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. Our Time
    The movie asks a lot of the viewer, but to this viewer, it gave back more.
  2. The End of Love
    Mr. Webber, a skilled actor, has not devised a narrative with sufficient momentum or tension to sustain much interest.
  3. 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.
  4. The Human Surge
    Just when you think you’ve got the movie pegged, it pulls a daring switch of perspective. While the thrill of that little coup is short-lived, it suggests that Mr. Williams may come up with something more substantial with his next feature.
  5. On the Road
    It all seems - dare I say it? - of little consequence.
  6. You're Not You
    Despite holes in the storytelling, Ms. Swank and Ms. Rossum keep it real.
  7. The Indian Runner
    Loose, rambling and sometimes rudderless as it is, The Indian Runner has a fundamental honesty that gives it real substance.
  8. For My Father
    Well-intentioned but philosophically timid, For My Father wants to meditate on the moral reshuffling that can accompany imminent death. But the director, Dror Zahavi, is ill served by a screenplay (by Ido Dror and Jonatan Dror) too attracted to coincidence and too repelled by the existential brink.
  9. The Details
    Instead of turning soft and squishy, this examination of karma gets tougher as it goes along. Its refusal to settle into a cozy niche may be commercially disastrous, but I take it as a sign of integrity.
  10. 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.
  11. In the Land of Pomegranates
    A tough and cleareyed look at how things are, rather than how we want them to be.
  12. Nightbitch
    Adams is a performer whose emotional transparency can make her characters seem unguarded and appealingly vulnerable, and the movie works as well as it does in great part because of her.
  13. Watchmen
    As it is, the film is more curiosity than provocation, an artifact of a faded world brought to zombie half-life by the cinematic technology of the present.
  14. Boy Culture
    A slick and absorbing drama.
  15. Crush
    It is clear from the offset which sibling will win both Paige’s affection and the obligatory climactic smooch. The journey there can drag. More fresh is the movie’s sex-positive empathy.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Omega Man
    Peppered with some sharp, even amusing dialogue, the story temporarily shelves the heavy allegory and slips into good, slam-bang suspense. But it doesn't last.
  17. Saints and Soldiers
    Thanks to an impressive cast of largely unknown actors, this small-scale, meticulously researched film tells its story with quiet conviction.
  18. The Chorus
    A deeply conventional story about truculent or orphaned boys and the gentle soul who finds himself by shaping the tots into a chorus.
  19. Deadpool & Wolverine
    Deadpool & Wolverine is a “Deadpool” movie, which means it’s rude and irreverent, funny and disgusting, weird and a little sweet. Reynolds and Jackman are fun to watch, in part because their on-screen characters contrast so violently with their nice guy personas off screen.
  20. Mermaids
    A terribly gentle if wisecracking comedy about the serious business of growing up.
  21. Lords of Dogtown
    From start to finish, is pretty much a blast.
  22. Diary of a Wimpy Kid
    There is nothing wrong with the story itself, but the tone is grating and the pacing sluggish. Episodes that might be howlingly funny on the page turn weirdly gross and sadistic on screen.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Invaders from Mars
    The director, Tobe Hooper, who honed his scary craft on such films as ''The Texas Chain Saw Massacre'' and ''Poltergeist,'' knows how to construct a horror film so it builds to a screaming pitch. He shoots many of his images from below, to give the view a child might have, and deftly manipulates the audience to feel the growing menace. He is helped by an excellent cast.
  24. Focus
    The preposterousness of the story doesn’t seem like a rip-off, since the twists in the plot, for the most part, pay off nicely.
  25. Blue in the Face
    Good-humored, try-anything fun.
  26. Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky
    Never regains that initial blast of energy and the final scenes wobble toward a wishy-washy ending.
  27. How to Eat Fried Worms
    Nicely directed, the film version proves refreshingly free of the customary blights that affect most modern children's movies, notably adult condescension. But, man, is it mean.
  28. Live Cargo
    We are largely left with the images, which take us far, if not far enough.
  29. Nighthawks
    We've seen movies like Nighthawks before, but we haven't seen one in a while. That may be why this police film, with an international cast and a plot about international terrorism, has so much punch. All of it is standard stuff, and yet Nighthawks has been assembled with enough pep to make it feel fresh. It is particularly helped by the performances of Rutger Hauer, a Dutch actor who makes a startling impression as a cold-blooded fiend, and Sylvester Stallone, from whom less is definitely more.
