The New York Times' Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. Black Sheep
    Once you have seen a sheep munching on a bloody human leg, you may think twice about your next leg of lamb. On the other hand maybe you'll be inspired to seek vengeance. To provoke one of these responses -- vegetarianism or a defiant meat eating -- may be the point of this odd, amusing film.
  2. Medicine for Melancholy
    There are no simple answers or obvious conclusions to be gleaned from this movie, which, like its soundtrack, is both sad and vibrant, meandering and formally sure-footed. It is an exciting debut, and a film that, without exaggeration or false modesty, finds interest and feeling in the world just as it is.
  3. White Fang
    A scenic and enveloping nature film about a young man and his beloved pet. But it is by no means strictly a children's film, and it certainly isn't Lassie.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster
    Fixing horror in the Black body is a tricky business, and “The Angry Black Girl” stumbles in the same way its ancestor, “Candyman” (1992), did.
  5. Begin Again
    Compared with “Once,” Begin Again is a bit like the disappointing, overly produced follow-up to a new band’s breakthrough album.
  6. The Dying Gaul
    Mr. Sarsgaard gives the riskiest screen performance of his career. Save perhaps for Sean Penn's outbursts in "Dead Man Walking" and "Mystic River," no actor in a recent American film has delivered as explosive a depiction of a man emotionally blasted apart.
  7. Shopgirl
    Elegant and exquisitely tailored.
  8. Catch a Fire
    It’s a film that wants to play as if it were ripped from today’s headlines, but has been shredded into near incoherence.
  9. Saving Grace
    That they're English and elderly apparently makes their antics screamingly funny to people who would turn up their noses at similar humor in a film like "Scary Movie."
  10. Caligula: The Ultimate Cut
    The great production designer Danilo Donati’s contributions alone are worth the trip.
  11. Eat the Night
    The film’s escalating violence frequently smothers its sweeter, more haunting moments, such as Night using the game to ease Apolline’s fear of losing her brother.
  12. The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water
    The new film displays enough nutty writing and sheer brio to confirm the stamina of its enduring and skillfully voiced characters.
  13. Ocean's Thirteen
    "Ocean's 23," oops, Ocean's Thirteen, is also a gas; it's lighter than air, prettier than life, a romp, a goof and an attentively oiled machine.
  14. Pop & Me
    For a film devoted to celebrating intimacy and the breaking down of emotional barriers, Pop and Me is oddly withholding of information about the travelers.
  15. Brigham City
    Brigham City, like "God's Army," may proselytize for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but Brigham City is also an example of concise, skillful filmmaking.
  16. Made
    Though Mr. Favreau probably had to co-star in Made to make his exposé of the loser's mushy pink underbelly of "Swingers" register, he might have come up with a better picture if he had stayed behind the camera. But he's willing to take chances, and he'll learn from this movie.
  17. Southpaw
    What the film resembles more than anything else is one of the miniature human-interest profiles that the networks have taken to inserting between the events in their Olympic coverage.
  18. Cuba feliz
    In painting an unabashedly romantic picture of a nation whose songs spring directly from the lives of the people, the movie exalts the Marxian dream of honest working folk, with little to show for their labor, living harmoniously, joined in song.
  19. Spiral
    Perhaps the most gripping thing about the ultimately disappointing Japanese horror film Uzumaki is the patient way the picture develops mood.
  20. What Alice Found
    A small, finely wrought drama.
  21. Twilight: Los Angeles
    The resulting compromise does not produce a perfect film, but it is a fine record of a classic production and an important reminder of an event that has not stopped echoing in American culture.
  22. The Human Factor
    A fascinating, slightly chilly picture — as well as one of the best Preminger films in years.
  23. Amulet
    This is Garai’s feature directing debut, and it is as satisfying as it is promising, despite an unfortunate wind down. She has a great eye — and a real feel for the power of silence and visual textures — but she stumbles when she explains too much.
  24. The Daughter
    The characters don’t have conversations so much as helpfully recite their back stories, and the long-buried secret is soon so obvious that the movie’s last-act hysteria feels forced and a little ridiculous.
  25. Newlyweeds
    Newlyweeds, for all its freshness, never really lands. It remains suspended in a haze of secondhand smoke.
  26. The Valet
    The Valet is an earnest crowd pleaser that unabashedly celebrates the bonds of a Latino family in a tight-knit neighborhood with rom-com aplomb.
  27. The Duchess
    An overstuffed, intellectually underbaked portrait of a poor little rich girl.
  28. The Fallen
    Directed by Ari Taub with a naturalistic style and a nonpartisan eye, The Fallen finds its humanity in the dailiness of a soldier's life, in the long stretches of nothing, where tensions swell and the killing of a deer can spark a mutiny.
  29. Stress Positions
    With shimmer, shadow and verve, Stress Positions . . . captures the often hallucinatory pandemonium wrought by that “long-ago” moment.
  30. The Source Family
    Unearthing a decent sample of these former members, as well as a wealth of archival film and photographs, the directors elicit testimony that’s diversely sharp, spacey, nostalgic and heartbreaking.
  31. New Order
    Franco practically dares the viewer to call his conclusion far-fetched. And for better or worse, the director’s dynamic filmmaking makes some of his projections stick.
  32. Patty Hearst
    Patty Hearst is a model of swift, spare, unsentimental film making about a character who can never be known, as most fictional characters are, and about a specific time and circumstances that, with hindsight, seem incredible.
  33. Abe
    This is a maudlin and predictable film, with oversimplified, kid-friendly takes on complex political issues. It’s also a surprisingly joyless production, lacking the stylistic and emotional flair to deliver even on the cheesy, feel-good promise of the setup.
  34. Set It Up
    The expectation that a female-written, female-directed effort would yield something refreshingly different is scotched within the first few minutes.
  35. Toe to Toe
    Ms. Abt provides an unusually honest, compassionate and challenging view of contemporary youth, neither sugarcoated nor prurient.
  36. The Human Resources Manager
    A disappointingly shallow story in which only the dead are named, and the living are reduced to stereotypes.
  37. La Última Película
    The movie revels in multiple film stocks (with hairs or threads often on the camera lens) and self-conscious “Last Movie” flourishes (long intervals between credits, “scene missing” title cards, a version of “Me and Bobby McGee”) while maintaining its blithe humor.
  38. Junction 48
    Junction 48 is more than a mere crowd-pleaser, and it refuses easy catharsis, ending with a cliffhanger. But since this is a movie about deciding to act, maybe that’s the perfect note.
  39. Mark, Mary & Some Other People
    It’s clear these overgrown kids are careening toward adult-size pain. But Marks’s infatuation with her flawed lovebirds also seduces the audience.
  40. Stay Awake
    Oleff, Argus and Metz succeed in depicting both the frustrations and the compassion associated with caring for relatives who continuously harm themselves.
  41. Shooting Stars
    For what it sets out to do, detailing the bond of young boys under surreal circumstances, Shooting Stars is a relatively sturdy retelling.
  42. Beautiful Boy
    It is hard not to be touched by the testing of paternal love, or by Nic’s fragility. But Beautiful Boy, rather than plumbing the hard emotional depths of its subject, skates on a surface of sentiment and gauzy visual beauty.
  43. Torremolinos 73
    Such a joyous celebration of sex and filmmaking that viewers will forgive its director for taking time out to enjoy a little of both.
  44. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
    To a degree and certainly by studio-sequel design, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice has a cozy familiarity. If the manic edginess of Keaton’s original performance suggested that his character had ingested way too much caffeine, though probably something a great deal stronger, he now seems more like a super-eccentric uncle — only, you know, dead.
  45. Big Eyes
    Trying to do Margaret justice, Mr. Burton can’t prevent himself (and Mr. Waltz) from upstaging her.
  46. Postmen in the Mountains
    It is an endearing, likable film, though its benign surface may cover some subtle propaganda on behalf of China's centralized government.
  47. Air Force One
    A meat-and-potatoes American thriller that means business all around the world.
  48. Goodrich
    Keaton’s an old pro at getting audiences to love a well-intentioned jerk, and the script gets good chuckles out of his inconsiderate attempts at generosity.
  49. OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies
    Not that Cairo, Nest of Spies is meant to be a thriller, but even as a self-consciously anachronistic knockabout farce it rarely rises to the level of wit, either verbal or physical.
  50. The Gift
    The picture is saved from mediocrity by Mr. Raimi's smooth competence, and by the unusually high quality of the acting.
  51. Black Sea
    The story loses credibility as it goes along, as the body count escalates, and Robinson’s solutions to life-and-death crises grow increasingly far-fetched.
  52. Red White & Royal Blue
    First-time director Matthew López gets us rooting for the cheeky couple’s transition from rivals to romantic bedfellows, boosted by the cinematographer Stephen Goldblatt, who photographs the leads so adoringly that you half-expect them to turn to the camera and hawk a bottle of cologne. Thanks to their playful chemistry, we’re sold.
  53. The Bounty
    The movie seems to have been planned, written, acted, shot and edited by people who were constantly being overruled by other people. It's totally lifeless.
  54. Curious George
    With top-drawer voice talent including Joan Plowright and Dick Van Dyke, original songs by Jack Johnson, and old-fashioned two-dimensional animation that echoes the simple colors and shapes of the books, Curious George is an unexpected delight.
  55. Klown
    The film, directed by Mikkel Norgaard, somehow manages the difficult trick of going into taboo territory without ever feeling dirty. And Mr. Hvam has a knack for misdirection. Just when you're wanting to give his character a hug and forgive all, off he goes into even more inappropriate behavior.
  56. Careful
    If the central performances in Careful approached the earnest intensity of some of its early-1930's inspirations, the movie would probably be twice as funny.
  57. Henry & June
    The characters' sexual abandon is so complete that it robs the story of any shape.
  58. Department Q: The Keeper of Lost Causes
    The film, directed by Mikkel Norgaard (who’s borrowed a thing or three from David Fincher) and first released in Denmark in 2013, often focuses on research rather than on gunplay, yet somehow it still feels filled with action. That’s a testament to its lead actors.
  59. The Boys in Company C
    As a film about heroism, it is chiefly remarkable for its gutlessness.
  60. Only in Theaters
    Ultimately the movie is as scattershot as it is enthusiastic. . . . But the narrative about the theaters’ present-day fight for survival is undeniably compelling.
  61. Sadie
    Lynskey and Schloss are well matched as mother and daughter, and Griffiths builds a relationship between them as this far-from-innocent teenager navigates her world. That rough journey is worth watching even when this film falls short.
  62. That Summer
    That Summer, a new documentary directed by Goran Hugo Olsson, sheds further light on the Beales with footage shot before the making of “Grey Gardens.”
  63. The Children Act
    The movie finally punts on grappling with its ambiguities. The finale feels functional rather than haunting.
  64. Kong: Skull Island
    “Skull Island” has momentum, polish and behemoths that slither and thunder. The sets and creature designs are often beautifully filigreed, but the larger picture remains murky.
  65. City Hall
    But this knotty investigative thriller has trouble achieving the rock-solid credibility to hold an audience in thrall.
  66. Hush!
    Rambling, occasionally very funny reflection on the meaning of family in contemporary Japan.
  67. Okraina
    A strange, disturbing and yet occasionally quite funny cultural artifact from the new Russia.
  68. Rugrats in Paris: The Movie - Rugrats II
    A one- way ticket to infantile heaven.
  69. Austin Powers in Goldmember
    Like a giant balloon painted with Day-Glo colors, however, the whole gaudy mess wouldn't inflate without the force of Mr. Myers's comic genius. It's his baby, baby. And after three editions, it's still flying high.
  70. Antwone Fisher
    A movie so profoundly in touch with its own feelings that it transcends its formulaic tics.
  71. American History X
    An inflated yet gut-slugging film.
  72. True Legend
    After a stirring opening battle, however, the fights in True Legend become pretty routine. And beyond some lovely mountain scenery and a tiny cameo by a radiant Michelle Yeoh, there isn't much else to look at.
  73. Veronica Mars
    A likable, unmemorable, feature-length footnote to the admired television series.
  74. Antarctic Edge: 70° South
    Antarctic Edge illustrates its points effectively, providing vivid evidence of how shrinking ice at the South Pole affects climates across the globe.
  75. The Doors
    It is made by a Morrison groupie for other groupies, a film that leaves the rest of us locked outside wondering what the fuss is about.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Fly
    Believe it or not, The Fly happens to be one of the better, more restrained entries of the "shock" school. As produced and directed by the late Kurt Neumann, with an earnest little cast headed by Al Hedison, Patricia Owens and Vincent Price, this is a quiet, uncluttered and even unpretentious picture, building up almost unbearable tension by simple suggestion.
  77. Conversations with Other Women
    None of it is quite believable -- the film is too studied, too forward in its conceits to be entirely satisfying -- but Mr. Eckhart and Ms. Bonham Carter approach their roles with intelligence and conviction.
  78. The Great Warming
    A straightforward, quietly persuasive primer on the climate-change crisis.
  79. Punching the Clown
    Holding things together are Mr. Phillips's quiet charm and his songs, which really are funny.
  80. Nate & Margaret
    Blessed with natural performances and brisk pacing, this unusual little movie would like us to know just one thing: Passion is fine, but a pal is priceless.
  81. Food Chains
    This emphatic and empathetic documentary (directed by Sanjay Rawal and narrated by Forest Whitaker) presents the plight of our farm laborers as modern-day slavery.
  82. Hud
    Ugly, powerful drama. [28 May 1963]
    • The New York Times
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Molly Maguires
    Realism without much reality, enormous care for the wrong details, historical accuracy and spineless dramaturgy, The Molly Maguires vacillates among intentions and settles finally for ponderous spectacle and easy irony.
  84. Emelie
    Working from Richard Raymond Harry Herbeck’s script, Mr. Thelin plays with genre clichés without upending them, and the results are more creepy than scary.
  85. The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls
    Merging old-fashioned comedy routines with up-to-the-minute politics - all of it enabled by fun-loving personalities and a gift for rousing original songs - the ladies emit a genuine warmth that reels audiences in.
  86. The Yellow Handkerchief
    If Mr. Hurt gives a meticulously detailed performance, he is still so innately refined that Brett never quite registers as an authentic blue-collar type, either vocally or in his body language. Ultimately, men like Brett are just not in Mr. Hurt’s DNA, and you are left with the impression of observing a silk purse artfully (but only partially) disguised as a sow’s ear.
  87. Everybody's Talking About Jamie
    Jonathan Butterell’s film, now streaming on Amazon, is a charmer, every bit as sunny, confident and ultimately compelling as Jamie himself.
  88. Land of Plenty
    Land of Plenty, is like a clumsy, well-meaning intervention in a family quarrel. Mr. Wenders may not have the power to heal the rifts his movie acknowledges - and his account of them may not always be persuasive - but there is nonetheless something touching about his heartfelt concern.
  89. Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead
    It’s a snappy, gutsy comedy about how kids are spoiled and ignorant, and yet the adult workplace is only passingly more mature.
  90. The Knife
    With its twists and rug-pulls, The Knife makes for an absorbing drama, but it’s also deeply exasperating in that it feels less like a social commentary grounded in reality than an edgy play on emotions.
  91. Saccharine
    The supernatural elements — angry ghosts and sunken places — feel like forced metaphors next to Hana’s real-life horrors, and, worse, they diminish the film’s compelling specificity.
  92. On a Clear Day
    Despite a familiar crop of lovable eccentrics and a predictably inspirational thrust, the movie resists formula just enough to achieve a surprising degree of emotional traction.
  93. Do You Trust this Computer?
    Though the film is heavier on summaries than specifics, its messages are troubling nonetheless.
  94. Working Girls
    Working Girls, though a work of fiction, sounds as authentic as might a documentary about coal miners. The camera attends to the duties of the ''girls'' without apparent emotional response.
  95. Harold and Maude
    As performers, they both are so aggressive, so creepy and off‐putting, that Harold and Maude are obviously made for each other, a point the movie itself refuses to recognize with a twist ending that betrays, I think, its life‐affirming pre tensions.
  96. Terrifier 3
    Leone’s new “Terrifier” film sags under its predecessors’ trappings: a bloated running time, an unfocused script, uneven pacing
  97. Seraphim Falls
    Archetypes and symbols solemnly parade through Seraphim Falls, a handsome, old-fashioned western of few words and heavy meanings that unfolds with the sanctimonious grandeur of a biblical allegory.
  98. Shelley
    Maybe expecting a horror film to have a point is expecting too much. In any case, the two actresses give committed performances on the way to a veiled ending.
  99. Alligator
    A very funny meditation on the old ''what happens when you flush the goldfish down the john?'' nightmare. It is also a formula film that simultaneously demonstrates the specific requirements of the formula while sending them up with good humor.
  100. My One and Only
    A good-natured screwball road film.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »