The New York Times' Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. Ain't in It for My Health: A Film About Levon Helm
    Less an archival clip job than a late-night jam session, it is informal and inviting.
  2. Deceptive Practices: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay
    Unsurprisingly, Mr. Jay proves a hugely entertaining guide, and as generous about his professional inspirations as he is reticent about his own life.
  3. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
    There are no signs of waning energy here, not even in an Enterprise crew that looks ever more ready for intergalactic rocking chairs. The principals' enthusiasm for their material has never seemed to fade. If anything, that enthusiasm grows more appealingly nutty with time.
  4. The Attack
    Mr. Doueiri creates characters, emotional colors and political contradictions that have the agonized sting and breathe of life.
  5. Disneynature: Wings of Life
    Wings of Life is almost so lovely that you suspect it’s as computer-generated as “Life of Pi.” But it’s reality captured, through time-lapse and high-speed techniques: if not the most exciting moviegoing, it’s praiseworthy.
  6. Don Jon
    [A] deceptively sincere movie about masculinity and its discontents that Mr. Gordon-Levitt, making a fine feature directing debut, shapes into a story about a young man's moral education.
  7. Prince Avalanche
    Mr. Green is too fond of these guys, and too respectful of the little bit of freedom they possess, to ensnare them in the machinery of a plot.
  8. Herman's House
    Although this documentary has a powerful political subtext, it is best described as a conceptual art piece about confinement, attached to a dual biography of the artist and the prisoner.
  9. Dead Man's Burden
    The film’s small group of primary characters slips from joy to fury to murderous suspicion with faultless fluidity.
  10. Trash Dance
    A warm thank you to those whose work is mostly invisible and entirely necessary.
  11. 22 Jump Street
    More is more and is, at times, just right in 22 Jump Street, an exploding piñata of gags, pratfalls, winking asides, throwaway one-liners and self-reflexive waggery.
  12. Out of the Furnace
    It’s a heavy, solemn tale of blood ties that turns into a melodramatic gusher filled with abstractions about masculinity, America and violence, but brought to specific, exciting life by Christian Bale, Casey Affleck and Woody Harrelson.
  13. You Will Be My Son
    [A] beautifully acted movie.
  14. Big Hero 6
    Big Hero 6 is good enough to transcend its blah ending and to make the case that every superhero story should be entirely animated.
  15. 33 Postcards
    [A] sweet if not very credible film.
  16. Doin' It in the Park: Pick-Up Basketball, NYC
    Paced by Eddie Palmieri’s up-tempo, percussive score, “Doin’ It” bounces like a crossover dribble, gliding swiftly and surely through interviews, videos and history lessons, then transitioning to today’s dedicated ballers and playground culture.
  17. A Band Called Death
    A Band Called Death is more concerned with bringing out the personal connections behind their driven music than with insisting upon the group’s distinction in the perennial music history search for oddities and firsts.
  18. Plimpton! Starring George Plimpton as Himself
    A skilled portrait of a literary light shadowed by his public profile. The film, written and directed by Tom Bean and Luke Poling, tacitly suggests a reconsideration of its subject, who deserves it.
  19. The Congress
    Ari Folman’s genre mash-up The Congress could use a freakier title, something either more appealing or appalling to go with the weird, sometimes wonderful visions flowing through it.
  20. Seduced and Abandoned
    Seduced and Abandoned may be the year’s most entertaining put-on.
  21. The Past
    The story is nearly obscured by its schematic design (everyone doesn’t just have his or her reasons; he or she is also guilty), but there are mysteries, surprises and complexities, notably in the representation of the children and in Ms. Bejo’s thorny, layered performance with its strata of neediness, resentment and hope.
  22. Venus in Fur
    What is beyond dispute is the sheer exuberant virtuosity Ms. Seigner and Mr. Amalric bring to the material.
  23. Student
    It’s the no-nonsense filmmaking, seamlessly integrating even dreams and visions, that keeps us fixed on the bold line of the student’s trajectory, all the way through to a transcendent ending.
  24. La Promesse (The Promise)
    The integrity of the film, whose directorial team has collaborated on numerous Belgian documentaries, extends to its sad final moments, in which nothing is left neat and tidy.
  25. High Hopes
    High Hopes manages to be enjoyably whimsical without ever losing its cutting edge.
