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. Mariachi Gringo
    As the moving concluding scenes cement, Mariachi Gringo is right on pitch — and, happily, not simply as you’d expect.
  2. New World
    New World is both less bloody and more thoughtful than most of its genre, the shifting-alliances plot becoming more engrossing as it progresses.
  3. Come Out and Play
    Stripped down and edited for disequilibrium rather than clarity, “Play” is less interested in pandering to gorehounds than in highlighting our reluctance to view children as anything other than innocent.
  4. Married and Counting
    The services...lose a little drama after you’ve seen a couple of them. But they’re simple, worthy and sweet, much like the film that features them.
  5. Eden
    Enough films about human trafficking have been made in recent years that the outlines of Eden should be painfully familiar. But that familiarity doesn’t cushion this movie’s excruciating vision.
  6. The Wall
    The photography is often lovely, and Ms. Gedeck convincingly portrays a woman who as the ordeal stretches on month after month seems to be gradually losing her individuality and blending into the landscape.
  7. Detour
    At times the groan and scream of collapsing metal sounds so authentic you might mistake Jackson’s heavy breathing for your own.
  8. Rescue in the Philippines
    Ultimately, this compelling story will leave viewers wanting even more information about this mission and the daily lives of the émigrés in Manila.
  9. Riddick
    There’s one man alone, stranded on a seemingly desolate distant planet with only his wits, his fists and his voice-over. That voice-over is mercifully spare, the landscape atmospherically barren and the action nice and tight.
  10. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
    Leonard Nimoy, who directed this third installment, hasn't matched the playfulness and energy of ''Star Trek II,'' but he's way ahead of the first film, making up in earnestness what he lacks in style. That kind of conviction, while sometimes verging on undue self-importance, goes a long way toward making the material touching.
  11. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
    The technical minutiae, the solemn silliness and the preachy tone occasionally sounded here...are all essential to the Star Trek mystique. Whatever it is, it seems durable beyond anyone's wildest dreams. And Mr. Nimoy, by injecting some extra levity this time, has done a great deal to assure the series' longevity.
  12. Crystal Fairy & The Magical Cactus
    Sebastián Silva is extremely perceptive about body language, and the characters’ physical presences are as revealing as their words. The performances give you an almost uncomfortable sense of proximity.
  13. Paradise: Love
    A tour de force of meticulous cruelty, a comic melodrama that elicits laughter and empathy and then replaces those responses with squirming discomfort.
  14. Short Term 12
    Even as the gathering melodramatic storms threaten to swamp this pungent slice of life, Mr. Cretton manages to earn your tears honestly.
  15. Arcadia
    Ms. Silver’s ability to translate the liminal into cinematic terms, to catch those moments between innocence and knowing, childhood and adulthood, unforgiving and forgiving, makes her someone to watch.
  16. Slacker
    The members of Mr. Linklater's cast, most of whom are non-professionals, are so amazingly effective that it's hard to believe they didn't make up their own lunacies.
  17. Furious 7
    There will no doubt be better movies released in 2015, but Furious 7 is an early favorite to win the prize for most picture.
  18. The Patience Stone
    Mr. Rahimi opens up an entire world inside the couple’s modest house, filling its few rooms with enough air, sharp words and slow-boiling intrigue that the walls never feel as if they’re closing in on you.
  19. Bidder 70
    Wisely deciding to refrain from rapping our knuckles with greenhouse gas statistics and Al Gore-style pie charts, the filmmakers fashion a portrait of a conscience spurred to action by an unexpected opportunity.
  20. Passion
    Passion is often sleek and enjoyable, dispensing titillation, suspense and a few laughs without taking itself too seriously.
  21. Cockneys vs Zombies
    As subtle as its title, Cockneys vs. Zombies is mildly funny and easily likable.
  22. Fury
    Within this gore-spattered, superficially nihilistic carapace is an old-fashioned platoon picture, a sensitive and superbly acted tale of male bonding under duress.
  23. Wuss
    Mr. Liford (yet another emergent indie filmmaker from Texas) can clearly write a script, handle a camera and construct a mood. Wuss may be slight, but Mr. Liford’s sense of pitch is spot on.
  24. Nymphomaniac: Volume I
    You’re unlikely to turn away. The problem with aesthetic shocks is that their power can drain off and their original effects become harder to replicate, so we’ll just have to see what happens next.
