The New York Times' Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. Real Steel
    An underdog drama with clanging metal-on-metal action, Real Steel feels scientifically programmed to claw at your heart while its battling robots, which have a semblance of human personality, drum up your adrenaline. That said, I'm not sure that the movie itself has more than a semblance of a heart.
  2. War Machine
    After a sluggish and chaotic start, War Machine finds its groove and becomes its own thing: a mordant, cleareyed critique of American war-making that is all the more devastating for being affectionately drawn.
  3. Spoken Word
    Strongly acted and beautifully photographed (by Virgil Mirano), Spoken Word is a quietly resonant family drama about the tug of old habits and the difficulties of escaping the past.
  4. For No Good Reason
    For No Good Reason is less revealing than a standard hourlong television tribute might have been... But there is enough of the man and artist here to rekindle interest and appreciation in his often disturbing pictures and an understanding of what motivated them.
  5. Unknown
    Despite its A-movie aspirations, as the chases continue and the plot holes widen, Unknown quickly settles into the familiar B-movie comfort zone.
  6. Virtual JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived
    Directed by Koji Masutani, this speculative, provocative, frustrating and finally unpersuasive historical gloss races quickly and all too lightly over the major political crises that John F. Kennedy faced during his aborted presidency.
  7. The Rum Diary
    A mild lark disguised as a wild bender, The Rum Diary is also a touching tribute to Thompson himself.
  8. Take Me
    Parts of it work, but the overall package is never really suspenseful enough to have you on edge or overtly funny enough to be a lark.
  9. Ramona and Beezus
    Parents may also be happy to see a movie for children that doesn't involve wizards, vampires or action figures that can be bought in the food court. They should be warned, though, that the price of contemporary realism is a story that includes layoffs, bickering and unpaid bills.
  10. Frank & Lola
    Frank & Lola proves more about him than her. That’s partly because of the story, partly because the writer-director Matthew Ross doesn’t have a full handle on it or his actors.
  11. Filth
    After a certain point, watching it is like listening to the ravings of an increasingly incoherent and abusive drunk.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Rollerball
    It's not funny at all and, not being funny, it becomes, instead, frivolous.
  13. Breaking and Entering
    What saves Breaking and Entering from foundering altogether in earnest self-regard is Mr. Minghella's evident affection for London, a city of inexhaustible architectural and human variety.
  14. Christmas in the Clouds
    A wisp of a movie so bursting with good cheer that even its sole meanie is given a personality makeover before the end credits.
  15. Two Men in Town
    The desert landscapes are gorgeously shot by Yves Cape, but Two Men in Town never seems to fully inhabit its setting. Nor does the schematic, occasionally clumsy story do justice to the skills of the cast.
  16. Return to Space
    Glowing with grandiose pronouncements and uplifting sentiment, Return to Space, a draggy documentary about America’s first manned spaceflight since 2011, could be easily repurposed as promotional material for Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
  17. Bamboozled
    Spike Lee has grabbed a tiger by the tail in his scabrously risky new comedy, Bamboozled. The wonder is how long he succeeds in hanging on.
  18. Tommy's Honour
    The performances are desultory, the musical score bullying and the drama — aside from the game-changing placement of inconvenient shrubbery — as predictable as Tom senior’s steadily sprouting beard.
  19. Stella Days
    Relaxed performances and pillow-soft photography compensate somewhat for the story's narrow ambitions, but they're not enough to invigorate a movie that clearly would rather charm than challenge.
  20. Doc Hollywood
    The screenplay, by Jeffrey Price, Peter S. Seaman and Daniel Pyne, is occasionally sharp-tongued but more often pleasantly knee-deep in rustic corn. Mr. Fox also seems a shade more substantial this time, possibly because he is seen making life-or-death decisions when not fielding comic lines.
  21. Hereafter
    One of the reasons that Hereafter works as well as it does - it has the power to haunt the skeptical, to mystify the credulous and to fascinate everyone in between.
  22. The Croods: A New Age
    Paradoxically, the movie’s energy ebbs as the proceedings turn more antic.
  23. Death Becomes Her
    Death Becomes Her dares to invent a world of spectacular self-interest and populate that world with two fabulous harridans (Ms. Streep and Goldie Hawn) giving wonderfully spirited performances. But in spite of that, it remains surprisingly tame. A lot of the problem arises from simple -- and inexplicable -- lapses in the screenplay.
  24. Let Us In
    The film’s derivativeness — residents literally fight darkness with light — is countered by strong acting from the two leads and a director who just might be having the time of his life. That apparent delight seeps into almost every frame, giving the film a guileless warmth that drew my good will.
  25. The Minus Man
    Takes such pains to avoid narrative and verbal cliches and anything that could remotely be construed as sentimental or romantic that it feels curiously flat.
  26. CQ
    May not make the splash it should; films about moviemaking rarely do. And that would be a shame, because the contrasts the director sets in motion and keeps playing against each other make an entertaining wrestling match.
  27. Once Upon a Time in the Midlands
    What really separates "Midlands" from Leone's desiccated, terse genre work is Mr. Meadows's doting attention to his characters' decency. It gives a demonstrative bittersweetness to a likable but small story.
  28. Men of Honor
    Until its unbearably hokey ending, acquits itself reasonably well.
  29. Phone Booth
    Bogus on every level, right down to its half-hearted trick ending.
  30. 30 Years to Life
    Though 30 Years to Life doesn't break any new ground, it's a light, engaging, well-carpentered film, with a quick wit and a sense of character just deep enough to lend some weight to the laugh lines.
  31. The Anniversary Party
    Despite its shortcomings, this smart, caustic movie is easily the most incisive and realistic comedy of manners to emerge from Hollywood in quite a while, and that's saying a lot.
  32. The Ladykillers
    Unquestionably minor, perhaps deliberately so, but it is nonetheless intermittently delightful.
  33. After Midnight
    Diverting and often charming, but it never really holds together.
  34. Troy
    For what it is -- a big, expensive, occasionally campy action movie full of well-known actors speaking in well-rounded accents -- Troy is not bad. It has the blocky, earnest integrity of a classic comic book, and it labors to respect the strangeness and grandeur of its classical sources.
  35. Phoebe in Wonderland
    Soon after that the movie simply stops dead in its tracks, as though the money had run out and the project had been called off in the middle of a scene that makes no psychological or dramatic sense. It leaves you frustrated and annoyed.
  36. Fast X
    The best I can say about all of this is that it didn’t bore me.
  37. Maleficent
    Consciously or not, coherently or not, Maleficent tells a new kind of story about how we live now, not once upon another time. And it does so by suggesting, among other things, that budding girls and older women are not natural foes, even if that’s what fairy tales, Hollywood and the world like to tell us.
  38. The Time We Killed
    The Time We Killed has the raw intimacy of a filmed diary, but as with reading a stranger's journal, it eventually gets dull.
  39. Falling
    It’s a theme as familiar as life. The five women, all perfectly cast and almost perfectly played.
  40. Sequestro: A Story of Kidnapping
    Filming over four years and tracking several cases, the Brazilian director Jorge W. Atalla favors a fevered shooting style that's repetitious and disorienting but also effortlessly dramatic.
  41. Fanny, Annie & Danny
    Characters this nicely etched deserve a more complete conclusion.
  42. Remington and the Curse of the Zombadings
    The film’s questionable continuity, bargain-basement effects and overload of gay clichés may not be to everyone’s taste, but its queer-eye-for-the-undead-guy exuberance and warmth of spirit are irresistible.
  43. The End of Time
    [Mr. Mettler’s] images of galaxies, mandalas, particle accelerators and glowing red lava become his real subjects. He uses music and sound to control the pace, to slow time, as if cinema were a form of enforced meditation.
  44. The Island of St. Matthews
    It’s a stretch to call Mr. Everson’s film a documentary.
  45. Throw Momma from the Train
    As Owen, Mr. DeVito is such an odd combination of the childlike and the diabolical that he remains a captivating figure throughout the story. Mr. DeVito's comic timing is particularly enjoyable, since he has such a slow, steady, deliberate way of building up to outrageous behavior.
  46. One Fine Day
    One Fine Day makes for sunny, pleasant fluff. Both stars are enjoyably breezy, and there's enough chemistry to deflect attention from the story's endless contrivances. The screenplay by Terrel Seltzer and Ellen Simon is full of energetic wisecracks. But it's jokey rather than actually funny most of the time.
  47. A Sloth Story
    A Sloth Story suffers from a plasticky visual design. The characters seem stiff, like action figures, and their food items, meant to look appetizing, are often rendered as colored medallions.
  48. Touch
    Mr. Schrader doesn't match the Leonard habit of ending each scene with a lively little jolt. But he succeeds admirably in extracting the novel's best lines and in casting his film with mischievous verve.
  49. Claire in Motion
    Ms. Robinson and Ms. Howell have kitted out their movie handsomely, but there’s not enough story here or enough anything else, namely a persuasive psychological portrait of Claire, to make up for that lack.
  50. Bottle Shock
    Bottle Shock is unable to figure out what kind of movie it wants to be, and flops around between madcap comedy and rousing drama. To borrow a wine-snob term of art, it lacks structure.