  26. Naked
    Naked is as corrosive and sometimes as funny as anything Mr. Leigh has done to date. It's loaded with wild flights of absurd rhetoric and encounters with characters so eccentric that they seem to have come directly from life. Nobody would dare imagine them.
  27. Following
    The usual elements of scheming and deception are well represented here, but they are made all the knottier by shifting time frames.
  28. The Gardener
    An intimate, discursive inquiry into religious belief that opens to include questions about cinema.
  29. Aliyah
    This smart, sober movie makes you feel the full weight of the challenges he faces.
  30. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
    Mr. Burton, whose artistry is at times most evident in its filigree, can be a great collector when given the right box to fill, as is the case here. He revels in the story’s icky, freaky stuff; he’s right at home, which may be why he seems liberated by its labyrinthine turns and why you don’t care if you get a little lost in them.
  31. Homegoings
    Ms. Turner captures the intimacy of solemn, heartfelt moments, and salutes a man who honors their value.
  32. Magic Camp
    The enchantment is irresistible in Judd Ehrlich’s documentary Magic Camp, a spry and revealing examination of Tannen’s Magic Camp.
  33. Les Coquillettes
    While it may not always be satisfying to attend these soirees, when presented with the talents for repetition and juxtaposition of precise details demonstrated by Ms. Letourneur and Ms. Adler, these social customs are fascinating to observe from afar.
  34. Pusher II: With Blood On My Hands
    Where "Pusher" worked fresh texture and authenticity into a classic noir template, Pusher II reaches toward the mode of hyperrealist allegory perfected by the Dardenne brothers.
  35. Drug War
    The brilliant, unsettling action scenes — ugly, savage, dehumanizing — speak volumes.
  36. After Tiller
    After Tiller is impressive because it honestly presents the views of supporters of legal abortion, and is thus a valuable contribution to a public argument that is unlikely to end anytime soon.
  37. A.K.A. Doc Pomus
    This static documentary portrait relies on the usual panning over photos and tag-team interviews, but the format, like the radio length of a song, doesn’t get in the way of its subject’s heart.
  38. The Good Son: The Life of Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini
    Jesse James Miller’s moving documentary “The Good Son” is like a brisk novel with a bigger-than-life protagonist.
  39. Wadjda
    With impressive agility, Wadjda finds room to maneuver between harsh realism and a more hopeful kind of storytelling.
  40. +1
    The movie’s boldness and horrifying logic get under your skin.
  41. Tokyo Waka: A City Poem
    The film is a short, nimble consideration of the collision between the wildness of nature and the orderly bustle of modern urban life. It is also an essay on ornithology, Japanese culture and the challenges of pest control.
  42. First Cousin Once Removed
    Mr. Berliner’s film bravely brings us to the edge of language and experience.
  43. Running Wild: The Life of Dayton O. Hyde
    The burning question is why Mr. Hyde’s story has never been made into a feature film. You’ve got big sky, a crazy but magnetically confident old coot, a noble but seemingly hopeless quest and a triumphant ending.
  44. The Summit
    The film over all is a pulse-pounding success.
  45. The Wind Rises
    Mr. Miyazaki renders Jiro’s life and dreams with lyrical elegance and aching poignancy.
  46. The Invisible Woman
    You may become impatient with the leisurely pace of The Invisible Woman and its occasional narrative vagueness, but its open spaces leave room for some of the strongest acting of any contemporary film.
  47. Joe
    Mr. Cage gives his most committed performance in years as this divided soul, but it still looks like acting when compared with Mr. Poulter’s embodiment of pure evil.
  48. Child of God
    What Mr. Franco does have is Mr. Haze, whose mesmerizing performance gives the movie its ballast and its fitful, nervous energy.
  49. Locke
    Mr. Knight keeps a fairly steady distance from Ivan — underscoring certain tense passages with tighter close-ups — but moment by moment, with a twitch, a shudder, a look, it’s Mr. Hardy who movingly draws you in, turning a stranger’s face into a life.
  50. Big Sur
    Filmed without a trace of sentimentality, Big Sur is an achingly sad last hurrah.
  51. On the Job
    Even at its most incomprehensible, the propulsive thriller On the Job is never less than arresting.
