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. About Last Night
    Many of the funniest parts seem to arise spontaneously from Mr. Hart’s uncensored brain and fast-moving mouth. He can swerve from tears to mock outrage to anatomically detailed obscenities faster than just about any other comic performer working today, and in Ms. Hall he has found an excellent match.
  2. Empire of the Sun
    A visual splendor, a heroic adventurousness and an immense scope that make it unforgettable.
  3. Red Hill
    Like the best westerns, Red Hill is a stripped-down morality tale; like the best horror movies, its true monsters remain cloaked until the final reel.
  4. Let the Corpses Tan
    A formalist experiment that soon devolves into a mannerist indulgence.
  5. The Actor
    Johnson and Stephen Cooney have shaped an unsettling, sorrowful journey from damage to a kind of deliverance.
  6. I Want You Back
    I Want You Back isn’t particularly clever or emotionally stirring, but it does briskly deliver on the corny promises of the genre, navigating relatable relationship issues by the least relatable means.
  7. I Sell the Dead
    The jokes do wear thin, and the setup does too, but it’s nonetheless worth noting what a couple of crafty thieves can do with elbow grease, some spare change and the kind of deep movie love that never dies.
  8. Micmacs
    There is no question that the heart of Micmacs is in the right place, but the movie is also a little thin.
  9. Yomeddine
    Yomeddine makes its strongest impression through the direction and performances; at times, the story is rather flimsy.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Thunderbolt and Lightfoot
    Not so hot. Try again, boys.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Mummy
    For a superior version of a nearly identical horror yarn, with a little style and imagination, catch the 1932 Boris Karloff version of The Mummy now floating around on television. The new one just lumbers.
  12. Sly
    Stallone’s flair for words — and his references to Arthur Miller’s “A View from the Bridge” and the 1968 dynastic drama “The Lion in Winter” — make one wish he’d talked about much more than his greatest hits and misses.
  13. Una
    The scenes that leave Ms. Mara and Mr. Mendelsohn alone are, tellingly, the most interesting and effective ones. Their performances are tightly focused and unflinching; too bad they are surrounded by a lot of heavy-handed, poorly aimed cinematic showing off.
  14. Jonathan
    The movie, itself somewhat torn in sensibility, permits itself an easy out.
  15. Fear of a Black Hat
    Flattering the daylights out of Rob Reiner and his Spinal Tap crew, Rusty Cundieff turns Fear of a Black Hat into an unapologetic Spinal Tap imitation. And there's no point in faulting Mr. Cundieff for such derivativeness, because Fear of a Black Hat is too savvy and cheerful to warrant complaints.
  16. Flora & Ulysses
    Flora & Ulysses veers close to falling into the trap of cheesiness that kids’ movies of this genre often find themselves in, but miraculously never does. In fact, this hopeful comedy, in showing how a twitchy-tailed hero can change a family, lifts off and flies.
  17. Fright Night
    Though Mr. Holland's handling of his stars is successful enough to establish him as a newcomer with promise, his material here is uneven and often flat.
  18. Match
    The movie pulls the rug out from under the audience several times, but in the end there is not much underneath.
  19. Supporting Characters
    This well-acted film captures a generational and occupational sliver of New York life that rings true.
  20. Xenia
    Xenia has been called a farce. But it is much more than that. Both the story and the performances are packed with raw emotion.
  21. Loving Highsmith
    Most of her exes’ memories stop short of being psychologically insightful. Strung together, however, these tender confidences shape an outline of a woman who never trusted anyone with her heart.
  22. Plane
    Plane” sinks (or rises, depending on your perspective) to “hell yeah” ridiculousness only at the end, delivering a punchline that lands at the right time.
  23. Lynch/Oz
    As the documentary repetitiously circles its subject and piles on greater numbers of clips — more than 50 movies are dropped into the 20-minute final chapter (“Dig”), hosted by the director David Lowery — whatever points Philippe is trying to make have been hopelessly lost.
  24. Incident at Loch Ness
    These blatantly comic characters undercut the credibility established by Mr. Herzog's naturalistic performance, and sink the horror premise as quickly as it surfaces.
  25. The Mafia Only Kills in Summer
    The swings from goofy to gory and jokey to tragic cancel one another out, and Mr. Diliberto’s near-constant voice-over is irksome. As is the pivotal romance.
  26. Labyrinth of Lies
    It is content to be a chilly, disquieting study of a society in a state of denial until the truth is bared.
  27. A Man of No Importance
    A Man of No Importance is a small film with far more charm than its premise might suggest. It is acted with great warmth and wit by an ideal cast.
