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. A Bottle in the Gaza Sea (Une bouteille à la mer)
    Fueled by neither anger nor religious extremism - the director, Thierry Binisti, remains rigidly nonpartisan - "Bottle" is a gentle pairing of youthful idealism and tenacious hope.
  2. My Brooklyn
    My Brooklyn, Kelly Anderson's sensitive study of gentrification in her home borough, is as much personal essay as urban-policy survey.
  3. Allegiance
    This well-acted debut feature from Michael Connors (a former Army captain) is too limited in ambition and scope to satisfy our expectations.
  4. Promised Land
    An earnest attempt, sometimes effective, sometimes clumsy, to dramatize the central arguments about fracking and its impact.
  5. West of Memphis
    The film is inspiring because it has a semi-happy ending attached to a love story.
  6. Tabu
    It is, of course, art rather than history - an elegant composition of dreams, memories and suggestive images - but its artfulness seems like an alibi, an excuse for keeping the ugliness of history out of the picture.
  7. Parental Guidance
    It could be worse, and would be without Bette Midler or Marisa Tomei.
  8. Django Unchained
    Like "Inglourious Basterds," Django Unchained is crazily entertaining, brazenly irresponsible and also ethically serious in a way that is entirely consistent with its playfulness.
  9. Les Miserables
    Song after song, as relationships and rebellion bloom, you wait in vain for the movie to, as well, and for the filmmaking to rise to the occasion of both its source material and its hard-working performers.
  10. The Impossible
    There is a troubling complacency and a lack of compassion in The Impossible, which is less an examination of mass destruction than the tale of a spoiled holiday.
  11. Not Fade Away
    By focusing on musicians who are talented but finally not good or persistent enough to succeed in the big time, Not Fade Away offers a poignant, alternative, antiheroic history of the big beat.
  12. On the Road
    It all seems - dare I say it? - of little consequence.
  13. Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away
    While the bodies of the performers do amazing things, the hectic editing and frequent use of slow motion distract from their physical artistry rather than enhance it. The 3-D, on the other hand, gives some sense of the scale of a Cirque du Soleil performance, and even if the film is no substitute for the real thing, it is at least an effective advertisement.
  14. Aquí y Allá (Here and There)
    If the intent was to keep the characters here just as anonymous as most migrant workers are to prosperous people in the United States, it succeeds: Pedro and his family remain mere sketches. If, however, the aim was a more meaningful portrait of hardship and aspiration, the film is merely underdone. It's no secret that life in many places is hard.
  15. Barbara
    Barbara is a film about the old Germany from one of the best directors working in the new: Christian Petzold. For more than a decade Mr. Petzold has been making his mark on the international cinema scene with smart, tense films that resemble psychological thrillers, but are distinguished by their strange story turns, moral thorns, visual beauty and filmmaking intelligence.
  16. This Is 40
    There are a lot of loose ends and a few forced conclusions. But, then again, the acceptance of imperfection is Mr. Apatow's theme, so a degree of sloppiness is to be expected. That's life.
  17. Jack Reacher
    Apart from the car chase, the only real fun in Jack Reacher comes from Mr. Herzog and Robert Duvall, called in near the end for some marvelously gratuitous scenery chewing as a gruff former Marine. They enliven the movie's atmosphere of weary brutality for a few moments, but they also call attention to the dullness of their dramatic surroundings.
  18. Amour
    A masterpiece about life, death and everything in between.
  19. Zero Dark Thirty
    Ms. Bigelow's direction here is unexpectedly stunning, at once bold and intimate: she has a genius for infusing even large-scale action set pieces with the human element.
  20. The Guilt Trip
    The chief pleasures of this mild-mannered dud lie in watching two resourceful comic actors go through their paces like the pros they are.
  21. Let Fury Have the Hour
    Infinitely less than the sum of its parts, Antonino D'Ambrosio's Let Fury Have the Hour crams 50 thoughtful artists into a disappointingly muddled film.
  22. Jason Becker: Not Dead Yet
    This heartfelt documentary is also, more subtly, a tribute to the squadron of caregivers that has enabled Mr. Becker not only to survive for an extraordinarily long time but also to continue to compose music, using virtually the only part of him that still moves, his eyes.
  23. Trashed
    If we must talk trash, Mr. Irons - assisted by a scientist or two and Vangelis's doomy score - is an inspired choice of guide. Soothing and sensitive, his liquid gaze alighting on oozing landfills and belching incinerators, he moves through the film with a tragic dignity that belies his whimsical neckwear and jaunty hats.
