The New York Times' Scores

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For 20,311 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: 9,399 out of 20311
  2. Mixed: 8,446 out of 20311
  3. Negative: 2,466 out of 20311
20311 movie reviews
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  1. Prodigal Sons
    A tale of two siblings -- one basking in memories, the other fleeing them -- Prodigal Sons grapples with identity through the prism of sibling rivalry. In the end its conclusions have little to do with gender and everything to do with acceptance.
  2. Women Without Men
    With its intense chiaroscuro and meticulous manipulation of color that ranges from stark black and white to richer, shifting hues in scenes set in a metaphorical orchard, the film surpasses even Michael Haneke's "White Ribbon" in the fierce beauty and precision of its cinematography (by Martin Gschlacht).
  3. Oceans
    The filmmakers work tirelessly to parallel their undersea world with the larger universe, offering genteel reminders of our mutual dependence.
  4. Anton Chekhov's The Duel
    Once again, Mr. Kosashvili mixes moments of bitterness and laughter with strong dramatic passages, creating a social milieu in The Duel that is believably inhabited, consistently surprising and true-feeling in detail and sweep.
  5. Ghost Bird
    Generally speaking, bird-watching is a pastime that is extremely interesting to a few people and not at all interesting to anyone else. But Scott Crocker has turned a bird-watching tale into a multilayered story that will fascinate practically everybody in Ghost Bird, a witty, wistful documentary.
  6. Barking Water
    The quiet humanity of the performances infuses the movie with a truthfulness that outweighs its flaws.
  7. Living in Emergency: Stories of Doctors Without Borders
    The extent of the need around the world is so enormous and overwhelming that the efforts of the doctors in this sobering film seem both vitally necessary and woefully inadequate.
  8. The Lottery
    Ignoring critical issues like financial transparency, Ms. Sackler sells her viewpoint with four admirable, striving families, each of whose tots could charm the fleas off a junkyard dog.
  9. The Girlfriends
    What makes Le Amiche so bracing -- so sad and, sometimes, so funny -- is that its heroines are fallible, flawed, vain and powerful, each in her own way. They often make one another miserable, but their company is always a pleasure.
  10. The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector
    Creepily riveting.
  11. Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child
    It places Basquiat's art in a cultural context with an enthusiasm and zest that make the many pictures shown come blazingly alive.
  12. Alamar (To the Sea)
    The characters in Alamar may be playing versions of themselves, but the writer, editor and director Pedro González-Rubio has constructed a film in which the journey has an overarching mythic resonance that evokes fables from "Robinson Crusoe" to "The Old Man and the Sea."
  13. Get Low
    Though the story sometimes wanders into hazy, corny sentiment, its protagonist (called Felix Bush, which was apparently a nickname or alias of Breazeale's) is vivid, enigmatic and unpredictable.
  14. Mundo alas
    An admirable documentary about an unusual concert tour.
  15. A Mother's Courage: Talking Back to Autism
    There is no pat resolution here, but the sight of a mother finally able to connect with her child across autism's chasm is more than stirring.
  16. Howl
    Not quite a biopic, not really a documentary and only loosely an adaptation, Howl does something that sounds simple until you consider how rarely it occurs in films of any kind. It takes a familiar, celebrated piece of writing and makes it come alive.
  17. Megamind
    Visually Megamind is immaculately sleek and gracefully enhanced by 3-D. The score by Hans Zimmer and Lorne Balfe is refreshingly subtle for an action comedy.
  18. Ahead of Time
    Ahead of Time follows Ms. Gruber to speaking engagements and encounters with relatives and old friends. Ever present are her lucid memory and articulate, compassionate bearing. She is an inspiration for career women, certainly, but also for us all.
  19. Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould
    A tour de force of archival research and dogged interviewing, and the portrait it presents is remarkably complete.
  20. Who Is Harry Nilsson (And Why Is Everybody Talkin' About Him?)
    The point of it is not, in the end, to explain him or solve the mystery of his life, but rather to spend time in his company and understand why he is someone to be missed.
  21. Night Catches Us
    Ms. Hamilton tells a modest, complex story with admirable clarity and nuance. That her film is so quiet, so evidently invested in contemplation rather than confrontation, gives it power as well as insight.
  22. Another Year
    Splendidly rich and wise.
  23. Nothing Personal
    Not since "Flashdance" has a lobster dinner been seasoned with so much unspoken emotion.
  24. Inspector Bellamy
    The ease and professionalism that distinguished this prolific director's later work is very much in evidence, as is an insouciant attitude, at once resigned and dismissive, toward mortality.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Change Nothing (Ne Change Rien)
    Ne Change Rien is about the work, the mix of inspiration and hard labor that performers draw on from moment to moment, an alchemical event that cinema rarely shows.
  26. Kawasaki's Rose
    The point of this thoughtful, moving film is that the motives and actions that define human ethics are never simple and that the Communist regime was especially adept at exploiting this complexity for its own ends.
  27. The Time That Remains
    The Time That Remains has the scope of a historical epic with none of the expected heaviness.
  28. Ip Man 2
    Choreographed by the film martial-arts veteran Sammo Hung, the fights are spectacularly designed and performed, relying more on muscle and skill than wirework.
  29. Fast Five
    In a free-for-all like this, where the laws of gravity and dictates of narrative logic are left to eat dust, it doesn't matter when anything takes place or why.
  30. Soul Surfer
    As a portrait of a spirited, resilient athlete, the movie succeeds best, unafraid to face its heroine's daunting challenges directly.
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