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. Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?
    Dutifully hitting its marks up to a point, this story of a married man struggling to stay closeted proves to have a maturity that eludes more overtly ambitious dramas on the subject.
  2. Deadly Blessing
    A better-than-average horror film, in large part because it isn't about terrified coeds being stalked by an ax wielding loon. Its story is more original than that -although where horror-movie ingenuity is concerned, it's only a thin line that separates the original from the bizarre.
  3. The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir
    Despite the film’s syrupy sweetness, it takes some risks ... and its relentless earnestness is tough to resist, even as the film sugarcoats intimations of real danger.
  4. Kamikaze Girls
    The yummy Japanese confection Kamikaze Girls deserves both a better title and an audience to go with it.
  5. Zack and Miri Make a Porno
    In spite of its sometimes tiresome, sometimes amusing lewdness, follows a gee-whiz romantic-comedy formula that would not be out of place on the Disney Channel.
  6. Twilight
    Though Edward and Bella reach certain heights in Twilight, notably during a charming scene that finds them leaping from piney treetop to treetop against the spectacular wilderness backdrop, the story’s moral undertow keeps dragging them down.
  7. The Secret Disco Revolution
    The Secret Disco Revolution, however limited, is one smart documentary. It’s so clever that it makes fun of itself.
  8. Max
    A historical fantasy connecting fact and wild supposition into a provocative work of fiction that poses ticklish questions about art and society.
  9. The Manson Family
    Finally, though, Mr. Van Bebber seems more interested in recreating the grainy look of scratched 1970's film stock than in reflecting on the horrors he depicts, making this a difficult sell for all but the strongest stomachs among connoisseurs of vintage gore.
  10. Soft Fruit
    The general talent and dedication of the ensemble mitigate the script's occasional lapses into sentimentality and noisy confrontation.
  11. Concussion
    While Concussion has some fine things going for it, notably science and Will Smith, it lacks the exciting, committed filmmaking that rises to the level of its outrageous topic.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Live and Let Die
    There is a marvelous escape from an alligator farm (deadly reptiles are rather a motif in this movie), a superb collection of grotesque ways of killing, and a fine sense of pace and rhythm.
  13. Edge of Darkness
    Edge of Darkness is reasonably well executed, but its competence reeks of fatigue. Another dead kid. Another angry dad. Another day at the office.
  14. Remarkably Bright Creatures
    While being cynical about a wise-octopus movie is probably unfair, being bored by it isn’t great, either.
  15. The Merry Gentleman
    The film’s title, needless to say, has an ironic bite. One of the pleasures of The Merry Gentleman is Mr. Keaton's commitment to that bite, which never registers as cruel or gratuitous, just honest, weary, sad.
  16. Finding Eleazar
    If Mr. Shicoff ultimately comes across as a short-tempered, egotistical prima donna, the upshot of all the fuss is worth it: his Viennese performance is transcendent.
  17. Dr. Feelgood: Dealer or Healer?
    Embracing a structure that implicitly acknowledges the complexity of the issue, Ms. Marson nevertheless contributes to the film’s general fuzziness by failing to clarify the legal and moral guidelines that govern these kinds of prescriptions.
  18. The Beach Bum
    What The Beach Bum celebrates as transgression is pure tedium. What it takes for divine lunacy is frat house doggerel. The booze flows freely. The women are topless and ornamental. The cars and boats are fast and expensive. There’s nothing much worth writing about.
  19. Touchy Feely
    Its humor is softer and more ambiguous than that of Ms. Shelton’s earlier films, and its characters are harder to pin down.
  20. Dom Hemingway
    Dom Hemingway is a bright, shiny bauble with next to no lasting power.
  21. Mommie Dearest
    Miss Dunaway gives the uncanny, meticulous Crawford imitation that is at the heart of Mommie Dearest. The movie itself has nothing like the brilliance of the impression, which is why it remains an impression and can't altogether rise to the level of a performance. But on its own terms Miss Dunaway's work here amounts to a small miracle, as one movie queen transforms herself passionately and wholeheartedly into another.
  22. A Jihad for Love
    Mr. Sharma's film emphasizes testimony over context to such a degree that it feels at first of little use to anyone except gay Muslims who might take comfort in knowing they're not alone. But the documentary gains depth of feeling as it goes and even develops something of a nail-biting narrative.
  23. Love Affair
    Cary Grant's shoes aren't fillable, but Mr. Beatty could have come closer if Love Affair had given him half a chance.
