitive, environmentally concerned movie is most successful when steeped in the particularities of its location.
  62. Midsommar
    Despite all the time he lavishes on Dani and Christian’s relationship, which is drawn along stereotypical gendered lines (consuming female need that becomes devouring), the couple remains instructively uninteresting. That’s the case despite Pugh.
  63. Braid
    Peirone’s everything-but-the-kitchen-sink directing does tend to head butt her thin writing, but the movie eventually coalesces as a sly, bitter parable against chasing-your-dreams optimism.
  64. The Death of Dick Long
    The Death of Dick Long, until it meanders into a semisincere dramatic dimension, manages to pack in a good number of laughs for a significant amount of time.
  65. The Sunlit Night
    This movie about artistic inspiration is meandering and slight, but, in a way, it provides evidence for why it’s helpful to cast actors with movie-star charisma.
  66. Black Sunday
    The characters don't motivate the drama in any real way. They are cut and shaped to fit it, and if the cast of Black Sunday were not so good, and if Mr. Frankenheimer were a less able director, the movie would be unendurably boring.
    • The New York Times
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Viva Las Vegas
    Viva Las Vegas is about as pleasant and unimportant as a banana split. And as fetching to look at, it might be added.
  68. Grand Prix
    It's razzle-dazzle of a random sort, but it works.The big trouble with this picture is that the characters and their romantic problems are stereotypes and clichés.
  69. Yesterday
    Yesterday is more of a novelty earworm than a classic. It’s appealing and accessible in a way that the Beatles never really were. If it took itself — and them — a bit more seriously, it would be a lot more fun. But it wasn’t made to last.
  70. Pavarotti
    This is a film too enamored of its subject to pry very deeply. And yet, it’s hard not to be enamored as well, as Pavarotti’s larger-than-life personality shines in almost every scene.
  71. Coming 2 America
    A genial, mostly inoffensive, sometimes quite funny sequel.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Young Racers
    Somehow, as the film progresses, its superficial protagonists grow more complex and assume added dimensions, until they unexpectedly emerge as interesting people.The result, though not a picture that many filmgoers would take special pains to see, still provides an agreeable hour for those who do. It is enough to make a viewer wonder what Mr. Corman might be able to accomplish with a better project and adequate means.
  73. God Exists, Her Name Is Petrunija
    The standoff with authorities dawdles and languishes, and a side plot with a TV journalist (Labina Mitevska) feels one-note. Still, we should all look forward to seeing what Petrunya does next.
  74. The Operative
    The Operative, directed by Yuval Adler, doesn’t offer much distinctive, but it does deliver a few suspenseful sequences, some interesting nuts-and-bolts details of espionage work and a good lead performance en route to an unsatisfying ending.
  75. Goldie
    Woods, remarkably comfortable in her first film role, gives Goldie a steel spine and a feisty resourcefulness, her moments of vulnerability rare, but essential.
  76. The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia
    Kristy McNichol and Dennis Quaid, as a mutually devoted sister and brother, are personable but idle in this largely uneventful tale.
  77. Bedknobs and Broomsticks
    A tricky, cheerful, aggressively friendly Walt Disney fantasy for children who still find enchantment in pop-up books, plush animals by Steiff and dreams of independent flight.
  78. Ernie & Joe: Crisis Cops
    As promising as Ernie and Joe’s program may seem, there is no insight into whether the nation’s law enforcement agencies are prioritizing these humane methods.
  79. Museum Town
    For those even mildly curious about the story of one of the country’s largest visual and performing arts spaces, Museum Town is worth watching.
  80. Diana Kennedy: Nothing Fancy
    More curious and combative than the movie around her, Kennedy is as much anthropologist as chef, her deep love for her adopted country palpable.
  81. Stuffed
    While Derham banks on the surprise factor of seeing taxidermists acting as stealth conservationists, the film leaves the impression that she could have scalpel-dug into deeper layers.
  82. The Star Chamber
    It is a great disappointment, halfway into the movie, to find The Star Chamber so far off the track that its credibility almost entirely disappears...The Star Chamber has a well- meaning urgency, and it is an entertaining film even when it becomes so thoroughly misguided.
  83. Ramen Shop
    A drama from the Singaporean director Eric Khoo that also demonstrates the power of Instagrammable cuisine to spice up an otherwise straightforward, sentimental film.
  84. A Man Called Horse
    Silverstein has elected to tell the story of Lord John's survival largely in terms of Sioux rituals relating to such things as wars, weddings, deaths, and even spiritual deliverance. I must admit that I found all this interesting, although I'm the sort of Indian buff and tourist who gets a kick out of watching contemporary Navajos do their rain dances in tennis shoes.
  85. Super Deluxe
    Super Deluxe, though, runs three hours, and Kumararaja loses his way in the draggy, overlong second act.
  86. Reinventing Rosalee
    If you can look past the low-grade production values — and to do that you’ll need two awfully forgiving eyes — Reinventing Rosalee delivers a few rewards, thanks to its vibrant subject and her noteworthy life.
  87. The Dead Don't Die
    This is an end-of-the-world party with an appealing guest list and inviting, eccentric décor.
  88. Paint Your Wagon
    An amiable, $20-million musical. That's a high price to pay for something that is more an expression of good intentions than evidence of sustained cinematic accomplishment. However, because amiability is never in over abundant supply, especially in Hollywood super-productions, the movie can be enjoyed more often than simply tolerated.
  89. Chasing Portraits
    Chasing Portraits is small and subtle, with some missed opportunities and occasionally inexpert filmmaking. But it’s not an insignificant effort, and Ms. Rynecki’s cause is admirable.
  90. El Chicano
    The director Ben Hernandez Bray began his career in Hollywood as a stuntman, and though too many bones are crunched to describe this film as elegant, Bray directs action with merciless kinetic logic.
  91. Out of Africa
    With the exception of Miss Streep's performance, the pleasures of Out of Africa are all peripheral – David Watkin's photography, the landscapes, the shots of animal life – all of which would fit neatly into a National Geographic layout.
  92. To Sir, with Love
    A cozy, good-humored and unbelievable little tale.
  93. Blow the Man Down
    While the sisterhood in Easter Cove is indeed powerful, the secrets that bind its members prove to be fairly simple, and the result is intriguing enough to make you wonder what these writer-directors might accomplish if they applied their vision to a more expansive canvas.
  94. Scrooge
    It is absurd, sentimental, pretty, never quite as funny as it intends to be, but quite acceptable, if only as a seasonal ritual.
  95. Skin
    A blistering story of rage and redemption that never fully illuminates the journey from one to the other.
  96. Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
    Although crudely acted, with laughably inept action sequences and a story that makes little sense, it has the feverish pulse of a classic B movie, boldly angular cinematography and a blaringly cheesy jazz soundtrack.
  97. American Woman
    The performances are excellent, and Ingelsby’s dialogue largely rings true. But while the movie is indeed considered and conscientious, it’s also careful. It doesn’t risk going over any edges itself. And it shows more than a few instances of fussy and telegraphing Conspicuous Direction.
  98. The Silence of Others
    Informative, if not always as specific as it might have been.
  99. General Magic
    General Magic is engaging, but there’s a tougher, tighter film in here struggling to get out.
  100. Zulu
    If you're not too squeamish at the sight of slaughter and blood and can keep your mind fixed on the notion that there was something heroic and strong about British colonial expansion in the 19th century, you may find a great deal of excitement in this robustly Kiplingesque film.
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