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. Reagan
    It all makes for a plodding film, more curious than compelling.
  2. Glee: The 3D Concert Movie
    There is a paradox at the heart of the film. It strains to celebrate diversity and individualism, while its processed music exemplifies strict corporate teamwork.
  3. We Are the Night
    A love triangle with fangs but no bite, the German import We Are the Night is mostly infatuated with its own stylish excesses.
  4. Resident Evil: Retribution
    Taking place almost entirely inside computer-simulated global locations, "Retribution" moves closer than ever to its airless video game roots.
  5. Good Deeds
    Good Deeds honors goodness, which isn't at all a bad thing, and it's not without moments of genuine feeling. But by the film's end, after watching a seemingly infinite number of dour close-ups of sober self-evaluation, I felt bludgeoned by thesis-driven dialogue and noble intentions.
  6. Double Dhamaal
    Unless your idea of a good joke is a golf ball thwacked into an unsuspecting crotch or the old frying-pan-in-the-kisser gag, you probably won't like this movie.
  7. The Lone Ranger
    A very long, very busy movie that will unite the generations in bafflement, stupefaction and occasional delight.
  8. Playing for Keeps
    Sometimes the movie swerves toward farce, sometimes into the zone of smiley family comedy and at other times into full-on weepiness. None of it is especially credible or engaging.
  9. Donnie Darko
    It's this compulsion to solder melancholy to weightlessness that constantly trips up the movie; Mr. Kelly doesn't have the assurance to pull off such a difficult feat.
  10. Act of Valor
    This archipelago of maneuvers, however jaw-dropping, never coheres into a real movie.
  11. The Iron Lady
    You are left with the impression of an old woman who can't quite remember who she used to be and of a movie that is not so sure either.
  12. W.E.
    The upshot is that instead of a film about a love that conquered a king and nearly undid a kingdom, Madonna has come up with a female friendship movie, which would be fine if she weren't busy trying to prove her art-film bona fides.
  13. Flying Fish
    The intertwining of the narratives, along with the somewhat elliptical, or perhaps rudimentary, storytelling, makes for a confusing experience. But the stories are mainly an excuse for pretty pictures, some quite striking, of poverty and oppression, and for a closing frenzy of bloodletting.
  14. Carnage
    As a portrait of anxious, status-conscious Brooklyn parents living in a chiaroscuro of self-righteousness and guilt, Carnage misses its mark badly.
  15. Star Trek Into Darkness
    It’s hard to emerge from “Into Darkness” without a feeling of disappointment, even betrayal.
  16. The Last Stand
    The South Korean director Kim Jee-woon fails to dazzle with the endless speeding-car sequences, but that 60-second flourish during a lengthy firefight is almost worth the tedium.
  17. All She Can
    Worse, you never root for Ms. Calderon's Luz, who goes from sullen to more sullen to a bit less sullen. She has discipline - to lift, she has to keep her weight down and train constantly - but not much compassion and no joy.
  18. Dredd
    Every so often there's a suggestion that a police state may actually be a lousy idea, but this thought dies even faster than the disposable characters.
  19. Red Tails
    To say that this live-action comic book lives up to Mr. Lucas's description is not a wholehearted endorsement. Are teenage boys as naïve today as they were 60 or more years ago? And much of the dialogue is groaningly clunky. But so it was back then.
  20. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
    Yes, you may cry, but when tears are milked as they are here, the truer response should be rage.
  21. The Watch
    The movie builds to a human-versus-alien showdown so sloppily staged that it makes little visual sense. The bargain-basement pyrotechnics suggest that much of The Watch was filmed on autopilot on a strict budget.
  22. Bodyguard
    Mr. Khan, seasoned Bollywood beefcake, is a well-muscled hunk who doesn't take himself too seriously in fight scenes. If only the film's archly slick director, Siddique, had adopted the same winking attitude toward the romantic arc. A twist near the end sends this contrived movie into a maudlin stratosphere from which it doesn't recover.
  23. The Odd Life of Timothy Green
    The ghastliness of this damp and squishy comedy is the byproduct of a confused and earnest sentimentality, a willful devotion to wide-eyed wonder that confuses simplicity with simple-mindedness.
  24. The Double
    A moldy, post-cold-war spy thriller.
  25. Puncture
    Notable at least in part for its fumbled potential, this health-care-industry melodrama possesses all the right ingredients: an idealistic young lawyer, a corrupt corporate villain and a sympathetic victim. It just fails to assemble them into a compelling whole.
  26. Trishna
    Life is suffering, as the Buddha said (including in Hardy's emotionally grinding novels), but it's more complex and contradictory than the ginned-up realism Mr. Winterbottom delivers here.
  27. Special Treatment
    A story that should have been a taut poker-faced French farce that pushed its premise to the brink of absurdity stalls, unsure of its balance between comedy and drama. The movie's one reliable constant is Ms. Huppert. You can't take your eyes off her, even when she is misused and misdirected.
  28. Bullet to the Head
    While the veteran action director Walter Hill hasn't done much to enliven this dull, unmemorable material, with its mechanically moving parts and popping gunfire, its dull-red splatter and spray, he has brought a spark of wit to the proceedings, starting with the figure of Sylvester Stallone.
  29. The Lady
    Paralyzes history and human drama with relentless hagiography.
  30. Sarah Palin: You Betcha!
    It feels warmed over, devoid of urgency and, in spite of Mr. Broomfield's on-camera displays of doggedness, lacking in curiosity.
  31. Fireflies in the Garden
    Mr. Lee gathers together a lifetime of hurt without conveying that there's something personal at stake.
  32. Beware the Gonzo
    Its serious intentions notwithstanding, Beware the Gonzo is essentially a comedy with a mean streak; its portrait of the big man on campus is truly venomous.
  33. Inside Out
    If Paul Levesque, the professional wrestler better known as Triple H, hopes to follow the career path of, say, Dwayne Johnson, who is now a credible action-adventure leading man, he's going to need movies a lot better than Inside Out to do it.
  34. Step Up Revolution
    Alas, the dancers have to stop sometimes to allow the utterly unoriginal story to be told, and the romance at the center of it inspired Amanda Brody, the screenwriter, to produce dialogue so cheesy as to be laughable.
  35. Happy Life
    The film advances the "let's put on a show" genre into a grim and hopeless direction, just right for hard times. In different hands Happy Life might become a decent movie. Maybe it's best thought of as a demo.
  36. The Dead
    Its scenes frequently feature Africans machine-gunning other Africans or hacking them to death with machetes. This is a disturbing sight indeed. Maybe it was intended as a metaphor, but this movie isn't nearly sophisticated enough to pull off that kind of commentary. It's not really even sophisticated enough to be an absorbing zombie movie
  37. I, Frankenstein
    Having established a downbeat, even stoically plain tone, this economical affair feels like a canvas prepped for, and awaiting, further detail (or straight-to-video-on-demand sequels).
  38. All's Faire in Love
    The script, by Mr. Marshall and R. A. White, doesn't contain enough that's genuinely funny, which leaves everybody trying too hard. Only Ann-Margret, as the fair's reigning queen, retains her dignity.
  39. Now You See Me
    Long before the story culminates with a preposterous final revelation, whatever hopes you had that Now You See Me might have had anything to say about the profession of magic, rampant greed or anything else have been dashed.
  40. 5 Star Day
    A drippy ending erases all the hopes you've built up and forces you to conclude that this wasn't such a well-thought-out film after all.
  41. Cherkess
    Mr. Quandour's utopian vision may seem improbable - that fairy tale quality again - but his odd, guileless, folkloric movie doesn't feel cloying so much as something from a different world.
  42. Killing Bono
    What could have been a moderately entertaining short film is yanked to intolerable lengths in Killing Bono, a shapeless rock-music caper that, like its deluded antihero, just doesn't know when to stop.
  43. A Novel Romance
    Steve Guttenberg is probably supposed to be a lovable loser in A Novel Romance, a drab, clumsy film by Allie Dvorin, but he can manage to be merely annoying. Mr. Guttenberg, though, deserves only part of the blame for this unrewarding movie.
  44. Lawless
    There are too many action-movie clichés without enough dramatic purpose, and interesting themes and anecdotes are scattered around without being fully explored. This is weak and cloudy moonshine: it doesn't burn or intoxicate.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    A Journey in My Mother's Footsteps
    Rosenmeier's tendency to insert herself at the center of the story - awkwardly drifting into the frame as she interviews local social workers, carefully inspecting institutions as if she were a high-profile ambassador - at first seems slightly immodest. Gradually, it suggests a deeply unsettling level of self-involvement.
  46. Seducing Charlie Barker
    An intermittently interesting but fatally clichéd comedy of personal and professional suicide.
  47. Red Hook Black
    Red Hook Black crawls forward by means of stilted conversations and vacuous exchanges.
  48. The Pill
    This might be more entertaining if any of the three main characters were at all likable.
  49. The Flowers of War
    Mr. Bale, turning in a respectable if oddly chipper performance under the circumstances, has the unfortunate task of playing a character who doesn't really add up.
  50. Don't Go in the Woods
    The actors are all natural, but no character is developed enough for you to care who is killed next. There's not much suspense, no inventive pacing, no wink-wink irony, no cinematic gimmicks, not much mystery and no awful gore.
  51. Domain
    You really can't hang a drama on a mathematical theory and expect it to serve as a shortcut for storytelling.
  52. Brake
    Brake is a full-scale paranoid nightmare with back-to-back double-whammy endings.
  53. Musical Chairs
    This mawkish rom-com mines class, ethnic and ambulatory boundaries for cheap laughs and cheap-looking visuals.
  54. Bad Fever
    Mr. Defa and his cinematographer, Mike Gioulakis, are united in their disdain for information over mood: as the camera skitters spastically around its troubled schlub, the film becomes a muddy, minimalist moan of desperation.
  55. Reuniting the Rubins
    It's the kind of stuff an amateur screenwriter reaches for when he has nothing original to say, because he's seen it work in other movies. It sure doesn't work here.
  56. Seeking Justice
    Mr. Donaldson has proven deftness with panting plots and knife-edge tension, but this cobbled-together noir does him no justice at all.
  57. Mammuth
    A wearisome mix of miserableness and dark humor.
  58. A Warrior's Heart
    A Warrior's Heart is factory-issue jingoism, yielding no surprises and frightfully few insights.
  59. Sinister
    A twitchy Mr. Hawke builds a persuasive portrait of desperation with little help from the script and despite playing a character who makes so many mistakes he might as well be on a suicide mission.
  60. Bonsai People: The Vision of Muhammad Yunus
    The result is a movie that feels more like a free-market sales pitch than like a critical look at one weapon in the poverty-fighting arsenal that may or may not offer long-term hope.
  61. Putin's Kiss
    Political menace stalks youthful idealism in Putin's Kiss, a portentous, rather creepy documentary that masks its lack of historical context with an atmosphere of accumulating threat.
  62. The Samaritan
    His (Jackson) doleful revenant is in almost every scene, and this hardworking actor seems to know that the film around him should be a light-footed caper instead of a grim noir with a side order of deviance.
  63. Transformers: Age Of Extinction
    You can admire what he does without really enjoying it, and two hours and 46 minutes of pulverized architecture is a lot to endure. But in every Michael Bay movie there are at least a few moments of inspired, kinetic absurdity.
  64. Killing Them Softly
    In spite of the golden presence of Brad Pitt as the killer, a level-headed professional named Jackie Cogan, the movie has an agreeably scuzzy, small-time feeling.
  65. The Woods
    With a sturdy indie vibe and pacing that feels like "Portlandia" this film, a series of related sketches, maintains a laconic, deadpan tone that's a nice break from the usual high-volume comedy. But it simply offers endless variations on the same joke.
  66. Blue Like Jazz
    Through it all Mr. Allman, who played the skeevy Tommy on "True Blood," is a pleasant presence but blank. And Don's crisis of faith, which should be the movie's core and engine, is never really convincing. It's spelled out but dramatically inert, lost among the yuks of the Reed kookiness.
  67. High School
    Once the plot has sprung into action, High School is a bumpy ride that takes a few amusing dives but never coheres into anything special.
  68. My Way
    The bloody chaos can be suitably overwhelming, but you're too aware of the whizzing camerawork, helter-skelter editing and bombastic score.
  69. Jack and Diane
    Jack & Diane offers a glaring example of a writer and director, Bradley Rust Gray, unable to trust in the simple strength of his material.
  70. 360
    There's no way to know what went wrong with 360 and whether it was this uninvolving and shallow from the start.
  71. Jack Reacher
    Apart from the car chase, the only real fun in Jack Reacher comes from Mr. Herzog and Robert Duvall, called in near the end for some marvelously gratuitous scenery chewing as a gruff former Marine. They enliven the movie's atmosphere of weary brutality for a few moments, but they also call attention to the dullness of their dramatic surroundings.
  72. The Smurfs 2
    A new, not very engaging movie featuring a lot of blue skin and household-name voices.
  73. The Perfect Family
    The dialogue in the film, directed by Anne Renton from a screenplay by Claire V. Riley and Paula Goldberg, has the loud, mechanical clicketyclack of a 40-year-old episode of "All in the Family."
  74. Bel Ami
    Although this is potentially juicy stuff, it is as dry and tasteless as a shrunken piece of fruit left in the refrigerator far too long.
  75. Lola Versus
    In spite of its scruffy look and slack pacing, it often rings as false as any of the big, shiny and soft studio rom-coms (starring Kate Hudson or Katherine Heigl, say) of the last decade.
  76. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
    A certain kind of discipline and experience is at work here: It’s no accident that the action and dialogue seem blandly cartoonish, as if the moviemakers wanted to keep everything easy for all ages to follow.
  77. All In: The Poker Movie
    The film, though, is so padded with cheerleading that it doesn't have time for a serious exploration of poker's place in the broader culture or the consequences of its rapid rise and global reach.
  78. Losing Control
    There are rare flashes of successful humor, as when the film deals with the behavior of jerks and a flustered cabby, but these are not likely to be replicated in the lab. If you want to enjoy watching a confused scientist grappling with life choices, stick with "The Nutty Professor."
  79. An Encounter with Simone Weil
    Though Weil remains fascinating, Ms. Haslett's film, even when it uses more traditional documentary techniques, mostly isn't.
  80. Womb
    If the 20-odd seconds of blank screen squatting pointlessly amid the opening credits aren't enough warning that you're in for some seriously sluggish storytelling, then the adoption of a snail as one of the central motifs should drive the point home.
  81. The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones
    Too much of the film feels like shorthand, a trail of teasing crumbs to lead us to the inevitable sequels.
  82. Jean Gentil
    The filmmakers have no patience for details, either basic or telling. Their elliptical method starts to seem lazy, and Jean's plight, a journey from bad to bad, starts to seem a stacked deck. Through it all Mr. Genty holds your attention with his sober dignity. Too bad the filmmakers frequently let that slip into pathos.
  83. Going Down in LA-LA Land
    Based on a novel by Andy Zeffer and directed by Casper Andreas, Going Down falls well short of compelling, either as a coming-of-age film, a satire or a romance.
  84. Sin City: A Dame To Kill For
    The best antidote to all the glowering and posing is Eva Green: As Ava, the titular dame, she’s nothing short of a godsend.
  85. Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale
    Despite the movie's considerable visual splendor, the pacing of Warriors of the Rainbow is clumsy, its battle scenes chaotic and its computer effects (especially of a fire that ravages the Seediq hunting forest) cheesy.
  86. The Broken Tower
    Despite earnest attempts, Mr. Franco can’t bring the fervency of Crane’s poetry to life in the extensive recitations.
  87. Cheerful Weather for the Wedding
    If the movie had more courage, it would lay waste these people as hilariously as Robert Altman's film "A Wedding." But as its bad vibes accumulate, Cheerful Weather exhibits all the energy of a disgruntled wedding guest muttering complaints under his breath.
  88. Small, Beautifully Moving Parts
    The best thing about Small, Beautifully Moving Parts is its admission that a positive pregnancy test is not always cause for giddy celebration; the worst thing is that, even at a lean 73 minutes, this flimsy road movie feels at least 43 minutes too long.
  89. Crazy Eyes
    If it feels uncomfortably real, it's because its vision of decadence (if you'll pardon the word) is almost unwatchably creepy. Crazy Eyes awakens the same queasiness. Yes, it feels true. But why bother?
  90. Pitch Perfect
    Only occasionally funny and not at all illuminating about the rich world of a cappella singing.
  91. 6 Month Rule
    An ostensible romantic comedy that's really just a grating portrait of an irredeemable jerk.
  92. Hide Away
    Much of the skimpy, waterlogged dialogue in Peter Vanderwall's screenplay is heavy with portent. Excerpts from Homer's "Odyssey" and Longfellow's "Children's Hour" add to the tonnage.
  93. Music from the Big House
    The filmmakers hesitate at going deeper into the dark places of the prisoners' biographies and the storied prison itself. The one wouldn't exist without the other, and Ms. Chiarelli's rambling platitudes are no substitute.
  94. Sexual Chronicles of a French Family
    It's dull filmmaking.
  95. The Oregonian
    Creepy, silly, startling, irritating, and black-vomit-and-multicolored-urine disgusting, The Oregonian wears out its welcome within 30 minutes.
  96. War of the Buttons
    The slick filmmaking - the movie has a glossy, Hollywood-ready feel that sometimes tips into the cutesy - works against its themes.
  97. Extraterrestrial
    Alien invasion is just an excuse for romantic farce in Extraterrestrial, a tiresome roundelay of lies, lust and leaping paranoia.
  98. V/H/S
    A low-budget horror anthology with segments both ghastly and moronic.
  99. About Cherry
    The fatal flaw of this well-acted movie, whose creators are sex industry veterans, is its refusal to examine Angelina's occupation from outside the bubble. You might even call it a recruitment film.
  100. Atlas Shrugged II: The Strike
    The producers are going to have to hire a better director if they want moviegoers to be curious enough about this Galt guy to buy a ticket for the presumptive third and final chapter.
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