  24. Spaceman
    Spaceman is neither particularly astute about human nature nor discernibly interested in the politics embedded in it, and it is not even meme-ably bad, which is a shame. So much wasted potential.
  25. The Getaway
    The action and the violence of The Getaway are supported by no particular themes whatsoever. The movie just unravels.
  26. The Foreigner
    Mr. Chan is in his early 60s, and he doesn’t deliver the action pizazz here that he used to. Nor, frankly, does he summon enough gravitas to be persuasive in the role of a grief-maddened father. For what it’s worth, Mr. Brosnan, as Quon’s nemesis, sells the angry-all-the-time requirement for his character.
  27. Pacific Heights
    Pacific Heights deserves a little credit for originality, and a little more for remaining within the realm of realism until a contrived, violent ending becomes overdue. Thanks to its three stars and a well-chosen supporting cast, the film remains sly fun even when its characters begin making silly mistakes.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    High Anxiety
    As witty and as disciplined as "Young Frankenstein," though it has one built-in problem: Hitchcock himself is a very funny man. His films, even at their most terrifying and most suspenseful, are full of jokes shared with the audience. Being so self-aware, Hitchcock's films deny an easy purchase to the parodist, especially one who admires his subject the way Mr. Brooks does.
  29. And We Go Green
    [A] cheery, lightweight documentary.
  30. The Hot Spot
    The Hot Spot, his film noir set in a small, sex-starved Texas backwater, is the closest Mr. Hopper has yet come to working within the bounds of a familiar genre. Nevertheless, The Hot Spot bears the film maker's idiosyncratic stamp all the way.
  31. Prefontaine
    But even after the documentary affectation gives way to a more conventional narrative, the film has trouble ringing true.
  32. Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!
    Mr. Almodovar's comic invention runs out too soon, leaving the audience to giggle weakly in anticipation of the big laughs and disorienting shocks that never arrive.
  33. Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed
    The melancholy result is that the painter with the spectacularly lulling voice, the hallmark ’fro and the liberating kindness remains a mystery; not the brand that’s made millions but the guy who touched millions.
  34. I'm So Excited
    The journey generally drags because the spinning characters, with their tired jokes and familiar melodramas, soon feel so mechanical, like the automated parts in an Almodóvar machine.
  35. A Tale of Love and Darkness
    There are many lovely and memorable moments in this film, which is in every way the opposite of a vanity project. If anything, Ms. Portman seems constrained by her own modesty, by a justified but nonetheless limiting reverence for her source material.
  36. Walt & El Grupo
    What’s really missing here is a story of artistic regeneration: by the time we encounter a dazzling excerpt from the studio’s post-trip film, “Aquarela do Brasil,” we are only reminded of what might have been.
  37. Back to the Future Part III
    Except for Mr. Lloyd, the film is so sweet-natured and bland that it is almost instantly forgettable.
  38. Mad Love
    An often watchable, though goofy and lurid, blast of a costume drama set in the late 15th century.
  39. He liu
    Whether or not The River is, as some critics have claimed, Mr. Tsai's masterpiece, it is an excellent introduction to his oblique narrative style, his favored themes and his careful, lyrical visual sensibility.
  40. America's Heart and Soul
    A feel-good documentary.
  41. Series 7: The Contenders
    Seems stranded in that nowhereland between irony and sarcasm.
  42. The Terminal
    Rarely have I been so acutely aware of a movie's softness and sentimentality, and rarely have I minded less. Some of the credit surely goes to Mr. Hanks...His performance is so easy and amiable that its nuances emerge only in retrospect.
  43. Punks
    The movie's warmth, and Mr. Gilliam's sober, likable performance sustain it through its ragged stretches and amateurish lapses.
  44. Ali Zoua: Prince of the Streets
    An overdose of morbid sentimentality.
  45. Antiviral
    At a certain point, Antiviral doesn’t know where to go or how to break out of its vacuum-sealed sepulcher, and Syd, even when vomiting blood, remains as incorporeal and creepy as a ghost. This is a movie that drinks its own tainted blood.
  46. Spark: A Burning Man Story
    Since we can’t all attend Burning Man, we can be thankful for “Spark,” which is probably the next best thing.
  47. Walking the Camino: Six Ways to Santiago
    As travelogue, this is a persuasive introduction.
  48. Stray Bullets
    Mr. Fessenden’s ambition is admirable, and there’s more than a little raw skill on display. If this, his first feature, isn’t always worth recommending, his talents are certainly worth encouraging.
  49. Vision Quest
    Movies are not like people who, if they're basically nice and decent, can be liked even if they're not very stimulating company. Movies of that order wear one down. They demand attention without giving much in return - amiability is not enough. This is Vision Quest.
  50. Safety
    Hudlin transforms a film that would be, in lesser hands, a formulaic hardship-as-aesthetic drama, into an earnest examination of what community means on the field, in the classroom and in our society.
  51. Picture This
    For all the potentially crushing challenges Pia faces — losing her business, not living out her dream of being a photographer, alienating her beloved younger sister — Picture This, keeps it light, never letting the sharp edges of potential failure come into focus.
  52. Olympic Dreams
    Compared to the drama of the competition, the story and its characters always feel slight, an excuse to hang out among Olympians rather than a movie that builds upon (or for that matter critiques) its surroundings.
  53. Odessa... Odessa!
    As it observes these people, most of them well over 60, it conjures a melancholy definition of exile as a haunted state of mind.
  54. Friends with Kids
    The result is a talky, predictable, less-audacious-than-it-thinks romantic comedy.
  55. Extraterrestrial
    Alien invasion is just an excuse for romantic farce in Extraterrestrial, a tiresome roundelay of lies, lust and leaping paranoia.
  56. Detour
    At times the groan and scream of collapsing metal sounds so authentic you might mistake Jackson’s heavy breathing for your own.
  57. Quid Pro Quo
    After spinning out metaphors of paralysis and eroticism in its characters' feverish imaginations, Quid Pro Quo decides at the last minute that it has to explain everything. The moment it pulls away from the fantastic, it lands with a thud.
  58. Man of Steel
    At once frantically overblown and beautifully filigreed, Man of Steel will turn on everyone it doesn’t turn off.
  59. General Orders No. 9
    Yet the urban images he presents are missing the thing that makes any city come alive: human beings. You begin to suspect that Mr. Persons hates humanity. This makes General Orders No. 9, for all its sheen of sophistication, rather simplistic: people bad, nature good.
  60. My Name Is Emily
    It’s a sometimes rocky road cinematically, slipping from enchanting to trite, magical to indulgent with some regularity.
  61. A Bag of Marbles
    Despite the hardships endured by the characters, nearly every shot seems dappled with nostalgia. The music score is sentimental, with shimmering pianos and trembling strings. But the writing and its attendant characterizations have an undeniable integrity, the particular historical detail offered by the story is not common in films about this era, and the lead performers are moving.
  62. The Unicorn
    Robert Schwartzman’s direction is blah, his story labored and the supporting characters one-note.
  63. Havana Suite
    An elusive but intermittently beautiful tone poem.
  64. The Harvest/La Cosecha
    The Harvest, in its modest way, calls to mind "The Grapes of Wrath" but with no glimmer of a New Deal or a union, or even of better economic times ahead.
  65. Payback
    You can't help feeling that the movie owed its subject - and its audience - a bit more.
  66. Who is Dayani Cristal?
    A movie whose techniques present problems not containable by the noble intentions of its makers.
  67. Fonzy
    What distinguishes Fonzy is its attention to Diego’s Galician roots. As his character discovers his offspring and his paternal instinct, Mr. Garcia gives the bedraggled but compassionate Diego an aspect slightly more emphatic than his screen forebears.
  68. 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.
  69. The Fog
    The Fog is constructed of random diversions. There are too many story lines, which necessitate so much cross-cutting that no one sequence can ever build to a decent climax. The movie looks quite pretty but prettiness of this sort is beside the point in such a film.
  70. Dogs
    One can imagine how the particularities of the Romanian bush might yield novel dynamics. Instead, Dogs underplays these elements and commits to the beats of the slow burn thriller in mostly generic form.
  71. American Fable
    It’s a nice opening for a movie that spirals into nonsense.
  72. The Mission
    A singularly lumpy sort of movie. The film's most riveting sequence comes at the very beginning, when we see a crucified Jesuit missionary being tossed - cross and all - into the river and carried over the spectacular Iguassu Falls. Nothing that follows, including more pretty scenery and quaint costumes, comes close to equaling the drama of that one sequence - about a character who remains forever anonymous.
  73. For a Good Time, Call...
    Doesn't aspire to be more than a broad, sloppy, old-fashioned sitcom with a sexy gimmick. But it is quite funny.
