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. North
    North, a playful modern fable about a boy in search of new parents, doesn't always work, but much of it is clever in amusingly unpredictable ways.
  2. No Sleep Till
    No Sleep Till is an understated — and somewhat sleepy — film. Its mood of boredom tinged with dread sometimes verges on outright listlessness.
  3. Chainsaw Man - The Movie: Reze Arc
    As Denji and his adversaries converge on and above city streets, it’s possible to enjoy the combat on the level of pure sensation. Here, the rapturous ability of anime to isolate and prolong movement and emotion within a frame is on full display.
  4. Kerouac's Road: The Beat of a Nation.
    The film does not fully succeed, though that’s a tall order for anyone. Too many things need wrapping up by the end, so the concluding rhythm drags. There’s just too much to say, and that always leads to saying less than you might want.
  5. GOAT
    It’s a story with few surprises and mostly rudimentary emotional concepts, but is enlivened by artwork with colorful texture and a dynamic animation style.
  6. Mogambo
    In the advancement of the romance, which itself is hot stuff, for what it is, several capable actors do entertaining jobs.
  7. Late Shift
    Benesch’s beautifully controlled performance — a balancing act of anxious, fidgety physicality and poker-faced concentration — shows us the difficulty of honoring each patient’s humanity when workplace conditions demand efficiency over empathy. Still, this message runs thin as the story progresses, a bit too evenly, through its various cases, giving the film a languid, repetitious quality.
  8. Mrs. Parkington
    Writers, director and producer have all of them obviously conspired to give the two stars a rapturous workout and let reason fall where it may. As a consequence, we see here a picture in which the clichés of ideal romance have been piled up so richly and warmly that a point of suffocation is almost reached.
  9. In Whose Name?
    The film, which could definitely focus more on the multiple-Grammy-Award-winner’s music, peters out around 2024, a year before Ye released a song called “Heil Hitler.” But Ballesteros, who started the project when he was 18 years old, does his best to portray a reflexive iconoclast without excusing the inexcusable.
  10. Men of War
    The film’s often frenetic editing tends to weaken this strong story. But this hopeless history does have the flair to deploy Depeche Mode’s “Never Let Me Down Again,” capturing the tragic absurdity to Goudreau’s ambition.
  11. Peacock
    Watching Matthias on the job is entertaining enough, even as the movie’s allegorical ambitions are stymied by a narrative inertia, and by a sneaking suspicion that we’ve seen this sort of social commentary before.
  12. Madame Bovary
    Robert Ardrey has put it together into a literate and playable script and Vincente Minelli has kept it moving with a smooth and refined directoral touch.
  13. Tinā
    The earnest mood and regional touches of Tinā, a New Zealand movie that centers on a choir instructor who teaches her students to harmonize, distinguish it from others using the familiar formula.
  14. The Last Viking
    Jensen’s story of a flinty ex-convict (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) and his brother (Mads Mikkelsen) seeking buried treasure while evading a criminal heavy (Nicolas Bro) feels disjointed and elusive, though not without its charms.
  15. Normal
    Normal — which heralds, according to the press notes, the birth of yet another franchise — navigates its cartoonish excesses with expected competence. As for Odenkirk, he’s golden; as mythology nerds will recall, Ulysses was also known as the Master of Cunning.
  16. Obsession
    Barker shows real promise as a horror storyteller; his instincts about when to hold back and when to plunge the knife are scalpel sharp. If only the sexual politics at play in Obsession didn’t feel so callow.
  17. Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die
    It’s actually when the film returns to the main, quest-driven plot that the film lags, particularly around the middle; there’s just not enough interest among the team members and the action to sustain narrative tension, and the film feels like it loses its drive.
  18. Soul on Fire
    In terms of dramatic oomph, the problem isn’t that everyone behaves with decency and compassion, but that everyone unfailingly says what they mean, robbing the movie of moment-to-moment friction, dimension and subtext, even as its lessons in gratitude and self-forgiveness hit the mark.
  19. Merrily We Roll Along
    Merrily We Roll Along is an OK movie of a good production of a great musical: on balance, another worthy addition to the Stephen Sondheim canon, which can always stand to be expanded.
  20. I Can Only Imagine 2
    Ventimiglia becomes the sequel’s saving grace.
  21. Love+War
    Love + War chooses to go wide rather than deep, resulting in a movie that, while pleasingly dynamic, offers less psychological insight than the photographs she has gambled everything to take. And perhaps that’s as it should be.
