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. Emancipation
    Part of this movie’s power comes from its insistence that you look at the near-unbearable, that you confront slavery as a crime against humanity rather than the perverse myth of the so-called Lost Cause enshrined in countless paintings, books, films and statues.
  2. Ma
    The movie ties itself up in knots as it tries to be provocative without giving offense, and offering more complacency and comfort than terror.
  3. Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood
    A free-for-all comic spoof that brings the "hood" genre of Hollywood films full circle. Crude and chaotic, the movie stridently stands every serious theme and anguished emotion from those two groundbreaking films on its ear. [13 Jan 1996, p.21]
    • The New York Times
  4. Jungleland
    The sweaty clichés enacted along the way are uniformly tired and ultimately offensive. A love scene near the movie’s finale, Winkler’s vision of sex among the underclass, is a caricature that could comfortably fit in the new “Borat” movie.
  5. Lost and Delirious
    It works in so many ways except for the script, which sounds laughable. And sadly, when Lost and Delirious trips over its own two feet, it is laughable. It needs to follow Paulie's advice and rage more.
  6. Vanity Fair
    Vanity Fair has a deeper conceptual confusion. In mixing satire and romance, the movie proves once again that the two are about as compatible as lemon juice and heavy cream.
  7. Tea with Mussolini
    Once you accept the notion that Tea With Mussolini aspires to be little more than a kind of British-Italian ''Steel Magnolias,'' with a patina of World War II-movie uplift, it becomes a pleasure to watch its stars shamelessly hamming it up.
  8. De-Lovely
    A movie so lifeless and drained of genuine joie de vivre it makes you long for the largely fictional earlier film.
  9. Johnny Suede
    A comedy so lazily hip and so laid back that it often seems to be asleep.
  10. He Was a Quiet Man
    By the time it reaches a weak, ambiguous conclusion, the movie has gone everywhere and nowhere, much like its psychotic main character, Bob Maconel (Christian Slater).
  11. Ricky
    The deeper Ricky plunges into allegory, the shakier its grasp of the material.
  12. That's What I Am
    Mr. Harris's depiction of a saintly, soft-spoken, bow-tie-wearing middle-school teacher lends the movie a moral weight it probably couldn't have summoned had another actor played the role.
  13. Downtown Express
    Little more than a showcase for Mr. Quint - whose acting is almost as toneless as his playing is sublime - this trite, sunny drama pins lengthy musical interludes onto the flimsiest of narratives and hopes for the best.
  14. Master
    Slick production values can’t disguise the lack of imagination.
  15. Bad Boys
    Bad Boys is a suspenseful movie, but it's also an extremely brutal one. It begins with someone's brains spattered on a wall, and ends with a particularly bloody battle. In between, there's a lot more of the same.
  16. The Lords of Flatbush
    This study of the growing pains of the leather jacket‐bobby soxer Brooklyn high school set of 1957 is, by turns, cheerful, confused, juvenile and never fully realized.
  17. Mischief
    IF Norman Rockwell had wanted to make ''Porky's,'' he might have come up with something like Mischief.
  18. Race with the Devil
    This is a ridiculous mishmash of a movie for people who never grew up, which is not so say it's for children. One would think that Mr. Fonda and Mr. Oates had better things to do, but perhaps not. American movie production is in a bad state.
  19. Palmer
    That Palmer eventually embraces Sam as an ally in misfitdom is inevitable. So is the annoyance inspired by this prosaic masculine melodrama.
  20. Monster Hunt
    Some of this recalls Stephen Chow’s “Journey to the West,” minus the brilliance.
  21. Palindromes
    The human landscape of Palindromes is a vista of grotesqueness, dishonesty and creepiness. These are qualities Mr. Solondz has explored before, but this time he fails to make them interesting, partly because he lets himself and the audience off the hook.
  22. It's Easier for a Camel...
    The kind of exercise in semi-autobiographical reflection that is almost impossible to carry off without its seeming self-absorbed.
  23. Let Fury Have the Hour
    Infinitely less than the sum of its parts, Antonino D'Ambrosio's Let Fury Have the Hour crams 50 thoughtful artists into a disappointingly muddled film.
  24. Britt-Marie Was Here
    Britt-Marie Was Here is a relatively unchallenging yet ultimately pleasant watch.
  25. We Broke Up
    The overwhelming impression is that of shrillness. It’s a tone that might be familiar to those who have experienced a broken heart, but this shallow exercise offers meager opportunity for discomfort to transform into either entertainment or contemplation.
