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. White Rabbit
    While White Rabbit is not a lost cause, its difficult story of mistreatment and lashing out proves too much of a challenge to tell well.
  2. Loitering with Intent
    The movie has no apparent destination in mind; it ends with a complacent shrug having barely reached feature running time. Ms. Tomei, Mr. Rockwell and Mr. Geraghty get stray laughs, but “Loitering With Intent” mostly plays like an excuse for its makers to hang out.
  3. Still Life
    As the pace picks up, whatever spell the movie cast is shattered, and Still Life melts into a heap of sentimental slush.
  4. Northern Borders
    Mr. Dern is fine in his crotchety-old-man mode, but the rest of the acting is labored, and the story is an unfocused mishmash.
  5. Ghost in the Shell
    [Mr. Sanders] likes a dark palette and is good with actors, but there’s little here that feels personal, and he mostly functions as a blockbuster traffic cop, managing all the busily moving, conspicuously pricey parts.
  6. I
    I is exuberant and unselfconscious but too cartoonish to engage your emotions. The onslaught of images and music will engage your senses, though, even as you’re left giggling at the too-muchness of it all.
  7. Salvation Army
    For a film rooted in a personal story, Salvation Army feels awfully remote.
  8. Manny
    The narrative has been fashioned mostly in Mr. Pacquiao’s favor, although there are mentions of overwork, infidelity and gambling. Banal, stentorian narration by Liam Neeson (“Once victory is stolen from you, what are you left with?”) mostly gives the sense that it’s the viewer being carried around the ring.
  9. Kidnapping Mr. Heineken
    Mr. Hopkins doesn’t have much to do, but it can be amusing to see him upstage everyone else with sonorous murmurings and imperious demands for a robe and Chinese takeout.
  10. Amira & Sam
    Written and directed by Sean Mullin, a comedian and onetime Army officer (he plays a comic in the film), Amira & Sam is more successful as a portrait of veteran alienation than as a romance.
  11. Enter the Dangerous Mind
    Partly thanks to Ms. Reed — as well as to Scott Bakula, as Wendy’s beleaguered boss, and minor players — the movie has its share of underplayed little scenes of realistic color.
  12. My Name Is Hmmm...
    My Name Is Hmmm ... has its magical moments, but they are sabotaged by the director’s showy, ham-handed technique applied to a frustratingly threadbare screenplay that leaves you wanting more.
  13. The Bronze
    Ms. Rauch (who wrote the film with her husband, Winston Rauch) nails the portrayal admirably under Bryan Buckley’s direction. But that doesn’t mean Hope is anyone you want to spend almost two hours with.
  14. Sleeping with Other People
    Ms. Headland has a concept for a latter-day screwball comedy — two romantically challenged friends whose hang-ups create a roadblock to coupledom — but she doesn’t have the jokes or the emotionally textured characters that can fill in that conceit.
  15. Take Me to the River
    Mr. Sobel’s film skates past any persuasive sense of motivation.
  16. Mad As Hell
    It’s a job requirement for a show host like Mr. Uygur to project his personality and beliefs; this filmmaker doesn’t muster a healthy skepticism to match.
  17. Call for Help
    If the point of Call for Help is to glorify a handful of off-the-grid heroes, it fails. If the point is to follow some young people who took their aimless wanderlust to a trouble spot and perhaps created more problems than they solved, it succeeds.
  18. Hawaizaada
    Mr. Puri works hard, but the strain shows and so do the movie’s seams. And Mr. Khurrana, who rides the line between ingratiating and annoying, has trouble carrying the movie.
  19. Life
    Mr. Corbijn picturesquely frames the back story to the shoot, but his muffled retelling drifts with Dane DeHaan’s murmurous impersonation of Dean and Robert Pattinson’s almost perversely listless turn as Stock.
  20. Walter
    In touching lightly on themes without committing to any of them, the movie falls flat. What should be sweet is saccharine, what might be profound seems trite.
  21. Blackbird
    Despite its sense of mission, the film suffers from soapy excesses and narrative disjunctures.
  22. Road Hard
    Mr. Carolla’s wide-ranging résumé includes writing, voice-over work, talk-show appearances and a popular podcast, but it’s light on acting, and he shows why here, proving himself unable to perform the difficult trick of making a loathsome character sympathetic.
  23. Can't Stand Losing You: Surviving the Police
    A movie singularly lacking in rock-doc unpredictability and verve.
