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. Erased
    Viewed solely as a string of action sequences, Erased delivers the kind of dryly efficient, wearyingly familiar entertainment that already clogs too many of our movie screens.
  2. State 194
    This is certainly competent filmmaking, sort of like a long “60 Minutes” segment without the confrontational interview style.
  3. 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.
  4. Cape Spin: An American Power Struggle
    A documentary should give audiences insights they can’t get elsewhere. Otherwise, it’s just one more tumble in an endless media churn.
  5. Bidder 70
    Wisely deciding to refrain from rapping our knuckles with greenhouse gas statistics and Al Gore-style pie charts, the filmmakers fashion a portrait of a conscience spurred to action by an unexpected opportunity.
  6. Re-emerging: The Jews of Nigeria
    “Re-emerging” can be pedestrian as filmmaking, though it remains interesting as long as it remains in Nigeria.
  7. Black Rock
    The male characters here are too thinly developed for this to be a top-notch survival thriller, but Ms. Aselton knows how to get the pulse pounding.
  8. Pieta
    Morally cunning and with a tone as black as pitch, Pieta, the 18th film from the South Korean director Kim Ki-duk, is a deeply unnerving revenge movie in which redemption is dangled like a cat toy before a cougar.
  9. 33 Postcards
    [A] sweet if not very credible film.
  10. Valentino's Ghost
    You may not agree with every observation in Michael Singh’s documentary Valentino’s Ghost. But this engrossing examination of American perceptions of Arabs and the Arab world gets you thinking.
  11. Frances Ha
    With its swift, jaunty rhythms and sharp, off-kilter jokes, Frances Ha is frequently delightful. Ms. Gerwig and Mr. Baumbach are nonetheless defiant partisans in the revolt against the tyranny of likability in popular culture.
  12. Augustine
    Everything depends on the subtlety of the direction and the charisma of the performances. Augustine is intellectually satisfying partly because it communicates its ideas at the level of feeling, through the uncanny power of Soko’s face and body.
  13. Star Trek Into Darkness
    It’s hard to emerge from “Into Darkness” without a feeling of disappointment, even betrayal.
  14. Old Dog
    Raw and resolute, this unsettling fable feels driven by an anger that remains largely unexpressed.
  15. Becoming Traviata
    May not be fully satisfying as a documentary. But it has what any good movie needs: a star — the ever-game soprano Natalie Dessay.
  16. The Girls in the Band
    The Girls in the Band is everything a worthwhile documentary should be, and then some: engaging, informative, thorough and brimming with delightful characters.
  17. Java Heat
    The film, directed by Conor Allyn, is rarely more than a few minutes away from a gun battle or a tedious chase, and soon you cease to care who is shooting at, or running from, whom or why.
  18. No One Lives
    Mr. Kitamura, an action enthusiast who prefers to show rather than tell, seems unaware that the film’s dialogue is laughable, its characters unfathomable and the acting often less than optimal.
  19. Pilgrim Song
    Ostensibly about a walk in the woods, this slight, uncertain film spends most of its time off trail.
  20. The Painting (Le Tableau)
    This is a sweet adventure story for children. (Surely, American parents can deal with the bare breasts of one talking painting.) For adults it is short on narrative sophistication but visually a true objet d’art.
  21. He's Way More Famous Than You
    This frenetic movie has moments of wit, and Ms. Feiffer, a seasoned screen and Broadway performer, has range, stamina and charisma.
  22. How Sweet It Is
    Brian Herzlinger’s How Sweet It Is, an ode to the healing powers of musical theater, misfires so badly at the beginning that it takes a while to notice when it goes from godawful to sweetly awful.
  23. The Second Meeting
    Their meeting was arranged by the filmmaker, and their encounters reek of false bonhomie.
  24. Aftershock
    The violence is quick and occasionally inventive, with little of the attenuated nastiness that characterizes so many genre pictures, and the photography ranges from brightly sun-kissed to down-and-dirty.
  25. Three Sisters
    Three Sisters documents extreme poverty in rural China with the compassionate eye and inexhaustible patience of a director whose curiosity about his country’s unfortunates never seems to wane.
  26. Peeples
    Revelations unfold predictably, but the subplots cohere and the assured pacing offers a stark contrast with the often disjointed tempos of Mr. Perry’s mosaics.
  27. And Now a Word from Our Sponsor
    To describe And Now a Word From Our Sponsor as a one-joke skit stretched well beyond the breaking point isn’t entirely fair, because when used ingeniously, which is very seldom, the joke lands.
  28. Venus and Serena
    Think of this movie as a greatest-hits package, with some good stuff to show but nothing very new to say.
  29. What Richard Did
    Every detail of What Richard Did rings true.
  30. Sightseers
    Working from a script by Ms. Lowe and Mr. Oram, Mr. Wheatley continues in the same bludgeoning, amusingly if dubiously deadpan fashion for what soon feels like an overextended joke.
  31. Stories We Tell
    Stories We Tell has a number of transparent virtues, including its humor and formal design, although its most admirable quality is the deep sense of personal ethics that frames Ms. Polley’s filmmaking choices.
  32. The Great Gatsby
    Less a conventional movie adaptation than a splashy, trashy opera, a wayward, lavishly theatrical celebration of the emotional and material extravagance that Fitzgerald surveyed with fascinated ambivalence.
  33. One Track Heart: The Story of Krishna Das
    One Track Heart is too hagiographic to dive into messy spots, where truth tends to live.
  34. Unmade in China
    Slack storytelling (including snippets from a post-film Q. and A. session) and patchy filmmaking seal the unappealing deal.
  35. Caroline and Jackie
    With low-key, almost guileless performances, the film demonstrates that no matter how intelligent, well thought out and potentially enlightened a current sociological method (e.g., the “loving intervention”) may be, people will always find a way to turn it into something ludicrous, aggressive or both.
  36. Turtle Hill, Brooklyn
    Turtle Hill is inconclusive from start to finish, and while that appears purposeful, it’s also pretty dull.
  37. Desperate Acts of Magic
    Despite the preachiness, however, they have still made a moderately enjoyable film, thanks to some engaging performances.
  38. The Happy House
    The film, a sleepy, low-budget affair, merely enacts a series of horror movie clichés, as if that were enough. Its bland actors and wit-free script do nothing with the familiar elements but present them.
  39. Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf's
    [A] glossy, fawning valentine to conspicuous consumption.
  40. Dead Man's Burden
    The film’s small group of primary characters slips from joy to fury to murderous suspicion with faultless fluidity.
  41. Free the Mind
    Ms. Ambo communicates the notion of compassion and calm as something teachable, but perhaps feeling already convinced, she’s less ambitious as a filmmaker about taking her subject and her portraits to another level.
  42. Once Upon a Time in Brooklyn
    Pathetically inept.
  43. Generation Um...
    What does it add up to? Um ... I have no idea and don’t really care. Just because the characters waste their time doesn’t mean you should waste yours watching them circle the drain.
  44. Something in the Air
    Mr. Assayas’s method is observant and immersive. His camera moves among young bodies like an invisible friend, and his somewhat messy narrative is propelled by fidelity to feeling rather than by the machinery of plot.
  45. Love Is All You Need
    As Love Is All You Need ties up its loose ends, it settles into a rom-com formula with a predictable, upbeat ending. It feels good, sort of.
  46. Greetings from Tim Buckley
    It’s sweet, sentimental, almost inevitably touching if not especially persuasive, brushing against the thorns in each man’s life without drawing blood.
  47. 1st Night
    If 1st Night had a glint of social satire, it might have amounted to something more than a frivolous fatuity. But it plays as an arch, hammily acted farce.
  48. The Iceman
    If the narrow biographical focus of “The Iceman” prevents it from being a great crime movie, on its own more modest terms it is an indelible film that clinches Mr. Shannon’s status as a major screen actor.
  49. What Maisie Knew
    What Maisie Knew lays waste to the comforting dogma that children are naturally resilient, and that our casual, unthinking cruelty to them can be answered by guilty and belated displays of affection. It accomplishes this not by means of melodrama, but by a mixture of understatement and thriller-worthy suspense.
