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. Following Sean
    What emerges is a liberal meditation on freedom and compromise, and a nostalgia trip graced by eloquent restraint.
  2. Micki + Maude
    The director, the star and the writer make a fine team in this often riotous tale.
  3. The Young Victoria
    Despite the filmmakers’ efforts to persuade us that The Young Victoria is a serious work, and despite some tense moments and gunfire, the movie’s pleasures are as light as its story. No matter. Albert may never rip Victoria’s bodice, but he does eventually loosen it, to her delight and ours.
  4. The Road
    Engrossing and at times impressive, a pretty good movie that is disappointing to the extent that it could have been great. Is this the way the world ends? With polite applause?
  5. Bombay Rose
    The movie is lovely, but airless and bolted with scraps that barely hold together.
  6. Coma
    Coma pushes the boundaries of the so-called lockdown movie with its thrilling, chaotic form.
  7. True Crime
    Directed by Eastwood with righteous indignation and increasingly strong momentum.
  8. Cross of Iron
    Cross of Iron is Mr. Peckinpah's least interesting, least personal film in years, a hysterically elaborate, made-in-Yugoslavia war spectacle, the work of international financiers and a multinational cast, most of whom are supposed to be Germans although they sound like delegates to an international PEN convention.
  9. Surf's Up
    Has a friendly, blue-collar vibe (Cody is an ex-fish-sorter from the Shiverpool, Antarctica) and some sly, low-key humor. Nevertheless, a moratorium on penguins might be called for, despite the inevitable anthropomorphic void.
  10. Miss Sloane
    Partly because Miss Sloane is more a character study than a coherent political drama, it fumbles the issue it purports to address, and it eventually runs aground in a preposterous ending.
  11. Vivarium
    There’s a consistent inventiveness — and grim humor — to this treatment of a seemingly well-worn theme.
  12. The Luzhin Defence
    Moves with fluidity and ease through brisk opening conventions to a perfectly poised and balanced endgame.
  13. The Princess and the Warrior
    Deeply whimsical beneath its poker face, The Princess and the Warrior has the structure of an elaborate mind-teasing puzzle.
  14. AKA
    His (Roy's) informed contempt is highly entertaining, but he neglects some of the more problematical and perhaps more illuminating aspects of his story.
  15. The Dancer Upstairs
    Echoes its director's own deportment as a performer, alternating silky smoothness with burlap coarseness. Though Mr. Malkovich stays entirely behind the scenes, he creates a languorous but gripping story of people fighting to stay a step ahead of hopelessness.
  16. Sleep Furiously
    Intermittently absorbing, if deliberately stripped of drama.
  17. The Chaser
    While it could stand to lose 20 minutes and several plot twists, Mr. Na’s debut manages to be thought-provoking and adventurous while providing solid thrills.
  18. Hieronymus Bosch, Touched by the Devil
    The movie comes alive only when the camera lingers over the actual paintings and allows their power to speak for itself.
  19. Lion's Den
    Although it is not a comedy, Lion’s Den is suffused with sense of life lived in the present. Even the grimmest moments are not exploited to instill fear and loathing.
  20. Inside Deep Throat
    A "slam, bam, thank you, ma'am" trifle of an entertainment.
  21. Room
    Room is an existential horror film, a parable of the war against terror being waged in Julia's psyche.
  22. Lady Jane
    At the very least, Lady Jane ought to summon more emotion than it does. But the early part of it is so reserved, and the latter part so incongruously fulsome, that it never manages to draw any deep response - not even when a beheading costs the hapless young Jane her luxuriant, Brooke Shields-like hair.
  23. Coming Through The Rye
    As Salinger, the formidable Chris Cooper has a brief but masterly turn, sympathetically rendering the writer as a curmudgeon defending his literary offspring.
  24. Come to Daddy
    Absurd yet bold, lurid yet a tiny bit touching, Come to Daddy drags poor Norval from hopefulness to horror to a wickedly literal form of closure. More than a few audience members might even be happy to accompany him.
  25. The Road to Guantanamo
    While far from a great movie, nonetheless effectively dramatizes a position that has been argued, by principled commentators on the left and the right, for several years now: that the abuse of prisoners, innocent or not, is not only repugnant in its own right.
  26. Conan O'Brien Can't Stop
    If Conan O'Brien Can't Stop is consistently watchable, it isn't especially funny, nor does it give any deeper insight into its star than you might get from seeing his late-night shows.
