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. An Open Secret
    An Open Secret is affecting, particularly when the victims recount their experiences in voices that crack with emotion or pause with pain. Even if you do look away, hearing them speak is enough.
  2. Brian and Charles
    Too soon, however, this intriguing psychological study turns into a programmatic geeks-vs-bullies story that relies on pushing the easiest emotional buttons.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Boston Strangler
    THE BOSTON STRANGLER represents an incredible collapse of taste, judgment, decency, prose, insight, journalism and movie technique, and yet—through certain prurient options that it does not take—it is not quite the popular exploitation film that one might think. It is as though someone had gone out to do a serious piece of reporting and come up with 4,000 clippings from a sensationalist tabloid.
  4. City Island
    Softened by some sweet, low-key moments between Vince and a fellow acting student (a very good Emily Mortimer) and by Mr. Garcia’s embodiment of disappointed middle age.
  5. The Kitchen
    The direction, by Kibwe Tavares and Daniel Kaluuya, is sure and unfussy, spinning a warmly humane story of cross-generational connection.
  6. Missing
    Missing captures the constant distractions of the modern age. Pop-up windows continually tug at June’s attention. However, the film’s more engaging moments tap into the older cyber nostalgia of text-based adventure games from the 1970s, where problems are solved by typing the right command.
  7. Never Here
    Ms. Enos is a credibly fraying voyeur, all anxious looks and nervous starts, but “Never Here” is too emotionally antiseptic to engage.
  8. Something's Gotta Give
    Nobody else working in movies today can make her (Keaton) own misery such a source of delight or make the spectacle of utter embarrassment look like a higher form of dignity.
  9. Patti Smith: Dream of Life
    A lovely, drifty first feature that feels less like a documentary and more like an act of rapturous devotion.
  10. The Girlfriend Experience
    When the turmoil of the last 12 months has receded and the 10th-anniversary deluxe collectors edition comes around, this strange, numb cinematic experience may seem fresh, shocking and poignant rather than merely and depressingly true.
  11. Vita Activa: The Spirit of Hannah Arendt
    Ms. Ushpiz is determined to rescue her subject from the banality of biography. The details of Arendt’s childhood, education, romantic life and professional activity are not ignored, but they nearly always illuminate her ideas.
  12. Sausage Party
    You will come for the kind of humor promised in the title and the well-earned R rating, but stay for the nuanced meditations on theology and faith.
  13. Shin Godzilla (Godzilla Resurgence)
    The film is at its best when it’s in parody mode, though it keeps that card too close to the vest for much of its two-hour length. The humor, not the monster, is what you’re left wanting more of.
  14. The Imaginary
    The movie falters periodically under the weight of its own dream logic, which can be hard to follow or flimsily constructed as the story gains momentum. But it’s mostly easy to move past those flaws in a work of such rich magical realism and heart.
  15. Mind Game
    A sometimes enthralling, sometimes exhausting tour de force.
  16. Genius on Hold
    This promisingly tragic tale is sunk by cartloads of context and an overbearing, slanted narration.
  17. Beverly Hills Cop
    Beverly Hills Cop finds Eddie Murphy doing what he does best: playing the shrewdest, hippest, fastest-talking underdog in a rich man's world.
  18. 500 Years
    Heavy with emotion yet light on information, 500 Years has the curious effect of being both passionate and pale. You may find yourself championing its subjects even while feeling confounded by the omission of details by its filmmaker.
  19. Dark Star
    There are some funny routines here, though Mr. Carpenter doesn't seem to have cared much about integrating or sustaining them. Mr. Carpenter makes his amateurishness unmistakable, especially when it comes to the film's four actors. Only one of them can act even crudely (fortunately, his is the largest role). The other three, neither photogenic nor particularly extroverted, look like well-meaning fraternity brothers helping out a pal with his class project.
  20. The Last Dalai Lama?
    A surplus of wisdom and benevolence radiates from The Last Dalai Lama?.
  21. The Heart of Nuba
    The film is worth seeing because it’s a moving and remarkable story and it represents a great cause. Mr. Carlson often puts a directorial foot wrong.
  22. King Cohen: The Wild World of Filmmaker Larry Cohen
    Directed by Steve Mitchell, it’s as conventional as Mr. Cohen’s movies are not. Which is O.K. While the filmmaker himself is more interested in telling colorful anecdotes than dredging up the portions of his psyche that inspire him, the anecdotes are colorful indeed.
  23. The Life Ahead
    This picture earns its tear-jerking without becoming treacly. OK, without becoming too treacly. And it has other charming, enlightened components.
  24. Cicada
    Ben and Sam’s blossoming romance does a lot of telling and little showing. While there’s the occasional amusingly idiosyncratic section of dialogue that sounds like a series of stagily poetic non-sequiturs, much of the couple’s bonding feels straightforward and unremarkable.
  25. Last Hurrah for Chivalry
    It's a rare entry into old-school swordplay for him, yet still centering on his themes of honor and betrayal -- with a not entirely successful attempt to blur those lines. "Chivalry" is still intense and watchable, nonetheless. [27 Jun 2003, p.E3]
    • The New York Times
  26. Diary of the Dead
    The body has its needs, and one of the problems with Diary of the Dead is that it doesn’t get into your body; it doesn’t shake you up, jolt you, make you shiver and squeak. It’s clever, or at least clever enough to keep you going and interested from start to finish. It just isn’t scary.
  27. Peterloo
    Leigh’s narrative is touched by the literary spirit of the later 19th century. Peterloo has the sweep of Tolstoy and the bustle of Dickens.
  28. Cordelia
    Enigmatic and imperfect, but nonetheless absorbing and consistently unsettling, Cordelia offers a haunting visualization of a breaking-apart psyche.
  29. White Hunter Black Heart
    This material marks a gutsy, fascinating departure for Mr. Eastwood, and makes it clear that his directorial ambitions have by now outstripped his goals as an actor.
  30. Yossi
    What began as a reasonably hardheaded look at profound and rapid cultural change turns into a feel-good fantasy of salvation.
  31. 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.
  32. Take Every Wave: The Life of Laird Hamilton
    The documentary stirs up most of its sporadic excitement in the surfing footage, of which there is plenty. The imagery, especially the aerial shots, gives a sense of Mr. Hamilton’s precision and how close he comes to wiping out.
  33. Innocent Voices
    As an outcry against the forcible conscription of children into armies around the world, Innocent Voices, is an honorable film. But as a balanced portrait of a tragic civil war, it is simplistic and opaque.
  34. Afterschool
    In truth there isn’t much story here, or much insight either; the kind of alienated teenagers wandering through this film exist in movies far out of proportion to their number in real life.
  35. Me You Them
    An unexpected delight, a film that weds the humor and magic of a folk tale with a very modern feel for the psychological dynamics between men and women and for the subtle politics of male rivalry in a macho culture. It has been made and acted with intelligence and evident love, which deserves to be requited.
  36. Stuart Little 2
    What sets the "Stuart Little" franchise above most of the competition is its emphasis on sharply drawn character and its profusion of witty remarks (mostly from the mouth of Snowbell) that are cutting enough to amuse grown-ups without sailing over children's heads.
  37. Beyond the Clouds
    The impact of these stories is not in the words but in the way the mood, texture and the acting build each situation into a visually intense parable about the similarity of spiritual, erotic and aesthetic aspiration.
  38. Bolivia
    This film, Mr. Caetano's feature-length directorial debut, has an emotional integrity that's concise and direct.
  39. Auto Focus
    Gets to you like a low-grade fever, a malaise with no known antidote. When it was over, I wasn't sure if I needed a drink, a shower or a lifelong vow of chastity.
  40. Miller's Crossing
    Weightless. It is also, unfortunately, without much point at all... A movie of random effects and little accumulative impact.
  41. Clara's Ghost
    As is perhaps appropriate, given the comic occupations of the Reynolds (and the Elliott) family, this unusual, unsettling and terrific little film presents itself not as a domestic opera, but as a family comedy.
  42. Slaughterhouse-Five
    A wild, noisy, sometimes very funny film that eventually becomes as unstuck in its own exuberance as its hero, Billy Pilgrim, the Illium, N. Y., optometrist, is unstuck in time.
  43. The Element of Crime
    A film noir that's murky without being terribly mysterious.
  44. Desert of Namibia
    What clinches the portrait is the sure-handed direction and Kana’s organic performance of a daunting character. Dramatically, Yamanaka finds unpredictable ways into and out of scenes, and she has an eye for the poignant details amid the angst.
  45. Devotion
    As an intellectual dismantling of white savior narratives, Devotion is smartly done; as an enjoyable heartwarmer to watch with your uncle, it’s stiff when it should soar.
  46. Dark Horse
    Mr. Solondz brilliantly - triumphantly - turns this impression on its head, transforming what might have been an exercise in easy satirical cruelty into a tremendously moving argument for the necessity of compassion.
  47. Dead Again
    A big, convoluted, entertainingly dizzy romantic mystery melodrama.
  48. The Optimists
    The director, who also served as producer along with Lisa Comforty, his wife, spent 12 years compiling the archival clips and photographs that make up this compact and elegant film.
  49. Pink Ribbons, Inc.
    Though leaving us with many more questions than answers, this well-intentioned blur of accusations, advertising clips and pink-washed events nevertheless deserves to be seen.
  50. The Rule of Jenny Pen
    The director remains near-merciless in his approach, never shying away from showing his vulnerable characters (and the tormentor played with twisted relish by Lithgow is, ultimately, as unprotected as any of the others) in states of utter abjection.
  51. Creed II
    Creed II is a terrific movie, a boxing picture full of inspired sweetness and shrewd science that honors the cherished traditions of the genre while feeling like something new and exciting in the world.
  52. The Tiger Hunter
    With a likable cast and a wholesome message about the true meaning of success, The Tiger Hunter might balk at the harsher details of immigrant life, but it has a generosity of spirit that lifts everyone up.
  53. Nina Wu
    This startlingly evocative, complex and confrontational new film is not interested in justice or didacticism.
  54. Ben Is Back
    Ben Is Back is really Holly’s story, and notwithstanding the all-around excellence of the cast, it’s very much Roberts’s movie. This isn’t a matter of ego or showboating. On the contrary, what is so moving and effective about Roberts’s work here is her shrewd subversion of her long-established persona.
  55. Rush
    Rush is often more successful at being clinical than at being clear.
  56. Wiener-Dog
    Mr. Solondz’s eye for the petty hypocrisies and delusions of American life has lost some of its sharpness, and he flails at flabby targets — avant-garde art, campus “political correctness” — in ways that sometimes carry an ugly whiff of racial and sexual bigotry.
  57. L.A. Story
    Basically decent, intelligent and sweet. It's a fanciful romantic comedy whose wildest and craziest notion is that Los Angeles, for all of its eccentricities, is a great place to live.
  58. Pamela, a love story
    The collision of her good-faith lack of inhibition with institutionalized misogyny makes this Canadian’s biography a very disquieting American story.
  59. Ever After
    Veering wildly between farce and suds, the movie never makes up its mind whether it's a spoof, a soap opera or a feminist pep talk.
  60. The Founder
    Ray remains an unanswered, not especially compelling, question, but Mr. Keaton comes close to making you believe there’s soul to go with the fries and freneticism.
  61. 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.
  62. 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.
  63. Argentina
    For the non-Argentine audience, though, more context would have helped these wonderful songs and dances tell the nation’s story.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Thomas Crown Affair
    An ordinary, not wonderful, but highly enjoyable movie.
  65. Charlatan
    Often as thorny as its subject but also oddly fascinated by his near-magical abilities, “Charlatan” is a temporary cure for the common biopic.
  66. Sexual Drive
    Consistently intriguing and occasionally hilarious, the movie does not depict sex itself. Instead, the characters eat food items that become objects of titillation, lust and pleasure: the sticky goo around soybeans, chili oil sizzling in a wok.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Pollyanna
    Like its sub-teen, "Glad Girl" heroine, this visit with Pollyanna is pleasant and unlikely to hurt or excite even the small fry.
  68. The Civil Dead
    Gently discursive and virtually plotless, The Civil Dead is a walking-and-talking movie that finds uncommon humor in Whit’s need to be seen and Clay’s extreme discomfort with that responsibility.
  69. Lewis Capaldi: How I'm Feeling Now
    Remarkably, “How I’m Feeling Now” manages to escape most of the promotional trappings of its ilk, striking a more meaningful note than other pop star docs.
  70. Taking Venice
    It’s still fascinating to imagine a time, not all that long ago, in which painting, sculpture, jazz, literature and more were considered keys to the exporting of American influence around the world.
  71. Mulan
    It’s lightly funny and a little sad, filled with ravishing landscapes and juiced up with kinetic fights (if not enough of them). It has antiseptic violence, emotional uplift and the kind of protagonist that movie people like to call relatable.
  72. The Angels' Share
    Watching it is like receiving a hard slap in the face from someone who expects you to laugh it off, even though the sting lingers.
  73. Moonraker
    Moonraker begins with one of the funniest and most dangerous (as well as most beautifully photographed and edited) sequences Bond has ever faced.