  22. Crime 101
    Like lovingly warmed leftovers, it has its satisfactions: a charismatic cast, evocative Los Angeles location work, the sort of granular details on diamond couriering and insurance valuation that might give impressionable viewers ideas.
  23. Scream 7
    The results are, by turns, amusing and lightly scary, though never truly surprising.
  24. Destination Tokyo
    The chief fault, in our estimation, with the Warners' "Destination Tokyo" is that there is just too doggone much of it and is all too conventionally crammed in.
  25. A Very Jonas Christmas Movie
    While the vanilla songs lack magic, the dad jokes and brotherly roasting feel like their own kind of delightfully unserious gift.
  26. Stop the Insanity: Finding Susan Powter
    Curtis shows up late in the picture, and her grounded presence helps Powter’s hard-luck story resonate more sympathetically. The documentary ends not with the promise of a comeback, but with a resolution to restore some, well, sanity to Powter’s life.
  27. Happy Holidays
    The movie favors an unflashy presentation that allows its themes to emerge organically. But the interlocking structure, which owes more to the early work of Alejandro González Iñárritu than “Rashomon,” undermines sustained tension, and the dramatic architecture is slightly wobbly.
  28. Little Trouble Girls
    Djukic has a fine eye and is a talent to look out for, even if here, like Ana-Maria, she chose the wrong girl.
  29. I Love Boosters
    Too many elements of Riley’s sophomore feature hang like excess fabric from what would otherwise be a stunning, smart ensemble.
  30. With Hasan in Gaza
    While there is value in any documentary evidence of this time and place, Aljafari’s allusive approach seems ill-matched with the urgency of his subject matter.
  31. Shelter
    The spy-versus-spy scenario set out by the screenwriter Ward Parry isn’t going to give the maestro Mick Harron (“Slow Horses”) any sleepless nights. But as a vehicle for Statham’s bone-breaking escapades, it’ll do. And the story avoids some of the expected clichés.
  32. A Great Awakening
    It’s an earnest account of a religious movement that still resonates — Whitefield’s practice was instrumental in the growth of the Methodist church, and his sermons and lectures are still in print today.
  33. Lee Cronin's The Mummy
    Cronin thrills as ever to luscious gross-out scenes.
  34. The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist
    The result is less clarifying than bewildering, though it’s often very interesting.
  35. Joe's College Road Trip
    There’s a reason that “Road Trip” is premiering in the middle of Black History Month. While expansively anarchic to a fault, the movie’s anger, and its pride, is convincing.
  36. Protector
    While the final twist adds some depth to its madcap revenge plot, it’s Jovovich who keeps the film’s moodiness from unintentionally playing for laughs.
  37. Our Hero, Balthazar
    So many details in this comedy-drama (a characterization worth quibbling with) are meant to provoke. And Our Hero, Balthazar teases with the promise of a darkly intelligent film. Not unlike its protagonist’s tears, the effect is dismayingly performative.
  38. Backrooms
    Ambiguity is key to this style of horror, where space and atmosphere do most of the heavy lifting, and though the story isn’t over-explained, mind you, it’s filled out enough to break its own uncanny spell.
  39. Marc by Sofia
    Two creative decision makers more at ease behind the scenes, they are, perhaps, not the most natural chroniclers of their own careers and social lives, and as the film goes on, it strains to arrive at even the most basic personal revelations.
  40. Youngblood
    “Hockey will teach you what you need to know about life” is a cliché, and while Underwood’s delivery of the line almost redeems it, James’s work makes you believe it.
  41. BTS: The Return
    This is, in short, as polished as you would expect of a work about a pop behemoth, a companion piece to their new album that’s less a revelatory look at the meaning of their time away than a sentimental welcome back for the group and its fans. For the BTS Army, that’s likely more than enough.
  42. Apex
    This Netflix thriller is a fun-enough time that is elevated by the performances of predator and prey.
  43. Deep Water
    This picture is not as ridiculous as a “Sharknado” movie — Harlin is out to make a genuine nail-biter, and he largely succeeds, maintaining interest even as the two-hour mark approaches. But it’s not enough to make you genuinely afraid to go into the ocean this summer.
  44. 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.
  45. Newborn
    Parker the writer has tended to overload his screenplays with messages. He does some of that here, as well. Parker the director, however, is gifted with crews and capable actors and that shows, too. The members of his ensemble — especially Oyelowo — find ways to keep us guessing, and caring, to the end.