  27. Turtles All the Way Down
    What “Turtles” does offer in surplus is texture, thanks to Marks’s springy, stylish direction.
  28. The Happy Prince
    Suffused with a sentimentality that Wilde himself would have deplored, The Happy Prince is narratively mushy and meandering. Yet, beneath the prosthetics, there’s genuine pathos in Mr. Everett’s portrayal of a man bitterly aware that his talents are unreliable armor against the perceived sin of his homosexuality.
  29. The Last Rites of Joe May
    Mr. Maggio's strengths here are his people (not their stories), a sense of intimacy and textured place rather than the generic hoops he forces the characters to jump through.
  30. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
    Regards its characters with affectionate detachment, and assures its audience that no great calamities or revelations are in store. Instead, there are a series of small crises and tiny epiphanies, all adding up to a story that courts triviality in its pursuit of charm.
  31. Ant-Man
    This film is a passable piece of drone work from the ever-expanding Marvel-Disney colony. It provides obligatory, intermittently amusing links to other corporate properties, serving essentially as a sidebar to the “Avengers” franchise.
  32. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1
    The script for Mockingjay Part 1, credited to Peter Craig and Danny Strong, gets the job done, but the performers matter far more than the words they deliver.
  33. Where to Invade Next
    Where to Invade Next is a sprawling, didactic polemic wittily disguised as a European travelogue.
  34. Men & Chicken
    The movie’s grave commitment to its own quirkiness is admirable, I suppose. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to recommend it.
  35. Big Time Adolescence
    Despite some moments of tenderness and easy chemistry between Zeke and Mo, “Big Time Adolescence” doesn’t have enough heart or humor to save it from becoming just another movie about white dudes bro-ing out.
  36. La sierra
    Posing proudly with their rifles or musing matter-of-factly about their own deaths, the boys are tragic enough. But it's the girls who break your heart, stoic and wise beyond their years.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Naked Prey
    A poor and tasteless motion-picture entertainment, redeemed somewhat by its authentic African setting and its effective use of tribal drums and native music as the accompaniment for a primitive jungle chase.
  38. The U.S. vs. John Lennon
    One of the best-known cultural figures of the past half-century, leaves the movie with little to do but add its sometimes sanctimonious voice to the chorus of praise and admiration.
  39. Nothing But the Truth
    Nothing but the Truth has nothing much at all to do with the historical record, which wouldn't be bad if it offered something persuasive and worthwhile in return, like a reckoning of journalism and its abuses.
  40. 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?
  41. Tip Top
    The humor of this situation — or of any of the movie’s strained wackiness — doesn’t particularly translate. It also does little to illuminate the more serious commentary on immigration, the legacy of colonialism and the tensions within the country’s Algerian communities.
  42. Winter Boy
    Winter Boy shines when it allows its actors to quietly play out family dynamics, with Lacoste, Binoche and especially Kircher wearing the many shades of grief with effortless, endearing naturalism.
  43. Sirens
    Sirens is best watched as a soft-core, high-minded daydream about the liberating sensuality of art. Its bubble tends to burst whenever the nymphs are asked to make clever dinner-table conversation, but the mood is nicely lulling anyhow.
  44. The Outsider
    A tragically missed opportunity to illuminate one of the more unusual cinematic talents working today.
  45. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
    Though this “Guardians” is certainly less fun than the others, there are still glints of joy in the more mundane and ancillary quibbles among the found family of misfits.
  46. Wrestling with Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner
    Best approached as an admiring portrait of a likable, creative powerhouse at midcareer. No disapproving voices interrupt the stream of praise for his politics and his art. Mr. Kushner’s place in the history of American theater and in American culture, in general, is left unexamined. These are subjects well worth exploring in another, deeper film.
  47. Ella Fitzgerald: Just One of Those Things
    It proceeds dryly and largely chronologically through her life, sometimes with an awkward sense of proportion.
  48. I'll See You in My Dreams
    Indeed, if it weren't for Mr. Thomas and the warmth that wells up from him, we would not want to voice a speculation as to the residual qualities of the film—not even conceding the wry humor that frequently pops in the script, the verve of the other performers and the nostalgic lushness of the songs.
  49. Lemmy
    Diverting if hagiographic documentary with an unprintable subtitle.
