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. Denial
    The absence of an emotional catharsis in the film, efficiently directed by Mick Jackson (“The Bodyguard,” “Temple Grandin”) from a screenplay by the British playwright David Hare, leaves a frustrating emptiness at its center.
  2. Heel
    Infused with the D.N.A. of Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971), Heel is an uneasy study of subjugation and transformation. Rock-solid performances from Boon and Graham maintain its precarious balance between anxiety and absurdity.
  3. The Other Son
    Ms. Lévy is rescued from her maudlin, preachy tendencies by the skill and sensitivity of the actors, who turn a wobbly parable of tolerance into a graceful and touching story of real people in a surreal situation.
  4. Dandelion
    So much care has been taken to build a mood of hushed suspense that the rushed, tragic conclusion, in which too little is shown and too little explained, leaves you deeply unsatisfied.
  5. The Dark Hours
    A cold and moody psychodrama poised frustratingly on the border between novel and banal.
  6. Gaza Strip
    Mr. Longley makes powerful use of the techniques of cinéma vérité. The absence of voice-over narration and talking-head interviews gives his portrait of daily life under duress a riveting immediacy.
  7. The Way Home
    The story, touching though it is, does not quite have enough emotional resonance or variety of incident to sustain a feature, and even at 85 minutes it feels a bit long. The premise, too, is a little thin.
  8. Dahmer
    As gamely as the movie tries to make sense of its title character, there remains a huge gap between the film's creepy, clean-cut Dahmer (Jeremy Renner) and fiendish acts that no amount of earnest textbook psychologizing can bridge.
  9. Presumed Guilty: Tales of the Public Defenders
    Makes compelling viewing. But it is viewing of an eerily familiar kind, almost as if the real-life lawyers in the film had patterned themselves on television archetypes.
  10. The Blonds
    It is not so much a documentary as a fictional film about the making of a documentary, or perhaps a documentary about the making of a fictional film about the making of a documentary. If this sounds a bit maddening, it is, though the confusion that The Blonds induces is clearly part of its intention.
  11. The Youth
    Mr. Ratnam is a dynamic, natural filmmaker who happily uses every device at his disposal, from rapid-fire MTV editing to sped-up action scenes that recall silent serials, to keep his lengthy film moving at a brisk pace. The film flags only when Mr. Ratnam must turn his attention to the soggy romantic subplots.
  12. Ticket to Jerusalem
    It has an air of melancholy humor as its characters fumble toward normalcy.
  13. Out of the Furnace
    It’s a heavy, solemn tale of blood ties that turns into a melodramatic gusher filled with abstractions about masculinity, America and violence, but brought to specific, exciting life by Christian Bale, Casey Affleck and Woody Harrelson.
  14. Cheap Thrills
    This is dark comedy indeed, and if viewed as such, it works deliciously.
  15. Buster's Mal Heart
    Buster’s Mal Heart is about the making of a madman. It also aspires, with less success, to philosophically query the void at the center of modern life and Christianity’s failure to fill it.
  16. Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant
    For all its clichés, this furious and discomfiting film tugs on your conscience for days, making a powerful case to turn the American public’s attention back to a conflict it would rather forget.
  17. If the Dancer Dances
    As Wechsler allows rehearsal scenes to play out at length, the perfectionism of dancer-to-dancer lessons becomes improbably poignant.
  18. 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.
  19. 100 Bloody Acres
    This fairly rote tale of rural ghouls and their passing-through prey has its own hick charm, mostly because of performers who never overplay their hands.
  20. Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.
    Regina Hall is a wonder as the woman who stands by her man for a mash-up of reasons, not least being the elevated position the title first lady confers.
  21. Downton Abbey: A New Era
    Fellowes manages to navigate Downton Abbey to charm both reactionaries and revolutionaries.
  22. Mistress
    Mistress abounds with sharp comic performances that never stray into caricature or sentimentality.
  23. Zombie Honeymoon
    Leisurely paced and never truly engaging or frightening (beyond the fear commitment-phobes may experience), this low-budget film, shot on high-definition video, looks cheap, but makes up for it in part with solid performances (especially Ms. Coogan's) and capable direction by Dave Gebroe, whose script is infused with some wickedly funny lines.
  24. Pope Francis - A Man of His Word
    The interview sections are fascinating, and scenes of the pope’s travels, during which he frequently washes the feet of those who come to him, are moving.... Less welcome are Mr. Wenders’s brief attempts at depicting the life of St. Francis himself.
  25. Battleground
    The documentary is a cookie-cutter presentation intent on showing viewers how leaders of the anti-abortion movement have managed to advance their goals and consolidate power by mobilizing an evangelical minority.
  26. The Game
    Mr. Douglas, who delivers a new shade of cruel elegance each time he plays another urbane monster, is the ideal star for this vigorously contrived thriller.
  27. Piercing
    The movie gains momentum as it indulges in hallucinogenic phantasmagoria. Whatever you make of its intentions, it’s certainly exceptional in its visual distinction.
  28. Under the Boardwalk: The Monopoly Story
    The film bounces around enjoyably, giving a history of the game, talking to people who love it and chronicling the 2009 Monopoly World Championships in Las Vegas.
  29. Saving America's Horses: A Nation Betrayed
    Filled with crushing facts about animal cruelty yet also overstuffed and overwrought, it's emotionally and visually tough to watch.
  30. Symphony of the Soil
    Infused with an infectious love for its subject, Symphony of the Soil presents a wondrous world of critters and bacteria, mulch and manure.
  31. Because I Was a Painter
    As crude as many of these works are, they exert an eerie cumulative power.
  32. The Sound of Music
    Miss Andrews, with her air of radiant vigor, her appearance of plain-Jane wholesomeness and her ability to make her dialogue as vivid and appealing as she makes her songs, brings a nice sort of Mary Poppins logic and authority to this role, which is always in peril of collapsing under its weight of romantic nonsense and sentiment.
  33. Endzeit - Ever After
    Once Vivi and Eva are forced off the train and start wandering the countryside, the forest seems to fold its arms around them, and Endzeit modestly deepens into beguiling mystery.
  34. Daughters of the Sexual Revolution: The Untold Story of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders
    The tone is unabashedly partial, yet the women are such entertaining company it’s hard to mind.
  35. Path of Blood
    Watching Path of Blood is frequently a queasy experience, and given the bewildering array of names and complications, not always an illuminating one. But it commands attention as an object lesson in the banality of evil.
  36. Where the Boys Are
    Inspired by the novel of Glendon Swarthout, which one reviewer described as "a highly carbonated elixir of sex, sun-shine and beer," it has been patterned into a movie by the glib script writer, George Wells, so that it looks and sounds like a chummy dramatization of the Kinsey reports.
  37. 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.
  38. Dear Frankie
    "Miramax porn." The term refers to manipulative tearjerkers like Dear Frankie whose sensitive performances, along with a light dusting of grit, allow them to be marketed as art films. This one is clever enough to fool a lot of people.
  39. Little Jerusalem
    For the first full hour, as we're guided inside privacies of culture and consciousness, Ms. Albou sustains her rich and gently intoxicating mode of storytelling, a feat all the more admirable in light of the overly schematic script.
  40. Violeta Went to Heaven
    Mr. Wood has created a poignant portrait of an artist unable to escape the stamp of her class or the burdens of aging.
  41. A State of Mind
    A rare and often chilling glimpse into the culture of North Korea.
  42. Atomic Blonde
    As she does, Ms. Theron locks down your attention immediately, holding you with her beauty and quiet vigilance.
  43. Family in Transition
    Trainin’s film spends a good deal of its running time surveying the emotions that affect everyone here, including the Tsuk children. Yet there’s quite a bit left unexplored; after the start, the director rarely returns to examine Amit’s past or seek insights into Amit’s inner self.
  44. I'm Your Woman
    The movie’s vagueness wants to appear purposeful, reflecting Jean’s disorientation, but it’s mostly confounding. Brosnahan, when she’s not playing panicked, largely enacts Jean as an irritated cipher.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Vitus
    The triumphant musical cues and comic double takes encourage us to cheer Vitus's high jinks as if he were Ferris Bueller's ivory-tickling kid brother.
  46. Cachorro
    At the end, Bear Cub does have a brush with sentimentality. But by then, its integrity and low-key truthfulness has been certified in a dozen different ways.
  47. Halftime
    In Halftime, she is seen in top J. Lo form, an empowering Hollywood icon with an inspirational story to share. Is that reason enough to watch this scattershot portrait? It depends on if she had your love to begin with.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    How She Move
    There’s nary a twist you don’t see coming. But the film’s strong acting, spectacular dance routines and culturally specific details turn clichés into catharsis. It’s the sort of film that sends you home with a spring in your step.
  49. Andre Gregory: Before and After Dinner
    An indelible, gripping documentary portrait.
  50. Anna Karenina
    Mr. Wright's Anna Karenina is different. It is risky and ambitious enough to count as an act of artistic hubris, and confident enough to triumph on its own slightly - wonderfully - crazy terms.
