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. 2 Jacks
    Written and directed by Bernard Rose (“Immortal Beloved”), 2 Jacks has a pleasing circular structure, and it doesn’t push the parallels between old and new Hollywood to absurd limits.
  2. Escape Plan
    The script never gives them the kind of memorable exchange that makes fans howl with delight. But all in all, Escape Plan does what it sets out to do.
  3. I'm in Love with a Church Girl
    This is a message film with the narrative sophistication of a recruiting pamphlet.
  4. Paradise
    Like much of Ms. Cody’s work, Paradise plays out in quippy sound bites, only this time they feel entirely unsuited to Lamb’s sheltered background.
  5. All Is Lost
    The ancient Greeks believed that character should be revealed through action. I can’t think of another film that has upheld this notion so thoroughly and thrillingly. There is certainly no other actor who can command our attention — our empathy, our loyalty, our love — with such efficiency.
  6. The Fifth Estate
    This version of the WikiLeaks story, directed by Bill Condon from a script by Josh Singer, is a moderate snoozefest, undone by its timid, muddled efforts at fair-mindedness.
  7. Carrie
    Ms. Peirce plays up the story’s religious themes and Carrie’s burgeoning power as she discovers her telekinetic gifts, even as the dread of the female body that deepens Mr. De Palma’s version somehow goes missing.
  8. 12 Years a Slave
    The genius of 12 Years a Slave is its insistence on banal evil, and on terror, that seeped into souls, bound bodies and reaped an enduring, terrible price.
  9. Camille Claudel 1915
    Ms. Binoche’s portrayal of Camille is one of the most wrenching performances she has given.
  10. Kill Your Darlings
    Mr. Krokidas deftly shows how the ambition to write is entangled with other impulses.
  11. Gahan Wilson: Born Dead, Still Weird
    Gahan Wilson: Born Dead, Still Weird skillfully introduces this pleasant man with the demented visions and delves into how he got them.
  12. Cooper and Hemingway: The True Gen
    In its allegiance to detail, the film is too long and perhaps overstates its case in claiming that later generations have lost an understanding of common courage, as depicted by these two artists. Their work endures, and so does what they stood for.
  13. Design Is One
    The information-rich film is enlivened by the charm of the intelligent, eccentric couple at its heart.
  14. Zero Charisma
    Has plenty of humor but no satirical bite.
  15. All the Boys Love Mandy Lane
    The hormonal realism to the performances and a laid-back run-up give the film a fairly legitimate feel for adolescence.
  16. The Institute
    The Institute stumbles between documentary and exploratory simulation, at once confusing and pedantic.
  17. God Loves Uganda
    A searing look at the role of American evangelical missionaries in the persecution of gay Africans, Roger Ross Williams’s God Loves Uganda approaches this intersection of faith and politics with some fairness and a good deal of outrage.
  18. 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.
  19. Broadway Idiot
    As a chronicle of how one rock star slowly fell victim to the Broadway bug, it’s kind of amusing.
  20. McConkey
    It’s not about why he was such a thrill-seeking risk-taker but about appreciating his success in living life on his own terms.
  21. Cassadaga
    This eager film piles on common fears: evil puppetry, haunted homes and overly generous hosts. So despite a sloppy and humorless execution, it is scary by association.
  22. I Will Follow You Into the Dark
    This fiasco from the writer and director Mark Edwin Robinson will persuade you that the title refers not to a place without light (though there’s precious little) but to a story without reason.
  23. Ghost Team One
    It’s not the derivative scares and rudimentary effects that keep this low-budget effort percolating but the improvisational energy of Mr. Santos and Mr. Villarreal, whose ease, chemistry and humor never flag.
  24. Forgetting the Girl
    Its characterizations may be overwrought — it is a thriller, after all — and the audience might prefer to have sympathy for a character without being practically told to feel it. But the acting is strong.