  50. Or
    This well-meaning but irritatingly naïve feature delves into the horrors of prostitution, or more accurately, the filmmaker's horror about the subject.
  51. Hey, Boo: Harper Lee and 'To Kill a Mockingbird'
    Eventually, though, Hey, Boo settles into a pleasant rhythm. It gives the fascinating history of how the book came to be.
  52. Justice
    Over all, though, the hands-off approach leaves the viewer to draw his own conclusions, but without providing enough information.
  53. If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle
    As the movie becomes more explosive - and more demanding of its cast - it loses some of the quiet, careful intensity that made Silviu's situation worth attending to in the first place. The seams of the narrative start to show, and by the end you are more aware of the filmmakers' ideas than of the character's life.
  54. In Country
    Are these re-enactors really as clueless as they seem, or is the portrait just incomplete? It’s impossible to tell from this too-sparse film.
  55. Crown Heights
    Like its protagonist, sensitively and shrewdly played by Lakeith Stanfield, the film is soft-spoken and thoughtful, with sweet, lyrical touches that alleviate some of the grimness without blunting the cruelty and injustice of what happened.
  56. bwoy
    Mr. Young, who also wrote the script, teases out the story in bits of coy hints and half-truths about a tragic accident, leaving too many questions unanswered.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
    A fast, dense, friendly children's musical, with something of the joys of singing together on a team bus on the way to a game.
  58. The First Step
    At once a story of legislative struggle and an admiring profile of a crusader, The First Step sometimes gets bogged down in bromides about community and common ground rather than unpacking the specifics of Jones’s approach and how it differs from his detractors’.
  59. Cold Storage
    A B-movie throwback with plentiful winks, it has few thrills, but it has a touch of science, a plausible-enough threat, suitably disgusting splatter, appealing actors and a fleet running time.
  60. Popeye
    Miss Duvall is superb - genteely ladylike one minute, a woman of volcanic passions the next.
  61. Giant
    It is an appealing, gently comedic prologue to a love story.
  62. Grass
    With its pointed narrative, the film makes its case with a minimum of pushiness and a subtle nod to its crowd.
  63. Chocolat
    So assured in its manipulative prowess that only afterward do you realize how fully you've been worked over.
  64. Fraulein
    An intimate, elusive drama about the boundaries of friendship and nationality, Fräulein presents immigrant lives with significantly more empathy than detail. For some, though, the movie’s narrative shorthand will be enough.
  65. Tracktown
    Fact and fiction blend nicely in Tracktown.
  66. Blades of Glory
    Fast, light, frequently funny comedy.
  67. One Bright Shining Moment
    Still, as the documentary plods past the two-hour mark, much of Mr. McGovern's legend seems dependent on Nixon's faults, and even the Democrat's political supporters, with hindsight's many gifts, can't infuse his persona with any more dynamism.
  68. Becks
    Perhaps recognizing their biggest asset, the directors, Elizabeth Rohrbaugh and Daniel Powell, allow Ms. Hall’s numbers to play out at length... If the screenplay perhaps backs itself into a corner, its irresolution feels true to life.
  69. The Hedgehog
    At times The Hedgehog suggests a Gallic "Harold and Maude," with an intellectual gloss as it celebrates the life force passed from an older generation to a younger. But its concept of vitality isn't the popular cliché of kicking up your heels, breathing deeply and gorging on ice cream. It is an aesthete's ideal of pursuing moments of ecstatic perfection in art and companionship.
  70. Us Kids
    Us Kids skillfully handles a sensitive subject and prudently connects the Parkland students’ stories to those of Black students whose experiences with gun violence rarely garner similar national attention.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Spelling the Dream
    Spelling the Dream is a film about winning, delivered with glossy visuals and a gratingly optimistic score that draws to a close with its champion showered in confetti — an obvious symbol for this overarching (and under-questioned) celebration of American multiculturalism.
  72. The Fall
    A genuine labor of love -- and a real bore.
  73. All You Need Is Kill
    By narrowing the scope and condensing the logic of the action, this film undermines the excitement of the story, so even the day of an alien apocalypse starts to get tedious. That’s a great misfortune given the movie’s funky style.
  74. Tow
    The movie steers into a “beat the system” narrative that packs some stirring “Erin Brockovich” energy.
  75. State of Play
    A superficially clever, self-important and finally incoherent thriller.
  76. Guest of Cindy Sherman
    At once a fascinating behind-the-scenes glimpse, bittersweet autobiography and witty trip down art-world memory lane, Guest of Cindy Sherman isn't out to settle scores or exploit access, public or otherwise.
  77. We Have a Pope
    Mr. Moretti finds broad comedy in the antics of some clerics, who can seem as sweet as children, but in Melville there is pathos and there is tragedy, and not his alone.
  78. Cloak & Dagger
    In addition to tossing in the occasional spy-movie homage (there's certainly a Hitchcock touch to Mr. Franklin's choice of villains), he has kept the story moving and the actors lively.
  79. Little Odessa
    Little Odessa might have been a great film. Instead, it is an exceptionally good one, the kind that suggests the start of a powerful career.
  80. Hamburger Hill
    Two actors who do have good material, and make the most of it, are Courtney Vance, as the platoon's snappish, highly articulate medic, and Dylan McDermott, as the platoon's exhausted sergeant. Mr. Vance is particularly fine. The narrative picks up weight and momentum every time he comes on the screen. Also good is Tegan West, who plays yet another young, raw lieutenant who must depend on the patience of his men.
  81. Nobody Knows I'm Here
    Not all the misdirection is elegant, but the film’s tenderness flowers in a lovely, unexpected final shot.
  82. The Beach House
    After a dillydallying slow start, Brown ratchets up the tension efficiently, summoning a mix of gross-out body invasion, eco-mutation and large-scale cosmic dread on a small budget.
  83. All Together Now
    The movie’s familiar suggestion of music as a light in the darkness works primarily because its star shines so brightly.
  84. Pineapple Express
    It's an unshowy, generous performance [by Franco] and it greatly humanizes a movie that, as it shifts genre gears and cranks up the noise, becomes disappointingly sober and self-serious.
  85. Danny Says
    If Mr. Fields’s contributions to pop music deserve more fame, the movie plays like an overcorrection, a spirited but repetitive testament to one man’s excellent taste.
  86. St. Vincent
    The actors don’t do all the heavy lifting by themselves. The uniformly good performances make it clear that Mr. Melfi knows how to handle actors, and there are some funny bits.
  87. Silent Water
    Silent Waters is several different movies, and most of them feel negligible and meandering, until the film finally packs a wallop.
  88. Queen of the Ring
    It’s a middling entry into the biographical sports movie genre, and the director, Ash Avildsen, cannot resist pummeling his audience with a simplistic girl-power message.
  89. The Hand That Rocks the Cradle
    Though Mr. Hanson ("Bad Influence," "The Bedroom Window") is a slick movie maker, he is not an especially persuasive one here.
  90. Cliff Walkers
    The numerous action set pieces would be memorable even if the plot points didn’t eventually fall into place, which they do.
  91. Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg
    Pallenberg is finally in focus. But the picture is tough to look at.
  92. The Man Who Sold His Skin
    The lustrously shot movie breaks Sam out of the gallery grind through Hollywood-grade somersaults in storytelling (one of them so breezily violent as to feel a little tasteless)
  93. Cradle Will Rock
    Although Robbins might have drawn some of these characters with less obviousness and more satirical bite, he ably keeps this lively, complicated film on track.
  94. Appaloosa
    The movie's tolerant, good-humored view of its characters drains it of some dramatic intensity, but Mr. Harris seems more interested in piquant, offhand moments than in big, straining confrontations.
  95. The Villainess
    It’s hard to enjoy the action when you witness its emotional cost, but once Sook-hee starts slashing goons from atop motorcycles, it’s equally impossible to root for the violence to stop.
  96. Fried Green Tomatoes
    Based on a novel by Fannie Flagg, the comedian, and directed by Jon Avnet, Fried Green Tomatoes has some good performances and a measure of homespun appeal, some of which can be credited to Elizabeth McBride's gently evocative costumes and Barbara Ling's detailed production design.
  97. Arctic Tale
    The movie’s stunning underwater photography (fearlessly captured by Mr. Ravetch) effectively dilutes the saccharine tone.
  98. Everest
    Though it assembles a first-rate cast in a story taken from reality, Everest feels icebound and strangely abstract, lacking the gravity of genuine tragedy or the swagger of first-rate adventure.
  99. Downton Abbey
    From its spectacularly detailed aesthetic to the characters’ march down well-worn personality paths, Downton Abbey argues insistently for the status quo.
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