  26. We Have a Ghost
    The film grasps onto anything that will amuse itself for a scene.
  27. Lilo & Stitch
    There’s just enough to make for a moderately fun, mostly serviceable and often adorable revamp that will probably satisfy fans of the original.
  28. Lost Highway
    Lost Highway, an elaborate hallucination that could never be mistaken for the work of anyone else, finds Mr. Lynch echoing the perversity of "Blue Velvet," the earlier film of his that this most closely resembles.
  29. She Came to Me
    Amid the roiling neuroses of the adults, the young beloveds provide the film with a surprising emotional ballast.
  30. Narrow Margin
    Though the story evokes old movie formulas - from Strangers on a Train to the 1952 film The Narrow Margin, which inspired it - this film does not reinvent them. It dully echos their conventions.
  31. Apres Vous (After You)
    Had it had the concision and symmetry of a classic French farce, Après Vous could have been an irresistible laugh machine.
  32. Flag Day
    Penn gives him a vivid, wheedling desperation that’s weirdly moving, and the younger Penn has clearly inherited the emotional expressiveness of her mother, Robin Wright. Maybe that’s why Flag Day feels as much a love letter from Penn to his own daughter as the story of someone else’s.
  33. Hamlet
    Mel Gibson's Hamlet is strong, intelligent and safely beyond ridicule.... He is by far the best part of Mr. Zeffirelli's sometimes slick but always lucid and beautifully cinematic version of the play.
  34. Hysteria
    Silly, featherweight comedy.
  35. In the Grey
    These days, Ritchie’s films are all about fabulous looking people causing a ruckus and blowing a lot of stuff up and taking out less good-looking bad guys in the bargain. “In the Grey” not only delivers these goods but goes into copious detail about just how Sid and Bronco get their ruckus up to speed.
  36. We Are Marshall
    A movie like We Are Marshall stands or falls on its ability to make you feel the pain and loss of individuals in a place where community pride and football are one and the same. As the film, directed by McG (the "Charlie's Angels" movies) from a wooden screenplay by Jamie Linden, follows a handful of Huntington residents during the months after the accident, not one of them comes fully to life.
  37. The Amazing Maurice
    What should be a cute story about a mischievous orange tabby cat instead becomes an ironic, even vaguely smug movie in the vein of something like “Deadpool.”
  38. The Phantom
    The pleasures are familiar, but not the least bit inspired.
  39. The Winning Season
    Gets lost in a fog of indecision and compromise.
  40. Earthwork
    Imagine spending an afternoon watching a bunch of vagrants putter around on an abandoned city lot, and you've pretty much nailed the viewing experience of Earthwork, a painfully dull account of a year in the life of the Kansas crop artist Stan Herd.
  41. Split: A Deeper Divide
    Even political foes agree here on today's parlous state of disagreement, leaving you keen to vote but feeling a little defeated already.
  42. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
    A strong filmmaking voice was clearly not called for in an entertainment that has been carefully calibrated for maximum blandness. Mr. Apted is aboard to keep the franchise sailing along or at least afloat, which he does.
  43. Landscape with Invisible Hand
    Landscape With Invisible Hand mashes up the teen romantic comedy and alien-invasion horror genres to campy, mixed results.
  44. Penguins of Madagascar
    The decision to focus on the series’s comic relief has resulted in the loosest and perhaps funniest film of the brand.
  45. She's the One
    This time, he takes no great risks, nor does he break new ground in the 20-something serial-small-talk genre. (Currently, Nicole Holofcener's sprightly "Walking and Talking" does it better.) But Burns emphatically avoids sophomore slump with an inviting, ruefully funny film that lives up to his initial promise.
  46. Fatherhood
    Despite Weitz’s sensitive direction and a superb cast — including Frankie R. Faison as Marian’s patient husband, DeWanda Wise as Matt’s patient love interest and Paul Reiser as his patient boss — Fatherhood can’t quite deliver.
  47. The Hudsucker Proxy
    Stylish and witty though it is, The Hudsucker Proxy has its problems, even for Coen fans. But throughout, there are wonderfully rich touches.
  48. The Better Angels
    The sense of predestination hangs heavily over the movie, but not a sense of life.
  49. The Amazing Spider-Man 2
    A sequel that, until a late, lamentably foolish turn, balances blockbuster bombast with human-scale drama, child-friendly comedy and gushers of tears.
