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. Philomena
    Even through improbable moments and abrupt changes of pace and tone, Ms. Dench and Mr. Coogan hold the movie together.
  2. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
    Catching Fire isn’t a great work of art but it’s a competent, at times exciting movie and it does something that better, more artistically notable movies often fail to do: It speaks to its moment in time.
  3. Dear Mr. Watterson
    But viewers looking to learn more about Mr. Watterson and his creation than what’s contained in his Wikipedia entry may come away as hopped-up with impatience as Calvin when confronted by parental indifference.
  4. Lion Ark
    Lion Ark, a spunky account of a perilous rescue mission, has a ragtag rhythm that befits the mercurial behavior of its hulking furry stars.
  5. The Long Island Railroad Massacre
    Respectful and thorough, this unembellished true-crime story might have only regional appeal, but its depressing reminder of our failure to prevent similar calamities will resonate nationwide.
  6. Charlie Countryman
    This catastrophe of a movie zigzags drunkenly between action-adventure and surreal comedy with some magical realism slopped over it like ketchup.
  7. The Best Man Holiday
    Mr. Lee’s film is more traditional than its sexually frank humor might indicate, with faith and charity ultimately given pride of place (right alongside human pettiness). But even if some of the crudeness and the drama feel forced, it’s hard to hate.
  8. Geography Club
    The film is at its strongest when Russell and Kevin face tests of their character brought on by their interactions with homophobic students.
  9. The Fall of 1980
    It’s essentially a modern version of “The Big Chill” without the banging oldies soundtrack or competent actors.
  10. The Great Fallacy
    Watching it feels like packing a semester-long history course with a very cool, left-leaning teacher into less than 90 minutes. The aim is wide-reaching and abstract, yet cohesive and invigorating.
  11. Junction
    Some predictable plot turns aren’t as damaging as they could be, thanks to solid acting (there isn’t a weak performance in the bunch) and lead characters with distinct personalities and motivations.
  12. 12-12-12
    12-12-12 is not really a concert movie so much as it is a densely compacted scrapbook of moments onstage and off.
  13. Sunlight Jr.
    Despite the intensity of their performances, Ms. Watts and Mr. Dillon are only fleetingly convincing as these desperate young Americans trying to maintain a foothold.
  14. The Great Beauty
    A deliriously alive movie, The Great Beauty is the story of a man, a city, a country and a cinema, though not necessarily in that order.
  15. Faust
    The movie expands in its frame, surpassing simple comprehension and continuing to grow in your mind — and perhaps to blow it — long after it’s over.
  16. Nebraska
    This is a comedy, with plenty of acutely funny lines, a handful of sharp sight gags and a few minutes of pure, perfect madcap. But a grim, unmistakable shadow falls across its wintry landscape.
  17. Sex, Love & Salsa
    For a romantic comedy that doubles as a mockumentary, it can be downright creepy.
  18. Speciesism: The Movie
    A painfully gauche, galumphing attack on factory farming, meat eating, animal experimentation and human supremacy.
  19. Ilya and Emilia Kabakov: Enter Here
    Ms. Wallach has fashioned a multifaceted, informative portrait conveying the emotional urgency of the Kabakovs’ work.
  20. Caucus
    The film is a testament to the power of observational documentary to tenderly present hypocrisy and to show eccentricity peeking out from behind social masks.
  21. L.A. Superheroes
    L.A. Superheroes is at times endearing, humorous and insightful. But her golden nugget of a story idea suffers in the big-screen telling.
  22. Blood and Ties
    After a promising start, it degenerates into unconvincing ticking-clock melodrama.
  23. The Book Thief
    The Book Thief is a shameless piece of Oscar-seeking Holocaust kitsch.
  24. Billy & Buddy
    Very young children fluent in French may enjoy the film for its jokes, but anyone old enough to read the subtitles is likely to be unamused.
  25. Reaching for the Moon
    Ms. Otto conveys a double-edged intelligence as the film’s pinched notion of “Elizabeth Bishop in Brazil,” while Ms. Pires strides about, every snap judgment and grand gesture a measure of her appeal. Both are hemmed in by direction and a screenplay that are relentlessly on point (as well as an off-the-shelf score).
