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. Changeling
    The truth about the case of Christine Collins is so shocking and dramatic that embellishment must have seemed pointless, but in sticking so close to the historical record, Mr. Straczynski and Mr. Eastwood have produced a distended, awkward narrative whose strongest themes are lost in the murky pomp of period detail.
  2. Simon Killer
    Though the film’s ice-cold blend of the cerebral and the atavistic can be off-putting, it enables a queasy portrait of moral disengagement that lingers long after Simon has slipped from the screen.
  3. Knock at the Cabin
    For all its skill and cunning, Knock at the Cabin is an overwrought quasi-theological melodrama that also manages to be a half-baked thought experiment. It’s a thrill ride in a toy trolley.
  4. The Summit
    The film over all is a pulse-pounding success.
  5. Invisible
    Though each character is living a distinctly personal tragedy, the filmmaker's antipathy to context or coherence effectively bars us from all but the most fleeting emotional involvement.
  6. Cyber-Seniors
    This is a sweet tale that will resonate with anyone who has tried to make a Skype call to a grandparent.
  7. Accidental Courtesy: Daryl Davis, Race & America
    Mr. Davis, speaking to Faith Morris of the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, poses a knotty question about how far his cause of eliminating race hate has yet to go. Her reply: “How long is this documentary going to be?”
  8. The World According to Garp
    If it was finally the book's whimsical side that endeared it to so many readers, the movie is missing none of that charm. If anything, it's got a little more...A gentle, intelligent film and an interesting one.
  9. Where Eagles Dare
    Where Eagles Dare is the ultimate metaphor. It encapsulates human experience into an ordered, comprehensible melodrama that is both absurd and entertaining.
  10. Shadow of the Thin Man
    William Powell and Myrna Loy may not have invented star chemistry but they perfected it.
  11. Meet John Doe
    With an excellent script by Mr. Riskin—overwritten in many spots, it is true—Mr. Capra has produced a film which is eloquent with affection for gentle people, for the plain, unimpressive little people who want reassurance and faith.
  12. Zoo
    Paradoxically, it is precisely because Mr. Devor refuses to acknowledge the murkiness that clings to every frame in his film, because he refuses to engage with the world beyond that of the zoophiles, that they seem like creatures from some never-ending night.
  13. Klitschko
    For those who care about the winning and losing of championship belts, the film's slow-motion attention to pugilistic style and powerhouse punches is thrillingly instructive.
  14. Pee-wee's Big Holiday
    Like the Muppets and the Simpsons, Pee-wee Herman seems not to age. But in his new Netflix movie, Pee-wee’s Big Holiday, he does take things down a notch; he’s less frenetic and more reactive.
  15. Three of Hearts: A Postmodern Family
    A significant development turns Susan Kaplan's documentary into a thought-provoking story.
  16. Blood on Her Name
    Oppressively dark and unrelentingly intense, Blood on Her Name packs down-and-dirty performances, and a few surprises, into a tight 85 minutes.
  17. Kiss of the Spider Woman
    For the most part, though, the X factor of elegance, sensuality and verve that made MGM musicals so memorable is missing here. You want to give an encouraging grade for effort, but effort is also the last thing you want to see in a musical.
  18. Rob the Mob
    Vividly painting Queens in the early 1990s as a landscape of crack and graffiti, the filmmakers go on to smother any menace with a swoony-upbeat soundtrack and an “oh, those kooky kids” tone.
  19. Eames: The Architect & The Painter
    The most gratifying thing about "Eames" is that it shows, in marvelous detail, how their work was an extension of themselves and how their distinct personalities melded into a unique and protean force.
  20. Winter Brothers
    Mr. Palmason’s showy technique, magnetic on its own, ultimately seems like a way of adding mystery to a story that, like Emil, is content with having no place to go.
  21. Rocky Balboa
    Surprisingly Rocky Balboa, is no embarrassment. Like its forerunners it goes the distance almost in spite of itself. It's all heart and no credibility except as a raw-boned fable.
  22. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
    The dazzling, high-flying silliness is quite an achievement. The movie is better than it deserves to be, given its origins: a ride at Disneyland and Disney World.
  23. Jimmy's Hall
    The screenplay is vague not only about politics but also about the history of Jimmy’s unconsummated relationship with his former sweetheart, Oonagh (Simone Kirby), now married, whose wide Susan Sarandon eyes express a wistful sadness.
  24. Lunacy
    Mr. Svankmajer’s provocations skew toward the intellectual and the shivery rather than the pop and the visceral, and at his best, he doesn’t just get under your skin, but also deep in your head, too. Here, unfortunately, he does neither, despite some marvelous stop-motion animated sequences involving a literal moveable feast of severed animal tongues, loose eyeballs and errant brains.
  25. A Man Named Pearl
    Assembled without frills or fuss, A Man Named Pearl is as much a portrait of a small Southern town as of an unassuming black folk artist.