  25. Deliver Us From Evil
    Scott Derrickson, the director, and his special-effects crew really deliver the creepy goods here, providing an apt climax for as taut and credible a movie involving demonic possession as you’re likely to see.
  26. The Painting (Le Tableau)
    This is a sweet adventure story for children. (Surely, American parents can deal with the bare breasts of one talking painting.) For adults it is short on narrative sophistication but visually a true objet d’art.
  27. Berberian Sound Studio
    It’s not unlike many of Mr. Strickland’s beloved Italian films, which could be superb exercises in cinematic style and atmosphere while remaining imperfect.
  28. This Is Martin Bonner
    It’s gratifying to see the care taken with his characters, though it would be no betrayal of them for Mr. Hartigan to flesh out their world and their lives further.
  29. More Than Honey
    A fascinating but rambling documentary.
  30. Storm Surfers 3D
    The vistas are spectacular, the waves fearsome, the filming often amazing.
  31. Israel: A Home Movie
    These mostly silent home movies often have the tug of nostalgia, especially those that show domestic life... But images can be slippery, showing something different from what their creators intended. Even as Mr. Lilti constructs a history...he seems to show its fissures.
  32. Lone Survivor
    It is a modest, competent, effective movie, concerned above all with doing the job of explaining how the job was done.
  33. Old Dog
    Raw and resolute, this unsettling fable feels driven by an anger that remains largely unexpressed.
  34. Aurangzeb
    The plot of Aurangzeb is inevitably too complicated, and the themes presented more interestingly than they are wrapped up. But for much of the nearly two-and-a-half-hour running time, it ably weaves Bollywood tropes...with contemporary outrage at the rules of the game.
  35. Like Father, Like Son
    Mr. Hirokazu never overly explains his stories through the dialogue, preferring to tease out their meaning visually.
  36. As I Lay Dying
    In rushing in where wise men might fear to tread, Mr. Franco has accomplished something serious and worthwhile. His As I Lay Dying is certainly ambitious, but it is also admirably modest.
  37. Jimmy P.
    This is a calm film about strong emotions, but it does find a reservoir of intensity in the two central performances, in particular Mr. Del Toro’s.
  38. The Selfish Giant
    Intent on showing that Arbor and Swifty live in a world of radically limited possibilities, barely sustained by their families and failed by the state, Ms. Barnard locks them into a narrative prison. Their fates seem predetermined less by their circumstances than by the iron will and limited imagination of their creator.
  39. The History of Future Folk
    It may not make much sense in a brief plot summary, but it makes perfect, daffy sense on the screen.
  40. Non-Stop
    Non-Stop doesn’t make any sense, but that’s expected, uninteresting and incidental to the pleasures of a slow-season Liam Neeson release as diverting as this one.
  41. Free Samples
    Free Samples is a modest but pleasant small-budget movie with two bits of laziness in the script, but one particularly sweet performance that makes up for them.
  42. Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me
    A deserved tribute that puts us inside the music, and the head space, of a great, lost band.
  43. The Prey
    It doesn’t aspire to art-house significance, just to white-knuckled entertainment.
  44. Wish You Were Here
    Wish You Were Here has a quaint, inviting period look - the year is 1951, the setting a British coastal village - and a cast that's well attuned to Mr. Leland's brand of cleverness.
  45. Career Girls
    There is the sense that Mr. Leigh, whose unusual collaborative method with actors is an essential facet of his writing and direction, is too willing to confuse tics with truth. Indeed, this time the actors' solipsism is more apparent.
  46. The Last of the Mohicans
    Drawing upon the novel with merciful selectivity, and adding such a contemporary flavor that the film's woodsmen often have a laid-back air, Michael Mann has directed a sultrier and more pointedly responsible version of this story.
  47. Vincent & Theo
    The enjoyment in Vincent and Theo comes more from the director's attention to art history than from his ability to interpret it anew.
  48. Alan Partridge
    The plot of Alan Partridge (also known as “Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa”) is designed not for coherence but to maximize the chances for Mr. Coogan to riff in character and to bring his alter ego to the very edge of either improbable likability or utter awfulness.
  49. The Secret Disco Revolution
    The Secret Disco Revolution, however limited, is one smart documentary. It’s so clever that it makes fun of itself.
  50. Spider-Man: Homecoming
    The Vulture is a mess of prickly contradictions, only some of which seem intentional. His criminality, rage and perhaps his madness have been stoked by class resentment and Mr. Keaton, with his white-hot menace and narrowing eyes, makes him a memorably angry man, not a caricature.
  51. Downloaded
    No one is as intriguing as the thoughtful, soft-spoken Mr. Fanning, a onetime idealist thwarted by the piracy label and the dated assumptions of a calcified communications infrastructure.
  52. Kuichisan
    At once loose and dense, Ms. Endo’s treatment wilts somewhat when drawn out to feature length, though it’s a nice place to visit.
  53. Dolphin Tale 2
    For the right age group, though, the film hits its marks: It’s wholesome, engaging and rife with impressive aquatic photography.
  54. Stargate
    Stargate is a clever adventure that should find its audience.
  55. Breathe In
    What distinguishes Breathe In from countless similar movies about marital discontent and disruption is the restraint with which the story is handled, the subtlety of its performances and its almost perverse refusal to turn into a prurient, heavy-breathing examination of adultery and its consequences.
  56. The Shine of Day
    The Shine of Day pulls itself together with an ending that feels a bit ready-made for drawing out the parallels between its kindred performers. But the movie gratifyingly observes the openness that seems the base line for Philipp and Walter, and the glimmer of realization in a stage actor about the void that may lurk among his many liberating roles.
  57. Exit Elena
    Using mostly amateur performers and improvised dialogue, Mr. Silver has created a profoundly awkward riff on dysfunction that’s uneventful but not unrewarding.
  58. The Stone Roses: Made of Stone
    By the time the long, throbbing concert finale begins, there is no doubt that Mr. Brown’s intensity has not faded over the years and that the Stone Roses’ breakup was a serious loss.
  59. Apparition (Aparisyon)
    Cool and cerebral, Apparition stubbornly resists our desire to connect with its troubled characters... Even so, the film’s sophistication creates space for us to ponder deeper, unanswered questions.
  60. Bhaag Milkha Bhaag
    Along the way the movie strikes its chosen couple of notes resoundingly, making clear what makes Singh run.
  61. Wasteland
    To borrow from a term for the gritty, working-class British dramas that this film also nods to, it’s a kitchen-sink caper.
  62. The Rooftop
    The Rooftop is frenzied, funny and knowing, drenched in lavish, often surreal, imagery.
  63. The ROMEOWS
    There’s nothing flashy about The Romeows the film or the Romeows the men, but what they’ve created — their life’s art — matters.
  64. Smash & Grab: The Story of the Pink Panthers
    Smash and Grab has a grating, repetitive score and can look a little homely on the big screen. But unlike many true-crime accounts, it cherry-picks its material successfully and preserves the conspiratorial sense that we’re learning the ins and outs of an illicit art.
  65. The Machine Which Makes Everything Disappear
    The film produces moments that catch in the throat.
  66. Belle
    The weave of the personal and the political finally proves as irresistible as it is moving, partly because it has been drawn from extraordinary life.
  67. Una Noche
    For all its flaws, the movie, filmed with nonprofessional actors, is steadily gripping.
  68. National Lampoon's Vacation
    National Lampoon's Vacation, which is more controlled than other Lampoon movies have been, is careful not to stray too far from its target. The result is a confident humor and throwaway style that helps sustain the laughs - of which there are quite a few.
  69. Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa
    It’s hard to score big laughs with hidden-camera material these days because there has been so much of it since the “Jackass” TV show, but Mr. Knoxville and his young sidekick still land a few jaw-droppers.
  70. The Inevitable Defeat of Mister and Pete
    [Mr.Tillman] does lovely work here, particularly with the actors, even if his insistent ebullience can feel like a sales pitch.
  71. Spark: A Burning Man Story
    Since we can’t all attend Burning Man, we can be thankful for “Spark,” which is probably the next best thing.
  72. Sparrows Dance
    Mr. Buschel, armed with an ear for diverting dialogue and actors who know how to sell it, somehow makes it all work.
  73. Fire in the Blood
    This virtuous stance is not unusual for issue-based documentaries, but a film with such illuminating content deserves a more artful vehicle for its moving message.
  74. Shuddh Desi Romance
    Ms. Kapoor, in her early 20s, gives a performance that seems to reinvent female confidence.
  75. Neighbors
    Neighbors is not a great film and does not really aspire to be. It is more a status report on mainstream American movie comedy, operating in a sweet spot between the friendly and the nasty, and not straining to be daring, obnoxious or even especially original. It knows how to have fun. How very grown-up.
  76. The United States of Autism
    Yes, the animated opening sequence has a professional polish that the rest of the film lacks, but the documentary’s chosen angle is meaningful: The world of autism is as diverse as the nation.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Seconds
    Its so called science is still fiction, and its lesson is all to apparent to the mature. Its tensions and terrors, however, are genuinely fascinating.
  78. Paradise: Faith
    Like it or not, Paradise: Faith sticks in your head. The fierce, indelible performance of Ms. Hofstätter, a regular in Mr. Seidl’s films, may make you cringe with revulsion, but it is utterly riveting.
  79. The Student
    Pitched somewhere between allegory and documentary, the film looks at its characters in a dispassionate, almost deadpan way. They’re something more than specimens under glass but something less than fully rounded people.
  80. Birth of the Living Dead
    Mr. Romero, manifesting a self-effacing demeanor and sensible humanity, is a most agreeable raconteur.
  81. Inequality for All
    Mr. Reich ties together his talking points with a reasonable-sounding analysis and an unassuming warmth sometimes absent from documentaries charting America’s economic woes.
  82. We the Parents
    Mr. Takata deserves praise for refusing to oversimplify the situation, although his film doesn’t always bring the conflict fully to life.
  83. Devil's Pass
    The film is ridiculous and laugh-out-loud funny, though it’s sometimes hard to tell if this is intentional or not. Either way, it remains riveting because of its effective tropes.
  84. Night Moves
    Some of the climactic turns seem to follow the kind of narrative rules that this film, and this filmmaker, have otherwise defied.
  85. The Idolmaker
    The Idolmaker is a modest, interesting, well-acted movie, more lively than it is exciting.
  86. Red Obsession
    Red Obsession, a little too stuffed for its nearly 80 minutes, may already be dated, since China’s wine fever has cooled recently. Still, the movie raises legitimate concerns about the cultural and economic implications of status-minded overconsumption.
  87. Tio Papi
    What lingers is the affectionate sense of family and place. Modest goals accomplished.
  88. I Am Breathing
    Mr. Platt’s good-humored attitude helps keep the potent material from turning mawkish, and having his perspective also wards off a sense of exploitive voyeurism.
  89. Sample This
    The real pleasure of this film lies in its recognition of session artists and in the oddities and mysteries within the evolution of any given item of pop culture.
  90. Out in the Dark
    Even though the plot defies credibility at several points, Out in the Dark is gripping.
  91. Hawking
    Mr. Hawking — no shy and retiring genius, he — has star quality that he lets shine, whatever the limitations of its packaging.
  92. Four
    The close-ups of faces convey reams of inchoate emotion and enhance the stumbling poetry mouthed by characters whose urge to connect conflicts with their innate sense of caution.
  93. Herb & Dorothy
    Interviews with artists whom they collected testify to their sharp eye and good spirits, while the Vogels themselves, sitting in their same old apartment, overflowing as ever, make for charming company.
  94. Naked As We Came
    A lovely small surprise of a film.
  95. Bad Words
    It would be something to see Mr. Bateman go authentically dark (perhaps not that dark), but it’s also enough just to watch him as he widens his eyes, furrows his brow and shows off his excellent timing.
  96. Enemy
    Much of the fun in Enemy, which is tightly constructed and expertly shot, lies in Mr. Gyllenhaal’s playful and subtle performances.
  97. Stranger by the Lake
    Stranger by the Lake is seductive and fascinating, but it is also a bit trapped in its own conceit, and in its carefully maintained emotional detachment.
  98. Life of Crime
    As a late-summer caper movie, it hits the spot. The film offers the intriguing contrast of actors and a director (Daniel Schechter) taking a different approach to known material.
  99. Abuse of Weakness
    It is hard to imagine that any other actress could muster the stubborn ferocity that Isabelle Huppert brings to the role of Maud.
  100. The Armstrong Lie
    More glaringly than most sports documentaries, The Armstrong Lie reinforces the sad truth that the adage “It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game” doesn’t apply to professional sports. Maybe it never did. Winning is everything.
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