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. Dark Touch
    That space between reality and mirage is where Ms. de Van’s strength, and this movie’s true horror, lies.
  2. Hôtel Normandy
    Hôtel Normandy is a confection spun differently from the typical Hollywood rom-com.
  3. The Paw Project
    A heartfelt documentary about a subject that inflames cat lovers everywhere: declawing.
  4. Winter Nomads
    What little we learn of Pascal, who has worked in Switzerland as a shepherd for more than 30 years, and Carole, who is a former dietitian, fits in a scene or two, but their practical journey yields a certain contemplative equanimity.
  5. The Spy: Undercover Operation
    It’s amusing, and a refreshing change from the usual C.G.I.-heavy blockbusters.
  6. We Came Home
    Ariana Delawari documents her father’s role in helping his home country, Afghanistan, modernize its financial system after the fall of the Taliban. But this intimate film, Ms. Delawari’s first, is about so much more.
  7. I Used to Be Darker
    Mr. Porterfield might sometimes be too subtle for his own good, but by taking us on a low-key ramble through the ever-shifting feelings of a fractured family, he has woven a dreamy, detached chronicle of dissolution and renewal.
  8. A Wolf at the Door
    As a piece of storytelling, A Wolf at the Door may be a tawdry little shocker. But on a visceral level, it is a knife to the gut.
  9. The Last Day of August
    The film benefits from nice performances and nice work by Mr. DiFolco (making his directorial debut), even if the ending is not as psychologically complex as earlier scenes lead us to hope.
  10. Besharam
    Besharam is frequently crude, but it’s also unusually clean in its plotting. And it has a kind of unblushing vitality that is especially strong in the dance numbers, which feature big crowds, lots of color and an old-fashioned Bollywood desire to please.
  11. Design Is One
    The information-rich film is enlivened by the charm of the intelligent, eccentric couple at its heart.
  12. McConkey
    It’s not about why he was such a thrill-seeking risk-taker but about appreciating his success in living life on his own terms.
  13. Camille Claudel 1915
    Ms. Binoche’s portrayal of Camille is one of the most wrenching performances she has given.
  14. Hellbenders
    This movie has the humor and insouciant pileup of bizarre and disgustingly beautiful images of a cult classic on late-night cable.
  15. S#x Acts
    The movie’s observations of the wolf pack mentality of privileged teenage boys who view every conquest as proof of their prowess is casually devastating.
  16. Days of Grace
    Mr. Gout combines a slick, kinetic style with a somber ethical sense. His movie is flashy and entertaining, but also earnestly concerned with the collapse of trust and integrity at every level of society.
  17. Réquiem NN
    More a medium-length gallery piece than a feature, the movie can look a little rudimentary in presentation... But its subject is eternal.
  18. The New Black
    Ms. Richen elucidates an entire spectrum of views, from actively egalitarian to reactively homophobic.
  19. The Human Scale
    If the result sometimes feels like a sedate lecture, the global journey strongly enlivens the lesson; it’s fascinating how alike and how different cities can be, and more fascinating to imagine what they may become.
  20. Torn
    Slowly uncovering the prejudices that calamity can unleash, Michael Richter’s screenplay lays bare the damage wrought by Sept. 11 while deftly dodging hysteria, wondering how we differentiate between innocent teenage behaviors and dangerous red flags.
  21. Medora
    A mournful Midwestern ballad devoid of grace notes.
  22. Peaches Does Herself
    Feeling a little stage-bound because of frequent far-back long shots, the show can’t quite become a true extravaganza on screen. But Peaches — even without commanding the screen — shines through, vulnerability winning out over bravado here.
  23. The Taiwan Oyster
    Part romance, existential meditation and dark comedy, the film, like its perplexed characters, isn’t always certain of what it wants to be. Yet in the end it does pretty well for itself, despite those self-doubts.
  24. Shahid
    Mr. Mehta has done something difficult. He has made a film of conviction that’s neither plodding nor preachy.
  25. Remington and the Curse of the Zombadings
    The film’s questionable continuity, bargain-basement effects and overload of gay clichés may not be to everyone’s taste, but its queer-eye-for-the-undead-guy exuberance and warmth of spirit are irresistible.
  26. Not Yet Begun to Fight
    With their sensitive feature clocking in at an hour, the filmmakers make you wish only that they had developed their material further.
  27. The End of Time
    [Mr. Mettler’s] images of galaxies, mandalas, particle accelerators and glowing red lava become his real subjects. He uses music and sound to control the pace, to slow time, as if cinema were a form of enforced meditation.