  51. Shag
    Long before the film is over, one is left frustratedly grasping after characters and an ambiance that have evaporated into formulaic freneticism.
  52. Pretty in Pink
    Fortunately, the actors are mostly likable, and the story is told gently enough to downplay both its trendiness and its conventionality.
  53. Boss Level
    Roy grows as a killer over the course of the movie, which involves an increasingly tedious amount of repetitive violence played for laughs — he’s like Wile E. Coyote, brushing himself off after falling off a cliff or being blown up.
  54. December Boys
    A coming-of-age tale so treacly it doesn’t just tug your heartstrings, it attempts to glue them to your ribs.
  55. Then She Found Me
    Then She Found Me, a serious comedy, is more impressive for what it refuses to do than for its modest accomplishment.
  56. The Pale Blue Eye
    Continuing his fascination with tormented manhood, Cooper, in this third collaboration with Bale after “Out of the Furnace” (2013) and “Hostiles” (2017), works with a solemnity that stifles the fun.
  57. Sangre De Mi Sangre
    Although it exhibits a heartfelt connection with the city's half-invisible population of illegal immigrants, its myriad inconsistencies and strained plotting are increasingly frustrating.
  58. Saint Misbehavin': The Wavy Gravy Movie
    Make of it what you will: like its subject, Saint Misbehavin' is an unabashed love letter to the world that defies the cynicism of our age.
  59. Manglehorn
    In truth, it’s less Manglehorn than Mr. Pacino that you warm up to in this film, as so many times before.
  60. The Misandrists
    With The Misandrists, Mr. LaBruce announces, here is queer cinema: confrontational, pansexual, gender-fluid, racially inclusive, angry and surprisingly romantic.
  61. The Man Who Knew Infinity
    Mr. Irons handily hits the emotional beats, as does Mr. Patel.
  62. Ghostbusters II
    Even the special effects are more to the point of the comedy than they were in the first film. For some reason, this appears to leave more room for the sort of random funny business that Mr. Murray and his friends do best, or to which they react with most aplomb.
  63. Kundo: Age of the Rampant
    For all its gloss, “Kundo” fails to resonate. You appreciate the execution, but the film is hindered by its lack of novelty and metaphorical weight.
  64. Alex of Venice
    What’s missing here is the sting of revelation, something less comforting than the story’s melodramatic turns and more worthy of Ms. Winstead’s performance, which is as natural as life.
  65. The Running Man
    There’s nothing wrong (or incorrect!) about either Wright’s desire to please or the righteousness, and at times you can sense a bit of anger wafting off the screen, even if Wright and Powell mostly seem to be having a very good time.
  66. My Girl
    As directed by Howard Zieff, My Girl has a bizarrely light tone and an awkward pace, in part because it's hard for the director to keep track of the story's many half-developed subplots.
  67. Dinner for Schmucks
    The film collects a cast of performers who know how to be funny. The success of this movie, following a formula upheld by just about any recent hit comedy you can name, lies as much with supporting players and plot-derailing set pieces as with the central story and characters.
  68. Mr. K
    Naturally, the guests are weirdos, though none are very memorable. And since Glover himself is the ultimate weirdo, it all feels a bit much.
  69. Downloaded
    No one is as intriguing as the thoughtful, soft-spoken Mr. Fanning, a onetime idealist thwarted by the piracy label and the dated assumptions of a calcified communications infrastructure.
  70. Butt Boy
    Maybe it’s the hell we’re all living through right now, but Tyler Cornack’s orificial fantasy struck me as a hilariously bawdy, intermittently inspired act of vivacious vulgarity.
  71. The Recruit
    Like Christopher Walken or Marlon Brando, Mr. Pacino frequently uses his gifts to make mediocre movies more interesting. Everything else in The Recruit may be tiresomely predictable, but he, at least, is not.
  72. Dinosaur
    As luxuriant and intoxicating as a theme park ride; more remarkably, it feels like a real movie.
  73. Ned Kelly
    The storytelling is choppy and abrupt, and the filmmakers rely heavily on voice-over narration to announce themes that are never brought to dramatic life on screen. Mr. Ledger, his heartthrob charisma camouflaged behind a heavy beard, gives a stiff, hesitant performance.
  74. Swapped
    Pelage and plumage noticeably lack the tactile quality of a Pixar extravaganza, but the animation gets a pass for the movie’s purposes — namely, to impart a message that communities should trust each other, whether they’re covered in rotely-rendered feathers or fur.
  75. The Cable Guy
    A grim, sour Jim Carrey comedy that erases the boundary between anarchic humor and sociopathic malice.
  76. Alive
    Alive remains remarkably colorless, despite its difficult subject and the harrowing adventure it describes.
  77. Iceberg Slim: Portrait of a Pimp
    Though directed with some flourishes, including a riveting use of music and attractive animated pulp art, the film is weighed down by the testimony of bespectacled professors from hip critical studies and English departments and a psychologist.
  78. 2 Days in the Valley
    Two Days in the Valley lacks the humanity of ''Short Cuts'' or the edgy hipness of ''Pulp Fiction,'' but it is still a sleek, amusingly nasty screen debut by a film maker whose television credits include an Amy Fisher docudrama.
  79. The Fluffy Movie
    Bringing out truths about fatherhood, love and pride without dissolving into crowd-pleasing, that material feels like the genuine article. Fluffy, not fluff.
  80. The Monk
    Mr. Moll, whose films include “With a Friend Like Harry...,” somewhat heroically manages to keep the story’s manifold twists from becoming knotted, but he’s less adept at setting up the characters and their relationships and especially the depth and significance of their faith.
  81. The Yellow Birds
    Capped by a truly lovely final shot, The Yellow Birds (the title comes from a particularly cruel Army cadence) is about unseen wounds and wasted lives. The closer we get to these young men, the closer we are to wondering how many more of these stories we can bear to hear.
  82. Joy
    The movie, in all its mess and glory, belongs almost entirely to Ms. Lawrence. She is the kind of movie star who turns everyone else into a character actor. This is not a complaint but an acknowledgment of both her charisma and her generosity.
  83. The Three Stooges
    Peter and Bobby Farrelly's thoroughly enjoyable paean to Moe, Larry and Curly and the art of the eye poke.
  84. Firstborn
    It is to the credit of Mr. Apted, and to a cast including some very believable young actors, that Firstborn moves swiftly and smoothly enough to dispel much nitpicking about plot points, at least for a time.
  85. Betty Blue
    Too often, Betty Blue has the posturing good looks of a fashion spread and nothing more.
  86. Summerland
    A thumb to suck in troubled times, Summerland offers a digit of nostalgia that many viewers will latch onto with something approaching relief.
  87. Wassup Rockers
    However you respond to Wassup Rockers, it is completely alive, unlike any number of teenage Hollywood movies with their stale formulas and second-hand puerility. And that's mostly to the good.
  88. The Matador
    Barbaric, elegant, primitive, erotic, revolting, thrilling: the movie, like bullfighting itself, is all of these.
  89. Stir Crazy
    Stir Crazy is an energetic but spiritless shambles.
  90. Lucha Mexico
    Lucha Mexico often plays less like a character study than like a simple promotional effort, with repetitive platitudes.
  91. Steel Magnolias
    Steel Magnolias is pop entertainment of an especially condescending, superficial sort. Its bitchiness and greeting-card truisms are made no more palatable by the fact that Mr. Harling probably wrote it with as much sincerity and passion as Mr. Shepard put into "Fool for Love."
  92. Psychomagic, A Healing Art
    Jodorowsky’s patients express gratitude and relief. But there has to be an easier way to alleviate stuttering than rubbing red dye on your genitals, putting on gold lamé hot pants, being body painted and walking the streets of Paris talking to oneself.
  93. The Extra Man
    For all its flighty charms, The Extra Man never really lands. It hovers like a hummingbird madly beating its wings to stay aloft.
  94. That Sugar Film
    Mr. Gameau’s breezy blend of computer imagery, musical numbers, sketches and offbeat field trips makes the nutrition lessons easy to digest.
  95. A Fragile Trust
    Lightness of touch is missing from the film, which features animated graphics and an ominous score.
  96. Black Rain
    At its best, Black Rain has the glitzy quality of an extremely long and clever television commercial. One can't be sure what is being sold, but the eye isn't bored.
  97. Monsters vs Aliens
    The movie is curiously unmemorable, partly because nearly all of its humor depends on your having seen something like it before, even if you haven't.
  98. Mr. Bean's Vacation
    The kids at my screening loved it. Besides, at its heart, Mr. Atkinson’s movie, a huge hit overseas, speaks in an international language.
  99. W.
    The pleasure of Mr. Stone's work has never been located in restraint but in excess, a commitment to extremes that can drown out the world or, as in this film, give it newly vivid, hilarious and horrible form.
  100. Going Shopping
    Going Shopping, like Mr. Jaglom's other movies, has enough smart, knowing touches and enough easy spontaneity among its well-chosen actors to make you wish it added up to more than what it turns out to be: a flighty, motor-mouthed cinematic divertissement.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »