The New York Times' Scores

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For 20,312 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: 9,400 out of 20312
  2. Mixed: 8,446 out of 20312
  3. Negative: 2,466 out of 20312
20312 movie reviews
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  1. Frantic
    Frantic generates its suspense precisely because it appears so reasonable, because it takes such a calm, methodical approach to the maddening events that lure Dr. Walker into the maelstrom.
  2. Presumed Innocent
    Alan J. Pakula has directed an intense, enveloping, gratifyingly thorough screen adaptation of Mr. Turow's story. Mr. Pakula, who also co-wrote the film with Frank Pierson, is well suited to the job of conveying both the story's suspense and its underlying sobriety.
  3. The Departure
    Sad, tender and quietly moving, The Departure never says more than it needs to, much like its subject, a Buddhist priest who counsels those contemplating suicide.
  4. Guncrazy
    Taking Mr. Bright's excellent screenplay, Ms. Davis, whose background is in music videos, has made a remarkably rich melodrama with a strong narrative line and vivid characters. There's no waste space in this movie. Every second of its 97 minutes counts.
  5. Wait Until Dark
    Once this build-up is accomplished—once the sinister plot is launched and the young woman suddenly realizes that she has been duped and is in grave peril—the shock and suspense of the situation hit the audience with almost the same force, I'd imagine, as they evidently hit her. And from here on, the tension is terrific and the melodramatic action is wild as the blind woman uses all her courage and ingenuity to foil her assailants and save her life.
  6. Cleopatra
    Forget the length of time it took to make it and all the tattle of troubles they had, including the behavior of two of its spotlighted stars. The memorable thing about this picture is that it is a surpassing entertainment, one of the great epic films of our day. By virtue of brilliant staging, Mr. Mankiewicz keeps this well-known tale moving with visual excitements that increase the dramatic flow and give extraordinary insights into the characters.
  7. Bitch
    As she did in her gentler but equally original “Good Dick” in 2008, Ms. Palka carves a black and biting niche between a man and a woman, a space where chaos and psychological unease demand to be reckoned with.
  8. The Rescuers
    Efficiently short, charming, mildly scary in unimportant ways, and occasionally very funny. It's a perfect show for the very, very young who take their cartoons seriously.
  9. Guilty by Suspicion
    A stirring and tragic evocation of terrible times.
  10. Chappaquiddick
    Whether or not events actually unfolded this way, the story the film tells is an interesting and complicated character study, with something to say about the corrosive effects of power and privilege on both the innocent and the guilty.
  11. Permanent Vacation
    It's a must-see for anyone who shares the belief that Mr. Jarmusch is the most arresting and original American film maker to come out of the 1980's.
  12. Night on Earth
    With this, his fourth commercially released feature, Mr. Jarmusch again demonstrates his mastery of comedy of the oblique. He seems to see his characters through a telescope, while attending to their talk with some kind of long-range listening device. Everything that is seen and heard is vivid and particular, but decidedly foreign. Meanings are elusive. Themes can be supplied by others. He's also becoming an increasingly fine director of actors.
  13. Stranger Than Paradise
    The film has no big scenes, and it takes a while to get the hang of it, but once you do, it's as funny as it is wise. The three lead performers are extremely good, never for a second betraying the film's consistently deadpan style.
  14. Things Change
    An enchanted lark about wiseguys and those hustlers who think they are wiseguys, but aren't.
  15. In Between
    In Between, Ms. Hamoud’s debut feature, is an unusually welcoming and engaging film, inviting you to become a part of the circle of friends it depicts with such energy and warmth. For that reason, it can also be frustrating.
  16. Bill Frisell: A Portrait
    The movie is at its liveliest when it depicts Mr. Frisell making his distinctive sound with a variety of colleagues. And, fortunately, Ms. Franz includes a lot of such footage.
  17. Cuba and the Cameraman
    In part because of its political blind spots, Cuba and the Cameraman is captivating. (Whatever you think of Mr. Alpert’s perspective, it’s interesting.) But it’s mostly worth watching because of human stories like these.
  18. The 15:17 to Paris
    Mr. Eastwood, who has long favored a lean, functional directing style, practices an economy here that makes some of his earlier movies look positively baroque. He almost seems to be testing the limits of minimalism, seeing how much artifice he can strip away and still achieve some kind of dramatic impact.
  19. Wind
    Wind is not commonplace movie making. The sailing sequences, including one short, very funny race off Newport involving the kind of small boats you and I might sail, surpass anything I've ever seen on the screen. There are collisions at sea, wrecked spinnakers and freak accidents, like the one during a race when a sailor finds himself hanging upside down from the mast as the other boat gains. These things exhilarate as they threaten to stop the heart.
  20. Saturday Church
    It is a disarmingly and consistently sensitive movie that remains engaging even when its reach sometimes exceeds its grasp.
  21. Shadowman
    This intense documentary shows a driven creator walking the walk, so to speak, in the most perverse fashion possible. The story is both repellent and strangely inspiring.
  22. Good Morning, Vietnam
    Good Morning, Vietnam, directed by Barry Levinson (Diner, Tin Men) succeeds in doing something that's very rare in movies, being about a character who really is as funny as he's supposed to be to most of the people sharing the fiction with him. It's also a breakthrough for Mr. Williams, who, for the first time in movies, gets a chance to exercise his restless, full-frontal comic intelligence.
  23. The Right Stuff
    THE RIGHT STUFF, Philip Kaufman's rousing, funny screen adaptation of Tom Wolfe's book about Project Mercury and America's first astronauts, is probably the brightest and the best rookie/cadet movie ever made, though the rookies and cadets are seasoned pilots and officers.
  24. Permanent Midnight
    Permanent Midnight is as enveloping as it is darkly cautionary, thanks to the effectively varied layers of Mr. Veloz's direction and the bitter intensity Mr. Stiller brings to his central role.
  25. Gandhi
    Neither Mr. Attenborough nor John Briley, who wrote the screenplay, are particularly adventurous filmmakers. Yet in some ways their almost obsessively middle-brow approach—their fondness for the gestures of conventional biographical cinema—seems self-effacing in a fashion suitable to the subject. Since Roberto Rossellini is not around to examine Gandhi in a film that would itself reflect the rigorous self-denial of the man, this very ordinary style is probably best.
  26. Oh Lucy!
    A movie in which the human comedy is by turns tender, plaintive, heartfelt and joyful.
  27. Blindspotting
    This movie, which was written by Mr. Diggs and Mr. Casal, has an energetic-to-the-point-of-boisterous style. Its lively frequency is embedded in the writing, bolstered by Carlos López Estrada’s direction, and kept buoyant by the performers. This particular aspect of the film makes it exciting to watch, but can also be confounding.
  28. A Shot in the Dark
    The whole thing is colorful, gay — and Henry Mancini's music is as sassy and frivolous as the film.
  29. Bumblebee
    There’s a lot to like here, particularly Steinfeld’s performance.
  30. Non-Fiction
    Witty, intelligent, sometimes cryptic.
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