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. Deadpool
    It’s no surprise that the teams hired to bring a property like Deadpool to the screen know how to keep the machine oiled and humming; it’s the ones who somehow manage to temporarily stick a wrench in the works, adding something human — a feeling instead of another quip — who are worth your attention.
  2. Regression
    The movie is ultimately a tepid and frustrating experience.
  3. Fort Buchanan
    If, at barely more than an hour, the movie initially seems slight, its inconsequentiality might be better viewed as polemical.
  4. The Pack
    A dreary Australian movie, directed by Nick Robertson, that has more dogs than “Cujo” but noticeably less plot.
  5. Tumbledown
    We’re meant to warm to Hannah and Andrew as they wear each other down with good-natured ribbing. But Ms. Hall and Mr. Sudeikis hardly warm up themselves, showing little chemistry and looking unsure how to play the film’s tone, or the would-be zingers.
  6. Southbound
    These are fragments more than complete stories, and the incompleteness is its own kind of creepiness.
  7. The Club
    There is power in this vision, but it can also feel forced, almost mechanical.
  8. Misconduct
    This clumsy, poorly written action thriller is such a complete catastrophe that you wonder how actors with the stature of Mr. Hopkins and Mr. Pacino were bamboozled into appearing in it.
  9. Eisenstein in Guanajuato
    Beyond the arty trappings and flamboyant showmanship that are typical of Mr. Greenaway, 73, Eisenstein in Guanajuato is a brazen provocation.
  10. 4th Man Out
    The director, Andrew Nackman, in making a super-mainstream film, leans so far toward the feel-good end of the spectrum that he forgoes the opportunity to make something that is more real, more fraught, more complex.
  11. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
    The story’s lone joke and its grinding literalness grow dull.
  12. The Choice
    Directed by Ross Katz and filmed like an ad for erectile-dysfunction medication, The Choice is almost repellently synthetic.
  13. Hail, Caesar!
    It’s a typically sly, off-center comedy, once again set against the machinery of the motion-picture business. And, as usual with the Coens, it has more going on than there might seem, including in its wrangling over God and ideology, art and entertainment.
  14. Rams
    Despite its affection for the quirks of its characters and their milieu, the film is most memorable for its gravity, for the almost tragic nobility it finds in sad and silly circumstances.
  15. Saala Khadoos
    Ms. Kongara seems to know the clichés of fighter movies and is mostly unembarrassed to embrace them. That keeps the film humming along, as does Mr. Madhavan, who grows in stature along with Adi.
  16. Fifty Shades of Black
    As with other staples of the screen-parody genre, the comic bull’s-eyes arrive only intermittently.
  17. Jane Got a Gun
    Whatever feminist angle the film might have once aspired to is lost in its listless shuffle.
  18. Requiem for the American Dream
    [A] well-paced and cogent seminar.
  19. JeruZalem
    The more desperate the characters’ flight becomes, the less interesting the movie grows. It does end with a witty flourish, though — one that makes good use of those glasses.
  20. 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.
  21. Lazer Team
    Lazer Team ends by setting itself up for a sequel, but that’s mighty wishful thinking. There’s not a big demand for laugh-free comedies.
  22. Rabin, the Last Day
    Rabin, the Last Day is not interesting in spite of its flaws as a film. It’s interesting because of them, because of Mr. Gitai’s refusal or inability to clarify or even coherently narrate the history he addresses.
  23. Kung Fu Panda 3
    Lots of comedic fight scenes break up the story’s more somber stretches, and the animation, especially in 3-D, is simply gorgeous.
  24. The Finest Hours
    The Finest Hours is a moderately gripping whoosh of nostalgia that shamelessly recycles the ’50s cliché of the squeaky-clean all-American hero.
  25. Exposed
    In certain mutilated pictures, you can detect the lineaments of greatness: Consider Orson Welles’s “The Magnificent Ambersons.” Here, that’s not the case.
  26. Dirty Grandpa
    The screenplay, by John M. Phillips, is the written equivalent of a toddler discovering curse words. Yet some riffs draw chuckles.
  27. The Boy
    It still has enough scary moments to satisfy horror fans, but you’re left wondering whether it might have been more disturbing had it stayed on its original path.
  28. Synchronicity
    The combustible Mr. Ironside vaulted into movie immortality as the antagonist in “Scanners,” David Cronenberg’s down-and-dirty, exploding-head anti-classic. Synchronicity, a low-budget misfire about time and love, could use some exploding heads, dialogue and ideas.
  29. Rabid Dogs
    If you can endure the messy slaughter, with a body count in double digits, the plot is not without its rewards.
  30. Naz & Maalik
    Despite its deficiencies, Naz & Maalik feels authentic, and Mr. Johnson and Mr. Cook bring their characters completely alive.
  31. Monster Hunt
    Some of this recalls Stephen Chow’s “Journey to the West,” minus the brilliance.
  32. Mojave
    Does it add up? Not really, but it passes the time nicely, working best when Mr. Monahan keeps it vague and off-kilter as his characters roam among the Hollywood ghosts.
  33. 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.
  34. Ip Man 3
    Despite Mr. Yen’s impressive physical virtuosity, his stoic, often humorless presence tends to neutralize the emotional temperature.
  35. The 5th Wave
    It’s depressing to see Ms. Moretz — so spirited in “Clouds of Sils Maria” and the “Kick-Ass” movies — reduced to constant mooning at Mr. Roe.
  36. Prescription Thugs
    Even before a “do as I say, not as I do” twist costs it all credibility, Prescription Thugs is a not very good documentary about a very important subject.
  37. Martyrs
    Shatteringly stupid and repulsively misogynistic, Martyrs mashes revenge, torture and the supernatural into one solid, quasi-religious lump.
  38. Aferim!
    Shot in richly toned, wide-screen black and white, Aferim! looks like an elegant exercise in period playacting. But it casts a fierce, revisionist eye on the past, finding the cruelty and prejudice that lie beneath the pageantry.
  39. Bleak Street
    The film’s enigmas are atmospheric, and somewhat superficial. It solicits the audience’s morbid curiosity rather than gripping our emotions or haunting our dreams. It’s a creepy and beguiling oddity, willfully weird but, at the same time, not quite weird enough.
  40. A Perfect Day
    A serviceable, watchable movie.
  41. Moonwalkers
    Though Mr. Grint and Mr. Perlman both come off credibly, the movie is practically laugh-free.
  42. Intruders
    Ms. Riesgraf, who at times recalls the young Teri Garr, is gutsy and committed, but not even Meryl Streep could make this hokum credible.
  43. 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.
  44. Norm of the North
    Its plotline, involving Norm’s trek to New York to foil a condos-in-the-Arctic scheme, is inane even by the standards of animated funny animal comedy. Its gag set pieces run the gamut from uninspired to incoherent.
  45. In the Shadow of Women
    Mr. Garrel is always worth attending to when he takes up the rhythms and paradoxes of love, and even though this is a minor entry in his canon of melancholy romances, it is brief, brisk and intermittently affecting.
  46. Ride Along 2
    This franchise is lucky to have Kevin Hart in that role, and his manic comic energy is enough to make the sequel something other than a complete waste of time. But the genre is also stubbornly innovation-proof, and there’s not much new to see here.
  47. Band of Robbers
    This comic take on “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” is infused with a gleefully absurdist sense of humor while retaining a childlike sense of wonder.
  48. 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi
    The movie is a pummeling slog — 45 minutes of setup and an eternity of relentless combat.
  49. Unlucky Plaza
    The multicultural milieu lends an initial boost as Mr. Kwek’s jokes and plot entanglements take potshots at life in Singapore, but all the air seeps out of this attempt at zippy, tabloid-nutty storytelling.
  50. Henry Gamble's Birthday Party
    Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party feels sincere but not accomplished, empathetic but not deep.
  51. Troublemakers: The Story of Land Art
    The film’s generous views of spectacular works like Smithson’s monumental “Spiral Jetty” (the work projects into the Great Salt Lake in Utah) and Mr. Heizer’s “Double Negative” in Nevada (a huge trench bisected by a canyon) are best seen on the largest screen available.