  25. The Inevitable Defeat of Mister and Pete
    [Mr.Tillman] does lovely work here, particularly with the actors, even if his insistent ebullience can feel like a sales pitch.
  26. Escape from Tomorrow
    None of it is as scary or as funny as it should be, and what starts out as a sly thumb in the eye of corporate power ends up as a muddled and amateurish homage to David Lynch.
  27. Romeo & Juliet
    A sufficiently entertaining, adamantly old-fashioned adaptation that follows the play’s general outline without ever rising to the passionate intensity of its star-cross’d crazy kids.
  28. CBGB
    There is no story to speak of. Just a series of anecdotes that gain very little when acted out on screen.
  29. As I Lay Dying
    In rushing in where wise men might fear to tread, Mr. Franco has accomplished something serious and worthwhile. His As I Lay Dying is certainly ambitious, but it is also admirably modest.
  30. Machete Kills
    All too soon, Machete Kills collapses into a deranged, directionless splatter comedy that exhausts its bag of tricks, many of them recycled from this grindhouse auteur’s 2010 spoof.
  31. Captain Phillips
    Captain Phillips, a movie that insistently closes the distance between us and them, has a vital moral immediacy.
  32. Réquiem NN
    More a medium-length gallery piece than a feature, the movie can look a little rudimentary in presentation... But its subject is eternal.
  33. Grace Unplugged
    Feels like a religious tract more than a movie.
  34. The Last Day of August
    The film benefits from nice performances and nice work by Mr. DiFolco (making his directorial debut), even if the ending is not as psychologically complex as earlier scenes lead us to hope.
  35. Nothing Left to Fear
    The familiar special effects are not the most disappointing element here. It’s the squandering of the talented Ms. Heche, who is given top billing but almost nothing to do.
  36. Five Dances
    A promising, though static, new film that never leaves its taciturn shadows for a single emotionally gripping moment.
  37. Dislecksia: The Movie
    The film’s primary mission is to destigmatize dyslexia, and it achieves that admirably, presenting technical material with a light touch and compassion.
  38. Bridegroom
    What Bridegroom celebrates is not simply gay rights; it’s the human spirit.
  39. Bad Milo!
    What could have been a very funny short film about self-control and befriending your id instead becomes a rambling commentary on father-son dysfunction and the limits of proctology.
  40. Babygirl
    Predictable musical montages fail to deflate an exceptionally subtle script (by Mr. Vallely) and Ms. Ynoa’s astonishingly mature, hard-to-pin-down performance.
  41. Parkland
    Because the film, which affects the style of “United 93,” offers no new insights, theories or important information, you’re left wondering why it was made.
  42. I Used to Be Darker
    Mr. Porterfield might sometimes be too subtle for his own good, but by taking us on a low-key ramble through the ever-shifting feelings of a fractured family, he has woven a dreamy, detached chronicle of dissolution and renewal.
  43. All Is Bright
    A sardonic, smart screwball comedy.
  44. A.C.O.D.
    A.C.O.D., an unfunny comedy about a guy mooning over his parents’ divorce decades later, is so eager to please it’s hard to hate. But it’s sluggish even at 87 minutes, clichéd and gives you nothing of interest to look at other than some familiar faces.
  45. Concussion
    Ms. Passon ultimately seems to skirt some of the larger life questions hinted at along the way.
  46. The Dirties
    Remarkable as much for its insights as for its audacity, The Dirties approaches school violence with a comic veneer that slowly shades into deep darkness.
  47. Linsanity
    Unfortunately, Linsanity, following the conventions of the sports bio genre, ends at its peak, with only a brief nod to these events. Lin raised his game’s possibilities; you just wish that Mr. Leong had raised his.
  48. A Touch of Sin
    A blistering fictionalized tale straight out of China, A Touch of Sin is at once monumental and human scale.
  49. Runner Runner
    It feels like a halfhearted bluff and has the stale smell of yesterday’s after-shave.
  50. Argento's Dracula 3D
    When insects are the best thing in your movie, it’s probably time to retire.
  51. Running Wild: The Life of Dayton O. Hyde
    The burning question is why Mr. Hyde’s story has never been made into a feature film. You’ve got big sky, a crazy but magnetically confident old coot, a noble but seemingly hopeless quest and a triumphant ending.
  52. Besharam
    Besharam is frequently crude, but it’s also unusually clean in its plotting. And it has a kind of unblushing vitality that is especially strong in the dance numbers, which feature big crowds, lots of color and an old-fashioned Bollywood desire to please.
  53. A.K.A. Doc Pomus
    This static documentary portrait relies on the usual panning over photos and tag-team interviews, but the format, like the radio length of a song, doesn’t get in the way of its subject’s heart.
  54. The Summit
    The film over all is a pulse-pounding success.
  55. A River Changes Course
    This human story is profound enough to stand on its own.
  56. Walter: Lessons from the World's Oldest People
    The documentary is not really about these older people but about this couple.
  57. Vikingdom
    Poor computer-generated effects give the movie an unsettling, two-layered feel.
  58. Gravity
    For all of Mr. Cuarón’s formal wizardry and pictorial grandeur, he is a humanist at heart.
  59. Let the Fire Burn
    Let the Fire Burn relentlessly sustains its tragic momentum.
  60. The Dead Man and Being Happy
    Stories of humanized hit men make for a small but well-trod patch of screenwriting terrain, but The Dead Man and Being Happy quickly transcends that territory to become a beguiling road movie.
  61. The Citizen
    The Citizen is a heartfelt plea for charity, tolerance and all-around loving kindness — admirable aims sadly shackled to Sam Kadi’s inexpert direction.
  62. Muscle Shoals
    At once overstuffed with interviews and intellectually underdeveloped, the movie charts the area’s music industry and what is lyrically if elusively called the Muscle Shoals sound.
  63. Winter Nomads
    What little we learn of Pascal, who has worked in Switzerland as a shepherd for more than 30 years, and Carole, who is a former dietitian, fits in a scene or two, but their practical journey yields a certain contemplative equanimity.
  64. The Spy: Undercover Operation
    It’s amusing, and a refreshing change from the usual C.G.I.-heavy blockbusters.
  65. Dark Touch
    That space between reality and mirage is where Ms. de Van’s strength, and this movie’s true horror, lies.
  66. Hôtel Normandy
    Hôtel Normandy is a confection spun differently from the typical Hollywood rom-com.
  67. The Secret Lives of Dorks
    There’s no way to prepare yourself for how awful The Secret Lives of Dorks is.
  68. Inequality for All
    Mr. Reich ties together his talking points with a reasonable-sounding analysis and an unassuming warmth sometimes absent from documentaries charting America’s economic woes.
  69. Out in the Dark
    Even though the plot defies credibility at several points, Out in the Dark is gripping.
  70. We Are What We Are
    It’s all a little silly, but Mr. Mickle’s restrained gravity stifles the impulse to laugh.
  71. The Paw Project
    A heartfelt documentary about a subject that inflames cat lovers everywhere: declawing.
  72. We Came Home
    Ariana Delawari documents her father’s role in helping his home country, Afghanistan, modernize its financial system after the fall of the Taliban. But this intimate film, Ms. Delawari’s first, is about so much more.
  73. Wedding Palace
    While the story is a bit weak, the film does a good job of contrasting Korean-Americans who steadfastly adhere to the traditions of their homeland with South Koreans who have renounced old customs.
  74. The Time Is... Now
    The Time Is ... Now is a well-meaning if congenitally flawed bit of uplift about how to endure catastrophe and violence in a world that has no shortage of either.
  75. Metallica: Through the Never
    Despite swooping camera movements and elaborate stagecraft, the film produces detachment rather than immediacy.
  76. Don Jon
    [A] deceptively sincere movie about masculinity and its discontents that Mr. Gordon-Levitt, making a fine feature directing debut, shapes into a story about a young man's moral education.
  77. Morning
    Acute emotional honesty and a frustrating narrative coyness coincide in Morning.
  78. On the Job
    Even at its most incomprehensible, the propulsive thriller On the Job is never less than arresting.
  79. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2
    At times it felt as if this film might challenge Pixar’s decade-long reign, but that promise wanes. Instead, the movie is sometimes so strange, colorful and wildly cute that it may end up becoming a “Yellow Submarine” for a new generation.
  80. Baggage Claim
    Predictability and clichés get in the way of comedy here, especially with a lead character who rarely comes across as more than blandly sweet.
  81. Shepard & Dark
    The film points toward a rich and complicated story that only partly makes it onto the screen.
  82. Zaytoun
    In grabbing for the heart this one-size-fits-all fable sadly ignores the mind.
  83. The Muslims Are Coming!
    This well-intentioned “docu-comedy” (as the filmmakers label it in publicity notes) is not very funny.
  84. My Lucky Star
    My Lucky Star, a spy-caper romance from China, is sweet and harmless, but it’s also a little disorienting.
  85. The Short Game
    [Mr. Greenbaum] is observant of tears and laughter alike, but he might have made fewer sacrifices in the name of a tidy package.
  86. Arise
    Arise always feels unified, a genuinely felt and executed womanist letter to the world.
  87. Men at Lunch
    The film feels meandering. Not only does it offer a jumble of ideas that aren’t followed through, but it’s also structured oddly.
  88. Generation Iron
    For a documentary about extreme discipline, the filmmakers lack restraint: the movie, about 20 minutes too long, undercuts much of its own momentum.
  89. Haute Cuisine
    As flatly directed by Christian Vincent, Haute Cuisine is a reserved, très simple tale that raises the occasional smile and tummy rumble but keeps hiccuping because of the drawn-out parallel story about her subsequent tour of duty.
  90. Ip Man: The Final Fight
    Seriously, if not always elegantly, the film portrays the great Ip Man as someone trying to survive, which is to say just as often a victim as a victor.
  91. Jewtopia
    On screen, where visuals reign and the simple pleasures of language are less paramount, the expanded Jewtopia is just a flat premise, uncomfortable not only because the clichés are groaners, but also because you feel sorry for everyone who’s working so hard to prop up the farce.
  92. Thanks for Sharing
    The movie never transcends a screenwriting formula that makes you uncomfortably aware of the machinery driving it all.
  93. A Single Shot
    Mr. Rosenthal puts the story’s parts into play well enough, but once everyone and everything is in position that’s more or less where they stay as this slow story downshifts to a crawl.
  94. After Tiller
    After Tiller is impressive because it honestly presents the views of supporters of legal abortion, and is thus a valuable contribution to a public argument that is unlikely to end anytime soon.
  95. +1
    The movie’s boldness and horrifying logic get under your skin.
  96. C.O.G.
    Despite smatterings of wit and a stable of skilled performers, C.O.G. struggles to find a consistent tone, its episodic structure veering from farcical to poignant to dangerously raw.
  97. The Colony
    The Colony is two-thirds of a pretty good sci-fi suspense movie. But it eventually takes a disappointing turn and becomes yet another run-from-the-ghouls exercise, cheapening decent work by a good cast.
  98. Battle of the Year
    The miracle of the new 3-D dance film Battle of the Year is how it can be so relentlessly boring while there is so much frenetic activity on screen.
  99. Prisoners
    Prisoners is the kind of movie that can quiet a room full of casual thrill-seekers. It absorbs and controls your attention with such assurance that you hold your breath for fear of distracting the people on screen, exhaling in relief or amazement at each new revelation
  100. Rush
    Mr. Howard doesn’t just want you to crawl inside a Formula One racecar, he also wants you to crawl inside its driver’s head.
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