  28. Centurion
    The real message: Life's ultimate pleasure lies in extreme fighting - to the death.
  29. Little Girl (La Pivellina)
    Though at times too determined to avoid dramatic highs and lows, Little Girl strikes gold in the casting of the 2-year-old Asia Crippa.
  30. Chicks
    Ms. Letourneur's film also bears a rare, even strange, stamp of authenticity.
  31. Deli Man
    This documentary goes heavy on the schmaltz, in all senses.
  32. Rise of the Legend
    Mr. Peng has charisma, though his moves are less convincing than those of an earlier Fei.... But “Legend” does offer the hefty authority of Mr. Hung, who at 64 can still — almost — hit, kick and do wire work with the best of them.
  33. Murder on the Orient Express
    Like the lovely, extravagantly overemphasized nineteen-thirties' costumes and production designed by Tony Walton, Murder on the Orient Express is much less a literal re-creation of a type of thirties movie than an elaborate and witty tribute that never for a moment condescends to the subject.
  34. H is for Happiness
    Its meticulous visuals do frequently tip into preciousness, yet this cuteness is offset by the movie’s refreshingly direct take on depression and despair. This unusual children’s film may be fussy, but to its credit, it is not frivolous.
  35. McLintock!
    If the film doesn't quite come off, it is not for lack of effort. Mr. Wayne is in there swinging all the way, as a reactionary old cattle baron coping with encroaching homesteaders, discontented Indians, a marriageable daughter and a rebellious wife.
  36. The Mouse on the Moon
    Sensitive music by Mr. Pintoff and some wonderfully wry dialogue, subtly laced with motivations, top off this animated jewel.
  37. The Help
    Save for Ms. Davis's, however, the performances are almost all overly broad, sometimes excruciatingly so, characterized by loud laughs, bugging eyes and pumping limbs.
  38. William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe
    Although the film, with its home movies and family reminiscences, portrays him as a heroic crusader for justice, it is by no means a hagiography of a man who earned widespread contempt late in his career for defending pariahs.
  39. Back to the Beach
    Back to the Beach opened yesterday. But if you catch a television commercial for it, or the rock video that's on television, you'll get the joke and see the most this movie has to offer.
  40. Girls Rock!
    A jubilant documentary about a place where power chords and empowerment go hand in hand.
  41. Lu Over the Wall
    Lu sometimes feels more like a cynical plot device than a character. The problem is only amplified by the animation itself.
  42. Charm City Kings
    The dirt bikes and their exuberant operators are the saving grace — and joy — of the sincere if overstuffed drama Charm City Kings.
  43. Allswell in New York
    If few of the melodramatic plot lines wrap up by the end, at least the members of the ensemble cast commit to their roles with naturalistic gusto.
  44. Loggerheads
    If it isn't easy being any of the troubled people wandering through the film, Loggerheads makes it easy not only to believe in them, but to care about them as well.
  45. Annabelle: Creation
    As with last year’s “Lights Out,” [Sandberg] proves a master of the flash-scare, a nifty choreographer of precipitous timing and striptease visuals. But he’s also adroit with more leisurely horrors.
  46. Ira & Abby
    Though playing at times like an extended sitcom, Ira & Abby radiates a breathless charm, due in no small part to Ms. Westfeldt’s sharp dialogue and engagingly unmannered performance.
  47. Black Box
    It also brings some devilish ingenuity to its variations on “Memento” and other “who am I?” thrillers. And it adds to that something more rare: a genuine emotional potency.
  48. Stuck on You
    It's a much funnier movie than the trailer would lead you to believe; it would almost have to be. But it is just not as consistent as their previous trash wallows.
  49. Daddio
    Somehow, Penn never allows Clark’s inappropriateness to become predatory, and Johnson’s marvelously expressive features reveal details the dialogue declines to provide. Yet if there’s a finer point to any of this — beyond yes, talking to strangers is sometimes beneficial — it eluded me.
  50. Rolling Family
    Rolling Family is not a movie of ideas but an emotional and tactile experience of economy-class travel. In surveying a large swath of the Argentine landscape, it could be a companion piece to "The Motorcycle Diaries."
  51. The Names of Love
    For all the potentially dangerous subjects it glosses, above all the tangled legacies of the Holocaust and the Algerian war, The Names of Love dances away from any uncomfortable provocation. Even when sticking out its tongue, it is finally just an airy comedy riding on one cheeky, incandescent performance.
  52. Dark Star: HR Giger's World
    This disordered portrait seems heavily influenced by its equally jumbled setting.
  53. Dragnet
    Mr. Aykroyd and Mr. Hanks play well together, but the funniest performance in the film is that of Dabney Coleman, as the smut king (who lisps). Somewhat less diverting are the car chases and the time out necessary to explain the throwaway story.
  54. Ideal Home
    Ideal Home is genuinely funny, and the poignant and pithy script is aided by the chemistry between its stars, who are equally adept with comedic punch lines as they are with dramatic gut punches.
  55. Köln 75
    A movie that’s a little too eager to be liked. But it’s also tough to resist.
  56. Fierce Creatures
    The real fun here comes from watching Mr. Kline bounding through two archly good performances, Mr. Cleese coming hilariously unstrung in the presence of Ms. Curtis and all those adorable animals.
  57. Lipstick & Dynamite, Piss & Vinegar: The First Ladies of Wrestling
    This visually stylish work, with its vintage glamour photos, film and television clips, and snippets from a 1951 B-movie, "Racket Girls," is more of a scrapbook than a coherent history of the sport during its rough-and-tumble infancy.
  58. Bug
    The escalating hysteria and grisly set pieces of Bug may strain credulity, but Ms. Judd has never been more believable as a woman condemned to attract the wrong kind of man.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Oswald's Ghost
    The documentary Oswald’s Ghost initially plays as yet another primer on the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the vilification of Lee Harvey Oswald.
  60. Dream Lover
    The whole film has the intensity of a dream, and Mr. Kazan selects his fantasy elements with great care.
  61. Trust Machine: The Story of Blockchain
    A hodgepodge of boosterish arguments for blockchain technology, Trust Machine: The Story of Blockchain, directed by Alex Winter (Bill of “Bill & Ted” fame), is not always a model of clarity, but it does a decent job of explaining the basic concept.
  62. The First Beautiful Thing
    Comedy and poignancy weave together in Mr. Virzì's hands, but the maudlin meter only occasionally goes into the red zone. And Ms. Pandolfi gives such an exquisitely understated performance that you don't realize until the very end that the film was as much about her character as it was about Bruno and Anna.
  63. Joshy
    Mr. Baena (who, with David O. Russell, wrote the tricky 2004 “I ♥ Huckabees”) is more accomplished than many microbudget filmmakers, and the looseness with which he imbues the middle section of Joshy is deceptive, creating a sense that the necessary emotional crash might not actually occur.
  64. Love at First Bite
    Mr. Hamilton's knack for comedy has been a well-kept secret until now, but he's certainly funny in Love at First Bite, a coarse, delightful little movie with a bang-up cast and no pretensions at all.
  65. Lan Yu
    Lan Yu is like a less dizzily gorgeous companion to Mr. Wong's "In the Mood for Love" -- very much a Hong Kong movie despite its mainland setting.
  66. Ramen Shop
    A drama from the Singaporean director Eric Khoo that also demonstrates the power of Instagrammable cuisine to spice up an otherwise straightforward, sentimental film.
  67. The King
    What Michôd never manages to make clear is what we are to make of this version’s nationalism, its glorification of war, its ambivalence toward corrupting power and its selective, finally misguided attempt to brush off Shakespeare.
  68. A Glitch in the Matrix
    “A Glitch” wades only shin-deep into the complex logic that’s attached to this speculation.
  69. Abigail
    A horror flick that’s serviceable enough to make you occasionally giggle or flinch, yet is also so aggressively unambitious that it scarcely seems worth griping about.
  70. Destroyer
    Kusama is still figuring out how to balance form and pulp, but she has a singular unapologetic idea about what women can and cannot do onscreen, one she lets rip with verve and her superbly unbound star.
  71. My Big Fat Greek Wedding
    An amiable, offhanded comedy about ethnic identity and last-chance romance.
  72. Mumford
    At heart a Frank Capra-style social fable for the '90s.
  73. A Few Good Men
    A big commercial entertainment of unusually satisfying order. [11 Dec 1992]
    • The New York Times
  74. Train of Life
    What saves Train of Life from sinking into sudsy Holocaust kitsch is its sustained comic buoyancy.
  75. The Mudge Boy
    Depending on your choice, the film is either an unpleasantly masochistic fantasy or an unpleasantly sadistic one.
  76. Unbreakable
    Mr. Shyamalan may be the only mainstream director hankering for success with a need to understate; he is like Shaq without the tattoos. The result is a mastery of craft that may leave some hungry for more.
  77. A Silent Love
    Ultimately, A Silent Love transcends its problem-play situation to ponder how the best laid plans for an arranged marriage are no match against the vicissitudes of passion in a romantically besotted culture.
  78. Ararat
    Until its final moments this almost great movie feels as if it's racing against itself in a neck-and-neck battle between its troubled heart and its egg-shaped head. The heart wins by a nose.
  79. The Last Mountain
    If Mr. Haney sometimes struggles to find focus, he has no trouble locating heroes, including the doggedly energetic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and a slew of stalwart locals and fearless outsiders. And the black heart of coal country - and, as the film shows, our national energy debate - has never seemed so in need of white knights.
  80. Dragon
    As a whole, it does not quite work, especially at the end, when Mr. Chan tries for a Shakespearean climax of filial rebellion and paternal rage. But at its less grandiose moments, the combination of expressive acting and kinetic action pays off in ways that are likely to satisfy both novices and adepts in martial-arts fandom.
  81. Kingdom
    The film acquits itself honorably, even if its ultimate message is disquieting.
  82. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
    The actor's (Murray) quiet, downcast presence modulates the antic busyness that encircles him, and his performance is a triumph of comic minimalism.
  83. I Am a Sex Addict
    The movie is a minor triumph of sincerity, neatly skirting the pitfalls of narcissism and unexamined misogyny. It never mugs for our good will, only our witness, which it rewards with honesty and wit.
  84. Scream 2
    Even if you haven't spent as much obsessive time at the video store as these guys have, you might enjoy helping 'Scream 2' laugh all the way to the bank.
  85. Iceman
    Having been handed a script that, at its best moments, is a wan though benign reminder of the original version of The Thing, Mr. Schepisi seems uncertain whether to distract the audience's attention by decor or to send up the cliches of a certain kind of science-fiction. Unfortunately, he plays it straight most of the time. [16 May 1984, p.17]
    • The New York Times
  86. The Ice Harvest
    There is very little fun in The Ice Harvest, which wouldn't pose a problem if the film had some fleshed-out ideas to go along with the booze, the booty and the recycled plot points.
  87. On Chesil Beach
    Onscreen, On Chesil Beach loses some intensity at the end, as the supple suggestiveness of Mr. McEwan’s prose is replaced by the stagy literalness of film. Perhaps this couldn’t be avoided.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Longing
    Intrigues because it presents an outwardly decent man falling equally in love with two women but eschews simplistic judgments.
  89. Breakfast with Curtis
    Desultory, dauntingly DIY but secretly efficient, Breakfast With Curtis is something like a leafy summer afternoon in movie form.
  90. All the Light in the Sky
    The cosmic and the microscopic are casually — and delicately — juxtaposed in All the Light in the Sky, an evocative, slightly melancholic movie.
  91. Bitter Honey
    There is nothing remotely salacious about Bitter Honey, an agonizing documentary examination of polygamy in Bali, Indonesia, from the U.C.L.A. anthropologist Robert Lemelson. There is only vivid evidence of a society that, despite limp efforts at discouraging domestic abuse, remains mired in ancient patriarchy, sanctioning polygamy and, implicitly, often attendant violence.
  92. The Front Page
    Even though the mechanics and demands of movie-making slow what should be the furious tempo, this Front Page displays a giddy bitterness that is rare in any films except those of Mr. Wilder. It is also, much of the time, extremely funny
  93. The Snows of Kilimanjaro
    Thanks to a skillful combination of some sensational African hunting scenes, a musical score of rich suggestion and a vivid performance by Gregory Peck, Twentieth Century-Fox and Darryl F. Zanuck have concocted a handsome and generally absorbing film in The Snows of Kilimanjaro.
  94. The Rental
    Featuring one of the most dissatisfying, anticlimactic endings in genre memory, this paranoid thriller (the directing debut of Dave Franco) turns an isolated seaside villa into a slaughterhouse.
  95. My Favorite Year
    A funny and good-natured comedy that marks the directing debut of Richard Benjamin. Mr. Benjamin works in a steady, affable style that is occasionally inspired, always snappy and never less than amusing.
  96. Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale
    Despite the movie's considerable visual splendor, the pacing of Warriors of the Rainbow is clumsy, its battle scenes chaotic and its computer effects (especially of a fire that ravages the Seediq hunting forest) cheesy.
  97. Still Life in Lodz
    The individual stories are powerful, as are the visual comparisons between present-day and historical locations. A few animated sequences effectively evoke the evanescence of memory.
  98. Random Harvest
    Random Harvest is a strangely empty film. Its characters are creatures of fortune, not partisans in determining their own fates. Miss Garson and Mr. Colman are charming; they act perfectly. But they never seem real. And a sense of psychiatric levels is not conveyed in either the script or direction.
  99. Big Man Japan
    The most impressive special effect here is Mr. Matsumoto's hilariously restrained performance, a tour de force of comedic concision in a movie bloated by increasingly surreal developments.
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