  52. Sweaty Betty
    Defiantly amateurish yet never less than engaging, “Sweaty Betty” is a true oddity.
  53. The Forest
    A decently executed creeper built around a convincing performance by Natalie Dormer.
  54. Lamb
    Mr. Partridge never figures out how to complicate his version and its voices, or maybe doesn’t want to. He softens Lamb and Tommie with tears, safe hugs and averted looks and, once they land in the countryside, mires them in sentimentality.
  55. Anesthesia
    Lacking epic pretensions and modest in scale, running under 90 minutes, Anesthesia is really closer in spirit to Rodrigo García’s delicate 2005 gem, “Nine Lives.” And it doesn’t waste a word or an image.
  56. The Treasure
    The final shot, accompanied by an improbable but perfect musical cue, is an astonishing cinematic gesture, an appalling, hilarious statement about modern values, the state of the world, human nature and everything else. This is a movie that lives up to its name.
  57. Other People's Children
    Other People’s Children desperately wants to take a deep dive into a young woman’s pain and the solace of artistic expression. For that to happen, though, would require much better actors and a much smarter script.
  58. TransFatty Lives
    Refreshingly unpredictable but also frustrating.
  59. The Himalayas
    It finds a few moments of sweep and suspense in between grand speeches and reprises of a swollen score.
  60. Only Yesterday (1991)
    Mr. Takahata’s psychologically acute film, which was based on a manga, seems to grow in impact, too, as the adult Takao comes to a richer understanding of what she wants and how she wants to live.
  61. Yosemite
    Ms. Demeestere’s direction winds up frustratingly splitting the difference between thoughtfully detached and just plain vague.
  62. Anomalisa
    Mr. Kaufman’s gift for quotidian horror remains startling; he’s a whiz at minor miseries.
  63. Point Break
    Nowhere does Mr. Core’s film approach the action-movie chops or psychological smarts of Ms. Bigelow’s original or, truth be told, benefit from actors displaying the same charm as her stars. But for a number of liberating airborne seconds, none of that may matter.
  64. 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.
  65. Daddy's Home
    Daddy’s Home is an ugly psychological cockfight posing as a family-friendly comedy. Laugh-free — except for some farcical, life-threatening stunts at the expense of Will Ferrell’s character, Brad — it is best avoided unless a movie that has the attitude and mind-set of a schoolyard bully happens to be your thing.
  66. Concussion
    While Concussion has some fine things going for it, notably science and Will Smith, it lacks the exciting, committed filmmaking that rises to the level of its outrageous topic.
  67. Joy
    The movie, in all its mess and glory, belongs almost entirely to Ms. Lawrence. She is the kind of movie star who turns everyone else into a character actor. This is not a complaint but an acknowledgment of both her charisma and her generosity.
  68. The Revenant
    Mr. Iñárritu isn’t content to merely seduce you with ecstatic beauty and annihilating terror; he wants to blow your mind, to amp up your art-house experience with blockbusterlike awesomeness.
  69. The Hateful Eight
    Maybe I’m repeating myself: The Hateful Eight is a Quentin Tarantino movie. But Mr. Tarantino is also repeating himself, spinning his wheels here in a way he has rarely done before. None of his other films venture so far into tedium or manage to get in their own way so frequently.
  70. Where to Invade Next
    Where to Invade Next is a sprawling, didactic polemic wittily disguised as a European travelogue.
  71. 45 Years
    [A] sensitive and devastating portrait of a long, happy marriage in sudden crisis.
  72. Bajirao Mastani
    There’s plenty of story here, but Bajirao Mastani has more visual pop than narrative traction.
  73. 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.
  74. Mojin: The Lost Legend
    What starts eerie becomes strictly cartoonish.
  75. Those Who Feel the Fire Burning
    The immersive style is always fascinating. But it also seems uneasily suited to the material.
  76. Noma: My Perfect Storm
    Less a documentary than a glittering souvenir, but it’s still a record of a legend.
  77. He Never Died
    The humor in Mr. Krawczyk’s script is deliciously subtle, as it has to be when your lead character is a man of few words; a viewer might easily spend the first half of the movie not even realizing it’s there.