  24. Save the Date
    The reunion of Ms. Caplan and Mr. Starr, cast mates on Starz network's "Party Down," seemed intriguing. That series, though, with all the fizz and social comedy that this movie lacks, was a better showcase for them.
  25. Yelling to the Sky
    It's disconcerting to watch Sweetness, tiny and light-skinned, assaulting Latonya, large and dark-skinned, partly because it bluntly if inconclusively underscores a crucial color divide that runs through this film like a throbbing vein.
  26. The Girl
    What at first came across as a tale of dawning conscience increasingly starts to feel rigged.
  27. Saving Grace B. Jones
    Ms. O'Neal's Grace is a fluttery Blanche DuBois type who transforms into a ranting madwoman wreaking havoc. Instead of an ax, she wields scissors. From here on, the movie is a grotesquely overacted, ineptly staged screamfest.
  28. Stand Up Guys
    Most of the modest pleasures are in the ways the men expertly play off one another and invest their shallow characters with more depth than any filmmaker could reasonably expect.
  29. Any Day Now
    An outraged, unblinking depiction of institutionalized homophobia three decades ago, when the prevailing court opinion in adoption cases was that exposing a child to a homosexual environment was harmful. Never mind that nobody else wants Marco.
  30. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
    Tolkien's inventive, episodic tale of a modest homebody on a dangerous journey has been turned into an overscale and plodding spectacle.
  31. Consuming Spirits
    It is a work of obsessive artisanal discipline and unfettered artistic vision. You have never seen anything like it.
  32. Saving America's Horses: A Nation Betrayed
    Filled with crushing facts about animal cruelty yet also overstuffed and overwrought, it's emotionally and visually tough to watch.
  33. The Sheik and I
    Poking the bear of repression has consequences beyond Mr. Zahedi's immediate artistic goals, as this layered, intermittently fascinating documentary makes abundantly clear.
  34. Honor Flight
    The film might have made a decent end-of-broadcast segment on a newscast. But inflated to feature length and devoid of nuance or fresh insights, it just seems self-congratulatory - aren't we great for having done this for these old guys? - and exploitive.
  35. Happy New Year
    A dully directed movie that sends a message but lacks oomph.
  36. Waiting for Lightning
    In this overly sympathetic film he's a superhero without feelings, curiously bloodless except for the moment just before the China jump, when his mother presents him with his stepfather's ashes for inspiration.
  37. Sahkanaga
    A haunting piece of fact-based Southern Gothic free of histrionics, Sahkanaga is a thoughtful, atmospherically heavy study of reactions to an inexplicably inhumane act.
  38. Delhi Safari
    The worst thing about the animated film Delhi Safari isn't that it's awful. It's that it shamelessly rips off much better animated movies.
  39. Off-White Lies
    Poised unwaveringly between gentle comedy and delicate drama, Maya Kenig's Off White Lies keeps a lot to itself. But this narrative withholding, while infuriating at times, presents no real barrier to our engagement with the film's unconventional look at the growing connection between a shy teenage girl and her shiftless father.
  40. Heleno
    Though powerfully acted and dazzlingly shot (by Walter Carvalho) in heavenly black and white, Heleno is a feverish opera that, like its doomed antihero, loses vitality much too soon.
  41. The Rabbi's Cat
    The film presents an often sharp commentary on dueling beliefs and idiocies that unfolds in lush pastel hues and distinctively retro drawings.
  42. In Our Nature
    Is the movie psychologically accurate? Yes. But that doesn't keep it from being a little dull.
  43. Wagner & Me
    In the documentary Wagner & Me, the actor Stephen Fry, an ardent admirer of the music of Richard Wagner, wrestles with a longstanding problem for Wagner fans: how to reconcile that composer's musical genius with his racism.
  44. Lay the Favorite
    The movie is a bust, and, as usual in these situations, it is easier to say how than why, and best to say as little as possible, cut one's losses and move on.
  45. The Fitzgerald Family Christmas
    Mr. Burns shuffles this dense material with the dexterity of a card shark. The pace, although swift, is never rushed. The writing and acting give you vivid enough tastes of the characters - there are seven children, two parents, and assorted spouses, lovers and friends - so that each registers as a singular flavor.
  46. Cheerful Weather for the Wedding
    If the movie had more courage, it would lay waste these people as hilariously as Robert Altman's film "A Wedding." But as its bad vibes accumulate, Cheerful Weather exhibits all the energy of a disgruntled wedding guest muttering complaints under his breath.
