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. Focus
    The preposterousness of the story doesn’t seem like a rip-off, since the twists in the plot, for the most part, pay off nicely.
  2. Run All Night
    The movie, directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, who directed Mr. Neeson in the efficient airborne thriller “Non-Stop,” has two saving graces: a tight script and terrific acting.
  3. The Shadow
    Style is almost everything here, and it's a tough call whether the star is handsomer than the sets.
  4. The Only Real Game
    The history lesson is fascinating, and it’s nice to see an American export other than a Hollywood blockbuster engendering good will.
  5. The Retrieval
    Mr. Eska’s choices are thoughtful if sometimes studied: the movie is well cast with solid performers, and if the handsome digital images look overly sharp, as if outlined in razor, he consistently makes the most of his limited resources.
  6. The Great Invisible
    Margaret Brown’s quietly infuriating documentary film about the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, includes depressing information that many would probably be happier not knowing.
  7. Hateship Loveship
    Ms. Johnson and the screenwriter, Mark Jude Poirier, have transformed a taciturn masterpiece into an absorbing, messy, modest story of damaged relationships.
  8. Salvo
    A soulful romance, an existential action flick and something of a miracle movie — the appealing slow-burner Salvo hovers at the crossroads of genre.
  9. The French Minister
    Mr. Tavernier’s filmmaking here is loose, almost casual, and you may not always notice what he’s doing with the camera as he frames the ministry’s choreographed chaos with its whirling people and parts.
  10. American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs
    Ms. Lee could have delved more deeply into Ms. Boggs’s thoughts, and slips into glib autopilot by using archival footage with sound effects or repeating ideas of personal transformation. But in sharing her subject’s life achievements, she raises meaningful questions and keeps them profitably open.
  11. Brothers Hypnotic
    The fearless streak displayed by the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble deserves its equivalent in a bolder movie technique. But Mr. Atlas delivers a rousing finale.
  12. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
    Even as Ms. Amirpour draws heavily from various bodies of work with vampirelike hunger, she gives her influences new life by channeling them through other cultural forms, including her chador-cloaked vampire.
  13. Go Down Death
    Rather than distressed retro photography, or Guy Maddin mash-up fantasias, the movie’s often deadpan episodes feel like something out of one-act theater
  14. Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger
    Its powerful narratives leaves you with the strong suspicion that the whole story has not yet been told.
  15. Flex Is Kings
    Because of the rote and typical way of organizing a dance movie around a contest, the pace and interest lag even though the images and characters are fascinating. Yet the film is worth watching because of the strong cinematography and the glimpses of strange beauty in the dance moves.
  16. A Night in Old Mexico
    The director Emilio Aragón wisely trains the camera on Mr. Duvall. A Night in Old Mexico is his baby, and he rocks it.
  17. Dancing in Jaffa
    Predictably, the film culminates in a dance competition, irresistible to behold and leading to an ending just about too pat to believe.
  18. Speak the Music: Robert Mann and the Mysteries of Chamber Music
    Though colleagues and former students chime in, Mr. Miller lets Mr. Mann and his violin do most of the talking, drawing on assorted interviews and vintage performance clips that convey both the skill and the enthusiasm underpinning his subject’s long career.
  19. A People Uncounted
    Much of this movie is composed of survivors who give harrowing accounts of their experiences, and their warnings about rising ethnic hatred in Europe should not be ignored. But those seeking to learn in depth about, say, the dialects and traditions of the Roma should look elsewhere.
  20. Next Year Jerusalem
    What elevates the film beyond a video scrapbook, though, are the glimpses of the routines and slow rhythms of the nursing home before and after this adventure.
  21. Captain America: Civil War
    This very crowded, reasonably enjoyable installment in the Avengers cycle...reveals, even more than its predecessors, an essential truth about the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s not so much a grand science-fiction saga, or even a series of action-adventure movies, as a very expensive, perpetually renewed workplace sitcom.
  22. The King of Escape
    The King of Escape is more loosely put together than “Stranger,” and, considering what happens, it’s relatively underplayed.
  23. Small Time
    Small Time is agreeably sentimental meat-and-potatoes fare with strong dashes of humor, executed with a sincerity that’s hard to resist.
  24. A Monster Calls
    If you prefer to view dying as a natural part of life, a step in a cycle, this film will feel discordant and perhaps counterproductive. But visually it will certainly stick with you, and your children.
  25. Decoding Annie Parker
    Decoding Annie Parker is considerably better than the kind of disease-of-the-week fare that used to be a television cliché.