  50. Focus
    The movie's surreal style, with its film-noir camerawork and ominous lighting, turns the story into a fable about fear and nonconformism, and Mr. Macy's and Ms. Dern's carefully shaded caricatures match the mood.
  51. Passionada
    As Passionada ambles toward a formulaic fairy-tale ending, it exudes such giddy self-assurance that you wish you could believe in it.
  52. ABCD
    A better and more serious film than its forerunner, "American Desi."
  53. Enemy at the Gates
    Enemy at the Gates has its deficiencies, but the first-rate cast is not among them.
  54. New Suit
    What's oddly appealing about this film is the sweetness that the director, François Velle, manages to extract from Craig Sherman's rather bitter screenplay.
  55. Daydream Believer
    It's the best kind of homemade movie, created with skill, modesty and a pleasing awareness of what works in an ultra-low-budget format that tends to be performance and storytelling, rather than visual expressiveness and technical polish.
  56. L'autre monde
    Working in broad, often melodramatic strokes, Mr. Allouache paints a deeply pessimistic portrait of his native country.
  57. Magnifico
    Modest but engaging Filipino tear-jerker.
  58. Drug Lord: The Legend of Shorty
    Driven by mostly Spanish-language folk music, the movie provides a potent if piecemeal counterbalance to the sensationalism of “Breaking Bad.”
  59. Knock Knock
    Knock Knock ends on a not entirely satisfactory note, but delivers a pretty mean genre wallop getting there (with almost zero gore).
  60. Late Bloomers
    As more characters, including the couple's three children - enter the picture, Late Bloomers loses its narrative thread and becomes so choppy that you have the sense that it was butchered during the editing process. What remains is the skeleton of a story that leads to an abrupt, icky-cute ending.
  61. Black Moon Rising
    The film sounds pretty silly, and it is, but it's not painful to watch. Harley Cokliss, the director, and John Carpenter, Desmond Nakano and William Gray, who wrote the screenplay, never allow credibility to worry them, or even those of us in the audience. Like a stolen car, it moves pretty fast, if erratically. It has a tendency to put Quint into impossible situations from which he walks away with unexplained ease.
  62. Private Romeo
    Much better to focus on the tempestuous Mercutio (Hale Appleman, a standout), whose increasing volatility forms the perfect counterpoint to Mr. Doyle's beaming Juliet and Seth Numrich's sensitive Romeo. Punctuated by eerily static shots of empty basketball courts and deserted hallways, Mercutio's blustering menace is as timeless as the romance he seeks to derail.
  63. Chagall-Malevich
    It’s a literally colorful and playful attempt to portray battlefields of artistic ambition and political struggle. But its dialogue and characters are also written as subtly as a radical manifesto.
  64. On a Magical Night
    Despite the fantastic premise and the ostensibly comedic bits of business Honoré strews throughout (pay attention to the changing marquee of the cinema on the street where both Maria’s apartment and the hotel are), the movie’s treatment of its themes still too often lists toward a near-ponderous solemnity.
  65. Beyond Outrage
    The strategy and strategizing of Beyond Outrage still feel like overkill (if you’ll pardon the expression).
  66. Humor Me
    The movie never gets too deep, which is half of its charm. The other half involves the low-key comic performances by a stellar cast including Annie Potts and Bebe Neuwirth.
  67. Subway
    Unlike ''Le Dernier Combat,'' which had humor and urgency, Subway appears to have been a good deal more exciting to film than it is to see.
  68. The Journey
    Though the script tilts to the didactic, the performances are absolutely delicious, with Mr. Meaney droll and understated and Mr. Spall fiery and derisive, yet not above a joke.
  69. Rent
    Often dramatically jumbled and musically muddled - but every time the film seemed ready to tip into awfulness, the sneer on my lips was trumped by the lump in my throat.
  70. Hellbound?
    Mr. Miller makes a questionable choice in setting the film against the backdrop of the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11, and he lingers too long on an offensive fringe group that hangs out near ground zero with signs saying the terrorist attacks were God's will. But for most of the way, his treatment is substantive and evenhanded.
  71. Free Samples
    Free Samples is a modest but pleasant small-budget movie with two bits of laziness in the script, but one particularly sweet performance that makes up for them.
  72. Another Stakeout
    Another Stakeout is made for the kind of person whom television drives out of the house to the movies but who doesn't want surprises when he arrives at the theater. It's big-screen television fare.