  52. Dislecksia: The Movie
    The film’s primary mission is to destigmatize dyslexia, and it achieves that admirably, presenting technical material with a light touch and compassion.
  53. Le Week-End
    Don’t be fooled by Mr. Broadbent’s genial sarcasm, Ms. Duncan’s warm smile or the literary felicities of Mr. Kureishi’s script. This is not a movie about the gentle aging of lovable codgers.
  54. Babygirl
    Predictable musical montages fail to deflate an exceptionally subtle script (by Mr. Vallely) and Ms. Ynoa’s astonishingly mature, hard-to-pin-down performance.
  55. Cooper and Hemingway: The True Gen
    In its allegiance to detail, the film is too long and perhaps overstates its case in claiming that later generations have lost an understanding of common courage, as depicted by these two artists. Their work endures, and so does what they stood for.
  56. God Loves Uganda
    A searing look at the role of American evangelical missionaries in the persecution of gay Africans, Roger Ross Williams’s God Loves Uganda approaches this intersection of faith and politics with some fairness and a good deal of outrage.
  57. Wilde Salomé
    Wilde Salomé is most fascinating as a portrait of a superstar actor who, for all his wealth and privilege, encounters unusual frustrations as he pursues genuine artistic ambitions.
  58. Gahan Wilson: Born Dead, Still Weird
    Gahan Wilson: Born Dead, Still Weird skillfully introduces this pleasant man with the demented visions and delves into how he got them.
  59. I Am Divine
    I Am Divine doesn’t dwell on Milstead’s growing pains. It is an aggressively upbeat show-business success story that focuses on his self-reinvention.
  60. The Pin
    Ms. Jaye uses sound, composition and careful patience to create a contemplative mood of memory, loss and magic. With limited resources and the power of storytelling, she has created a small film that feels mainstream and epic.
  61. At Middleton
    Yes, it’s full of droll humor, but it’s also a bittersweet portrait of two people, who, in the process of helping their children choose a college, confront the emptiness of their respective marriages.
  62. Hours
    Mr. Walker is convincing as a man battling grief, exhaustion and, occasionally, an intruding outside world where lawlessness has taken hold.
  63. Chinese Puzzle
    This warm-blooded paean to globalization is just enough in touch with reality to keep your eyes from rolling. For Chinese Puzzle genuinely likes people. It overlooks the faults and misbehavior of its eccentric characters to express a lighthearted optimism that doesn’t feel forced or manipulative. It is in love with life.
  64. Following the Ninth: In the Footsteps of Beethoven's Final Symphony
    All the film’s segments are smartly assembled and gracefully paced.
    • 99 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Intolerance
    For in spite of its utter incoherence, the questionable taste of some of its scenes and the cheap banalties into which it sometimes lapses Intolerance is an interesting and unusual picture. The stupendousness of its panoramas, the grouping and handling of its great masses of players, make it an impressive spectacle.
  66. Lion Ark
    Lion Ark, a spunky account of a perilous rescue mission, has a ragtag rhythm that befits the mercurial behavior of its hulking furry stars.
  67. Spy
    The busy, silly script allows Ms. McCarthy to be her own best sidekick, in effect an entire sketch-comedy troupe unto herself.
  68. Khumba
    A wondrous and slightly deranged story about oddballs embracing their differences.
  69. In Fear
    Economical in the extreme — but without appearing cash-poor — this tightly wound thriller proves that minimal resources can sometimes produce more than satisfying results.
  70. Insidious: Chapter 3
    Ms. Shaye gives Insidious more than sufficient reason for a Chapter 4.
  71. Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case
    Mr. Johnsen offers viewers the challenge and pleasure of an important artist’s company, and a chance to appreciate anew his wisdom, his wit and his bravery.
  72. Levitated Mass
    [A] sneakily compelling documentary.
  73. Blackhat
    Michael Mann’s thriller Blackhat, a story about the intersection of bodies and machines, is a spectacular work of unhinged moviemaking. By turns brutal and sentimental, lovely and lurid, as serious as the grave and blissfully preposterous, it combines a truckload of plot with many of the obsessions, tropes, sights and sounds that distinguish his other movies.
  74. Big Trouble in Little China
    What matters is the stunts and the spirit, and this latest set of exotic exploits of an indomitable hero (Kurt Russell) and a spunky heroine (Kim Cattrall) gives good value.
  75. Liv & Ingmar
    [A] small, likably sentimental film.
  76. What's in a Name?
    In their intensity, the actors’ incisive, impeccably coordinated performances are pitched slightly above normal conversation but not so much that “What’s in a Name?” shatters credibility.
  77. Let's Get Lost
    Chet Baker's face, and the extraordinary ways in which Bruce Weber has photographed it, encapsulate the story of Baker's life in a succession of ghostly, indelible images that are at once hauntingly beautiful and desperately sad.
  78. Raze
    If you can stand to watch this movie — a big if — there is food for thought here about the subjugation and exploitation of women, the limits of psychological and physical endurance, and more.
  79. Interior. Leather Bar.
    A sly conceptual coup d’art and a deeply sincere exploration of masculinity and its discontents, with a little hot sex thrown in.
  80. The Great Flood
    A striking experiment in music and moviemaking.
  81. Jodorowsky's Dune
    Cheerfully partial and unapologetically deferential to its subject’s operatic self-promotion, Jodorowsky’s Dune makes you wish that he had scraped together the final $5 million needed, we are told, to realize his dream.
  82. Lost River
    Lost River ponders people and places left behind in the name of progress. Slyly political, it observes the mortgage crisis through a warped looking glass. The cinematographer, Benoît Debie, finds a perverse beauty in the decline.
  83. Bethlehem
    Bethlehem is emphatically political, as perhaps any movie about warring Israelis and Palestinians must be. Yet its ideas are more complex than is suggested by either its schematic story or fast-moving genre elements.
  84. Date and Switch
    Like a fresh ripple in the near-stagnant high school movie pool, Chris Nelson’s Date and Switch balances formula with winning performers, genuine humor and a generosity of spirit that this genre too often lacks.
  85. The Homesman
    The Homesman is both a captivating western and a meticulous, devastating feminist critique of the genre.
  86. Song to Song
    There is...much to admire in Song to Song and much to argue with, including its ideas about pleasure and women. So go, fall into its embrace, resist its charms, argue. This may not be a film to love, but it is a film to see.
  87. A Most Wanted Man
    Mr. Hoffman’s performance is so finely etched — and the story so irresistible — that the film becomes, almost inescapably, something of a last testament.
  88. Rosewater
    Mr. Stewart’s interest in the material is obviously personal, but his movie transcends mere self-interest.
  89. Love & Air Sex
    Love & Air Sex has a spontaneity and cheeky attitude... along with spirited naturalistic performances that infuse the standard rom-com formula with a zany vitality.
  90. The Two Faces of January
    There’s a mystery here, some thrills and blood, but mostly there are beautiful people and the kind of human hunger that devours everything and everyone in sight.
  91. The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz
    Moving and maddening in almost equal measure, Brian Knappenberger’s The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz is a devastating meditation on what can happen when a prescient thinker challenges corporate interests and the power of the state.
  92. The Skeleton Twins
    The Skeleton Twins is a well-written and acted movie about contemporary life that doesn’t strain for melodrama and is largely devoid of weepy soap opera theatrics. A small, precise, character-driven vignette, it has no pretensions to make any kind of grand statement about The Way We Live Now.
  93. Frank
    Mr. Abrahamson’s main achievement, enabled by the sensitive and resourceful cast, is to find a tone that is funny without flippancy, sincere without turning to mush.
  94. Run & Jump
    Run & Jump is as real and messy as life itself.
  95. Cheap Thrills
    This is dark comedy indeed, and if viewed as such, it works deliciously.
  96. Aatsinki: The Story of Arctic Cowboys
    This challenging and mesmerizing documentary captures horror and joy with the same gorgeous dispassion.
  97. Land Ho!
    At times, Colin and Mitch’s trip to Iceland feels like a lark, for them and for the filmmakers. Yet there’s no denying the deepening effect of a movie in which two older men, with their creases and sags, white and thinning hair, inhabit so much screen time.
  98. Charlie Victor Romeo
    It is a curious hybrid of documentary and experimental theater. It is also one of the most terrifying movies I have ever seen.
  99. Obvious Child
    It’s both funny and serious without trying too hard to be either, and by trying above all to be honest.
  100. Jules and Jim
    To put it quickly and crisply, it is charming, exciting and sad.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »