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. Chasing Ice
    The film doesn't just serve up Mr. Balog's amazing and undeniably convincing imagery. It also records his personal struggles as knee problems threaten his ability to hike the difficult terrain to get the shots he wants.
  2. Bridesmaids
    The movie is smart about a lot of things, including the vital importance of female friendships. And it's nice to see so many actresses taking up space while making fun of something besides other women.
  3. Fever Dream
    Lllosa’s sensually shot film takes the story of a mother facing strange danger and casts a spell that feels like being dropped into the character’s mind.
  4. Benedetta
    Verhoeven brings more vitality to his work than many filmmakers half his age, and his screenplay (with David Birke) is a tasteless hoot, gleefully cramming the frame with blood, fornication and flagellations galore.
  5. Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion
    A more concise and affecting summation of the Tibetan crisis would be hard to imagine.
  6. El Norte
    Not exactly a great film, but it's a very good one that, through the devices of fiction, manages to provoke a number of healthily contradictory feelings about the world we all inhabit at the moment.
  7. The Invisible Woman
    You may become impatient with the leisurely pace of The Invisible Woman and its occasional narrative vagueness, but its open spaces leave room for some of the strongest acting of any contemporary film.
  8. Tully
    Tully isn’t really interested in the sustaining joys of female bonding. It has a message to deliver, which is as sincere and decent as it is obvious: Mothers need help, sometimes serious help. Which is why it’s strange that as Marlo very visibly sinks into postpartum depression — you can see Ms. Theron pulling Marlo deeper and deeper inside — the movie pretends that her burden is somehow too hidden for anyone to notice.
  9. Elizabeth
    This Elizabeth is presented as a glamorously stressed-out modern woman who must cope with a super-intense case of having it all.
  10. Born in Flames
    Born in Flames, while inventive, is also much too diffuse and overcrowded. Only those who already share Miss Borden's ideas are apt to find her film persuasive.
  11. Separated
    If Separated is likely too straightforward — too much of a conventional issue documentary — to be remembered as one of Morris’s richest films, it is not as if the director has abandoned his sense of profound absurdity.
  12. Pleasure
    Excess is the sine qua non of porn, so that’s expected. What is more surprising — and welcome — is how Thyberg engages feminist issues like a woman’s agency while making you laugh, freaking you out and prompting you to squirm.
  13. The Muppets
    The rainbow connection is a smooth, unbroken arch.
  14. Time Out of Mind
    Mr. Gere is fascinating to observe in this role, partly because he refuses to solicit sympathy, or even attention. Time Out of Mind is an intimate portrait of a man caught between the desire to be left alone and a need for human connection.
  15. Darkest Hour
    Churchill’s resolve, like the bravery of the soldiers, airmen and ordinary Britons in “Dunkirk,” is offered not as a rebuke to the current generation, but rather as a sop, an easy and complacent fantasy of Imperial gumption and national unity.
  16. The Automat
    If anything, The Automat seeks to burnish the mystique — it won’t be hijacked by social politics even if the company’s stance in such matters appeared to be the right one. The movie opts for a starry, top-down vantage.
  17. An Inconvenient Truth
    As unsettling as it can be, it is also intellectually exhilarating, and, like any good piece of pedagogy, whets the appetite for further study.
  18. The Beat That My Heart Skipped
    Audiard's superb remake improves on the original significantly, investing it with aesthetic grandeur and emotional depth.
  19. Twelve Monkeys
    Fierce and disturbing, with a plot that skillfully resists following any familiar course. The film's hero fears that he's half-crazy, and for two hours Mr. Gilliam artfully keeps his audience feeling the same way.
  20. Nimona
    Attention has been paid; it’s just not equally distributed. The tone is uneasy teetering on anarchic, veering from giddily moronic one-liners to — more shockingly — a climax with deep empathy and visual awe.
  21. Lady Vengeance
    A convoluted hodge-podge of time frames, subplots and bit player back stories.
  22. Make It Funky!
    The accidental poignancy of Make It Funky! comes from juxtaposing the charisma and dignity of those musicians - and the knowledge of how much great music New Orleans has given the world - with the unavoidable images of devastation from the last two weeks.
  23. Enchanted
    The film works its magic largely by sending up, at times with a wink, at times with a hard nudge, some of the very stereotypes that have long been this company’s profitable stock in trade.
  24. Kippur
    Immerses you in violence and agony, but it may leave you with a curious feeling of detachment.
  25. The Clay Bird
    Easily one of the finest pictures of 2003 or any other year.
  26. Lawless Heart
    By allowing the stories to play off one another and allowing layers of meaning to accumulate before we even notice them, the filmmakers capture some of the essential strangeness of life -- the way our relations are governed by laws that remain invisible to us until art reveals their workings.
  27. The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi
    Like many musicals, The Blind Swordsman works better in individual scenes than as a whole. Mr. Kitano is not the most disciplined storyteller, and the plot meanders along tangents and stumbles into flashbacks, losing momentum for long stretches in the middle.
  28. Shrek 2
    Certainly Shrek 2 offers rambunctious fun, but there is also something dishonest about its blending of mockery and sentimentality. It lacks both the courage to be truly ugly and the heart to be genuinely beautiful.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »