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. The Good Son: The Life of Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini
    Jesse James Miller’s moving documentary “The Good Son” is like a brisk novel with a bigger-than-life protagonist.
  2. Zipper: Coney Island's Last Wild Ride
    Though not terribly nuanced, a bit muddled and lacking certain perspectives, “Zipper” drives home the fragile identity of even the city’s signature locales and the alarming cultural myopia of much redevelopment.
  3. I Give It a Year
    This painfully awkward product fails on almost every level.
  4. The Machine Which Makes Everything Disappear
    The film produces moments that catch in the throat.
  5. Jug Face
    Some low-budget manifestations of the supernatural jazz up the frights now and again, but as the novelty of worshiping a hole in the ground fades, the film paints itself into a corner.
  6. Blood
    Dark, airless and packed with psychological hurt that seems to spring from nowhere, this angry morality play, tucked inside a police procedural, suffers from a crippling lack of back story and characters whose relationships are fraught with unexplained complexity.
  7. Chennai Express
    The movie chugs along for most of its 2 hours and 20 minutes searching for comedy and characters in a frantically overplotted story.
  8. The Gardener
    An intimate, discursive inquiry into religious belief that opens to include questions about cinema.
  9. Planes
    Planes is for the most part content to imitate rather than innovate, presumably hoping to reap a respectable fraction of the box office numbers of “Cars” and “Cars 2,” which together made hundreds of millions of dollars (not to mention the ubiquitous product tie-ins).
  10. Lovelace
    There’s a lot in this story about victimization and agency that Mr. Epstein and Mr. Friedman never satisfactorily address. It’s perhaps inevitable that they seem happier when nothing yet feels at stake, including during the production of “Deep Throat.”
  11. In a World...
    Ms. Bell, who plays Carol with a perfect blend of diffidence, goofiness and charm, has written and directed an insightful comedy that is much more complex and ambitious than it sometimes seems.
  12. Prince Avalanche
    Mr. Green is too fond of these guys, and too respectful of the little bit of freedom they possess, to ensnare them in the machinery of a plot.
  13. Elysium
    Mr. Damon’s performance helps keep the movie from sinking under the weight of its artfully constructed horrors.
  14. Kid-Thing
    The film is, if nothing else, an interesting meditation on how a child who grows up without guidance might react to a situation that requires judgment.
  15. Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters
    “Sea of Monsters” is diverting enough...but it doesn’t begin to approach the biting adolescent tension of the Harry Potter movies.
  16. We're the Millers
    What really drives the movie is its own search for something to make fun of, and for a comic style that can feel credibly naughty while remaining ultimately safe and affirmative.
  17. Jajouka, Something Good Comes to You
    The film’s strange mixture of primitive and poetic images becomes etched into memory. Weaving observation and a shared dream state, this is an intuitive and intricate exploration into the feeling of sound.
  18. National Security
    Though not without substance, National Security is marred by writing that’s not nearly as creative as the torments it portrays.
  19. Breakup at a Wedding
    Everything goes pretty much as you guess it’s going to, but the conceit of seeing the whole story through the eyes of the videographer adds a dimension to the familiar goings-on.
  20. Rising from Ashes
    Rising From Ashes has the phantom limbs of missed opportunities.
  21. Drift
    This poor-surfers-make-good drama from Morgan O’Neill and Ben Nott relies more than it should on toned thighs and taut gluteals. Be grateful; there’s nothing to see on dry land that’s anywhere near as compelling.
  22. The Artist and the Model
    It is a film with nothing but delight — no major revelations, no gravity and no meaning. This superficiality is a problem only because of the pretense of being about great art.
  23. Cockneys vs Zombies
    As subtle as its title, Cockneys vs. Zombies is mildly funny and easily likable.
  24. Europa Report
    Banishing showy effects and cheap scares, the Ecuadorean director Sebastián Cordero has meticulously shaped a number of sci-fi clichés — from the botched spacewalk to the communications breakdown — into a wondering contemplation of our place in the universe.
  25. Our Children
    Much like the Dardennes, Mr. Joachim holds to the truth that the personal is political, which is why this isn’t simply a movie about a woman and an unspeakable crime, but also an exploration of the power and cruelty that brought her to that very dark place.
  26. The Spectacular Now
    Mr. Ponsoldt ably charts a journey through the high stakes of adolescence, with both Sutter and Mr. Teller showing great promise.
  27. 2 Guns
    Mr. Kormakur sets and keeps up a fast rather than frantic pace that never runs the movie off the rails even when the story nearly does.
  28. The Canyons
    With The Canyons, [Mr. Schrader] tries to get at something real under all the hard, glossy surfaces, but ends up caught in the divide between the movie that he seems to have wanted to make and the one he did.
  29. When Comedy Went to School
    Fortunately for the filmmakers, most of the comedians interviewed here — Jerry Stiller, Jackie Mason, Jerry Lewis and many other (mostly male) voices — provide lighthearted remembrances to elevate this poorly executed documentary.
  30. Smash & Grab: The Story of the Pink Panthers
    Smash and Grab has a grating, repetitive score and can look a little homely on the big screen. But unlike many true-crime accounts, it cherry-picks its material successfully and preserves the conspiratorial sense that we’re learning the ins and outs of an illicit art.
  31. The Smurfs 2
    A new, not very engaging movie featuring a lot of blue skin and household-name voices.
  32. Red Tide
    The undisciplined shooting style and underdeveloped script confound the actors at every turn. Despite their best efforts, they never overcome the limitations of a movie more intent on cutting corners than fleshing out a story.
  33. Postales (Postcards)
    While the film is let down by its plot, it is much too smart for reductive visions of “the other.” And there are moments, like a heartfelt exchange of keepsakes, when seeing Postales is a memory worth preserving.
  34. Stranded
    The actors work hard to make us feel their fear of a creature that, for much of the movie, we don’t get to see. We don’t really need to see it, because we’ve seen it or something like it before.
  35. The Time Being
    An exhaustingly pretentious heave of artistic self-involvement, The Time Being takes an exceptionally handsome journey to nowhere at all.
  36. Neander-Jin: The Return of the Neanderthal Man
    Routinely botching the basics of setting up characters and scenarios, the film lets punch lines die like dogs and at times resembles a pornographic film without the sex.
  37. Frankenstein's Army
    Narrative depth may be in short supply, but the energy, invention and humor are bracing.
  38. Drug War
    The brilliant, unsettling action scenes — ugly, savage, dehumanizing — speak volumes.
  39. Breaking the Girls
    An erotic thriller with too many twists and back stories to count.
  40. Wasteland
    To borrow from a term for the gritty, working-class British dramas that this film also nods to, it’s a kitchen-sink caper.
  41. The To Do List
    This movie is smarter and better acted and just plain funnier than most of its predecessors in the my-first-time genre, no matter which sex is losing what.
  42. The Wolverine
    A modest superhero picture may sound like a contradiction in terms, but really it is a welcome respite.
  43. Blue Jasmine
    [Allen's] most sustained, satisfying and resonant film since “Match Point.”
  44. Terraferma
    As Terraferma tightens its focus on a courageous resolution of tough issues, too much nuance is jettisoned along the way.
  45. First Comes Love
    The approach is cheerfully candid and the humor often sly... Yet this midlife confessional could have reached beyond the maternal cravings of highly educated, urban-dwelling singletons had it plumbed people’s heads as thoroughly as Ms. Davenport’s birth canal.
  46. Ramaiya Vastavaiya
    There is something for everyone in Prabhudheva’s ambitious Bollywood film Ramaiya Vastavaiya — comedy, romance, action and the obligatory music-and-dancing numbers — but hardly any of it is convincing, and the proceedings are rife with clichés.
  47. R.I.P.D.
    What’s missing is what’s often absent in industrial moviemaking of this type: story and characters, yes, but also the human touch and a sense that someone behind the scenes actually cares about the work.
  48. La Playa D.C.
    An urban drama limited by its nonprofessional cast and impressionistic, scattered storytelling.
  49. The Rooftop
    The Rooftop is frenzied, funny and knowing, drenched in lavish, often surreal, imagery.
  50. The ROMEOWS
    There’s nothing flashy about The Romeows the film or the Romeows the men, but what they’ve created — their life’s art — matters.
  51. Ways to Live Forever
    A little wan but a lot likable, Gustavo Ron’s Ways to Live Forever is a forthright and surprisingly buoyant drama about facing death before you have really lived.
  52. Big Words
    Big Words is an engrossing, coming-of-middle-age drama that shows how disappointment can fester and derail a life. By the end, hope and change seem possible but far from guaranteed.
  53. RED 2
    What pops more than the gunfire are the line readings, where Ms. Parker, especially, but also Mr. Malkovich and Ms. Mirren, can give personality to standard action repartee.
  54. Colossus
    A mindblower of a mockumentary, Colossus will leave you reeling in the best of ways, dizzy from a rock ’n’ roll Tilt-A-Whirl that swirls with duplicity and hilarity.
  55. Born to Royalty
    With the film’s incessant strings and narration by Hugh Bonneville of “Downton Abbey,” the earnest yet pompous tone could almost be mistaken for a Monty Python parody of the BBC-standard style.
  56. Centro Histórico
    The film’s final shot might seem a little too apt a summary of an audience’s reaction: Mr. Trêpa, looking into the camera, shrugs.
  57. Nicky's Family
    An enthralling documentary.
  58. Copperhead
    Though the tale, based on a novel by Harold Frederic, remains relevant to our time, the film is too self-conscious and tedious for the message it delivers.
  59. Evidence
    Neither suspenseful nor even comprehensible, John Swetnam’s dashed-off script (carelessly directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi) throws up plenty of red herrings — and a stupendously idiotic ending — but not a single character worth caring about.
  60. Iceberg Slim: Portrait of a Pimp
    Though directed with some flourishes, including a riveting use of music and attractive animated pulp art, the film is weighed down by the testimony of bespectacled professors from hip critical studies and English departments and a psychologist.
  61. Broken
    At a certain point, Mr. Norris forsakes realism for theatricalized fantasy, and Broken ultimately loses its stylistic cohesion, if not its humanity.
  62. The Conjuring
    The dread gathers and surges while the blood scarcely trickles in The Conjuring, a fantastically effective haunted-house movie.
  63. Blackfish
    Unapologetically designed both to inform and affect, Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s delicately lacerating documentary, Blackfish, uses the tragic tale of a single whale and his human victims as the backbone of a hypercritical investigation into the marine-park giant SeaWorld Entertainment.
  64. Girl Most Likely
    A forced, laugh-challenged comedy with an appealing if not terribly well-used cast.
  65. Still Mine
    The film’s vision of a long-married couple keeping each other going with mutual love and support, and a shared resistance to outside interference, is more vital than a thousand movies populated by hot, squirming teenagers.
  66. Only God Forgives
    The movie is so devoid of emotion that its ritualized gore acts as a narcotic. Filmed in shades of red, with a minimal screenplay, Only God Forgives looks like a ghoulish fashion shoot in hell. Three words should suffice: pretentious macho nonsense.
  67. The Act of Killing
    The horror of The Act of Killing does not dissipate easily or yield to anything like clarity.
  68. Dealin' with Idiots
    Mr. Garlin has such a soft touch that at times the film feels feather-light, almost devoid of emotional traction.
  69. Les Coquillettes
    While it may not always be satisfying to attend these soirees, when presented with the talents for repetition and juxtaposition of precise details demonstrated by Ms. Letourneur and Ms. Adler, these social customs are fascinating to observe from afar.
  70. Computer Chess
    Peculiar and sneakily brilliant.
  71. Turbo
    It is interesting to note that a movie strenuously preaching the virtue of being different should be so fundamentally — so deliberately, so timidly — just like everything else of its kind... Still, even in the absence of originality, there is fun to be had, thanks to some loopy, clever jokes...and a lively celebrity voice cast.
  72. Beneath
    Though the young actors...are appealing enough, you keep waiting for a boatful of humor to come along and rescue them. The whole film is a campy put-on, right? Apparently not.
  73. The Hot Flashes
    In critical ways, the movie is a mess. The basketball scenes are so sloppy and haphazard that the would-be slapstick registers as confusion. But away from the court, the actors bring their caricatures to folksy comic life.
  74. Viola
    The mischievous paradox of Matías Piñeiro’s Viola is that it is at once devilishly complicated and perfectly simple.
  75. Grown Ups 2
    This is pap, plain and simple: scattered raunch-lite devoid of emotional resonance. At best, it sells itself on the spectacle of a TV show’s cast reunion — and even then it disappoints.
  76. Terms and Conditions May Apply
    The title of Terms and Conditions May Apply is unlikely to excite, but the content of this quietly blistering documentary should rile even the most passive viewer.
  77. Exit Elena
    Using mostly amateur performers and improvised dialogue, Mr. Silver has created a profoundly awkward riff on dysfunction that’s uneventful but not unrewarding.
  78. V/H/S/2
    The horror anthology has a long tradition, going at least as far back as the British classic “Dead of Night,” in 1945. The best offer surprise endings or a sense of humor. You won’t receive much of either here. Just vertigo and maybe a wicked case of induced attention deficit disorder.
  79. Assaulted: Civil Rights Under Fire
    Like so much of current polarized communication, “Assaulted,” wherever it is shown, is likely to be preaching to the choir.
  80. Killing Season
    It’s not worthless, but it’s not good. As a genre film, it’s too ambitious; as an art film, it’s too obvious.
  81. Bhaag Milkha Bhaag
    Along the way the movie strikes its chosen couple of notes resoundingly, making clear what makes Singh run.
  82. Pawn Shop Chronicles
    "Hee Haw” meets “Pulp Fiction” at the meth lab: That describes the style of Pawn Shop Chronicles, a hillbilly grindhouse yawp of a movie that belches in your face and leaves a sour stink.
  83. Crystal Fairy & The Magical Cactus
    Sebastián Silva is extremely perceptive about body language, and the characters’ physical presences are as revealing as their words. The performances give you an almost uncomfortable sense of proximity.
  84. Fruitvale Station
    Mr. Coogler, with a ground-level, hand-held shooting style that sometimes evokes the spiritually alert naturalism of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, has enough faith in his actors and in the intrinsic interest of the characters’ lives to keep overt sentimentality and messagemongering to a minimum.
  85. The Shine of Day
    The Shine of Day pulls itself together with an ending that feels a bit ready-made for drawing out the parallels between its kindred performers. But the movie gratifyingly observes the openness that seems the base line for Philipp and Walter, and the glimmer of realization in a stage actor about the void that may lurk among his many liberating roles.
  86. The Hunt
    The Hunt doesn’t know where to stop. It is undermined with a short, unsatisfying epilogue whose shocking final moment isn’t enough to justify its inclusion.
  87. Pacific Rim
    Pacific Rim, with its carefree blend of silliness and solemnity, is clearly the product of an ingenious and playful pop sensibility.
  88. Apparition (Aparisyon)
    Cool and cerebral, Apparition stubbornly resists our desire to connect with its troubled characters... Even so, the film’s sophistication creates space for us to ponder deeper, unanswered questions.
  89. 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.
  90. Sweetgrass
    In Sweetgrass, a graceful and often moving meditation on a disappearing way of life, there is little here that is objective and much that is magnificent.
  91. Of By For
    If the lineup is bipartisan, the analysis oscillates between apt and obvious, culminating inevitably in amen calls for popular action.
  92. Stuck in Love
    Although Stuck in Love is an indie film, it hews slavishly to Hollywood formulas.
  93. The Look of Love
    Had The Look of Love focused more acutely on the father-daughter relationship or explored Mr. Raymond’s relationships with his two sons, only one of whom appears briefly, it might have amounted to something more substantial than a keenly observed period piece that keeps a celebrity journalist’s distance from its subject.
  94. Just Like a Woman
    The story arc is so familiar...that the main emotional response is hollow relief as every beat is, indeed, hit just as expected.
  95. Absence
    Mundane conversations and outings drag on while the central mystery takes baby steps forward, suggesting that a shorter running time or a more developed script might have better served the originality of the premise.
  96. A Girl and a Gun
    Whether viewed as empowerment tools or aphrodisiacs, stress relievers or deadly bodyguards, these weapons and their owners never cohere into an actual point.
  97. The Way, Way Back
    The Way, Way Back has the charm of timelessness but also more than a touch of triteness. Its situations and feelings seem drawn more from available, sentimental ideas about adolescence than from the perceptions of any particular adolescent.
  98. Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain
    Fans will love it; their main complaint may be that it ends too soon. Amateur psychologists in the audience, meanwhile, may be asking why such a successful guy seems so defensive.
  99. Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me
    A deserved tribute that puts us inside the music, and the head space, of a great, lost band.
  100. Ghanchakkar
    The script, written by Mr. Gupta with Parveez Sheikh, has some engaging mysteries and witty payoffs. But the story is stretched too thin, blunting some of its more interesting ideas.
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