  26. It's Me, It's Me
    Though the film is occasionally frustrating and confusing, the modern life it is commenting on is certainly that, too.
  27. At Berkeley
    A documentary necessarily conveys a point of view, and although Mr. Wiseman, as is his wont, is neither seen nor heard in a film that proceeds without commentary or subtitles, his spirit is palpable. Without overtly editorializing, the film quietly and steadfastly champions state-funded public education available to all.
  28. Approved for Adoption
    The movie is not always well unified and sequenced, but that seems to reflect Mr. Henin’s ambivalence over a past that’s like a book he is at once rereading and rewriting.
  29. Finding Mr. Right
    Finding Mr. Right (even the title is generic) has a top-to-bottom capable cast, a nice sense of place and a few honest epiphanies that are given time to land. But neither the comedy nor the romance exists beyond the level of idea.
  30. Go for Sisters
    As long as Go for Sisters is focused on its characters, it remains on firm ground. But the flimsy detective story draped over them is underdeveloped and too sluggishly paced to take hold.
  31. The Wind Rises
    Mr. Miyazaki renders Jiro’s life and dreams with lyrical elegance and aching poignancy.
  32. The Armstrong Lie
    More glaringly than most sports documentaries, The Armstrong Lie reinforces the sad truth that the adage “It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game” doesn’t apply to professional sports. Maybe it never did. Winning is everything.
  33. Great Expectations
    Containing enough characters and subplots for three movies, the novel has been nearly suffocated by Mr. Newell (“Four Weddings and a Funeral”) and his screenwriter, David Nicholls, in an effort to get everything in.
  34. People of a Feather
    Interweaving Inuit life today with re-enactments of the culture 100 years ago, People of a Feather warmly portrays a cold, uncertain present and a worrying future.
  35. The Ghosts in Our Machine
    The Ghosts in Our Machine is a compelling movie, but its argument expands without deepening.
  36. How I Live Now
    As sun-dappled infatuation abruptly crashes into post-apocalyptic survival, Mr. Macdonald struggles to balance a nebulous narrative on tentpole moments of rich emotional resonance.
  37. Ass Backwards
    The film, a comedy without much comedy in it... clumsily tries to merge road trip humor and beauty pageant parody.
  38. The Motel Life
    The story may be slight, but the performances and ambience resonate.
  39. Medora
    A mournful Midwestern ballad devoid of grace notes.
  40. Paris Countdown
    Mr. Marie, making his debut as a director, swathes their tale in a thick coat of style that teeters between cool and mannered.
  41. Thor: The Dark World
    The battle scenes are as lacking in heat and coherence as the central love story.
  42. The Stone Roses: Made of Stone
    By the time the long, throbbing concert finale begins, there is no doubt that Mr. Brown’s intensity has not faded over the years and that the Stone Roses’ breakup was a serious loss.
  43. Birth of the Living Dead
    Mr. Romero, manifesting a self-effacing demeanor and sensible humanity, is a most agreeable raconteur.
  44. A Case of You
    While this unrelentingly midtempo movie milks Brooklyn for its chic, it manages to denude it of its color.
  45. Following the Ninth: In the Footsteps of Beethoven's Final Symphony
    All the film’s segments are smartly assembled and gracefully paced.
  46. Behind the Blue Veil
    The first half of Behind the Blue Veil makes a case for the noble cause of preserving a way of life; the second half admits its near-futility.
  47. Immigrant
    In the end, the filmmaker’s message is nearly lost in this poorly constructed film.
  48. The Pervert's Guide to Ideology
    Mr. Zizek’s daisy-chained improvisations amount to an argument on behalf of complexity and unseen depths, and, like much academic writing, it risks monotony and becoming as reductive as it can be seductive.
  49. Running from Crazy
    This heart-wrenching and deceptively conventional documentary manages the tensions in its subject and in the vérité approach in a fruitful, illuminating and surprisingly moving way.
  50. Last Love
    This dull, dawdling film, adapted from Françoise Dorner’s novel “La Douceur Assassine,” eventually succumbs to sentimentality.
  51. Man of Tai Chi
    The fight is the thing in Man of Tai Chi, Keanu Reeves’s down-and-dirty and generally diverting directing debut.