  51. Bad Influence
    Bad Influence is full of sharply observed subsidiary characters and details of dress and behavior. Among other things, they help ease one past the plot's point of no return.
  52. Perfect Strangers (Perfectos Desconocidos)
    This picture is well acted (one of the cast members, Manuel García-Rulfo, has a growing profile in Hollywood; he was seen last year in “Widows” and “Sicario: Day of the Soldado”) and maintains narrative interest without ever grabbing the viewer by the lapels.
  53. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2
    Observed through emotional gauze, its four likable women are symbolic cheerleaders for personal loyalty and wholesome living.
  54. Chéri
    There's something poignant about the image of this actress (Pfeiffer) sitting in a pool of sunlight without a smile or trace of visible makeup. But she's trying to reach a character that her director seems intent to keep from her grasp.
  55. Friends with Benefits
    The results are about as naughty as that sounds (not very), but it also makes for a fairly giggling good time.
  56. Sade
    In its quiet, literate way, the film is almost as subversive as its central character.
  57. Wild Safari 3D
    The cinematic safari's simple pleasures are best experienced with the littlest ticket-holders, who get an edifying thrill ride and a computer-assisted sense of a wider world.
  58. Polytechnique
    It is neither floridly melodramatic nor showily minimalist. The virtue - and also the limitation - of this movie is that it confronts senselessness and insists on remaining calm and sane.
  59. My Reincarnation
    Especially in the early footage, Chogyal Namkhai Norbu is an engaging, charismatic figure; by the end, Yeshi is finding his own footing, able to relate to a young, wired-in audience. My Reincarnation makes a pretty strong case: when the family business is enlightenment, listen to your dad.
  60. First Winter
    The glue holding the film together is Adam Newport-Berra's elegant hand-held cinematography, which captures changing shades of winter and the frightened faces in natural light with an astonishing intensity.
  61. Being Ginger
    Sweet, funny and ultimately rather touching.
  62. That Guy Dick Miller
    The survey, pockmarked with sometimes dopey animations and music, feels scattered and less than the sum of Mr. Miller’s many parts. But it has its heart in the right movie-mad place.
  63. Muriel's Wedding
    Muriel's Wedding runs into trouble when it looks for poignancy too openly, working better at giddy moments than in its occasional sad ones. Most of the time, Mr. Hogan keeps his story light and surprising.
  64. The Blood of My Brother
    Though Mr. Berends strays too often, he does so down some compelling paths. His material is intimate and hair-raising, granting us rare access to scenes inside mosques, at a Shiite militia rally and in homes under fire.
  65. 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.
  66. Banana Split
    Is Banana Split an empty indulgence or a comfortingly familiar confection? Probably both.
  67. Walking on Water
    We spy on an artist who races around like a mad scientist, and who seems comically befuddled by technology. His passion is genuine, as is his sense of wonder.
  68. The Last Exorcism
    An unusually restrained and genuinely eerie little movie perched at the intersection of faith, folklore and female puberty.
  69. Citizen Ruth
    A hilariously brazen comedy whose heroine is an improbable hoot.
  70. It's Kind of a Funny Story
    There are humor and pathos, but a crucial dimension of intensity is missing. The best I can say is that it's kind of a good movie.
  71. The Beach Boys
    Any deviations from the film’s obligatory timeline tour are very welcome, like a mortifying studio recording of Murry holding forth, and it’s a treat to hear the esteem for Brian among the Wrecking Crew, the storied group of session musicians.
  72. Vidal Sassoon: The Movie
    Its upbeat tone, perky visual rhythm and sleek graphics capture the "swinging '60s" aesthetic epitomized by Mr. Sassoon's major invention: the geometric "five-point" haircut.
  73. Storm Surfers 3D
    The vistas are spectacular, the waves fearsome, the filming often amazing.
  74. Gaga: Five Foot Two
    While it’s possible that the director and cinematographer Chris Moukarbel is good at withholding unflattering material, Gaga comes off well, and credibly so: intelligent, an accomplished craftswoman, a well-mannered collaborator and boss.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Manxman
    The British silent pictorial translation of Sir Hall Caine's novel, "The Manxman," is filled with enchanting scenes and the story itself is quite well told.
  76. Reel Paradise
    Reel Paradise is a deliberately untidy, open-ended, thoroughly absorbing chronicle that lets the lives of its characters spill across the screen without editorializing.
  77. loudQUIETloud: A Film About the Pixies
    Boring people who made extraordinary music, the Pixies are inexplicable. In attempting to demystify them, the directors Steven Cantor and Matthew Galkin achieve the opposite.
  78. Human Capital
    It’s all handsomely managed, polished and professional, but the pieces are too neatly manufactured to feel as if anything is truly at stake.
  79. Howl
    Not quite a biopic, not really a documentary and only loosely an adaptation, Howl does something that sounds simple until you consider how rarely it occurs in films of any kind. It takes a familiar, celebrated piece of writing and makes it come alive.
  80. I'm Carolyn Parker
    Jacobs, the great 20th-century philosopher-evangelist of urban life, would surely recognize this retired restaurant cook, a resident of the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans and the subject of Jonathan Demme's marvelous new documentary, as an indispensable "public character."
  81. Steak (R)evolution
    This informative foodie film is more than just footage of assorted chefs cooking delicious-looking cuts of meat. The tour encompasses breeders, butchers, grazing practices and genetics.
  82. Holiday Affair
    An amiable little romance in which a boy meets a girl at Christmas-time, and the sentiments are quite as artificial and conveniently sprinkled as the snow is provided—for those who like such things—in RKO's Holiday Affair.
  83. Summer Wars
    There's a lovely, unhurried quality to Mr. Hosoda's storytelling, which nicely matches the clean, classically composed images of his outer story.
  84. The Hunter
    The Hunter never declares who is good or bad or right or wrong. And the implications of Martin's decision when the moment of truth finally arrives are left for the viewer to unravel.
  85. The Eyes of My Mother
    Unfolding with a minimum of dialogue, Francisca’s maturation from watcher to doer would be laughable if performed with less nuance or photographed with less originality.
  86. Les Miserables
    Song after song, as relationships and rebellion bloom, you wait in vain for the movie to, as well, and for the filmmaking to rise to the occasion of both its source material and its hard-working performers.
  87. Hot Tub Time Machine
    The movie itself is a nonstop barrage -- somewhere between a riot and an orgy -- of crude, obnoxious gags and riffs. If you are a connoisseur of sexual, scatological or just plain stupid humor, you will find your appetite satisfied, even glutted.
  88. Rose
    In the closing scene, Saada, relying on a fierce bit of acting by Fabian, finds a way to pose the question directly to the audience of what Rose’s life should look like. The answer is clear.
  89. Cypress Hill: Insane in the Brain
    Cypress Hill: Insane in the Brain, named for one of its signature songs, is an often engaging chronicle of the group (which has sold more than 20 million albums), one that is probably best appreciated by fans.
  90. Your Monster
    Your Monster, while falling short of the Critic’s Pick status that Jacob vociferously covets for his show, has its charms, namely the backstage intrigue, onstage songs by the Lazours (of the current Off Broadway musical “We Live in Cairo”), and a disarming lead in Barrera.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Mr. & Mrs. Smith
    A chucklesome comedy that fails to mount into a coruscating wave of laughter.
  92. My Favorite Wife
    A frankly fanciful farce, a rondo of refined ribaldries and an altogether delightful picture with Cary Grant and Irene Dunne chasing each other around most charmingly in it.
  93. Noble
    Ms. O’Kane’s brusque performance portrays Christina as a woman who acts on her principles and has little time for making nice. She is a compelling embodiment of the adage “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
  94. Revolution #9
    An unadorned, unsparing chronicle of a young man's descent into a nightmare of delusion, paranoia and self-destructive behavior.
  95. The Komediant
    As informative and packed with cultural lore as it is, The Komediant is dramatically diffuse.
  96. Spy Game
    The problem lies in the calculating pretentiousness of using human misery to make shallow entertainment seem serious. It's worth comparing Spy Game with "The Tailor of Panama," John Boorman's far superior exercise in post-cold-war spycraft.
  97. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
    More amusing than annoying. It is not as maniacally uninhibited as "Old School" or as dementedly lovable as "Elf," but its cheerful dumbness is hard to resist.
  98. Two Brothers
    Yes, it's all terribly hokey. But once you accept the premise as a conceit that allows the director, Jean-Jacques Annaud, to offer an intimate, utopian vision of the animal kingdom, Two Brothers succeeds as an inspirational pastorale and passionate moral brief for animal rights and preservation.
  99. Internal Affairs
    The very appealing Mr. Garcia has an intense, studied cool that is nicely offset by bilingual outbursts. And Mr. Gere makes the most of Peck's smiling villainy, giving him a powerful physical presence and a dangerous, unpredictable edge.
  100. Road to Singapore
    The Road to Singapore is cobbled with good intentions, is blessed intermittently with smooth-running strips of amiable nonsense, but is altogether too uneven for regular use.
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