  26. David Hockney: The Colors of Music
    Over all, this deferential film salutes Mr. Hockney's artistry as an elixir for creaky texts, a hallucinogen for orthodox opera fans, and an antidote to his own senescence. As much as he lets the filmmaker be present, he successfully avoids real intimacy, keeping his personal life comfortably backstage.
  27. The Congress
    Ari Folman’s genre mash-up The Congress could use a freakier title, something either more appealing or appalling to go with the weird, sometimes wonderful visions flowing through it.
  28. Tallulah
    The story in Tallulah sometimes strains credulity, but it’s beautifully told and acted.
  29. V/H/S/94
    I suppose it doesn’t cohere into anything more than the sum of its parts. But this is the first time I’ve felt the anthology horror format really worked, and gosh, the parts are really good.
  30. Biggie and Tupac
    Whether or not you buy Mr. Broomfield's findings, the film acquires an undeniable entertainment value as the slight, pale Mr. Broomfield continues to force himself on people and into situations that would make lesser men run for cover.
  31. Hannah
    Rigorously structured and glacially paced, this sophomore feature from Andrea Pallaoro (after his 2015 family tragedy, “Medeas”) is a minimalist portrait of brutal isolation and extreme emotional anguish.
  32. The Grace Lee Project
    Although The Grace Lee Project is ostensibly about a name, it's really about cultural assimilation and a stereotype of virtue and subservience that has deep roots on both sides of the Pacific. As oppressive as her name may be, Ms. Lee also knows full well that there are worse fates than being a 16-year-old Harvard freshman.
  33. Eating
    Food assumes near-religious importance in Mr. Jaglom's portrait of needy, anxious women who spend an entire day playing upon one another's insecurities, and waxing rhapsodic about well-remembered culinary thrills.
  34. Honeymoon in Vegas
    Honeymoon in Vegas is a virtually nonstop scream of benign delirium, pop entertainment as revivifying as anything you're likely to see this year. It's a romantic farce in which the explosion of the epically earnest and funny central situation creates shock waves that leave no person or thing untouched. Even the film's bit players and extras are funny.
  35. Blood Quantum
    Unfortunately, the film emulates many of its genre brethren’s inability to convert a promising start into a solid second act. . . . though a haunting finale almost redeems the flabby midsection.
  36. Before the Flood
    The film wants to spur individual changes in behavior, but there’s a fair amount in it that might discourage you from even trying.
  37. Green Zone
    When Mr. Greengrass made "United 93," his 2006 reconstruction of one of the Sept. 11 hijackings, some people fretted that it was too soon. My own response to Green Zone is almost exactly the opposite: it's about time.
  38. The Assassination of Richard Nixon
    That The Assassination of Richard Nixon is as well directed, acted and shot as it is makes Mr. Mueller's inability to invest his film with significance all the more disappointing.
  39. King of California
    King of California may look and feel realistic, but it is really a Don Quixote-like fable about nonconformity and pursuing your impossible dream to the very end.
  40. Damsel
    Damsel may feel 20 minutes too long, but it fills them with attitude and cheek. Here, the frontier is not just a crucible of reinvention, but a wilderness that can make you more than a little crazy.
  41. Thomas in Love
    The film is full of ingenious details and effective character sketches (Thomas has a mother who would give Woody Allen the willies) that go a long way toward covering up its conventionalities.
  42. Booye kafoor, atre yas
    Perhaps it's the difference in culture, but the thoughtfulness in Smell of Camphor, Fragrance of Jasmine shows that its creator isn't letting himself or his audience off the hook.
  43. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
    By the end, instead of feeling stirred to a high pitch of anxiety and excitement, you may feel battered and worn down. But not, in the end, too terribly disappointed.
  44. Master Gardener
    Part of the kick of “Master Gardener” is that the writer-director Paul Schrader manages to pull off this improbable movie. It shouldn’t work and, even after seeing it twice, I don’t think that it entirely does, which only makes it more fascinating and strengthens its power.
  45. Eden
    Enough films about human trafficking have been made in recent years that the outlines of Eden should be painfully familiar. But that familiarity doesn’t cushion this movie’s excruciating vision.
  46. Weekend of a Champion
    It’s a vintage flashbulb moment of two men at the peak of their talents, one on his way to securing his second world championship, and the other between the twin triumphs of “Rosemary’s Baby” and “Chinatown.”
  47. The Limehouse Golem
    Marrying fact and fiction, Jane Goldman’s seamy screenplay is wildly overstuffed; but the director, Juan Carlos Medina, gives the music hall scenes a rowdy authenticity.
  48. Hardcore
    Hardcore never gives in to the rhythm of its nighttime world, never swoons; Mr. Schrader doesn't seem capable of the perversely rhapsodic style his subject demands. But he does work with speed and intelligence, paying sharp attention to detail and making the movie as funny as it is quick and frightening.