  74. A Christmas Carol
    A Christmas Carol -- I mean the source material, without a corporate possessive attached to it -- remains among the most moving works of holiday literature, and Mr. Zemeckis has remained true to its finest sentiments. He is an innovator, but his traditionalism is what makes this movie work.
  75. Don't Worry Baby
    Despite an implausible ending devoid of consequence, “Don’t Worry Baby” benefits from tidy editing, cinematography and, most of all, the presence of the seasoned Mr. McDonald and Ms. Balsam. Their nuanced authority — and the vibrant Manhattan backdrop — make the trip worthwhile.
  76. Offseason
    Despite a wonderfully eerie atmosphere, this moody examination of guilt and mourning is too generic to scare and too predictable to surprise.
  77. Desperado
    Like "The Quick and the Dead," Desperado wavers uneasily between myth making and parody, so that too many scenes drag on long after they've lost their punch.
  78. En soap
    So sensitively acted you can almost buy its premise that love (in this case, neighborly affection and dependence) might rewire sexuality.
  79. Exporting Raymond
    It has the structure and some of the pleasures of a well-made sitcom or docu-reality show, despite the nervous-looking, unhappy guy at its center; it could have been called "Nobody Understands Phil."
  80. To Sir, with Love
    A cozy, good-humored and unbelievable little tale.
  81. Hunt
    A convoluted conclusion, begot by an unconvincing change of heart, obliterates any chance of “Hunt” offering the clarity it needs to be entertaining. Instead, Lee’s directorial effort wanders toward something unmemorable.
  82. Sophie and the Rising Sun
    The gently nostalgic mood and sleepy pacing effectively erase the movie’s necessary edge.
  83. Yes
    Yes is not just a movie, in other words, it's a poem. A bad poem. There is no denying Ms. Potter's skill at versifying - or for that matter, at composing clear, striking visual images - but her intricate, measured lines amount to doggerel, not art.
  84. The Woman in Red
    Fortunately, most of the film is more appealing than its premise.
  85. Inheritance
    It’s underbaked and baffling to watch, with little tension or interest to pull us through.
  86. Wuthering Heights
    Robbie and Elordi hold your attention well enough, though they’re more persuasive apart than when they’re together.
  87. The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare
    The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is not a good movie nor a terribly enjoyable one, if you’re paying attention to it. But as background noise, it’s diverting and intermittently amusing.
  88. A Christmas Story Christmas
    Mostly it made me want to watch the original, which, as always, remains well worth revisiting.
  89. Almost Christmas
    The family comedy-drama Almost Christmas is an often disarmingly entertaining picture, in spite of its being a not particularly well-thought-out cinematic contrivance.
  90. Becoming Jane
    The screenplay’s pseudo-Austen tone is so consistent that its lapses into modern romance-novel fantasy threaten to derail the film.
  91. Green Street Hooligans
    Green Street Hooligans, an accidental advertisement for Alcoholics Anonymous and the somnolent pleasures of cricket that, in the end, is mostly about the pleasures, both visceral and visual, of violence.
  92. Taking Woodstock
    This likable, humane movie is not an attempt to recreate the epochal Woodstock Music and Art Fair captured in Michael Wadleigh’s documentary “Woodstock.” It is essentially a small, intimate film into which is fitted a peripheral view of the landmark event.
  93. One Week
    Holds together in spite of its flaws.
  94. The Third Miracle
    This intelligent, well-acted movie is not helped by the fact that its story in some ways parallels that of "Stigmata," the trashy supernatural spookfest that flared briefly at the box office earlier this year.
  95. A Real Young Girl
    Crude, unpolished, yet curiously dreamy.
  96. The Relic
    Yes, we've seen it all before. But The Relic proves that the hoariest cliches, when stirred together with enough money, shaken vigorously and artfully lighted, can still make the adrenaline surge.
  97. Lost in Thailand
    Like many broad successes this unremarkable movie proves decidedly reluctant to yield any golden secret to box-office bonanzas, unless you count tried-and-true chase formulas and a moral about rethinking priorities.
  98. La Bare
    La Bare takes its title from the club it chronicles, a male strip joint in Dallas. The name proves unfortunately apt for a rambling, superficial documentary that straddles the line between exposé and infomercial.
  99. Driven
    Somewhere deep inside Driven — Nick Hamm’s based-on-real-life crime caper — lies a fascinating movie.
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