  50. Aroused
    The women share their dreams, their thoughts on relationships and some of the hazards of their work. The serious, thoughtful responses carry the film.
  51. Kiss of the Damned
    More focused on philosophy then feeding, “Kiss” marries a mash-up of undead clichés (I know, let’s have another lingering shot of the moon!) to hilariously stilted conversations.
  52. Wuss
    Mr. Liford (yet another emergent indie filmmaker from Texas) can clearly write a script, handle a camera and construct a mood. Wuss may be slight, but Mr. Liford’s sense of pitch is spot on.
  53. Memories Look at Me
    A slight yet profound exploration of generational choices and our fear of living our parents’ lives.
  54. Iron Man 3
    Stuff blows up and then more stuff blows up because that’s what happens when diversions like this hit movie screens around this time of year: chaos reigns and then some guy cleans it up.
  55. 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.
  56. Post Tenebras Lux
    Life and death, nature and culture, sex and money, man and beast, God and the Devil — Post Tenebras Lux embraces the world even if it doesn’t open itself up to ready interpretation.
  57. Voyage to Italy (re-release)
    In its time, this film represented the arrival of something new, and even now it can feel like a bulletin from the future.
  58. Hamesima X
    The protagonist’s life changes for the better, but your mileage may vary.
  59. The Ghastly Love of Johnny X
    Unfortunately, “Ghastly Love” is a fallen soufflé, a spoof enormously pleased with itself but only occasionally entertaining.
  60. Sun Don't Shine
    This confident first feature from the actor Amy Seimetz is much more invested in atmosphere than in plot.
  61. Trash Dance
    A warm thank you to those whose work is mostly invisible and entirely necessary.
  62. Mortem
    Most often Mortem just lacks bite, and the dedicated leads seem at times a little slight for the staging of a struggle at eternity’s edge.
  63. Married and Counting
    The services...lose a little drama after you’ve seen a couple of them. But they’re simple, worthy and sweet, much like the film that features them.
  64. The Numbers Station
    This dreary spy drama is as flat and airless as the concrete bunker in which it unfolds.
  65. Tai Chi Hero
    Tai Chi Hero merely fills the eye, offering little that stays with you.
  66. Graceland
    Even while embracing the breathless beats of the crime thriller, Graceland holds tight to its concern for exploited children.
  67. Arthur Newman
    The glum, episodic and unbelievable Arthur Newman is the film equivalent of a dysfunctional computer sloppily assembled from discarded parts of other machines.
  68. Midnight's Children
    The film needs an injection of Bollywood’s unembarrassed, anything-goes, bigger-than-life spirit, which embraces willy-nilly — as does Mr. Rushdie’s novel — the vulgar, the fanciful and the frankly unbelievable.
  69. The Big Wedding
    To say that Justin Zackham’s farce The Big Wedding takes the low road doesn’t begin to do justice to the sheer awfulness of this star-stuffed, potty-mouthed fiasco.
  70. Paradise: Love
    A tour de force of meticulous cruelty, a comic melodrama that elicits laughter and empathy and then replaces those responses with squirming discomfort.
  71. An Oversimplification of Her Beauty
    Mr. Nance turns his thought into a performance of vulnerability that’s all too relatable in its indulgences. It has heart without becoming cloying.
  72. Kon-Tiki
    There’s no denying the real Heyerdahl’s bravery, but if this movie is to be believed, his voyage was largely bereft of tension and interesting conversation.
  73. The Reluctant Fundamentalist
    By literalizing the idea of American military aggression and all that it implies Ms. Nair doesn’t just invest Mr. Hamid’s story with Hollywood-style beats, she also completely drains it of ambiguity.
  74. Mud
    Mr. Nichols’s screenplay is perhaps a little too heavily plotted, especially toward the end, when everything comes together neatly and noisily, but he more than compensates with graceful rhythm, an unfussy eye for natural beauty and a sure sense of character and place.
  75. Pain & Gain
    It all leaves you pondering whether you have just seen a monumentally stupid movie or a brilliant movie about the nature and consequences of stupidity.
  76. At Any Price
    If At Any Price overstates its points, they are still worth making. And the hot-wired performances by Mr. Quaid and Mr. Efron drive them home in a movie that sticks to your ribs and stays in your head.
  77. Oconomowoc
    Oconomowoc has one thing going for it: a running time of just 79 minutes, even if every one of them feels like an eternity.
  78. Love Sick Love
    Love Sick Love deteriorates into a series of pranks that are not funny enough to register as comedy or brutal enough to qualify as horror.
  79. The Lords of Salem
    Considerable care goes into establishing the premise, but the film eventually abandons psychological subtlety for hallucinatory garishness, which is too bad.
  80. Herman's House
    Although this documentary has a powerful political subtext, it is best described as a conceptual art piece about confinement, attached to a dual biography of the artist and the prisoner.
  81. Ain't in It for My Health: A Film About Levon Helm
    Less an archival clip job than a late-night jam session, it is informal and inviting.
  82. Oblivion
    Oblivion never transcends its inspirations to become anything other than a thin copy.
  83. In the House
    In the House weaves a pleasant and clever spell, manipulating the viewer much in the way that Claude plays with Germain.
  84. Deceptive Practices: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay
    Unsurprisingly, Mr. Jay proves a hugely entertaining guide, and as generous about his professional inspirations as he is reticent about his own life.
  85. Un Flic (re-release)
    The forcefulness and mystery of Mr. Melville's direction often generate an urgency that keeps the film from feeling vague. [30 Nov. 1979]
  86. Scary Movie 5
    Marlon Wayans’s satire “A Haunted House” got to “Paranormal” first, and for a much smaller budget delivered bigger laughs.
  87. The Revolutionary
    It’s a remarkable story, even if The Revolutionary, a no-frills documentary drawn from five years of interviews, isn’t much of a movie.
  88. Paris-Manhattan
    Were it not for the charming Patrick Bruel as a no-nonsense security expert and Alice’s unlikely suitor, this spun-sugar concoction would be well nigh unwatchable.
  89. American Meat
    The film’s ending, introducing farmers whose lives (and weight) have been changed for the better, sounds enough like an infomercial to undermine the whole enterprise.
  90. This Ain't California
    Smartly incorporating Sasa Zivkovic’s sweet and simple animation, as well as an exhilarating, punk-infused soundtrack, Mr. Persiel extends the film’s appeal beyond hard-core skaters.
  91. Fists of Legend
    Shot with some wit and considerable speed, its short, sharp beatdowns are a refreshing change from the bloated action sequences favored by some of Mr. Kang’s genre contemporaries.
  92. It's a Disaster
    The movie lurches from the improbably silly to the drearily so, while the characters remain so emotionally and psychologically divorced from life that they might as well be zombies or sitcom stick figures.
  93. Arcadia
    Ms. Silver’s ability to translate the liminal into cinematic terms, to catch those moments between innocence and knowing, childhood and adulthood, unforgiving and forgiving, makes her someone to watch.
  94. Antiviral
    At a certain point, Antiviral doesn’t know where to go or how to break out of its vacuum-sealed sepulcher, and Syd, even when vomiting blood, remains as incorporeal and creepy as a ghost. This is a movie that drinks its own tainted blood.
  95. The Angels' Share
    Watching it is like receiving a hard slap in the face from someone who expects you to laugh it off, even though the sting lingers.
  96. 42
    It is blunt, simple and sentimental, using time-tested methods to teach a clear and rousing lesson.
  97. Disconnect
    The film ominously conveys a world of too much information but too little communication, where people have become slaves to glowing hand-held devices that were designed to make life easier but have made it busier and more complicated.
  98. To the Wonder
    The fine intentions of To the Wonder pave a road to puzzlement, not awe.
  99. The Brass Teapot
    The movie’s best bits lose out to the requisite moral turnaround.
  100. Eddie: The Sleepwalking Cannibal
    This witty first feature is a flawed but diverting meditation on finding inspiration while losing your soul.
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