  49. The Ones Below
    Toward the end, Mr. Farr employs familiar cinematic sleights of hand, but with a finely calibrated touch.
  50. The Friend
    Some may be offended by this film's use of Sept. 11 as a plot device, but ultimately The Friend is less concerned with the politics of terror than with its psychology.
  51. Inside Moves
    It's a modest and sentimental movie, but also one that, on its own terms, accomplishes what it means to.
  52. Borg vs. McEnroe
    Nothing too grand or grave is at stake here. No special cultural or historical importance can be derived from the Borg-McEnroe battle, but sports don’t always carry that kind of significance. Borg vs. McEnroe is a modest, tactful movie about two guys who, at their peak, were neither.
  53. The 11th Hour
    An unnerving, surprisingly affecting documentary about our environmental calamity, is such essential viewing.
  54. H Is for Hawk
    What does work about H Is for Hawk (aside from Mabel, whose presence is enough to recommend the film) is its refusal to make grief facile or tidy, or to proclaim that healing must look the same for everyone.
  55. William S. Burroughs: A Man Within
    It is all either blood-chilling or hilarious. For those who celebrate Burroughs as one of the darkest and greatest of all comic artists, he is an extreme social satirist of Swiftian stature, whose quasi-pornographic images offer a stark, ghastly/funny photonegative image of the American body politic.
  56. The Noel Diary
    The director Charles Shyer brings a journeyman’s ease to the screenplay (based on Richard Paul Evans’s novel by the same name): embracing holiday movie expectations here, gently deflecting them there.
  57. Israel: A Home Movie
    These mostly silent home movies often have the tug of nostalgia, especially those that show domestic life... But images can be slippery, showing something different from what their creators intended. Even as Mr. Lilti constructs a history...he seems to show its fissures.
  58. The River Wild
    [Hanson] does another deft job of conveying a heroine's secret anxieties, at least during the first half of his story.
  59. Octopussy
    George MacDonald Fraser, Richard Maibaum and Michael G. Wilson are responsible for the story and screenplay, which was directed by John Glen, who does much better than he did with "For Your Eyes Only." However, the material is markedly better, and the budget seems noticeably larger. Peter Lamont's production design is both extravagant and funny.
  60. Falling
    Some scenes scrape your senses like sandpaper, while others are so tender they’re almost destabilizing. Together, they shape a picture that’s tragically specific, yet more comfortable with mystery than some viewers might prefer.
  61. Unsane
    Mr. Soderbergh’s quick-and-dirty approach works here better as a conceptual gambit than as an entertainment. What keeps you watching even as the story becomes more off-putting are the actors and Mr. Soderbergh’s filmmaking.
  62. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
    How light is this movie? So buoyant that even an air raid warning, signaling that this whole world is about to crumble under the blitz, can’t dampen its giddy spirits.
  63. Freestyle: The Art of Rhyme
    The skills on display in Freestyle are too varied and idiosyncratic for one movie to contain, but this one at least offers a heady, rousing education in an art form that is too often misunderstood.
  64. Undertow
    As with the 70's films of Terrence Malick, one of Undertow's producers, the more intoxicated it becomes with rural desolation and fecundity, the more deeply in touch it puts you with its characters' souls.
  65. North Sea Texas
    Pim's withdrawn demeanor and inability to verbalize his emotions - the character is basically one big ache - make it more challenging than it should be to immerse ourselves in his journey.
  66. Midnighters
    As tables turn and turn again — nudged along by a wolfish impostor (Ward Horton) and some creative torturing — the movie allows scant time to ponder each new tack.
  67. The Jungle Book
    If this version of The Jungle Book makes for a fable that is thinner than it might have been, the film is splendidly picturesque and moves along briskly.
  68. Single White Female
    Single White Female is Mr. Schroeder's bid to compete in the mass market, and there's no reason he shouldn't succeed. The film is smooth, entertaining and believably sophisticated. It has far more sound psychological underpinnings than other movies of its type.
  69. Blizzard of Souls
    “Blizzard” is almost immaculately shot and edited, but its good-taste approach to warfare, along with its treacly music score by Lolita Ritmanis, underscores what seems its main reason for being: a relentless “Go, Latvia!” agenda — which has extended to its marketing here.
  70. Night Raiders
    Goulet’s sleek, lo-fi world-building — decrepit gray cityscapes; fields covered with smoke-spewing factories — is more compelling than her storytelling, which grows increasingly predictable as Niska and the vigilantes plan a raid on Waseese’s academy. Yet the film’s use of clichés can also be thrillingly subversive at times.
  71. Spring Breakers
    In Spring Breakers [Mr. Korine] bores into a contested, deeply American topic — the pursuit of happiness taken to nihilistic extremes — but turns his exploration into such a gonzo, outrageously funny party that it takes a while to appreciate that this is more of a horror film than a comedy.
  72. Fingernails
    This gently humorous movie operates so smoothly you may not notice its subversiveness.
  73. Villains
    Despite some committed performances, particularly from a refreshingly natural Maika Monroe, Villains is a hackneyed farce rich in gimmicks and poor in substance.
  74. Three Days of the Condor
    Fast, vivd espionage-betrayal thriller, dandy plot. [24 Sep 1975]
    • The New York Times
  75. The Man with the Golden Arm
    It is a pretty plain and unimaginative looksee at a lower-depths character with a perilous weakness for narcotics that he miraculously overcomes in the end.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Someone Great
    The hooks on which Someone Great chooses to hang its emotional hats are a little clichéd, but Rodriguez, Snow and Wise have enough chemistry to pull it all off.
  77. Stowaway
    For all the empathy it expects of its viewers — every character cries onscreen at least once — the film is troublingly removed from human reality.
  78. The Cat's Meow
    A modest, restrained picture, as small and satisfying as one of Woody Allen's better recent efforts.
  79. Everything Put Together
    A finely acted expressionistic critique of the suburban baby culture and its joys, fears and fetishes.
  80. Happy Times
    A wise, gentle and sad new comedy by Zhang Yimou.
  81. Open Water
    The sharks are scary, and the ocean is vast and indifferent, but the most effective parts of Open Water, which is ultimately too modest to be very memorable, evoke a deeper terror, one that can chill even those viewers who would never dream of putting on a wet suit and jumping off a boat.
  82. Persons of Interest
    Before the film hits its halfway mark, the presentation feels like a frustrating day at an immigration legal clinic where you can never look at the dossier or get to the bottom of the case.
  83. Elemental
    The filmmakers behind Elemental might have done better to commit to a single portrait and been more fearless about avoiding familiar oratory, but small steps are progress too.
  84. Luz
    Despite the strange, echoing beauty of its images ... "Luz" is, as a whole, visually numbing and mentally taxing.
  85. Rio
    This animated feature effort is a significant step forward from the studio's "Ice Age" films, in the richness of its cast, the exuberance of its music and the vibrance of its palette.
  86. The Great Buck Howard
    An agreeable show business satire with a warm heart.
  87. Triangle of Sadness
    This, in the end, is a very bad movie, executed with enough visual polish and surface cleverness to fool the Cannes jurors, something Ostlund has done twice. Shame on them! But maybe we shouldn’t be surprised.
  88. Revenge of the Electric Car
    In the end, Revenge of the Electric Car is a slick, enjoyable valentine to a retooling industry. This optimistic film lacks the outrage of the earlier work, but that's O.K. A movement needs its triumphs too.
  89. Let Him Go
    With uncommon stealth, Let Him Go morphs from a drama about loss and grief into a terrifying thriller.
  90. Eden
    A picture so modest and minor-key that the emotional bruise it leaves may take days to develop.
  91. Algorithms
    The movie is an object lesson in how a remarkable subject can be turned into a less remarkable film.
  92. Who's That Knocking at My Door?
    The director, who also wrote the original story and screenplay, hasn't succeeded in making a drama that is really much more aware than the characters themselves. The result is a movie that is as precise—and as small—as a contact print.
  93. Batkid Begins
    Marveling without questioning, the movie is content to package the phenomenon and coast on its feel-good wave. Yet, somewhere around the midpoint, I began to wonder who was most thrilled by all this fuss.
  94. Things We Lost in the Fire
    Although neither Ms. Berry nor Mr. Del Toro can be faulted in their scenery-chewing moments, these star turns make you uncomfortably aware that they are Oscar-conscious auditions for the Big Prize. Their naked ambition subtly contaminates a movie that, despite its fine acting, has the emotional impact of a general anesthetic.
  95. City of Men
    City of Men has a more humane, you might say bleeding-heart, perspective on this anarchic culture than “City of God.”
  96. Freaks
    Appealing, partly because it’s so unembarrassed by its genre's done-to-death social-injustice themes, this undercooked blend of science fiction and family drama virtually dares you to turn up your nose.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Cat o' Nine Tails
    Only blindly abject devotees of the whodunit should discover catnip in The Cat O'Nine Tails. Any simple souls who expect large dollops of probability and authentic excitement are cautioned that they're in short supply in the concoction of slayings and sleuthing that is dished up here.
  98. Cry-Baby
    What it doesn't have, unfortunately, is enough true conviction to rise above novelty status. Nor does it really have a plot.
  99. World War Z
    World War Z often feels smaller and quieter than it is, because your attention is drawn to details and moments rather than to showstopping spectacles or self-important themes.
  100. Maria
    What we get here isn’t interesting, and it’s not told in an interesting way.
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