  26. The Jewish Cardinal
    It holds your interest, even if Jean-Marie remains what he must be to Mr. Cohen: an enticing puzzlement, his faith a mystery.
  27. The Pleasures of Being Out of Step
    This succinct documentary sticks smoothly to its beat.
  28. Cesar's Last Fast
    Chavez (1927-1993), a founder of what became the United Farm Workers union, faced brutal odds, as this compelling documentary demonstrates.
  29. That Demon Within
    Pulp done with passion can be its own reward, as the veteran Hong Kong filmmaker Dante Lam shows with his feverish cop thriller That Demon Within.
  30. Vanishing Pearls: The Oystermen of Pointe a la Hache
    Vanishing Pearls is most illuminating when offering a historical perspective.
  31. Nas: Time Is Illmatic
    Despite some conventional moves here and there and a weakness for the cult of genius, the documentary sustains that uneasy mood cast by Nas’s expression as a child on the “Illmatic” cover, sobered by experience and wisdom before his time.
  32. Bicycling With Molière
    The screenplay ultimately bears out Alceste’s observations about treachery, selfishness and deceit, but with such charm and zest that their sting tickles more than it hurts.
  33. Last Passenger
    Mr. Nooshin stirs a mystery that’s light on special effects and bravely uncomplicated. He may not have much money, but his feel for age and class dynamics is sure, and his actors respond.
  34. The German Doctor
    The Argentine writer and director Lucía Puenzo, shooting in wide screen, takes an effective, largely low-key approach to her fictionalization of Mengele’s time in South America.
  35. Desert Riders
    Amid a cacophony of accusations and justifications, it’s the children’s broken limbs, ladderlike scars and disfigured, emaciated bodies that paradoxically hold the film together.
  36. Next Goal Wins
    In some ways, this is just another underdogs-go-for-it sports movie. In others, it is as sensitive and observant as an Edith Wharton novel.
  37. The M Word
    As cavalier with structure as ever, Mr. Jaglom surrounds himself with familiars who embrace his cheery, disorderly style.
  38. All Cheerleaders Die
    Shot with a camera as excited as a squirrel-chasing dog, Cheerleaders has a girls-gone-wild energy and a twisted sense of humor.
  39. Unclaimed
    If we brush aside the unanswered questions, what we’re left with is a simple tale of two men: One who may have been lost, and one who only felt that way.
  40. NOW: In the Wings on a World Stage
    What “NOW” does well is explain why these actors love the place- and time-bound quality of live theater, most evident in the troupe’s stop at the ancient Greek theater of Epidaurus.
  41. The Case Against 8
    The Case Against 8 functions as a valuable record of the nuts-and-bolts conference room side of advocacy — an aspect of civil rights work not often seen on screen.
  42. Apocalypse: A Bill Callahan Tour Film
    A tantalizing glimpse of a determinedly outsider talent.
  43. The American Nurse
    If the film is workmanlike at times, it is also elegantly cleareyed.
  44. Breastmilk
    Empathetic and nosy, Ms. Ben-Ari is no unequivocal cheerleader for breast over bottle: If anything, her subjects’ time-consuming struggles and evident exhaustion could put a damper on the natural-feeding plans of the most sanguine new parent. Yet the film isn’t a downer.
  45. Still I Strive
    The innovative fictional narrative, woven throughout, demonstrates that many of these young actors have learned their lessons well.
  46. Cyber-Seniors
    This is a sweet tale that will resonate with anyone who has tried to make a Skype call to a grandparent.
  47. Horses of God
    In its demystification of these youthful slum dwellers, the film makes their embrace of terrorism frighteningly comprehensible. Because it follows its main characters over 10 years, from childhood into adulthood, it gives their fates a sense of tragic inevitability
  48. The Hornet's Nest
    The Hornet’s Nest lets its soldiers do most of the talking. The action — the rapid fire of automatic weapons, the crack of a sniper’s shot, the medevac rescues — is vivid.
  49. Gebo and the Shadow
    Mr. Oliveira relishes the formality of conversation, and there is great pleasure to be found in listening to the actors and watching the small adjustments of posture and gesture that accompany their words.
  50. Point Break
    Point Break, though it's anything but watertight where plotting is concerned, again reveals Ms. Bigelow's real talents as a director of fast-paced, high-adrenaline action. Whenever the flakiness of Point Break threatens to become lulling, Ms. Bigelow wakes up her audience with a formidable jolt.
  51. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
    With the strange caws and showy displays, these beasties provide a lot of the movie’s easygoing pleasures. The adults are rather less engaging.
  52. Macbeth
    Mr. Fassbender gives you a reason to see this Macbeth, although the writing isn’t bad, either.
  53. Wild Tales
    Mr. Szifron creates inhabited worlds with comic timing and visual flair, but you can hear him chortling as he shovels his people into the grinder.
  54. Amour Fou
    it can be a strategically off-putting movie yet one that also steals under your skin scene by scene and through Ms. Schnoeink’s slowly revealing performance as an ill-fated heroine turned future biographical footnote.
  55. The Salvation
    This is, it’s worth remembering, a movie set in the American West that was shot in South Africa by a Danish director with a Danish star. In other words it’s another dream of America, feverish, lovely and absurd.
  56. Mommy
    To take Mommy as an undisciplined outpouring of aggression and angst is to underestimate its artistry. [Mr. Dolan] has both advanced beyond the romanticism of “Heartbeats” and “Laurence Anyways” and regressed toward a more primal and confrontational mode of storytelling. Mommy may seem out of control, but it knows exactly what it’s doing.
  57. Frequencies
    While the detached, deadpan tone and occasionally stilted acting might leave some viewers flat, there’s no doubting the fierce intelligence behind this admirable puzzle box of a movie.
  58. Korengal
    The sequel is much more than a collection of outtakes from the first film, augmented by footage shot later.
  59. Dormant Beauty
    If Dormant Beauty does not rank among Mr. Bellocchio’s best movies, it nonetheless still occasionally shows him at his best. His eye for the latent beauty and evident absurdity of Italian life remains acute, as does his appreciation for vivid performance.
  60. Jimi: All Is by My Side
    Mr. Ridley’s ambitions and refusal to treat Hendrix as a solvable mystery are welcome, given how often biopics re-embalm their subjects. Here, a legend is born, and a man too.
  61. Nothing Bad Can Happen
    Pitting good against evil with striking intelligence and a near-operatic commitment to extreme suffering, Ms. Gebbe neither mocks nor celebrates Tore’s love for his God. Neither does she give any hint that it’s reciprocated.
  62. Master of the Universe
    Mr. Voss’s metaphors pile up helplessly: Finance is like being in the army, like catching a virus and as hard to grasp as quantum particles. The film in which he appears is a vertiginous look inside the bubble behind the financial bubble, with no end in sight.
  63. The Fluffy Movie
    Bringing out truths about fatherhood, love and pride without dissolving into crowd-pleasing, that material feels like the genuine article. Fluffy, not fluff.
  64. Walking the Camino: Six Ways to Santiago
    As travelogue, this is a persuasive introduction.
  65. The Client
    The Client, with a fast, no-nonsense pace and three winning performances, is the movie that most clearly echoes the simple, vigorous Grisham style.
  66. The Crow
    It is a dark, lurid revenge fantasy and not the breakthrough, star-making movie some people have claimed. But it is a genre film of a high order, stylish and smooth.
  67. F/X
    The movie, which looks as if it had been made on an A-picture budget, has a lot of the zest one associates with special-effects-filled B-pictures.
  68. Honey, I Shrunk the Kids
    The director, Joe Johnston, paces this adventure to suit the film's tone. It is swift and smooth, never wild or raucous.
  69. The Net
    This paranoid fantasy is so resonant that it makes The Net an enjoyably creepy thriller, even though Irwin Winkler belongs to the nothing-is-too-obvious school of directing.
  70. Witching and Bitching
    Known for his genre pastiches, the director, Álex de la Iglesia (“El Crimen Perfecto”), rarely lets the pace flag, and the buddy comedy, gross-out humor and horror elements make for a harmonious mix.
  71. The Amazing Catfish
    If there’s a certain depth missing in The Amazing Catfish, the film brings forth the small-scale pleasures and poignancy of an ambling short story.
  72. Nan Goldin: I Remember Your Face
    Charmingly slight and casually confessional.
  73. See You Next Tuesday
    Loving difficult people (and being difficult, and sometimes helpless) is the subject of the film’s drama, shot through with comedy and satire, thanks to Mr. Tobia’s razor-sharp, rapid cutting of scenes and needling dialogue.
  74. Honeymoon
    A lean, low-budget debut that taps into newlywed anxiety with subtle wit and no small amount of style.
  75. The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water
    The new film displays enough nutty writing and sheer brio to confirm the stamina of its enduring and skillfully voiced characters.
  76. 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.
  77. Exhibition
    Exhibition is an exquisitely photographed film that requires unusually close attention for it to reveal itself.
  78. No Tears for the Dead
    This is the kind of sleek, precisely constructed genre work that’s gone missing from American summer movies.
  79. Bound by Flesh
    It would be hard not to make a thought-provoking, heartstring-tugging film from this source material, and Bound by Flesh certainly tells the twins’ story effectively.
  80. A Picture of You
    Mr. Chan’s skill with actors — particularly with Ms. Mei and Mr. Pang’s persuasive, easygoing banter — compensates for the story’s limitations.
  81. Fonzy
    What distinguishes Fonzy is its attention to Diego’s Galician roots. As his character discovers his offspring and his paternal instinct, Mr. Garcia gives the bedraggled but compassionate Diego an aspect slightly more emphatic than his screen forebears.
  82. Han Gong-ju
    Swiveling from past to present and back again, the writer and director, Lee Su-jin, drops ominous clues — a bruised boy; a mysterious infection — that only slowly coalesce into a larger tragedy.
  83. Honour
    Mr. Khan displays a strong visual sense that makes pivotal scenes pop. The unlikely ending strains credulity, but what this confident debut lacks in subtlety, it more than makes up in execution.
  84. A Life in Dirty Movies
    Wiktor Ericsson’s A Life in Dirty Movies outlines this filmmaker’s work reasonably well, but, somewhat surprisingly, truly hits home with a heartwarming look at Mr. Sarno’s relationship with his wife, Peggy.
  85. The Green Prince
    If The Green Prince sustains the tension of a well-executed thriller, it is achieved at the cost of a dispassionate objectivity.
  86. Fifi Howls from Happiness
    A portrait of the artist as a refusenik, a recluse, a survivor and a stubborn question mark, “Fifi Howls From Happiness” registers, by turns, as a celebration, an excavation and an increasingly urgent rescue mission.
  87. The Notebook
    The Notebook is a skillfully made movie, with sequences that may haunt you after you leave the theater. But it lacks the power to turn its virtuosity, or the emotional discipline of its remarkable young leads, into a source of insight.
  88. The Battered Bastards of Baseball
    The Battered Bastards of Baseball is an affectionate scrapbook of a documentary.
  89. The Tribe
    The Tribe deploys an elaborate, rigorously executed conceit in support of a weary, dreary hypothesis: People are awful. That might well be true, but there’s no need to shout.
  90. Lost Persons Area
    The filmmaker Caroline Strubbe’s affection for her characters is evident, even through the often oblique narrative.
  91. Young Ones
    This spare but potent melodrama revels in the desiccated landscapes provided by South Africa and photographed with dusty purity by Giles Nuttgens. Through his lens, the spectrum of sunbaked skin and parched dunes is as rich as any rainbow.
  92. Double Play: James Benning and Richard Linklater
    The graceful flow avoids the spoon-feeding of pocket biographies, and even if the material can feel lean at times, Mr. Klinger shepherds along a valuable encounter with a sense of easy, generally uncanned observation.
  93. The Almost Man
    The Almost Man may be slight, but how many films can pack equal amounts of emotional nuance and inappropriately sprayed urine into just 75 minutes?
  94. Bobby Jasoos
    The exuberant staging and Ms. Balan’s sly performance are the show here.
  95. Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania
    The film is earnest, formulaic and sentimental. But, like Humpty, it has enough charm to wear down defenses.
  96. Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle
    The filmmakers are clearly trying to bring an uncommon maturity to the fantasy film, and in many respects they succeed. While not everything here works, what does is impressive.
  97. We Are Mari Pepa
    For all its enthusiastic vulgarity and truly terrible punk rock, We Are Mari Pepa is a gently endearing portrait of four amiable Mexican teenagers feeling their way toward adulthood.
  98. Mr. X
    Though Ms. Louise-Salomé’s film strikes a potentially irritating pose as a kind of artistic séance — shrouding interviewees in shadow, conjuring up clips with the drifting rhythm of the unconscious — it delivers articulate insights and has an elegant construction.
  99. No No: A Dockumentary
    As this smart and sympathetic profile shows, Dock Ellis didn’t need a no-hitter, stoned or otherwise, to define himself; he was his own best work.
  100. Expedition to the End of the World
    The film is essentially an evolved hybrid of global environmental documentary and the group-trip experiments of reality television. Its biggest step onto unfamiliar terrain might be its ambivalent ending, conveying uncertainty about what can or should be done next.
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