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. Gunday
    Gunday, directed by Ali Abbas Zafar, may be preposterous, but it’s rarely dull. And when Mr. Khan and Ms. Chopra are on screen it’s something more. It’s downright enjoyable.
  2. Two Lives
    Two Lives is an absorbing, well-acted, moderately suspenseful mystery, although its time line of events is fuzzy to the point of impenetrability.
  3. Fatal Assistance
    A potent, persuasive and quietly furious documentary.
  4. HairBrained
    Unfortunately, the movie lacks strong enough players to fill in subtext to Mr. Kent’s formulaic setups, and the story flounders once Ms. Posey is out of the picture.
  5. Chlorine
    Jay Alaimo’s sour tale of suburban greed and marital disappointment, can’t even deliver a temporary high; mired in the blahs, the blues and the midlife crazies, this poor man’s “American Beauty” slowly sucks your will to live.
  6. Odd Thomas
    At once comic, tragic and goofily romantic, and resting too often on Odd’s clarifying narration, this young-adult lark breaches the nonsense barrier with some regularity.
  7. Stalingrad
    The movie’s few spectacles — particularly the composite image of Russian soldiers aflame after a fuel depot explodes — seem to consume the creative energies of the filmmakers, with their palpable pride in staging patriotic deaths from the safe distance of history.
  8. Son of God
    Son of God may have hit the mark if part of the goal was to create a portrait flat enough to allow audience members to project their own feelings onto the screen.
  9. Kids for Cash
    Carefully assembled and soberly presented, Robert May’s Kids for Cash takes a lacerating look at America’s juvenile justice system.
  10. 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.
  11. The Bag Man
    At least Mr. De Niro, who disappears from the movie until the end, seems to be enjoying himself. The force of his bonhomie gives this murky-looking, empty conceit of a film a desperately needed lift of facetious humor.
  12. 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.
  13. Almost Human
    In this blood-splattered wasteland, neither original ideas nor acting skills flourish.
  14. 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.
  15. Highway
    The cinematographer Anil Mehta’s lovely, unfussy images ground the film and show us a good bit of India... Mr. Ali’s story, though, wanders too long and too far, sometimes coming off like a forced mash-up of “It Happened One Night” and “Patty Hearst.”
  16. 3 Days to Kill
    By any reasonable standard, 3 Days to Kill is a terrible movie: incoherent, crudely brutal, dumbly retrograde in its geo- and gender politics. But it is also, as much because of as in spite of these failings, kind of fun.
  17. In Secret
    Ms. Olsen and the more persuasive Mr. Isaac may generate heat, but their performances and the filmmaking lack the frenzy that might explain how these two crazy kids turned into murderous fiends.
  18. Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me
    On a deeper level, Shoot Me is an unflinchingly honest examination of a woman who is aware that the end is approaching.
  19. The Standbys
    Ms. Riggs gives each actor a story arc of sorts, and all three are personable guides to this backstage world, explaining the process and terminology and talking openly about their lives and jobs.
  20. One Candle, Two Candles...
    Mr. Rosebiani evidently wants to avoid depressing his audience while addressing a serious subject, but his aims are likely to be lost in this film’s strained mugging.
  21. Black Out
    Taking a credibility-straining premise and running with it, the Dutch director Arne Toonen gives Black Out way more energy than sense. Luckily, his antihero, Jos (Raymond Thiry), lacks neither.
  22. Barefoot
    The movie acts like screwball comedy, but there are no laughs as Daisy and Jay’s connection lurches toward implausible romance.
  23. Angels in Stardust
    Angels in Stardust ends up being too tidy to be a great coming-of-age movie, but it’s a decent one.
  24. Pompeii
    Mr. Anderson displays his mastery as a director in the sword-fighting scenes... But the glares and eye rolls that bookend these scenes are what make this film both GIF-ready and campy fun.
  25. 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.
  26. Child's Pose
    It’s too bad that the filmmakers don’t allow an occasional breath of air into the sepulchral proceedings or ease up on the increasingly heavy-handed lessons.
  27. Lucky Bastard
    Robert Nathan’s Lucky Bastard is a sorry-looking found-footage thriller as unconvincing as its characters’ thrashing orgasms.
  28. Girl on a Bicycle
    It’s all light as a feather, with Jeremy Leven, the writer and director, landing some good multinational jokes along the way.
  29. Beijing Love Story
    There’s a little effort to give each story its own tempo and style; you notice bits and pieces plucked from other movies or TV shows.
  30. Date and Switch
    Like a fresh ripple in the near-stagnant high school movie pool, Chris Nelson’s Date and Switch balances formula with winning performers, genuine humor and a generosity of spirit that this genre too often lacks.