  47. Only the Young
    If Mr. Tippet and Ms. Mims weren't such accomplished visual stylists, you might even think that the teenagers shot the documentary themselves, which explains both its appeal and its limitations.
  48. Deadfall
    A diverting neo-noir, Deadfall brings to mind those dark, old-fashioned entertainments in rotation on Turner Classic Movies that suck you in with their genre machinery, sullen beauties and despair.
  49. Tchoupitoulas
    Tchoupitoulas does explore the border between innocence and experience. It is alive with the risk and curiosity of youth, and unapologetic in insisting that the pursuit of fun can be a profound and transformative experience.
  50. Hyde Park on Hudson
    Roosevelt was one of the towering figures of the 20th century, but he and his accomplishments scarcely register in this amorphous, bafflingly aimless movie. The story hinges, increasingly to its detriment, on Daisy, a distant cousin to Roosevelt and his wife, Eleanor.
  51. Playing for Keeps
    Sometimes the movie swerves toward farce, sometimes into the zone of smiley family comedy and at other times into full-on weepiness. None of it is especially credible or engaging.
  52. What a Man
    It may hit all-too-familiar notes, but its sureness of tone makes Mr. Schweighöfer a talent to watch.
  53. Shady Lady
    It comes as no surprise that the director, Tristan Loraine, comes from a background as an airline captain and a documentarian. Perhaps those jobs make best use of his skills.
  54. I Do Bidoo Bidoo: Heto nApo sila!
    An exuberant if creaky Filipino musical that never lets story get in the way of its songs.
  55. Talaash
    It's very much a Hindi film, but updated and delivered with conviction and style.
  56. Drivers Wanted
    There's an authenticity to Drivers Wanted that seems so true and tough that it overwhelms any standard immigrants-up-from-their-bootstraps theme.
  57. Certainty
    He might as well be describing the act of watching this grating round robin of connubial dysfunction and romantic disappointment.
  58. Silent Night
    This brisk reimagining of the 1984 slasher "Silent Night, Deadly Night" delivers the seasonal goods with admirable efficiency and not a little wit.
  59. New Jerusalem
    New Jerusalem feeling like an acting exercise in search of a theater class.
  60. Young and Wild
    It's more about adolescent attitudes than the thrust of a story, yet the film's sexual intelligence is undone by a paralyzing voice-over and an encroaching case of the blahs.
  61. Walk Away Renee
    Walk Away Renee lets us observe a mother-son bond, but Mr. Caouette hasn't found a way to galvanize this incarnation of material for strangers.
  62. The Collection
    A pointless exercise in sadism.
  63. Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning
    This bloody wallow in sweat, guns and fisticuffs - for those who swing that way - delivers.
  64. Back to 1942
    It catalogs agony without making you feel it.
  65. My Brothers
    If the actors playing the brothers show little fraternal similarity, their performances are convincingly natural.
  66. Elza (Le bonheur d'Elza)
    Bathed in the flamingo colors and Caribbean rhythms of its location, this deeply personal debut from the writer and director Mariette Monpierre develops with a lingering attention to sensation and sound.
  67. California Solo
    A wry, mournful study of midlife crisis.
  68. Love, Marilyn
    The intelligence and dynamism of Ms. Garbus's approach could hardly fail to make you appreciate Monroe's growth as an actor.
  69. Parked
    Parked collapses into sentimentality that not even an actor of Mr. Meaney's dignity and restraint can redeem from mawkishness.
  70. 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.
  71. King Kelly
    The movie's other master stroke is the artfully unhinged lead performance of Louisa Krause as the despicable King Kelly, a character who would have been ready-made for Tuesday Weld.
  72. Killing Them Softly
    In spite of the golden presence of Brad Pitt as the killer, a level-headed professional named Jackie Cogan, the movie has an agreeably scuzzy, small-time feeling.
  73. Ex-Girlfriends
    It is cleverly conceived, well acted and seasoned with blips of mildly acidic wit.
  74. Beware of Mr. Baker
    Mr. Bulger, a former boxer and model before he turned to journalism and then filmmaking, does not let "Behind the Music" sensationalism overwhelm the music itself, which is Mr. Baker's great passion and the only reason anyone should take an interest in him.
  75. Otelo Burning
    Ms. Blecher draws fine performances out of the young actors and, to her credit, sugarcoats nothing.
  76. The Gatekeepers
    If you need reassurance or grounds for optimism about the Middle East, you will not find it here. What you will find is rare, welcome and almost unbearable clarity.
  77. Gottfried Helnwein and the Dreaming Child
    The backstage commentary circles around the bailiwick of a production designer and frustrations over Mr. Helnwein's literal interpretations. But they are rarely juicy or pursued in depth, and platitudes abound (with the exception of a matter-of-fact lighting designer named Bambi).
  78. The Mystical Laws
    There is also stultifyingly earnest proselytizing and an absolute humor vacuum. Who conceived this ponderous, quasi-evangelical hokum, anyway?
  79. The King (2012)
    An admiring but restrained documentary about Darko Kralj, a Paralympic shot-putter from Croatia. The film is more about what it takes to overcome adversity and recommit to finding meaning in life, terrain that anyone with a disability has to negotiate, athlete or not.
  80. Rust and Bone
    Rust and Bone is a strong, emotionally replete experience, and also a tour de force of directorial button pushing. Mr. Audiard is a canny showman, adept at manipulating the audience's feelings and expectations with quick edits and well-chosen songs.
  81. Hitchcock
    The movie has its diversions, including Scarlett Johansson's bodacious Janet Leigh and Michael Stuhlbarg's wheedling Lew Wasserman. It's fluff. But while its dim fantasies about Hitchcock and the association of genius with psychosis can be written off as silly, they also smack of spiteful jealousy.
  82. The Normals
    The satire - about religion, medicine, TV culture - is larded unevenly, the homage overly obvious.
  83. The Central Park Five
    Measured in tone and outraged in its argument, it is an emotionally stirring, at times crushingly depressing cinematic call to witness. It's also frustrating because while it re-examines the assault on the jogger and painstakingly walks you through what happened to the teenagers - from their arrest through their absolution - it fails to add anything substantively new.
  84. Red Dawn
    In his debut the director, Dan Bradley, a stunt coordinator with a long list of credits, handles the low-fi action well, which helps divert attention from the bargain-bin special effects, bad acting and politics.
  85. Rise of the Guardians
    Works so hard at celebrating wide eyes and naïve joy that it comes close to spoiling its own intermittent wonderfulness.
  86. Life of Pi
    The movie invites you to believe in all kinds of marvelous things, but it also may cause you to doubt what you see with your own eyes - or even to wonder if, in the end, you have seen anything at all.
  87. Who Bombed Judi Bari?
    Relies too much on rehash and preaching to the choir to kindle a broad-based outrage, but it does make you wonder what really happened on May 24, 1990.
  88. Turning
    Onstage the Johnsons perform Mr. Hegarty's agreeably lush, intimate and often melancholy piano-based songs, accompanied by a string section.
  89. 16 Acres
    A documentary that features forthright interviews with major players and gives a good sense of the infighting and pettiness without getting bogged down in it.
  90. Generation P
    Delivers a brave, head-spinning commentary on the potency of advertising and the seduction of the soul.
  91. La Rafle (The Round Up)
    A well-meaning but inexpertly dramatized account of the roundup of 13,000 Parisian Jews in the summer of 1942.
  92. Hitler's Children
    Quiet, simple and soaked in sorrow, Hitler's Children takes a stripped-down approach to an emotionally sophisticated subject.
  93. 28 Hotel Rooms
    At the very least 28 Hotel Rooms, the first feature written and directed by Matt Ross, is an impressively executed acting exercise for Chris Messina and Marin Ireland.
  94. Price Check
    Once Price Check darkens, it loses its comic footing, along with its nerve, and becomes a wishy-washy potpourri of elements that fail to mesh: backing away from its satirical potential, it sputters toward an evasive and unsatisfying ending. Ms. Posey, however, blithely sails above the fray.
  95. The Comedy
    If you can discern any critical distance or interesting perspective here, or even a good reason to spend 90 minutes in such company, I'm afraid the joke is on you.
  96. First Winter
    The glue holding the film together is Adam Newport-Berra's elegant hand-held cinematography, which captures changing shades of winter and the frightened faces in natural light with an astonishing intensity.
  97. Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God
    There is something to be said for a clear and unblinking recitation of facts, and thankfully Mr. Gibney does a lot of that.
  98. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2
    Despite the slow start Mr. Condon closes the series in fine, smooth style. He gives fans all the lovely flowers, conditioned hair and lightly erotic, dreamy kisses they deserve.
  99. Silver Linings Playbook
    For all its high-flying zaniness the movie has the sting of life, and its humor feels dredged up from the same dark, boggy place from which Samuel Beckett extracted his yuks.
  100. Anna Karenina
    Mr. Wright's Anna Karenina is different. It is risky and ambitious enough to count as an act of artistic hubris, and confident enough to triumph on its own slightly - wonderfully - crazy terms.
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