  30. Private Practices: The Story of a Sex Surrogate
    Sympathetic account of a sort of human frailty that is not easy to talk about, much less make a movie about.
  31. Leatherheads
    What is harder to comprehend is how Mr. Clooney turned out such a sloppy, haphazard and tonally incoherent piece of work. Leatherheads lurches hectically between Coen brothers-style pastiche and John Saylesian didacticism, while Mr. Clooney works his brow and his jaw and waits in vain for his charm to kick in and save the day.
  32. Paper Towns
    In the end, what makes Q such a deceptively tricky literary creation — his averageness — is the very thing the filmmakers struggle with, partly because movies of this commercial scale and bottom-line ambition rarely know what to do with ordinary life.
  33. Tom of Finland
    While Mr. Laaksonen devoted his life (1920-91) to challenging conventions, the film is committed to honoring them.
  34. The Cherry Orchard
    What makes this Cherry Orchard different from almost every other interpretation (and makes it essential viewing for lovers of Chekhov) is Ms. Rampling's extraordinarily rich portrait of Ranevskaya.
  35. The Five Senses
    By interweaving several stories, the movie suffers from a peculiar multiplier effect: it deepens its shallowness.
  36. The Big Kahuna
    If the movie looked any cheaper, you might think you were paying more to get into the theater than was spent on making the film.
  37. Cruel Intentions
    You have the queasy sense that the whole thing is just an elaborate stunt, and in this case an exploitative one.
  38. Speaking in Strings
    Draws a curtain over her intimate personal life.
  39. Once Upon a Time in Mexico
    The only thing missing is a coherent story -- or even, for that matter, an interesting idea for one.
  40. Antibirth
    In his director’s statement, Mr. Perez, who also wrote the script, says he sought to fashion a story “that would confuse and bludgeon the audience.” My comrade and I will sip, silently nod and, with a strange kind of awe, agree: This filmmaker succeeded.
  41. Hocus Pocus 2
    While its new sequel, Hocus Pocus 2, may be a blatant attempt by Disney to continue propping up its streaming platform Disney+ (where the movie has its debut), it manages to capture the same hokey magic of the original while creatively updating its humor.
  42. Hyena
    The strongest elements of this film, which adds nothing new to the subgenre, are its atmospheric, smeared-lipstick cinematography and Mr. Ferdinando’s portrayal of an arrogant, double-dealing crook.
  43. Making Grace
    A small, intimate documentary that patiently observes the highs and lows of a 30-something couple who want to become parents. That the couple are lesbians is perhaps the most remarkable feature of an unremarkable film.
  44. Me, Too
    Sensitive without being unrealistically utopian (this isn't a fairy tale), Me, Too movingly represents the frustration of the high-functioning yet falling-short individual.
  45. Cold War 2
    It is a summer sequel worth its salt, a brisk exercise in suspense and high-gloss mayhem.
  46. 68 Kill
    It’s a little amazing how a story so guilty of gross-out violence can retain a share of comic innocence.
  47. 1BR
    Drawing on a fascination with cults and utopian communities, the director and co-writer, David Marmor, has created a mildly entertaining survival story whose depiction of psychological indoctrination far outstrips its generic dips into torture.
  48. Percy Vs Goliath
    Sentimental and a little corny in parts, “Percy” is protected from bathos by Walken’s proudly minimalist performance as an intensely private man reluctantly drawn into an uncomfortably public fight.
  49. The Fate of the Furious
    Zoom, crash, repeat with squealing, burning and flaming tires — it’s all predictably absurd and self-mocking, and often a giggle when not a total yawn.
  50. It's All Gone Pete Tong
    The British comic turned actor (Paul Kaye) appears in almost every scene and he carries that weight admirably. He manages the very neat trick of keeping you interested in a character who doesn't merit our affection but earns it nonetheless.
  51. Girls Just Want to Have Fun
    Helen Hunt is a real scene-stealer as a girl who wears things like toy dinosaurs in her hair, in keeping with the film's relentlessly silly mood. The audience at the National Theater seemed giddy enough in its own right.
  52. Quick Change
    In films like Quick Change, he is bogged down by scripts that don't begin to match his comic imagination. Even though he chose and developed Quick Change himself, Bill Murray deserves better than this clunky, stereotypical comedy.
  53. Non-Stop
    Non-Stop doesn’t make any sense, but that’s expected, uninteresting and incidental to the pleasures of a slow-season Liam Neeson release as diverting as this one.
  54. Extreme Measures
    Brisk and unsettling.
  55. Coastlines
    A larger problem is the film's attempt to piece together a hard-boiled crime drama with a soft-boiled soap opera, ultimately giving precedence to the suds and adding a sickly lemon scent.
  56. Support Your Local Sheriff!
    SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL SHERIFF, a Western period farce about a town-taming supersheriff, is something designed for sensibilities shaped by "Petticoat Junction" and "Green Acres."
  57. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
    Yet for all the film's hard work at capturing Savannah's spirit, there is seldom enough context to make these characters seem anything but adorably whimsical to excess.
  58. Little Accidents
    The net effect of the messy bedroom sheets, the marital squabbling and lachrymose, emotional bloodletting is to turn a tragedy into an atmospheric backdrop for three isolated souls, all of whom might have started out considerably less lonely if the movie had a firmer grasp on the world in which they live.
  59. Oh, God!
    An uneasy amalgam of inconsistent attitudes, without enough humor or zaniness to divert attention from its questionable premise.
  60. Disco
    By the time it is over, Disco has crossed the line that separates being productively ambiguous from being simply cryptic.
  61. DC League of Super-Pets
    This brand of arch, inside-baseball riffing is a scourge on modern family films, present in almost every animated movie with an all-star cast. But it’s especially grating delivered by Johnson and Hart, who, despite the vocal talent they have shown in the past, give two of the least inspired voice performances in recent memory.
  62. Decoding Annie Parker
    Decoding Annie Parker is considerably better than the kind of disease-of-the-week fare that used to be a television cliché.
  63. Storks
    This film, directed by Nicholas Stoller and Doug Sweetland, is a harmless enough way to occupy a youngster for an hour and a half. It’s just not especially rich in extraordinary characters or moments.
  64. Valkyrie
    If Mr. Cruise doesn't work in Valkyrie, it's partly because he's too modern, too American and way too Tom Cruise to make sense in the role, but also because what passes for movie realism keeps changing, sometimes faster than even a star can change his brand.
  65. Douchebag
    The title may be mildly provocative in its vulgarity, but the most striking feature of this movie is its dullness.
  66. Don't Be Afraid of the Dark
    None of Mr. del Toro's classy fiddling, however, can improve on the original's marvelously economical scares. But if you've always wondered what the tooth fairies want with all those teeth - or if you just need proof that a terrified Katie Holmes looks not that different from the everyday version - this is the movie for you.
  67. Drive-Away Dolls
    Drive-Away Dolls only snaps alive when the ever-reliable Domingo is on camera and — with just a few hushed words and his trademark charisma — he inevitably draws you in with the promise of a movie that never materializes.
  68. Mosquito State
    Borne along on the whine of insects and a lead performance of surpassing strangeness, “Mosquito State” is a disquieting merger of body horror and social commentary.
  69. Date Night
    Date Night, like so many other films of its type, too often relies on words, catchphrases and inflections that signify a generally accepted notion of funniness rather than being, you know, actually funny.
  70. Driving Lessons
    The screwball aging diva genre isn't the only formula guiding this stubbornly old-fashioned movie. Driving Lessons belongs to the silly feel-good mode of "The Full Monty," "Calendar Girls," "Billy Elliot," "Kinky Boots" and dozens of other celebrations of Britons defying convention to become "free," whatever that means.
  71. The DUFF
    Even in this would-be subversive comedy. Success means getting the guy. Getting good grades (as Bianca does) is not enough, nor is writing the front-page article in the school paper.
  72. Loro
    In some ways Berlusconi, a media mogul and cruise-ship crooner in earlier phases of his career, a creature of appetite and excess, is Sorrentino’s ideal subject. But the overlap in their sensibilities turns Loro into a blurry, distracted, sentimental portrait.
  73. French Exit
    Too listless to fizz and too peculiar to win us over, French Exit, directed by Azazel Jacobs, is hampered by clockwork quirkiness and disaffected dialogue.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Stupid Boy
    An intriguing examination of alienation and dysfunction, tonally haunting rather than melodramatic.
  75. Where's the Party Yaar?
    Clearly understands its target audience of first-generation Indian-Americans and has its pleasures to provide.
  76. Sylvia
    Christine Jeffs's film is an emotionally rich biography of the poet Sylvia Plath, who is played with radiant conviction by Gwyneth Paltrow.
  77. Anna and the King
    Has the rambling pace of an episodic 1950s costume drama.
  78. Danny Deckchair
    A pleasantly sappy fable of new beginnings that suggests a Frank Capra film sweetened with an extra layer of sugar glaze.
  79. All Access: Front Row. Backstage. Live!
    So good it leaves you starved for more.
  80. Perlasca: The Courage of a Just Man
    Giorgio Perlasca, who has been compared to Oskar Schindler, deserves better than this Italian television film.
  81. Saving Private Perez
    If you don't get the jokes, there isn't a whole lot else to get, and it's a safe assumption that non-Latino, non-Spanish-speaking viewers are going to miss a lot of them.
  82. 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.
  83. Towheads
    The movie is a watchable collection of images that never quite come together.
  84. Casa Grande
    Mr. Barbosa blends tales of a coming-of-age and a burgeoning class consciousness, and never loses sympathy for Jean (Thales Cavalcanti).
  85. All Mistakes Buried
    Mr. Trammell’s drug-induced stammers and tics don’t by themselves add up to a compelling portrayal, nor is this drama of the down and out at all gripping.
  86. To Life
    There is a delicate beauty to this movie and its visual composition.
  87. Sabrina
    Mr. Pollack's film runs into these obstacles so hard, in fact, that it runs right over them without difficulty. His "Sabrina" succeeds as a breezy, lighthearted throwback, made without benefit of the Hepburn magic but with much else in its favor.
  88. The Arrival
    The Arrival, like so many science-fiction films, begins as a promisingly eerie mixture of pseudo-scientific exposition and chilly paranoia. But once its plot has been bared, it turns into a muddled chase movie filled with glaring inconsistencies.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Hellraiser
    Mr. Barker is no more successful in making the big leap from literature to film than Norman Mailer. He's cast his film with singularly uninteresting actors, though the special effects aren't bad - only damp.
  90. Ne Zha
    A computer-animated feature of bright hues, hectic action and only occasional charm.
  91. The Other Tom
    The film, directed by Laura Santullo and Rodrigo Plá, ultimately falls flat, with unconvincing dialogue and a strained delivery by the actors.
  92. Satanic Hispanics
    The problem is that the films, which are in Spanish and English, rely on typical horror movie stuff — a haunted house, angry ghosts, shape shifters, tableaus of corpses — to lift scripts that are across the board mediocre. The result is eye-popping but half-formed, more sketches than fully considered short takes.
  93. Forbidden Fruits
    Though Reinhart and Pedretti chew through the scenery with dedication, the film, directed and written by Meredith Alloway, is a vibes-only pastiche that has little to add to the satirical queen-bee subgenre besides some updated slang.
  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 Brave One
    Don’t be fooled. The Brave One, though well cast and smoothly directed, is just as crude and ugly as you want it to be.
  96. Wolf Creek
    The vogue for retro-horror, particularly the stripped-down shivers of 1970's slasher flicks, continues apace in this nasty little piece of work from Australia.
  97. 39 Pounds of Love
    A bracingly honest yet poetic portrait of a man refusing to be defined by the limitations of his body.
  98. Miss Julie
    Aside from the change of setting, Ms. Ullmann’s version is quite orthodox. Much more convincing than Mike Figgis’s 1999 screen adaptation, starring Saffron Burrows, it is a grueling slog through a hell of torment, cruelty and suffering.
  99. Minions
    The good news is that the minions are more (unconsciously, if perhaps also strategically) in touch with their anarchic side than the typical onesie-wearing crusader, which suits the directors Pierre Coffin and Kyle Balda’s well-tuned sense of the absurd.
  100. Wall Street
    Wall Street isn't a movie to make one think. It simply confirms what we all know we should think, while giving us a tantalizing, Sidney Sheldon-like peek into the boardrooms and bedrooms of the rich and powerful.
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