  52. Free Birds
    Free Birds is likely to leave audiences fuzzy-headed and vaguely nauseated instead of nourished and satisfied.
  53. Aftermath
    Delivers its Holocaust-related story with the clunking force of a blunt instrument slammed into the skull.
  54. Big Sur
    Filmed without a trace of sentimentality, Big Sur is an achingly sad last hurrah.
  55. The Broken Circle Breakdown
    [A] touching love story and soggy family melodrama.
  56. Last Vegas
    If you approach Last Vegas expecting an emotionally engaging, in any way surprising, moviegoing experience, you will be disappointed. But if you want the equivalent of an old-fashioned television variety show — a Very Special Evening with Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman, Michael Douglas and Kevin Kline — you might not have such a bad time.
  57. Diana
    Anchored by Ms. Watts’s sympathetic performance, it humanizes the woman behind the smile, the helmet hair and the myth.
  58. Sweet Dreams
    The sibling directors Lisa and Rob Fruchtman have made a nuanced and deftly edited film about a complex issue.
  59. About Time
    A flimsy bit of mildly romantic, putatively comic Anglophile bait.
  60. Dallas Buyers Club
    There is warmth and intelligence here, and undeniable sincerity, but also a determination, in the face of much painful and fascinating history, to play it safe.
  61. Musicwood
    Merging the sustainability worries of guitar enthusiasts and environmentalists with the hard-cash concerns of logging corporations and Native American land developers, Maxine Trump’s thoughtful documentary wrests clarity from complexity.
  62. A Perfect Man
    One of those projects whose very existence should baffle anyone hardy enough to endure all 94 minutes.
  63. These Birds Walk
    The filmmakers record the flash of youth’s headlong energies, its bumps and bruises, and its melancholies and brilliant chaos.
  64. Ender's Game
    Mr. Butterfield is one of those young performers whose seriousness feels as if it sprang from deep within. And while he’s an appealing presence, little Ender can’t help feeling like a pint-size psycho.
  65. Golden Slumbers
    Golden Slumbers has a tendency to wallow in its romanticism, not to the point of trivializing its history, but definitely dropping off into somnolence.
  66. In the Name Of
    Encouraging sensitive performances that mitigate the film’s sluggish pace and fuzzy narrative, Ms. Szumowska juxtaposes two-person scenes of wordless intimacy with group expressions of casual violence.
  67. The Pin
    Ms. Jaye uses sound, composition and careful patience to create a contemplative mood of memory, loss and magic. With limited resources and the power of storytelling, she has created a small film that feels mainstream and epic.
  68. Go Grandriders
    It’s like a cheap, dry cake covered with a thick layer of frosting. But even bad cake can be enjoyable, especially if celebrating something as worthwhile as these elders, their long lives and their continued gutsiness so late in the game.
  69. Capital
    Its indictment of capitalism is so shrill and one-note that it may just as easily set off fits of giggling, because its characters are so ridiculously evil.
  70. Out Loud
    That the movie exists at all attests to the courage of the participants to see it through to the end. Out Loud bleeds with sincerity.
  71. Not Yet Begun to Fight
    With their sensitive feature clocking in at an hour, the filmmakers make you wish only that they had developed their material further.
  72. House in the Alley
    [A] slight exercise, which, for all its modesty, generates a measure of dread.
  73. When I Walk
    Astonishingly, this is neither as depressing nor as arm-twistingly uplifting as you might expect. Mr. DaSilva’s experience behind a camera shows in his brisk pacing, clear narrative structure and the awareness that a story of sickness needs lighthearted distractions.
  74. I Am Divine
    I Am Divine doesn’t dwell on Milstead’s growing pains. It is an aggressively upbeat show-business success story that focuses on his self-reinvention.
  75. Spinning Plates
    This dully structured film makes its points early and often, treading water before a purposely delayed big finish.
  76. Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa
    It’s hard to score big laughs with hidden-camera material these days because there has been so much of it since the “Jackass” TV show, but Mr. Knoxville and his young sidekick still land a few jaw-droppers.
  77. The Square
    Even though The Square depicts widely covered recent events, it still feels like a revelation. This is partly because of the immediacy of Ms. Noujaim’s approach, which often puts the viewer in the midst of chaos as it unfolds.
  78. Bridging the Gap
    Blithely hokey, amusingly eager to distract and rather entertaining, the film resembles a children’s travel show with music-video elements more than it resembles a straight-up documentary.
  79. The Counselor
    Mr. Scott’s seriousness isn’t always well served by the scripts he films, but in Mr. McCarthy he has found a partner with convictions about good and evil rather than canned formula.
  80. Toad Road
    Mr. Banker teases us with a dizzy, dislocating shooting style that throws up a succession of eerily arresting images. Even so, his film never overcomes the fact that watching drugged-out wastrels is rarely interesting — unless, of course, you’re one of them.
  81. Remington and the Curse of the Zombadings
    The film’s questionable continuity, bargain-basement effects and overload of gay clichés may not be to everyone’s taste, but its queer-eye-for-the-undead-guy exuberance and warmth of spirit are irresistible.
  82. Blue Is the Warmest Color
    Mr. Kechiche’s style is dizzy, obsessive, inspired and relentless, words that also describe Adèle and Emma and the fearless women who embody them. Many more words can — and will — be spent on “Blue Is the Warmest Color,” but for now I’ll settle for just one: glorious.
  83. Bastards
    The story grips you entirely even if Ms. Denis’s worldview here finally feels like a tomb: terrifying, pitiless, inevitable.
  84. Shahid
    Mr. Mehta has done something difficult. He has made a film of conviction that’s neither plodding nor preachy.
  85. Boss
    Boss is billed as an action comedy, but it isn’t always clear what is part of the joke and what isn’t.
  86. The Taiwan Oyster
    Part romance, existential meditation and dark comedy, the film, like its perplexed characters, isn’t always certain of what it wants to be. Yet in the end it does pretty well for itself, despite those self-doubts.
  87. Cut to Black
    A mildly engaging lowlife odyssey that struggles not to choke on its own style.
  88. Seduced and Abandoned
    Seduced and Abandoned may be the year’s most entertaining put-on.
  89. Torn
    Slowly uncovering the prejudices that calamity can unleash, Michael Richter’s screenplay lays bare the damage wrought by Sept. 11 while deftly dodging hysteria, wondering how we differentiate between innocent teenage behaviors and dangerous red flags.
  90. The Prime Ministers: The Pioneers
    A bit overstuffed with history and tales of perseverance, the film doesn’t have room for balanced political analysis or even exposition at times. It’s an omission that feels like a missed opportunity, but maybe that will be resolved in the next installment.
  91. Peaches Does Herself
    Feeling a little stage-bound because of frequent far-back long shots, the show can’t quite become a true extravaganza on screen. But Peaches — even without commanding the screen — shines through, vulnerability winning out over bravado here.
  92. Lost for Words
    The conventions are trundled out in Stanley J. Orzel’s cross-cultural romance, Lost for Words, but not the tension or the chemistry.
  93. The Human Scale
    If the result sometimes feels like a sedate lecture, the global journey strongly enlivens the lesson; it’s fascinating how alike and how different cities can be, and more fascinating to imagine what they may become.
  94. Hellbenders
    This movie has the humor and insouciant pileup of bizarre and disgustingly beautiful images of a cult classic on late-night cable.
  95. Haunter
    Lifted by the sepulchral Stephen McHattie as Lisa’s nemesis, the film’s frazzled thought experiment becomes an adequate yarn.
  96. Enzo Avitabile Music Life
    The fuzziness of Mr. Avitabile’s sentiments on boundary-blind unity is echoed in the movie’s slack, tag-along portraiture.
  97. American Promise
    Race is raised as a possible reason for Idris’s and Seun’s problems, and then other potential determinants (a learning disorder, illness) are introduced. But the filmmakers don’t engage with these life events and issues: They just line them up as if their significance were transparent.
  98. CZ12
    The film is about exotic locations (including a volcano), garish humor (often at the expense of Mr. Chan or women), fisticuffs, stunts and frenetic visual bombast.
  99. Big Ass Spider!
    The director, Mike Mendez, shows no signs of knowing how to make campy horror work the way that the creators of similar movies on Syfy do. It has to be either subtle or over the top. This is neither.
  100. Blood Brother
    A stirring documentary directed with narrative depth and unguarded heart.
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