  28. Running from Crazy
    This heart-wrenching and deceptively conventional documentary manages the tensions in its subject and in the vérité approach in a fruitful, illuminating and surprisingly moving way.
  29. Behind the Blue Veil
    The first half of Behind the Blue Veil makes a case for the noble cause of preserving a way of life; the second half admits its near-futility.
  30. The Ghosts in Our Machine
    The Ghosts in Our Machine is a compelling movie, but its argument expands without deepening.
  31. People of a Feather
    Interweaving Inuit life today with re-enactments of the culture 100 years ago, People of a Feather warmly portrays a cold, uncertain present and a worrying future.
  32. It's Me, It's Me
    Though the film is occasionally frustrating and confusing, the modern life it is commenting on is certainly that, too.
  33. Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy?
    Blissfully unconventional as a documentary and as an intellectual endeavor, Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy? won’t tell you everything you’ve always wanted to know about Mr. Chomsky, but its modesty is one of its strengths, along with Mr. Gondry’s entrancing, vibrant illustrations.
  34. My Name Is Nobody
    My Name Is Nobody is terribly knowing. It has the manner of a buff who knows absolutely everything about a subject most other people haven't time for, but it's also very entertaining.
  35. The Motel Life
    The story may be slight, but the performances and ambience resonate.
  36. Approved for Adoption
    The movie is not always well unified and sequenced, but that seems to reflect Mr. Henin’s ambivalence over a past that’s like a book he is at once rereading and rewriting.
  37. Ilya and Emilia Kabakov: Enter Here
    Ms. Wallach has fashioned a multifaceted, informative portrait conveying the emotional urgency of the Kabakovs’ work.
  38. The Great Fallacy
    Watching it feels like packing a semester-long history course with a very cool, left-leaning teacher into less than 90 minutes. The aim is wide-reaching and abstract, yet cohesive and invigorating.
  39. Junction
    Some predictable plot turns aren’t as damaging as they could be, thanks to solid acting (there isn’t a weak performance in the bunch) and lead characters with distinct personalities and motivations.
  40. Free Ride
    Free Ride offers an unsettling vision of a demimonde whose inhabitants live with the reality that there may be no tomorrow.
  41. The Long Island Railroad Massacre
    Respectful and thorough, this unembellished true-crime story might have only regional appeal, but its depressing reminder of our failure to prevent similar calamities will resonate nationwide.
  42. Detroit Unleaded
    Detroit Unleaded is about as gentle as comedies come these days, commendably so.
  43. Everyday
    Moment by moment, it all adds up. The scenes of the family huddling and hugging, greeting and parting, and reaffirming primal bonds are quietly moving.
  44. Weekend of a Champion
    It’s a vintage flashbulb moment of two men at the peak of their talents, one on his way to securing his second world championship, and the other between the twin triumphs of “Rosemary’s Baby” and “Chinatown.”
  45. Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation
    Sleek and bloated, specific and generic, “Rogue Nation” is pretty much like most of the “Impossible” movies in that it’s an immense machine that Mr. McQuarrie, after tinkering and oiling, has cranked up again and set humming with twists and turns, global trotting and gadgets, a crack supporting cast and a hard-working star.
  46. JFK: A President Betrayed
    Fifty years later, this is one of many additions to the Kennedy catalog. Although it’s more suited for the small screen, it is a worthy entry nonetheless.
  47. White Reindeer
    Mr. Clark finds unexpected heart amid cliché and frigidity.
  48. Beatocello’s Umbrella
    Beatocello’s Umbrella could have been a terrible movie. In theory and largely in execution, it is little more than a promotional video for Kantha Bopha, a group of hospitals in Cambodia, and Dr. Richner, who has run them since the early 1990s. But what a guy!
  49. The New Rijksmuseum
    The film dwells on the logistical and bureaucratic details of the process, and if it does not exactly write a fresh chapter in the history of art, it stands as an exemplary study in the sociology of art administration.
  50. Night of the Comet
    A good-natured, end-of- the-world B-movie, written and directed by Thom Eberhardt, a new film maker whose sense of humor augments rather than upstages the mechanics of the melodrama.
  51. The Purge: Anarchy
    Kill or be killed isn’t the official tag line of The Purge: Anarchy, but it fits. It would also make a more suitable title for this satisfyingly creepy, blunt, down-and-dirty thriller, one of those follow-ups that improves on the original.
  52. Knightriders
    Though Knightriders is absurd when you get right down to it, its absurdities are often fun and far less offensive than the solemnities that Mr. Boorman has dished up at far greater expense.
  53. Harlem Street Singer
    A labor of love and respect.
  54. Lucy
    Buoyed by Ms. Johansson’s presence, Mr. Besson keeps his entertainment machine purring. He may be a hack, but he’s also a reliable entertainer.
  55. 1,000 Times Good Night
    What makes 1,000 Times Good Night more than a dramatic essay on wartime journalism is Ms. Binoche’s wrenchingly honest portrayal of a woman of conscience driven by a mixture of guilt, nobility and self-importance, reckoning belatedly with her destructive impulses.
  56. Cymbeline
    Cymbeline has been branded a tragedy, a tragicomedy and a romance, and Mr. Almereyda embraces all three categories. The movie is by turns grim, grimly amusing and romantic, sometimes at once.
  57. Tricked: The Documentary
    A documentary that presents the sexual exploitation of young women as a systemic cancer that feeds on public misconception as much as male appetites.
  58. Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq
    The movie is unusual for its absence of gossip. Instead it offers hardheaded commentary about the rigors of a dancer’s life and how everyone who chooses a dance career is aware of its brevity.
  59. All the Light in the Sky
    The cosmic and the microscopic are casually — and delicately — juxtaposed in All the Light in the Sky, an evocative, slightly melancholic movie.
  60. Journey to the West
    Mr. Chow has perhaps achieved more sustained and elaborate adventures, but he hits a sweet spot of comedy that never grows too self-aware or forgets the value of a good, clean demon whomping.
  61. Blue Ruin
    Stingy with details and dialogue, but more than generous with atmosphere, this seductively photographed thriller (written and directed by Jeremy Saulnier, who also wielded the camera) sells its empty calories with great skill.
  62. The Raid 2
    The pleasant surprise of Gareth Evans’s sturdy sequel to “The Raid: Redemption” is that neither its undercover drama nor its two-and-a-half-hour length bog down the bracing, and numerous, fight fests.
  63. In Bloom
    The two lead performances — Lika Babluani as Eka and Mariam Bokeria as Natia — are direct and unaffected, but also enigmatic in the way that nonprofessional screen acting can be in the hands of a sensitive director.
  64. The Rocket
    What gives this movie its sting is that, despite Mr. Mordaunt’s insistent attempts at uplift, death hovers over this story at every single moment.
  65. Adult World
    Mr. Cusack’s sardonic, understated portrayal of Rat, who is not quite what he says he is, grounds the movie in a wistfully cynical realism.
  66. Peter Brook: The Tightrope
    Simon Brook used five hidden cameras, and the audience has a sense of witnessing intimate moments rather than watching a performance.
  67. Kill the Messenger
    The visual choices in the movie, including all the close-ups of Gary’s face as it lightens and darkens, help create the sense that something deeply personal is at stake.
  68. In No Great Hurry: 13 Lessons in Life with Saul Leiter
    If the film at times seems only a tender profile of a quiet and quirky individual, it is also a meditation of a private life at its end.
  69. The Trip to Italy
    Like its predecessor, The Trip to Italy flirts with seriousness yet invariably, perhaps rightly, it always goes for the joke, the pun, the fun and the sun.
  70. Far from the Madding Crowd
    The most obvious thing to say about Far From the Madding Crowd is also the most bizarre, given the source material. It’s buoyant, pleasant and easygoing. That’s a recommendation of sorts, and also an expression of disappointment.
  71. Explorers
    OF all the Spielberg-inspired fantasy films afoot at the moment, Joe Dante's Explorers is by far the most eccentric. It's charmingly odd at some moments, just plain goofy at others.
  72. Exposed
    These confrontational comedians — however serious the message, it’s always imparted with liberal dollops of humor — are experts at merging shock and showmanship.
  73. Loves Her Gun
    Adopting an appealingly low-key approach to a high-stakes subject, this gently observant drama from Geoff Marslett takes its sweet time introducing the girl to the gun, but when it does, we’re all but guaranteed to care.
  74. The Drop
    Mr. Roskam’s direction is gratifyingly loose. He lets the story, which is really the least interesting part of the movie, more or less take care of itself, allowing us to savor pungent morsels of dialogue and bits of low-key actorly showboating.
  75. The Imitation Game
    The Imitation Game is a highly conventional movie about a profoundly unusual man. This is not entirely a bad thing.
  76. Manglehorn
    In truth, it’s less Manglehorn than Mr. Pacino that you warm up to in this film, as so many times before.
  77. Maps to the Stars
    It takes a perverse effort of will to love “Maps to the Stars.” It’s a little too chilly, and in some places too easy. But you may find yourself drawn back to it, and retracing its route from the familiar to the uncanny, from entertainment to revulsion, from dream to nightmare.
  78. Midnight Special
    The charm and audacity of this film lie in the way it blends the commonplace and the bizarre.
  79. When I Saw You
    When I Saw You is a soft-centered child’s-eye view of alienation, toughened by fine acting (Saleh Bakri shines as a fighter drawn to Ghaydaa) and Hélène Louvart’s full-bodied photography.
  80. Omar
    Mr. Abu-Assad shows a world from which all trust has vanished, where every relationship carries the possibility — perhaps the inevitability — of betrayal and where every form of honor is corroded by lies.
  81. Dinosaur 13
    Dinosaur 13 may not be the best documentary, but as a scientific soap opera, it’s a doozy.
  82. Calvary
    The limitations of Calvary are summed up by the insistent, dialectical chatter that almost mechanically pings and pongs between lightness and darkness, glibness and seriousness, insincerity and honesty, faithfulness and despair.
  83. The Sleepwalker
    With strong assists from the cinematographer Zachary Galler and her ex-husband, the composer Sondre Lerche, Ms. Fastvold, previously a director of music videos, has painted a resonant tableau of dysfunction.
  84. Cold in July
    As the movie’s resident live wire, Mr. Johnson, obviously having the time of his life, is a hoot, and the feisty camaraderie among these three men gives Cold in July a euphoric goofiness.
  85. Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter
    A delicate, haunting study of a woman who has in several senses lost her way.
  86. Somewhere Slow
    The whole enterprise rests on Ms. Gilsig, who plays Anna with a subtlety rarely required of her crazypants girlfriend on “Nip/Tuck” or her clingy spouse on “Glee.”
  87. 7 Boxes
    The filmmakers stage an amazing race that almost absolves an overstuffed plot and an over-reliance on coincidence.
  88. The Lunchbox
    The comedy is more wry than uproarious, the melodrama gently poignant rather than operatic, and the sentimentality just sweet enough to be satisfying rather than bothersome.
  89. A Birder's Guide to Everything
    This gentle comedy, the first feature directed by Rob Meyer, is an eye opener for anyone who takes the everyday natural world for granted. It is also a quiet brief for the cultivation of intellectual curiosity and scientific exploration at an age when hormones rule so much behavior.
  90. Finding Vivian Maier
    The film, which [Mr. Maloof] directed with Charlie Siskel, is absorbing, touching and satisfyingly enjoyable because Maier was a fascinating, poignant and somewhat enigmatic woman.
  91. A Coffee In Berlin
    If A Coffee in Berlin has its own kind of formula and a romanticism that reads as both youthful and obscuring, it nevertheless absorbs you and makes you wonder what Mr. Gerster will do next.
  92. Easy Money: Hard to Kill
    For the second film, Babak Najafi has succeeded Daniel Espinosa as director. The structure here is more mechanical, and the ambience scruffier, as the complicated story shifts from one disreputable lowlife to another.
  93. Rich Hill
    Regular hazily scored, gauzy interludes cut into the film’s immediacy and tone. But the filmmakers shade in humble, sympathetic portraits of these children.
  94. 12 O'Clock Boys
    12 O’Clock Boys packs more life into its 72 minutes than many longer documentaries do.
  95. Pitch Perfect 2
    Some of the underdog appeal is gone, but a victory lap can be its own kind of fun, and more is not necessarily something to complain about, especially when what there is more of is Fat Amy.
  96. A Walk Among the Tombstones
    Nasty, brutal and unforgiving, A Walk Among the Tombstones is one of those rare contemporary cinematic offerings: intelligent pulp.
  97. Vic + Flo Saw a Bear
    This isn’t, it turns out, the usual once upon a time, but a story about the unknowns that can swallow us up.
  98. It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
    It's a wonderfully crazy and colorful collection of "chase" comedy, so crowded with plot and people that it almost splits the seams of its huge Cinerama packing and its 3-hour-and-12-minute length.
  99. A World Not Ours
    Mr. Fleifel helps walk us through the history with an ingratiating voice-over that lightens the seemingly permanent clouds of a dire history.
  100. Chaplin of the Mountains
    The film embraces humor — would you want a one-legged man guiding you through a minefield? — without surrendering sensitivity. The screenplay may echo with atrocities, but it’s not consumed by them.
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