  24. 3 Hearts
    The screenplay relies on so many mechanical contrivances to make the story gripping that you can hear the rusty machinery clanking.
  25. Trumbo
    It’s impossible to tell if the filmmakers don’t trust the audience or simply don’t have the chops, guts or heart to do this story justice.
  26. Central Intelligence
    An odd-couple caper of staggering dopeyness that makes you long for the snap and sizzle of the buddy movies of the 1980s.
  27. 1915
    There might be an engaging film buried beneath the severe dialogue, portentous music and ominous shadows of 1915. But a relentless and heavy-handed script makes the effort to find it seem futile.
  28. The Barber
    Scott Glenn handles the balancing act required of him in “The Barber” with his usual skill... The film, though, delivers its plot twists muddily and doesn’t really distinguish itself from the countless other creepy-killer tales out there.
  29. The Girl Is in Trouble
    A modern-day noir weighed down by redundant narration and a forced plot, The Girl Is in Trouble feels like a tug of war between the actors, who understand the need for lightness, and dialogue that emerges in expository clots.
  30. Captive
    A credit-sequence television clip of Mr. Warren and the real Ms. Smith with Oprah Winfrey makes the entire movie feel like the strangest book infomercial in memory.
  31. Eddie the Eagle
    This film doesn’t seem to trust the inherent likability of his story. The director, Dexter Fletcher, and the writers, Sean Macaulay and Simon Kelton, load it up with tropes that actually make it less endearing.
  32. The Living
    The emotional dynamics in domestic violence, for the abuser and the abused, are often too disturbing and complex to be treated as superficially as The Living does.
  33. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
    The story’s lone joke and its grinding literalness grow dull.
  34. Live From New York!
    “Saturday Night Live” deserves much better than the documentary equivalent of what a book editor would surely dismiss as a rushed, careless clip job.
  35. Closer to the Moon
    Mr. Caranfil never manages to negotiate the thickets of ambiguity, tragedy and bleak comedy, although the problem may be that someone behind the scenes just didn’t see the profit in a no-exit narrative.
  36. Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet
    This collection of eight mini-sermons falls flat.
  37. Aloft
    For all its brooding atmosphere and visual poeticism, the film offers a perspective on the lives of its characters that feels narrow and superficial.
  38. The Gallows
    The horror movie The Gallows starts with a decent if improbable premise, and it ends with a pretty good jolt. But in between, the film sure wears out the already tired found-footage device.
  39. The Little Death
    The only sketch that’s inspired is the final one.
  40. Ride
    As an instructional movie on the sport, Ride offers some useful tips, but beyond that, it feels like a slightly bizarre vanity project.
  41. Where Hope Grows
    Once the proselytizing takes over, so does the predictability.
  42. Cas & Dylan
    When the banter sputters, there is always the glorious scenery along the Trans-Canada Highway to divert you.
  43. The Film Critic
    The Film Critic is at once too clever by half and not as smart as it pretends to be.
  44. Far from the Madding Crowd
    The environment is more impressive than the slow, mawkish drama it contains, and the peasants are more assertive and colorful than the main characters. Scenes of sheepherding, farm gatherings, harvest suppers and assemblies at markets and fairs are more energetic and entertaining than the bloodless confrontations of the principals.
  45. Intrepido: A Lonely Hero
    Digressions involving suicide, child abuse, immigration and unions muddy the film’s meaning rather than illuminate it.
  46. Love
    As if all its artistic energy had been gobbled up by the fornication, Love has nothing left with which to build its characters or set them in motion.
  47. The Benefactor
    So long as the camera is studying Franny maniacally bestowing his largess or throwing temper tantrums, The Benefactor is mesmerizing. But Mr. Gere’s flamboyant performance is the sole raison d’être for this melodrama.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Mad Max
    Mad Max is ugly and incoherent, and aimed, probably accurately, at the most uncritical of moviegoers. [14 June 1980, p.13]
    • The New York Times
  49. Wild Horses
    The one solid element in Wild Horses is Mr. Duvall’s squinting, stone-faced portrayal of a gruff, crusty patriarch beginning to crumble.
  50. Dark Was the Night
    The trouble lies in Tyler Hisel’s script, which teems with wheezy conventions.
  51. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
    To say that “Valerian” is a science-fiction epic doesn’t quite do it justice. Imagine crushing a DVD of “The Phantom Menace” into a fine powder, tossing in some Adderall and Ecstasy and a pinch of cayenne pepper and snorting the resulting mixture while wearing a virtual reality helmet in a Las Vegas karaoke bar. Actually, that sounds like too much fun, but you get the idea.
  52. What We Did on Our Holiday
    A damp-eyed comedy whose banal title isn’t the only thing needing improvement.
  53. Felt
    This vague, arty horror film from Jason Banker (“Toad Road”), who shares a story credit with his star, Amy Everson, is at once underwritten and overconceptualized.
  54. Lila & Eve
    The main, and perhaps the only, reason to see the revenge thriller Lila and Eve, a shallow, cut-rate “Thelma and Louise,” is for the thunderous lead performance of Viola Davis.
  55. The Program
    The Program, much to its detriment, concentrates almost exclusively on the history of the doping effort.
  56. Any Body Can Dance 2
    For all the movie’s flashy pyrotechnics and pulverizing techno-ish musical numbers, gleaning an emotional pulse can be challenging.
  57. Big Significant Things
    Big Significant Things is a cute idea in search of substance.
  58. I Touched All Your Stuff
    The filmmakers pop their story’s bubble in a confusing finish, but it all ends up feeling like a mystery novel that simply never revealed the key clues.
  59. Partisan
    The screenwriters, Ariel Kleiman (who is also the director) and Sarah Cyngler, have cut their story loose from any real significance, leaving us with Gregori, who has no discernible political views and no unifying beliefs, even delusional ones.
  60. Paulo Coelho's Best Story
    The title of this biopic, Paulo Coelho’s Best Story, is apt: His own life might well be his greatest work. A pity, then, that the film, directed by Daniel Augusto, doesn’t chronicle his evolution better, leapfrogging among decades instead.
  61. Stonewall
    The feisty, lovelorn Ray is far and away the strongest, most complex character, and Mr. Beauchamp gives him his due, even though too many of his speeches sound like a mix of biographical filler and boilerplate sloganeering.
  62. One & Two
    The film tries, unsuccessfully, to walk the same eerie, atmospheric trail as “The Village” by M. Night Shyamalan, or any number of Stephen King works.
  63. Air
    Juicy dilemmas are dangled in front of the audience, then disappointingly yanked away.
  64. The Perfect Guy
    Michael Ealy has a very ominous stare and Sanaa Lathan sells her inconsistent character pretty well, but The Perfect Guy is still just a boilerplate stalker story that proceeds more or less as you suspect it will.
  65. Hellions
    A jumbled third act and an indifferent ending ultimately make Hellions disappointing. But there’s a bit of fun to be had in its opening frights, and in trying to figure out what these costumed little monsters really want.
  66. Big Sky
    The film rests on the attractive but opaque Ms. Thorne, who is not ready for such weight. Commendably, she stretches her acting muscles, but Hazel’s internal struggle remains elusive. Viewers need more to connect with.
  67. Tango Negro: The African Roots of Tango
    Theories that are worth voicing are apparently worth repeating, and beats that sound catchy are sure to be replayed many times.
  68. Ashby
    Ashby is a movie divided against itself. It’s a comedy afraid of being too funny lest its macho sentimentality seem even more ridiculous than it is, and a drama afraid of appearing too serious lest you dismiss it as hogwash.
  69. Love the Coopers
    The film is occasionally amusing but rarely feels genuine.
  70. Listening
    [A] strained, overheated thriller.
  71. Jack Reacher: Never Go Back
    Jack Reacher: Never Go Back is the second movie that Tom Cruise has starred in as this title character. Let’s hope it’s the last.
  72. I Saw the Light
    Part of what defeats Mr. Abraham and may help explain why Mr. Hiddleston’s performance, however appealing, never gets below the surface, is that Williams is one of those artists whose eloquence is expressed through his work.
  73. Hardcore Henry
    Its dour eccentricity gives Hardcore Henry a potency above and beyond that of standard-issue show-off action fare. That doesn’t mean it’s not still obnoxious, though.
  74. A Christmas Horror Story
    Unsparingly gory and on occasion actually shock-inducing, it can’t help falling prey to Genre Overreach syndrome, in which horror fans turned horror creators maniacally pile up their favorite terrorizing tropes, as if they’d never get the chance again.
  75. Olvidados (Forgotten)
    While it would be a tall order to fully elucidate this complicated history in two hours, Olvidados is hamstrung by Mr. Bolado’s lack of focused direction and a convoluted plot.
  76. Sleepless in New York
    There’s something woebegone about the film itself as it staggers along, ever in danger of tipping into the abyss inhabited by one of its subjects.
  77. #Horror
    The audience, given not an ounce of human warmth nor one person to care about, finally has no choice but to cheer for the anonymous cyberbully who wants them all dead.
  78. Short Skin
    The film opts for a somber if gentle tone that, given the story, is equally ill suited.
  79. A Faster Horse
    The tidbits we learn are wrapped in an unabashedly promotional tone that overestimates the global emotional attachment to this car’s muscular mythos. It’s difficult to believe that this tribute comes from the director who showed such delicacy in his appreciation of Jiro Ono’s art.
  80. Expend4bles
    This all-star mercenary squadron composed of ’80s-to-aughts brutes is the cinematic equivalent to Slash’s Snakepit, a supergroup throwback to an era when men were meatheads and we in the audience merrily cheered them on.
  81. Lost in the Sun
    The movie briefly picks up some warmth when John and Louis encounter a mother and daughter (Lynn Collins and Emma Fuhrmann) who are also in the midst of some self-discovery, but the movie seems unwilling to linger too long on it for fear of becoming rewarding.
  82. Homemakers
    The movie is thin on true narrative, preferring to study Irene without shedding quite enough light on her background or tracking her development.
  83. The World of Kanako
    Mr. Nakashima, it must be said, does have a knack for composition. But the torrential, if glossy, violence — he adores juxtaposing innocuous pop ditties with gruesome set pieces — grows tiresome.
  84. The Royal Road
    Ms. Olson’s images are often captivating, but too often undercut by the aforementioned aspiring-to-the-dialectical voice-over, which is awkwardly written, and delivered with a lack of affect that grows tedious over the course of an hour.
  85. American Hero
    American Hero starts off seeming as if it is going to be a fresh take on superheroes, but Nick Love, who wrote and directed, turns out to have nowhere to go with his intriguing premise.
  86. Funny Bunny
    Ms. Bagnall’s baffling story about a trio of oddball outsiders is stricken with a galloping case of romantic whimsy and falls short of its serio-comic aspirations.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Le Mans
    Dramatically, the picture is a bore. And neither the oblique approach to these time-out sequences nor a ripe score by Michel Legrand manages to juice things up.
  88. Mr. Six
    The baggy 137-minute story drowns out Mr. Feng’s assorted sharp moments with hoary family drama and clumsy plotting, and Li Yifeng is generic as Mr. Six’s son.
  89. Body
    Body eventually goes for ["Very Bad Thing"'s] brand of cheap irony in a less blackly comedic register, and unfortunately achieves it.
  90. Fifty Shades of Black
    As with other staples of the screen-parody genre, the comic bull’s-eyes arrive only intermittently.
  91. Rocky IV
    The comforting sameness of all the ''Rockys'' and the overbearing star quality of Mr. Stallone in his lovable-lug incarnation may well make Rocky IV another hit. But when it flashes back to its antecedents, particularly to the original ''Rocky'' with its bashful heroine and self-effacing star, it becomes clear how bloated and hollow the story has become.
  92. Outlaws and Angels
    The sensibility is more grindhouse gore than spaghetti western, perhaps hoping to mine the same vein as Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight,” but lacking Mr. Tarantino’s lively dialogue and wicked sense of humor.
  93. Mojin: The Lost Legend
    What starts eerie becomes strictly cartoonish.
  94. The Genital Warriors
    The movie touches on some worthy topics — sex, age, ego, desire, reason, insanity, death — but never focuses long on any of them: Some bits are amusing, most are simply tedious.
  95. 31
    Awash in blood and revoltingly misogynistic dialogue, this latest redneck ruckus (his seventh feature) is a grindhouse slog of unrelenting bad taste.
  96. Forsaken
    A starry father-son pairing is largely squandered in Forsaken, an old-school western that is a little too old school for its own good.
  97. All Mistakes Buried
    Mr. Trammell’s drug-induced stammers and tics don’t by themselves add up to a compelling portrayal, nor is this drama of the down and out at all gripping.
  98. Mountain Men
    Catherine Lutes’s camera catches magnificent views of Revelstoke, British Columbia, that are worth watching as you wait 18 minutes for the next semi-interesting scene.
  99. Kate Plays Christine
    The film’s method of circling around its subject, then closing in at the end, feels coy and withholding, as if Mr. Greene reserved the few juiciest moments for last.
  100. Creative Control
    Concocted with heaps of style but only a smattering of substance, Benjamin Dickinson’s sophomore feature, Creative Control, is as brittle and unwelcoming as its characters’ surroundings.
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