  78. Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip
    The film delivers the standard upbeat message about family, along with one particularly outstanding and incongruous cameo that — sorry — won’t be spoiled here.
  79. Son of Saul
    Mr. Nemes orchestrates a tour de force of suspense, a swift symphony of collisions, coincidences and reversals that is almost unbearably exciting. His skill is undeniable, but also troubling. The movie offers less insight than sensation, an emotional experience that sits too comfortably within the norms of entertainment. This is not entirely the director’s fault. The Holocaust, once forbidden territory, is now safe and familiar ground.
  80. Sisters
    Sisters is both too careful and too sloppy to take full advantage of the thornier implications of its premise. It’s too awkward — because scenes drag when they should swing and jokes sag when they should pop — and not awkward enough.
  81. The Creation of Meaning
    Cutaways to nature’s splendor abound: Mists enfold the mountain; Mr. Casanova mesmerizingly holds one cross-fade from these clouds.
  82. The Winding Stream
    Rhythmically blending vintage recordings and live performances, The Winding Stream exudes a quirky warmth that counters its PBS-pledge-drive aura.
  83. The Emperor's New Clothes
    The Emperor’s New Clothes is moderately effective agitprop.
  84. Dreams Rewired
    Dreams Rewired is mostly content to entertain. Its explanations of how new inventions work are simplified to the point of superficiality.
  85. Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens
    Mr. Abrams may be as worshipful as any Star Wars obsessive, but in The Force Awakens he’s made a movie that goes for old-fashioned escapism even as it presents a futuristic vision of a pluralistic world that his audience already lives in. He hasn’t made a film only for true believers; he has made a film for everyone (well, almost).
  86. Sunday Ball
    Captured more for poetry than for clarity, the topography of penalties and free kicks can be impossible to follow. But Léo Bittencourt’s photography has flash and flair, and hardscrabble determination on a real-life field of dreams has a narrative all its own.
  87. The Tainted Veil
    The subject matter makes The Tainted Veil much more visually interesting than many issue-oriented documentaries, though the thriller-like score goes too far in trying to counter dryness.
  88. Dixieland
    This is well-worn territory, and though the two leads are very good, the romance that is supposed to drive the story isn’t particularly well delineated.
  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. 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.
  91. Don Verdean
    Its intentions are, to some degree, corrective: It mocks some of the popular corruptions of faith so as to invite the audience to reflect upon what real faith might be.
  92. The Girl in the Book
    Given [Ms. Cohn] confident hand behind the camera and gift for rich female characters, you hope to see more portraits from her in the future.
  93. In the Heart of the Sea
    As the movie lurches along by fits and starts, toggling between the little Nantucket room and the great watery world, it becomes apparent that the filmmakers have no idea how to reconcile not just two parallel stories but also the past and our contemporary age.
  94. The Big Short
    A true crime story and a madcap comedy, a heist movie and a scalding polemic, The Big Short will affirm your deepest cynicism about Wall Street while simultaneously restoring your faith in Hollywood.
  95. Boy and the World
    It’s both the best children’s animated film this year since “Inside Out” — you might call it “Outside In” — and, unexpectedly, a more stirring depiction of the deadening modern megalopolis than most heal-the-world documentaries.
  96. Stinking Heaven
    The brisk clip and dashes of dark humor ward off actual despair, but the length poses challenges for some of the heavy lifting of character growth.
  97. Almost There
    This first feature from Dan Rybicky and Aaron Wickenden demonstrates that these documentary filmmakers might do well to think more like journalists sometimes.
  98. Night Owls
    The performances are so crackling that you can imagine Ms. Salazar and Mr. Pally, given richer material, becoming a slapstick comedy team: the spitfire and the nerd.
  99. River of Fundament
    River of Fundament is often a commanding, engaging and certainly challenging experience. Nevertheless, by the end of the piece I felt deliberately alienated, and to a nearly infuriating degree.
  100. The Messenger
    Overall, the arguments are persuasive, the message from the birds powerful, and the film a rich and satisfying call to action that is presented with some novel ideas for how to restore the ecological balance.
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