  74. Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall
    What it resembles more than anything is a deluxe extended episode of a television music-biography series like “Unsung” (or “Behind the Music” minus the scandals).
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Rain People
    [Coppola] has made a relentlessly good-looking, accurate-feeling movie without the patronizing paranoia toward the American heartland and its natives that is so much in fashion these days.
  76. The Last Showgirl
    Modestly scaled and loosely plotted, it is an unusually tender movie and an ideal vehicle for Coppola’s gift for expressing the intangible and the ephemeral.
  77. You Cannot Kill David Arquette
    What’s fascinating is Arquette’s vulnerability, both emotionally and physically.
  78. A Map of the World
    Something disturbing has happened to this story en route to the screen.
  79. By Sidney Lumet
    While it’s no surprise that Mr. Lumet can spin a tale, these murky-looking, less-than-flattering sit-downs are irritatingly suboptimal, particularly given that he was so great at telling intimate stories about men in shadows.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Aristocats
    As funny, warm and sweet an animated, cartoon, package as ever gave a movie marquee a Christmas glow.
  81. Frantic
    Frantic generates its suspense precisely because it appears so reasonable, because it takes such a calm, methodical approach to the maddening events that lure Dr. Walker into the maelstrom.
  82. Fast Five
    In a free-for-all like this, where the laws of gravity and dictates of narrative logic are left to eat dust, it doesn't matter when anything takes place or why.
  83. The Sound of Silence
    The Sound of Silence wants to be heard, but, in the end, doesn’t have much to say.
  84. OC87: The Obsessive Compulsive, Major Depression, Bipolar, Asperger's Movie
    This moving, penetrating documentary records his attempt to describe his conditions, confront them and learn to manage them.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Roberta
    The work is a model for urbanity in the musical films and Mr. Astaire, the debonair master of light comedy and the dance, is its chief ornament.
  86. Hollywood Stargirl
    Hollywood Stargirl could be seen as a filmmaking exercise. How do you build a story around a character who was auxiliary by design? Hart’s solutions are manifold, but her most effective one is to quash the grating altruism that drove Stargirl in the first movie.
  87. Sasquatch Sunset
    Surrender to its shaggy rhythms and you’ll find this sometimes tiresome portrait of a family of mythical beasts is not without intelligence and a strangely mesmeric intent.
  88. Bogart: Life Comes in Flashes
    The documentary Bogart: Life Comes in Flashes is an official portrait that nevertheless offers some insights into how one of Hollywood’s most recognizable and irreplaceable star personas evolved.
  89. Spanking the Monkey
    It is also the sort of astonishingly fresh and self-assured work that can make a reputation.
  90. Seven Psychopaths
    Meta to the max, filled with clever jokes and observations that stick like barbs and deflated ones that land with a thud, Seven Psychopaths is a leisurely riff about movies, violence, storytelling and the art of the steal.
  91. Small Town Murder Songs
    Compellingly acted from top to bottom. As the raw passions of its hard-bitten characters seep into you, the songs hammer them even more deeply into your consciousness. The film's only flaw - a big one - is its brevity.
  92. Bumblebee
    There’s a lot to like here, particularly Steinfeld’s performance.
  93. Holy Spider
    Abbasi seems enamored by the contradictions of Hanaei, who was at once an upstanding Muslim, a family man, a pervert and a ruthless killer. But anyone who reads the news, anywhere in the world, will respond to these rote hypocrisies of misogyny with little other than jadedness.
  94. Tuck Everlasting
    An effective, well-made film that will certainly please its target audience of preteen girls.
  95. Dog Days
    The believability comes from the casting: he has found a group of actors and nonprofessionals who interact spectacularly well.
  96. Steamboy
    The film turns into a preposterous but engrossing spectacle, fueled by a resource more enduring than steam or its successors: big ideas.
  97. Phantom Boy
    Instead of maintaining an effervescent fizzle, Phantom Boy too frequently sputters piffle.
  98. American Me
    But Mr. Olmos's direction, from a screenplay by Floyd Mutrux and Desmond Nakano, is dark, slow and solemn, so much so that it diverts energy from the film's fundamental frankness. Violent as it is, American Me is seldom dramatic enough to bring its material to life.
  99. Blue Thunder
    The action sequences are what the film is all about, and these are remarkably well done, including a climactic, largely bloodless shootout among helicopters and jet fighters over Los Angeles.
  100. Elstree 1976
    "Star Wars” fans will, of course, love this film, but it’s also a thought-provoking exploration of the dawning of our current age.
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