  46. Passenger
    A demon won’t take no for an answer in Andre Ovredal’s tense but confounding supernatural thriller.
  47. The Seduction of Joe Tynan
    The principal thing that keeps "The Seduction of Joe Tynan" engrossing is the level of acting it sustains throughout.
  48. Underland
    This is that rare movie that could do with a longer running time, which would, perhaps, give it greater depth.
  49. No Picnic
    It is impossible to separate Mr. Hartman's writing and direction from Mr. Horton's smooth, sophisticated camera work, which offers a broad view of the cluttered streets and also peers up narrow stairwells to suggest Mac's claustrophobic life. However their collaboration worked, ''No Picnic'' does not look or sound quite like any other film, and that's more than you can say about most movies of any size.
  50. Decorado
    Vázquez’s deadpan directorial style, which occasionally swerves into grim spoofs of Looney Tunes-style antics, perfectly suits the animated dystopia.
  51. Renaldo and Clara
    Renaldo and Clara is so personal it borders on being obscure, yet it remains surprisingly deficient in personality.
  52. Falling from Grace
    In the end, "Falling From Grace" is more a series of separate reflections than a sustained story. But Mr. Mellencamp does bring out the naturalness of his actors, and he has assembled a large and believable cast.
  53. Promised Sky
    There is much to be said for [Sehiri's] unsensationalistic approach, and for its specificity of detail, even if splitting the narrative three ways means that each of these stories feels shortchanged.
  54. Act of Violence
    Technically "Act of Violence" touches all the bases in its circuit chase. But it is as though it were doing it on the strength of a long, foul ball.
  55. 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.
  56. Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief
    For all the earth shaking that goes on, “Percy Jackson” is agreeably tame and unthreatening.
  57. The Lovely Bones
    The filmmakers’ evident affection for the book expresses itself as a desperate scramble to include as much of it as possible, which leaves the movie feeling both overcrowded and thin.
  58. The Blind Side
    The film, not unsurprisingly for a holiday- (and football-) season release from a major Hollywood studio, plays this story straight down the middle, shedding nuance and complication in favor of maximum uplift.
  59. The Princess and the Frog
    It’s not easy being green. But to judge from how this hand-drawn movie addresses, or rather strenuously avoids, race, it is a lot more difficult to be black.
  60. Inglourious Basterds
    Mostly, though, there is Landa, whose unctuous charm, beautifully modulated by Mr. Waltz, gives this unwieldy, dragging movie a much-needed periodic jolt.
  61. Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel
    The earlier “Alvin” movie made more than $217 million just in the United States. It’s hard to imagine this somewhat confused sequel doing as well.
  62. Ninja Assassin
    This saga, set in Berlin, is more committed to its bloodletting than to any of its characters.
  63. 44 Inch Chest
    Think of 44 Inch Chest as a piece of chamber music and you can compensate for the thinness of its story and the lack of visual distinction.
  64. Zombieland
    A minor diversion dripping in splatter and groaning with self-amusement.
  65. The Invention of Lying
    While the movie is a conceptual pip filled with quotable laughs and gentle pokes at religious faith at its most literal, it also looks so shoddy that you yearn for the camerawork, lighting and polish of his shows.
  66. Paranormal Activity
    A crudely made, half-clever little frightener that has become something of a pop-culture sensation and most certainly the movie marketing story of the year.
  67. The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day
    Like its predecessor, All Saints Day will, if nothing else, be a cult item for Roman Catholic schoolboys; the next sequel, blatantly set up, should arrive no later than 2019.
  68. AVPR: Aliens vs Predator - Requiem
    It may not be classic sci-fi like the original “Alien,” which it has in its DNA, but it’s a perfectly respectable next step in the series.
  69. The Box
    Sincere and sinister and inevitably ambitious, a serious work that insists on its own seriousness even when it edges toward the preposterous.
  70. Love Happens
    The vital signs in Love Happens, a movie that feels likes a laboriously padded outline, are faint.
  71. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
    The man (Bay) just wears you out and wears you down, so much so that it’s easy to pretend that you’re not ingesting 2 hours and 30 minutes of warmongering along with all that dumb fun.
  72. Crash
    So what kind of a movie is Crash? A frustrating movie: full of heart and devoid of life; crudely manipulative when it tries hardest to be subtle; and profoundly complacent in spite of its intention to unsettle and disturb.
  73. Astro Boy
    And so he zips and zags, keeping aloft in a movie that can’t always do the same.
  74. The Devil's Rejects
    The Devil's Rejects is a trompe l'oeil experiment in deliberately retro filmmaking. It looks sensational, but there is a curious emptiness at its core.
  75. Blood Diamond
    While Mr. DiCaprio turns out to be an ideal fit for Blood Diamond, there's an insolvable disconnect between this serious story and the frivolous way it has been told. There is no reason to doubt the filmmakers' sincerity; only their filmmaking.
  76. Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant
    This movie incites curiosity tinged with confusion and irritation. It bristles with interesting ideas — about friendship and freakishness, honesty and anger — and intriguing characters, all of which may blossom in later episodes.
  77. The Brothers Bloom
    As much as you admire the stagecraft and the technical skills on display, when all is said and done, that's all it is: a fancy, not-quite-two-hour stunt.
  78. Revolutionary Road
    "Revolutionary Road" is the kind of great novel that Hollywood tends to botch, because much of it takes place inside the heads of its characters, and because the Wheelers aren't especially likeable and because pessimism without obvious redemption is a tough sell.
  79. AVP: Alien vs. Predator
    Between the Predators' dripping their glow-in-the-dark green blood and the Aliens' getting their rubber cement mucous all over everything, this is certainly a very sticky movie, though not, ultimately, a very frightening or commanding one.
  80. Oldboy
    Entertaining to watch - notwithstanding the scene in which Dae-su eats a live animal - which is a good thing, because there is not much to think about here, outside of the choreographed mayhem.
  81. Departures
    Overlong, predictable in its plotting and utterly banal in its blending of comic whimsy and melodramatic pathos.
  82. The Proposal
    Ms. Bullock, who excels at playing spunky, is as appealing as usual, but the role proves as awkward as those heels.
  83. Burn After Reading
    The clubby, predictably self-amused comedy from Joel and Ethan Coen, has a tricky plot, visual style, er, to burn, but so little heart as to warrant a Jarvik 8.
  84. Atonement
    Atonement fails to be anything more than a decorous, heavily decorated and ultimately superficial reading of the book on which it is based.
  85. 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.
  86. My Sister's Keeper
    My Sister’s Keeper takes on a very tough subject -- and has, in Anna and Kate, two pretty tough characters played by strong young actresses -- but ultimately it is too soft, too easy, and it dissolves like a tear-soaked tissue.
  87. Everything Is Illuminated
    Taken on its own, without comparison with its literary source, the movie, Mr. Schreiber's first as writer and director, is thin and soft, whimsical when it should be darkly funny and poignant when it should be devastating.
  88. Spider-Man 3
    The bittersweet paradox of this franchise is that while the stories have grown progressively less interesting the special effects have improved tremendously, becoming at once more plausible -- when Spider-Man swings through the urban canyons he finally looks almost real -- and more spectacular.
  89. Death at a Funeral
    Think of Death at a Funeral as a comic quickie. As it presses buttons, a few laughs come out, but that’s all there is to it.
  90. Solitude
    Ultimately feels like a clinical study without wider resonance.
  91. Racing Stripes
    Racing Stripes is unlikely to ascend to the pantheon of perennially watchable children's films, but like its hero, what it lacks in skill, it makes up for in heart.
  92. 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.
  93. Appleseed
    While there are some genuinely dazzling moments of visual bravura, the marriage of flatness and depth that Mr. Aramaki attempts doesn't quite work.
  94. Because of Winn-Dixie
    A harmless, pleasant comic drama, but elements that may have seemed delightfully eccentric on the page take on unfortunate new tones when translated to film.
  95. Schultze Gets the Blues
    It's a good thing the movie has so little dialogue, because when it talks, the words dilute its almost surreal visual spell, and the fructose turns to saccharine.
  96. The Pacifier
    Mr. Diesel could not have succeeded as a genre-switcher without the proven television talents of the film's able ensemble.
  97. In My Country
    High-minded but hopelessly wooden film.
  98. Mail Order Wife
    The narrative manages 30 solid minutes of ingenuity, before breaking into a version of Charlie Kaufman-style absurdity.
  99. Guess Who
    So mild and thin that it doesn't inspire much of a reaction at all. With one exception - a dinner table scene that is by far the most memorable in the movie - the racial humor is studiously unprovocative.
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