  31. 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.
  32. 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.
  33. Winter's Tale
    A thin line separates the magical from the preposterous, and by insisting so strenuously on its own magic, Winter’s Tale pitches helplessly into earnest ridiculousness.
  34. 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.
  35. Endless Love
    Directed by Shana Feste (“Country Strong”), this new Endless Love doesn’t have enough going on to make it memorably terrible: Banality is its gravest sin.
  36. About Last Night
    Many of the funniest parts seem to arise spontaneously from Mr. Hart’s uncensored brain and fast-moving mouth. He can swerve from tears to mock outrage to anatomically detailed obscenities faster than just about any other comic performer working today, and in Ms. Hall he has found an excellent match.
  37. Someone Marry Barry
    There’s nothing sophisticated or groundbreaking here, but the movie is a moderately good entry in the bro-grows-up genre.
  38. The New Black
    Ms. Richen elucidates an entire spectrum of views, from actively egalitarian to reactively homophobic.
  39. RoboCop
    A nicely cast, respectable remake.
  40. Hasee Toh Phasee
    While the film starts out as a seemingly fresh take on the romantic comedy, it is saddled with numerous contrivances and the clichéd trappings of the genre.
  41. Vampire Academy
    What is surprising is that while the patchwork whole creaks terribly in places, the parts also show signs of life.
  42. The Attorney
    Mr. Song puts his usual big heart into the character, though there aren’t many layers or nuances to the drama. Every scene does its job, tears flowing on cue.
  43. Mars at Sunrise
    This setup is simple, but what follows is less so: an impressionistic battle between imagination and brute force that too often veers from enlightening to exasperating.
  44. Demi-Soeur
    This sickly sweet concoction sets your teeth on edge.
  45. The Outsider
    After a somewhat tense opening chase involving a lot of girders, much of the film is rather shakily assembled.
  46. A Field in England
    The actors are uniformly impressive, and Mr. Wheatley’s longtime cinematographer, Laurie Rose, shooting in black and white, combines stunning pastoral compositions with bursts of graphic violence punctuated by blazing flintlocks.
  47. Cavemen
    A terrible movie about a bland, morose young man’s search for love.
  48. 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.
  49. Nurse 3D
    Nurse 3D isn’t nearly as fun as a movie about a homicidal, sex-obsessed, clothing-averse health care provider ought to be.
  50. 7 Boxes
    The filmmakers stage an amazing race that almost absolves an overstuffed plot and an over-reliance on coincidence.
  51. The Pretty One
    The Pretty One is intermittently charming, occasionally touching and entirely lacking in credibility.
  52. The Last of the Unjust
    “Shoah” remains a heroic reckoning with the limits of collective understanding, but The Last of the Unjust is something smaller, stranger and more paradoxical: the portrait of an individual whose actions still defy comprehension, and the self-portrait of an artist consumed by the past.
  53. Love & Air Sex
    Love & Air Sex has a spontaneity and cheeky attitude... along with spirited naturalistic performances that infuse the standard rom-com formula with a zany vitality.
  54. After the Dark
    Slack acting (perhaps aggravated by the harsh lighting design) and the script’s inability to build characters together vaporize the chances for the movie, which is both smugly clever and at times distastefully clueless.
  55. The Monuments Men
    It can be nice to spend time with these actors even when you don’t believe their characters for a single second, and there’s no denying this movie’s easy pleasures... Yet because Mr. Clooney can’t figure out what kind of story this is, he too often slips into pandering mode.
  56. The LEGO Movie
    The visual environment created by the filmmakers (Phil Lord and Christopher Miller of “21 Jump Street” wrote and directed; the animation is by Animal Logic) hums with wit and imagination... The story is a busy, slapdash contraption designed above all to satisfy the imperatives of big-budget family entertainment.
  57. 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.
  58. Tim's Vermeer
    Shooting in unattractive, hard-edge digital, Teller condenses Mr. Jenison’s years-long pursuit into 80 glib, alternately diverting, exasperating and tedious minutes.
  59. The Wait
    It’s all just so much empty eye candy.
  60. 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.”
  61. 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.
  62. Hank: 5 Years from the Brink
    It’s informative but not enlightening, and Mr. Berlinger packs in chattering news clips and a score that’s audible under the interview.
  63. Brightest Star
    Allegories involving astronomy, baseball and sandwiches are hinted at but are no better developed than the characters.
  64. Breaking the Frame
    Breaking the Frame is a tantalizing teaser for a story that still needs to be told.
  65. 12 O'Clock Boys
    12 O’Clock Boys packs more life into its 72 minutes than many longer documentaries do.
  66. Love Is in the Air
    The two leads have enough genuine sex appeal to make the film endurable.
  67. At Middleton
    Yes, it’s full of droll humor, but it’s also a bittersweet portrait of two people, who, in the process of helping their children choose a college, confront the emptiness of their respective marriages.
  68. Labor Day
    The movie’s principal saving grace is Ms. Winslet’s convincing portrayal of Adele, a despairing woman of low self-esteem just a twitch away from a nervous breakdown. In almost every other respect, this overbaked romantic hokum is preposterous.
  69. That Awkward Moment
    A vile, witless sex comedy.
  70. Charlie Victor Romeo
    It is a curious hybrid of documentary and experimental theater. It is also one of the most terrifying movies I have ever seen.
  71. I, Frankenstein
    Having established a downbeat, even stoically plain tone, this economical affair feels like a canvas prepped for, and awaiting, further detail (or straight-to-video-on-demand sequels).
  72. Life is Strange
    [A] useful, if slightly redundant, oral history.
  73. Papirosen
    But instead of a dignified stroll down genealogy lane, Mr. Solnicki has made a sparking, gossipy soap opera that’s riddled with emotion and stuffed with strong characters.
  74. Aatsinki: The Story of Arctic Cowboys
    This challenging and mesmerizing documentary captures horror and joy with the same gorgeous dispassion.
  75. 24 Exposures
    24 Exposures plays like an exercise. With a thin plot — the usual parade of possible killers — it falls to the actors to provide zing.
  76. Old Goats
    The root of the movie’s appeal is less the scripted story than watching three game oldsters.
  77. Gimme Shelter
    The film is more of a pageant than a convincing drama. It’s so determined to deliver its moral that it loses its grip on the reality of its characters.
  78. Run & Jump
    Run & Jump is as real and messy as life itself.
  79. Mercedes Sosa: The Voice of Latin America
    Despite the glorious singing heard in archival footage from various periods of her career, the film is frustratingly sketchy.
  80. Enemies Closer
    With a manic performance by Jean-Claude Van Damme and an improbable but intriguing plot variation, Enemies Closer is an improvement over most hunt-or-be-hunted fare. A small improvement, but still.
  81. G.B.F.
    Unlike such forerunners as “Clueless” and “Mean Girls,” however, this movie, doesn’t have a believable moment in it.
  82. 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.
  83. Gloria
    The great accomplishment of Gloria, the Chilean writer-director Sebastián Lelio’s astute, unpretentious and thrillingly humane new film, is that it acknowledges both sides of its heroine’s temperament without judgment or sentimentality.
  84. Visitors
    Time slows to a near-standstill as the film peers into humanity’s troubled soul, glimpsed through the individual faces, which sometimes appear to be studying us as intently as we are studying them.
  85. Towheads
    The movie is a watchable collection of images that never quite come together.
  86. Devil's Due
    Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett direct with competence but a dispiriting lack of originality.
  87. Band of Sisters
    A sweeping but disorganized and sometimes monotonous exploration.
  88. Indigo Children
    Indigo is vaguely defined here as having a certain sensitivity and even power, but the movie doesn’t quite share those qualities, collapsing from a lack of direction in more than one sense.
  89. Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?
    Dutifully hitting its marks up to a point, this story of a married man struggling to stay closeted proves to have a maturity that eludes more overtly ambitious dramas on the subject.
  90. Maidentrip
    Before our eyes, Laura’s lengthening limbs and deepening introspection become the point of a movie that begins with a child and ends with a young woman.
  91. Back in the Day
    There are a lot of odious movies yet to come in 2014, no doubt, but they’ll have to work to beat Back in the Day for awfulness.
  92. Life of a King
    Mr. Gooding’s performance and his complex charisma are fascinating to watch throughout.
  93. The Nut Job
    The Nut Job features muddy-colored and often ugly animation, a plot that feels too stretched out and loaded with details to hold the attention of most children, and more flatulence jokes than anyone deserves.
  94. Ride Along
    The plot twists are easily guessed, and the film goes on for one predicament too long, but there are some good laughs.
  95. Reasonable Doubt
    In lieu of tension, the film is stuffed with crazed musical crescendos, amateurish structural feints and pregnant pauses that cry out for the familiar “chu-CHUNG” of a “Law & Order” scene change.
  96. Big Bad Wolves
    Is there a point? All the filmmakers seem interested in is the ugliness of the main Israeli characters.
  97. Summer in February
    Picturesque seascapes are about the only thing to recommend in Summer in February.
  98. Like Father, Like Son
    Mr. Hirokazu never overly explains his stories through the dialogue, preferring to tease out their meaning visually.
  99. Generation War
    As television drama, Generation War is unquestionably effective. As dramatized history, it is pretty questionable.
  100. 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.
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