The New York Times' Scores

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For 20,278 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: 9,380 out of 20278
  2. Mixed: 8,434 out of 20278
  3. Negative: 2,464 out of 20278
20278 movie reviews
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  1. Michael
    This coldly compelling film doesn't try to explain Michael's behavior or analyze his disease. As if doing penance for Michael's sins, it eventually metes out unequivocal punishment, but it is small consolation.
  2. Marley
    Marley is a detailed, finely edited character study whose theme - Marley's bid to reconcile his divided racial legacy - defined his music and his life.
  3. Polisse
    The messiness of the film seems appropriate to its subject, which is the attempt to bring at least a measure of order - and even a touch of grace - to a chaotic and frequently ugly reality.
  4. Middle of Nowhere
    Ms. DuVernay, from start to finish in this very fine movie, works to make sure that Ruby is a woman to remember.
  5. Starlet
    The bright sun that blasts through Starlet, a thrillingly, unexpectedly good American movie about love and a moral awakening, bathes everything in a radiant light, even the small houses with thirsty lawns and dusty cars.
  6. The Wise Kids
    In its unassuming way, this tiny, low-budget film is a universal reflection on issues of personal identity and choice for which there are no easy answers.
  7. Ruby Sparks
    Ruby Sparks doesn't try to pretend to be more than it is: a sleek, beautifully written and acted romantic comedy that glides down to earth in a gently satisfying soft landing.
  8. The Playroom
    The Playroom captures the malaise of mid-’70s suburbia with a merciless accuracy not seen since Ang Lee’s 1997 film, “The Ice Storm.”
  9. The Road
    The dead are unquiet and the living are terrified in The Road, a powerfully atmospheric blend of ghostly encounters, horrific situations and missing-persons mysteries from the Philippine director Yam Laranas.
  10. Frozen
    Frozen, for all its innovations, is not fundamentally revolutionary. Its animated characters are the same familiar, blank-faced, big-eyed storybook figures. But they are a little more psychologically complex than their Disney forerunners.
  11. Tatsumi
    It's potent stuff, delving into pornography, incest, murder and mutilation in the company of alienated men and unhappy, sometimes cruel women.
  12. Oki's Movie
    Mr. Hong's casually brilliant feat of storytelling, akin to an ingeniously wrought suite of literary short fiction.
  13. Unraveled
    Bolstered by animated re-enactments and Bob Richman's frosty cinematography, Unraveled is a mesmerizing one-man dive into narcissism, entitlement and unchecked greed.
  14. A Simple Life
    Ms. Hui, a rare successful female director in the Hong Kong film industry, drew her story from real events, and the movie retains a tonic flavor of the everyday: its drama unfolds simply, without explosive moments but not without emotion. She and her two excellent leads keep the film buoyant.
  15. The Day He Arrives
    The Day He Arrives has real force and its experimentation is in the service of a moving story about a man who, as he says at the start, has nowhere to go. And so he returns to a bar, a woman and situations that are always the same and yet always different - snow falls during one kiss but not another - playing a director whose life resembles a movie he keeps remaking.
  16. You Hurt My Feelings
    Unfolding in New England over four vibrantly represented seasons, "Feelings" is a small-scale wonder. Pivotal events play out in the spaces between scenes, leaving only emotional imprints that we interpret within a timeline that may not be entirely linear.
  17. Side Effects
    While the plot may be predictable (and more than a little preposterous) in retrospect, Mr. Soderbergh handles it brilliantly, serving notice once again that he is a crackerjack genre technician.
  18. Patience (After Sebald)
    If he is a self-revealing writer, it is not in the usual, confessional sense, but rather because he seems so strongly present in his books, with a personality that is both the source and aftereffect of the prose.
  19. Under African Skies
    The film skillfully interweaves several strands to tell a true story with a happy ending.
  20. Flight
    Flight is freakishly real; it's one of those big-screen nightmares that will inspire fear-of-flying moviegoers to run home and Google car rental deals and Greyhound schedules.
  21. Indie Game: The Movie
    Along the way comes a bracing, honest confession about these interactive creations, voiced by one designer but no doubt applying to many more makers of all kinds: "I made it for myself."
  22. Battle Royale
    American fans of "The Hunger Games" may not embrace - or even be permitted to see - Battle Royale, which is too bad. It is in many ways a better movie and in any case a fascinating companion, drawn from a parallel cultural universe. It is a lot uglier and also, perversely, a lot more fun.
  23. 5 Broken Cameras
    5 Broken Cameras deserves to be appreciated for the lyrical delicacy of his voice and the precision of his eye. That it is almost possible to look at the film this way - to foresee a time when it might be understood, above all, as a film - may be the only concrete hope Mr. Burnat and Mr. Davidi have to offer.
  24. The Tall Man
    Ultimately his story draws more energy from class than from criminality: awash in sludgy browns and rotting greens - the colors of poverty and decomposition - this unpredictable oddity is a little bonkers but a lot original.
  25. The Queen of Versailles
    Schadenfreude and disgust may be unavoidable, but to withhold all sympathy from the Siegels is to deny their humanity and shortchange your own. Marvel at the ornate frame, mock the vulgarity of the images if you want, but let's not kid ourselves. If this film is a portrait, it is also a mirror.
  26. A Cat in Paris
    This movie is graceful, subtle and sure-footed, much as its English title implies.
  27. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
    “Dawn” is more than a bunch of occasionally thrilling action sequences, emotional gut punches and throwaway jokes arranged in predictable sequence. It is technically impressive and viscerally exciting, for sure, but it also gives you a lot to think, and even to care, about.
  28. Dark Horse
    Mr. Solondz brilliantly - triumphantly - turns this impression on its head, transforming what might have been an exercise in easy satirical cruelty into a tremendously moving argument for the necessity of compassion.
  29. Kite
    Patang ("The Kite"), Prashant Bhargava's first feature, has a lovely, unforced quality. That's because Mr. Bhargava lets his story, set during the annual kite festival in Ahmedabad, India, tell itself, unfolding slowly as he follows filmmaking's most basic and most sinned-against dictum: Show, don't tell.
  30. Évocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie
    This pull-no-punches portrait shocks and amuses with equal frequency.
  31. Annie Hall
    There will be discussion about what points in the film coincide with the lives of its two stars, but this, I think, is to detract from and trivialize the achievement of the film, which, at last, puts Woody in the league with the best directors we have.
  32. Neil Young Journeys
    Mr. Young's passionate cracked whine assumes an oracular power.
  33. Compliance
    A slow-motion punch to the groin. As such, it's fitting that one of our first sights is a large "NO" stenciled in the parking lot of a fast-food joint in suburban Ohio: as the film progresses, the word becomes a silent mantra for viewers who can't quite believe what they're seeing.
  34. Starry Starry Night
    Crammed with color and imagination, every one of Jake Pollock's gorgeously photographed images feels timelessly suspended between innocence and awareness.
  35. The Do-Deca-Pentathlon
    The most gripping scene in this near-perfect little sports comedy is a fraternal arm-wrestling contest that reaches apoplectic intensity.
  36. Farewell, My Queen
    Benoît Jacquot's tense, absorbing, pleasurably original look at three days in the life and lies of a doomed monarch.
  37. Ballplayer: Pelotero
    Commendably, the film, narrated by John Leguizamo, sugarcoats nothing, and the people involved - the players, their trainers, their parents, the scouts - are remarkably forthright.
  38. Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry
    The fluidity and convenience of digital moviemaking tools explain some of its freshness, as does Ms. Klayman's history as a budding documentarian. It's clear from watching both the feature and its earlier iterations that, while she was learning about Mr. Ai, she was also learning how to tell a visual story. It's easy to think that hanging around Mr. Ai, a brilliant Conceptual artist and an equally great mass-media interpolater, played a part in her education.
  39. The Conjuring
    The dread gathers and surges while the blood scarcely trickles in The Conjuring, a fantastically effective haunted-house movie.
  40. This Must Be the Place
    Maybe, beneath the stylistic flourishes and bursts of operatic emotion, it is a simple story of psychological struggle, about a man in midlife reckoning with the damage of his past. But to settle on that interpretation is to deny or discount the splendid strangeness of Mr. Sorrentino's vision - and also, therefore, of the curious corners of reality he discovers along the way.
  41. Rush
    Mr. Howard doesn’t just want you to crawl inside a Formula One racecar, he also wants you to crawl inside its driver’s head.
  42. Not Fade Away
    By focusing on musicians who are talented but finally not good or persistent enough to succeed in the big time, Not Fade Away offers a poignant, alternative, antiheroic history of the big beat.
  43. Neighboring Sounds
    With his sound designer, Pablo Lamar, Mr. Mendonça has created the aural landscape of a horror movie. And, for much of its running time, a thriller without a plot.
  44. Bachelorette
    Bachelorette is more tartly written, better acted and less forgiving than male-centric equivalents like the "Hangover" movies.
  45. Smashed
    The degree to which Smashed refuses to indulge a voyeuristic taste for the kind of sordid details exploited by reality television amounts to an unspoken declaration of principle. In lieu of self-pity, Smashed substitutes tough love.
  46. Holy Motors
    It's a gift for moviegoers to have this much freedom, and exhilarating. In Holy Motors you never know where Mr. Carax will take you and you never know what, exactly, you're to do once you're there.
  47. Chasing Ice
    The film doesn't just serve up Mr. Balog's amazing and undeniably convincing imagery. It also records his personal struggles as knee problems threaten his ability to hike the difficult terrain to get the shots he wants.
  48. Rust and Bone
    Rust and Bone is a strong, emotionally replete experience, and also a tour de force of directorial button pushing. Mr. Audiard is a canny showman, adept at manipulating the audience's feelings and expectations with quick edits and well-chosen songs.
  49. The To Do List
    This movie is smarter and better acted and just plain funnier than most of its predecessors in the my-first-time genre, no matter which sex is losing what.
  50. Keep the Lights On
    Its subject is not addiction or ambition, or even love in a conventional romantic sense, but rather the more elusive and intriguing matter of intimacy: how it grows, falters and endures over time.
  51. Las Acacias
    The very definition of modest, Las Acacias articulates emotional transformation with simplicity and grace. Rarely has a film managed to say so much while saying so little.
  52. Beauty Is Embarrassing
    The creativity grows like kudzu in Beauty Is Embarrassing, Neil Berkeley's enlightening and often hilarious portrait of the Los Angeles artist Wayne White. And it yields a thousand blossoms.
  53. Vertigo
    Believe us, that secret is so clever, even though it is devilishly far-fetched, that we wouldn't want to risk at all disturbing your inevitable enjoyment of the film.
  54. Step Up To The Plate
    What resonates here are two men, two good men, whose lives have a paradoxically simple and complex bond beyond their profession. Step Up to the Plate asserts how family, in multifarious ways, can be the most deeply affecting of ensembles.
  55. Tears of Gaza
    Woven together, these monologues of bereavement and confusion, illustrated with images so terrible they repel rational explanation, form a tapestry of human misery that's impossible to shake off.
  56. Knuckleball!
    Maybe that's romanticizing things, but baseball wouldn't be half as beautiful without its mythology.
  57. 17 Girls
    Wavering between light comedy and drama with wonderfully natural performances, 17 Girls doesn't judge anyone's behavior.
  58. The Big Picture
    Paul is not a sociopath like Tom Ripley, and the movie does not convey the same diabolical Hitchcockian sense of being manipulated by a slightly sadistic master puppeteer. As the story sprawls across the screen, it darts from one incident to the next as though it were inventing itself as it goes along.
  59. The Thieves
    Loaded with all the twists, disguises, glamorous settings and split-screen montages you could ask for.
  60. Simon & the Oaks
    With its exhilarating World War II narrative and performances that touch notes intimate and grand, Simon and the Oaks has an exquisite, and epic, ache.
  61. The Flat
    A film that begins as a family quest but evolves into a gripping study of know-don't-tell reticence and the umbilical tie of a lost homeland.
  62. Prisoners
    Prisoners is the kind of movie that can quiet a room full of casual thrill-seekers. It absorbs and controls your attention with such assurance that you hold your breath for fear of distracting the people on screen, exhaling in relief or amazement at each new revelation
  63. The Rolling Stones: Charlie Is My Darling - Ireland 1965
    What you see is the intensity of rock 'n' roll at a time when it still felt risky and thrilling.
  64. The Revisionaries
    Interviewing a wide range of concerned parties, Mr. Thurman's presentation is admirably evenhanded; though he clearly supports the scientists.
  65. California Solo
    A wry, mournful study of midlife crisis.
  66. Burn
    For all the alarming statistics cited in the film, Burn is not a depressing movie. The firefighters interviewed are remarkably resilient men who talk enthusiastically about the adrenaline rush of their work. And the film makes you thankful for members of this macho breed, who relish risking their lives to save others.
  67. Hitler's Children
    Quiet, simple and soaked in sorrow, Hitler's Children takes a stripped-down approach to an emotionally sophisticated subject.
  68. First Winter
    The glue holding the film together is Adam Newport-Berra's elegant hand-held cinematography, which captures changing shades of winter and the frightened faces in natural light with an astonishing intensity.
  69. Otelo Burning
    Ms. Blecher draws fine performances out of the young actors and, to her credit, sugarcoats nothing.
  70. Tchoupitoulas
    Tchoupitoulas does explore the border between innocence and experience. It is alive with the risk and curiosity of youth, and unapologetic in insisting that the pursuit of fun can be a profound and transformative experience.
  71. Jason Becker: Not Dead Yet
    This heartfelt documentary is also, more subtly, a tribute to the squadron of caregivers that has enabled Mr. Becker not only to survive for an extraordinarily long time but also to continue to compose music, using virtually the only part of him that still moves, his eyes.
  72. Fairhaven
    There isn't a dishonest moment in Fairhaven, Tom O'Brien's piercing, wistful portrait of three longtime buddies in their mid-30s who reunite around a funeral in a southeastern Massachusetts fishing community.
  73. Our School
    Discrimination against nomadic populations is hardly restricted to Romania, but the integration of that country's largest ethnic minority seems particularly pressing. If only that view were shared by the Romanian adults on screen, most of whom display a shocking degree of prejudice.
  74. The Call
    An effectively creepy thriller about a 911 operator and a young miss in peril, The Call is a model of low-budget filmmaking.
  75. The Iceman
    If the narrow biographical focus of “The Iceman” prevents it from being a great crime movie, on its own more modest terms it is an indelible film that clinches Mr. Shannon’s status as a major screen actor.
  76. The Pirogue
    The most powerful thing about The Pirogue is the way it deals with emotionally charged events matter-of-factly, rather than melodramatically. The story Mr. Touré has chosen to tell is both painfully specific - about these individuals, in this boat - and immeasurably vast, since the experience it depicts is shared by millions of people around the world. And yet somehow he gets the scale just right.
  77. Nana
    Naturalistic and mysterious, Nana is terrifyingly dependent on its diminutive star. Insisting on neither written lines nor predetermined actions (the film's short script was used primarily to obtain financing), Ms. Massadian, who worked with the child for almost two years, has coaxed a performance of remarkable lucidity.
  78. Lore
    The film sustains an air of overarching mystery in which the viewer, like the title character, is in the position of a sheltered child plunked into an alien environment and required to fend for herself without a map or compass.
  79. No
    Marshall McLuhan called advertising the greatest art form of the 20th century. In No, Pablo Larraín’s sly, smart, fictionalized tale about the art of the sell during a fraught period in Chilean history, advertising isn’t only an art; it’s also a way of life.
  80. A Rubberband Is an Unlikely Instrument
    Gliding from intimate to surreal, from aurally disjunctive to visually seductive, Rubberband is a languorous ballad of sadness and disappointment.
  81. Back to the Future
    Mr. Zemeckis is able both to keep the story moving and to keep it from going too far. He handles Back to the Future with the kind of inventiveness that indicates he will be spinning funny, whimsical tall tales for a long time to come.
  82. King of the Hill
    With warmth, wit and none of the usual overlay of nostalgia, King of the Hill presents the scary yet liberating precariousness of life on the edge.
  83. Simon Killer
    Though the film’s ice-cold blend of the cerebral and the atavistic can be off-putting, it enables a queasy portrait of moral disengagement that lingers long after Simon has slipped from the screen.
  84. 11 Flowers
    Delicate and autobiographical (Wang Han was the director’s name when he was a child, and the story is constructed from his boyhood memories), 11 Flowers clings steadfastly to its youthful point of view.
  85. War Witch
    Superstition, witchcraft, exorcism, talismans that ward off evil: in this land of the supernatural, irrationality prevails. But War Witch is so cleareyed that it makes you wonder how much more irrational this world is than the so-called civilized one under its camouflage of material wealth.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Tristana (re-release)
    Buñuel has made a marvelously complex, funny and vigorously moral movie that also is, to me, his most perfectly cast film. [21 Sept. 1970]
    • The New York Times
      • Posted Feb 21, 2013
  87. Reality
    Reality is a story about one man’s desire to make it big on the small screen, and something of a familiar exploration of the blurring between reality and its simulations. More elliptically and more interestingly, it is also a look at an Italy engrossed with rituals and spectacle, in watching and being watched.
  88. Pavilion
    Unguided by obvious story signposts, you slip from image to image, pulled along by their beauty (the digital cinematography is by Chris Dapkins) and by the dreamy, leisurely rhythms of the editing (by Seth Bomse).
  89. Graceland
    Even while embracing the breathless beats of the crime thriller, Graceland holds tight to its concern for exploited children.
  90. Disconnect
    The film ominously conveys a world of too much information but too little communication, where people have become slaves to glowing hand-held devices that were designed to make life easier but have made it busier and more complicated.
  91. Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom
    Mr. Elba’s towering performance lends “Long Walk to Freedom” a Shakespearean breadth.
  92. The We and the I
    To call this thrillingly original, deeply felt movie a coming-of-age story would be to insult it with cliché. It’s much more the story, or rather a series of interlocking, incomplete stories, about what it feels like to be a certain age and to feel caught, as the title suggests, between the desire to be yourself and the longing to fit in.
  93. Down the Shore
    The director, Harold Guskin, and writer, Sandra Jennings, show admirable patience in letting the story unspool, and the actors reward them.
  94. Interstellar
    Like the great space epics of the past, Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar distills terrestrial anxieties and aspirations into a potent pop parable, a mirror of the mood down here on Earth.
  95. Byzantium
    Again and again, as the story shifts between women, times and moods, Mr. Jordan adds a punctuating flourish...that exquisitely illustrates the once-upon-a-time mood.
  96. I Killed My Mother
    As a director, Mr. Dolan has a freewheeling style, and he’s self-dramatizing enough to want to call attention to it without being too much of a visual show-off.
  97. Something in the Air
    Mr. Assayas’s method is observant and immersive. His camera moves among young bodies like an invisible friend, and his somewhat messy narrative is propelled by fidelity to feeling rather than by the machinery of plot.
  98. My Brother the Devil
    Nuances of faith, politics and sexual identity enrich what initially presents as a classic good son-bad son tale.
  99. Renoir
    The movie, like its subject, refuses to stir up unnecessary melodrama. There are many small conflicts and psychological undercurrents, but the closest thing to a narrative theme is the effect Andrée has on the Renoir household.
  100. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
    The second Star Trek movie is swift, droll and adventurous, not to mention appealingly gadget-happy. It's everything the first one should have been and wasn't.
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