  73. Suspect
    If Suspect amounts to less than the sum of its parts, those parts are often valuable on their own.
  74. Free State of Jones
    Mr. Ross consulted some of the leading experts in the era...and has done a good job of balancing the factual record with the demands of dramatic storytelling. The result is a riveting visual history lesson, whose occasional didacticism is integral to its power.
  75. Sharp Stick
    An uneven, uneasy fable of desire.
  76. Mr. Popper's Penguins
    There is nothing new here, but Mr. Waters, as he showed with the smarter and more daring "Mean Girls" and "Freaky Friday," knows how to keep things buzzing along.
  77. I Trust You to Kill Me
    Inconsequential documentary.
  78. Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween
    The production design displays a genuine enthusiasm for the decorative kitsch of the Halloween season, and the flashes of giddy craftiness beneath the slick style almost compensate for the toothlessness of the horror.
  79. A Good Woman
    When put into the mouths of American actors with no feel for Wilde's high-toned repartee, they simply hang in the air and die.
  80. The Big Question
    The overall effect, especially given the gorgeous setting and liquid-gold cinematography, is less a discussion of the divine than a commercial for it.
  81. Another Evil
    An ultra-low-budget ghost story with an off-kilter sensibility that initially intrigues but ultimately fizzles.
  82. A Paris Education
    Mr. Civeyrac leads Étienne into anxious imitations of the past, and the possibility of making art fueled by the present never materializes.
  83. The Magician's Elephant
    In jazzing up the tale for the screen, Rogers sands down the somberness — Baltese is all fuzzy blues and pinks, with nary a trace of postwar grit — while turning up the silliness for gimmicky thrills.
  84. Stormy
    After so much media coverage, certain details of the events feel overly familiar. But the director, Sarah Gibson, is often able to put the episodes into fresh contexts.
  85. The Killer Inside Me
    Michael Winterbottom’s nasty and uneven adaptation of Jim Thompson’s surpassingly mean little crime novel.
  86. The Rocker
    Most disappointingly, the music is tepid, mediocre pop pastiche.
  87. Finding Your Feet
    Watching it demands little effort. Evict your inner cynic and enjoying it should demand even less.
  88. Resistance
    Resistance feels disjointed and dated.
  89. The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears
    Enervatingly synthetic, The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears slices and dices the images and tropes of Italian giallo-style slasher films into an inert pile of style.
  90. Mother India
    The film is at once a sort of Indian "Stella Dallas," which finds the heroine making sacrifice after sacrifice on behalf of her family, and a "Gone With the Wind"-style epic of social change.
  91. Remember Me, My Love
    An abrasive but innovative fusion of farce, satire and drama that blurs their boundaries in uncomfortable ways. It's a noisy movie whose characters tend to talk at medium-to-high volume.
  92. The Tender Bar
    It’s not the kind of movie that will knock you out, but it won’t leave you with a headache and a dry mouth, either. It’s a generous pour and a mellow buzz.
  93. Bachelorette
    Bachelorette is more tartly written, better acted and less forgiving than male-centric equivalents like the "Hangover" movies.
  94. On Any Sunday: The Next Chapter
    Motorbikes careening round corners just millimeters off the track still quicken the pulse, but “The Next Chapter” also demonstrates the padding that documentaries in general have picked up in recent years.
  95. The Great White Hope
    The Great White Hope is one of those liberal, well-meaning, fervently uncontroversial works that pretend to tackle contemporary problems by finding analogies at a safe remove in history.
  96. 69: The Saga of Danny Hernandez
    Gandhi’s insights into Tekashi69’s psyche are limited, and some of his conclusions about the disgraced rapper’s character are bizarre.
  97. Silent Night, Deadly Night
    Nelson may be throwing too much at the wall, but he does manage to make you feel something beyond just gross-out thrills.
  98. Muppets from Space
    Instead of sending up their cinematic sources, the creators of Muppets From Space rely too much on this spent screen fuel. Frenetic movement and loud music overwhelm warmth and compassion, and the balance of character, plot, irreverent humor and innate decency that made some of the earlier Muppet movies so welcome is lost.
  99. Dog Eat Dog
    Dog Eat Dog is a movie that wants everyone off its lawn, but only after they’ve had time to appreciate that said lawn is way more nihilistic than their own.
  100. A Goofy Movie
    A Goofy Movie is engaging in its mild-mannered way, but the story is too rambling and emotionally diffuse for the title character to come fully alive.
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