The New York Times' Scores

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:
20311 movie reviews
  1. 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.
  2. While Mr. Laaksonen devoted his life (1920-91) to challenging conventions, the film is committed to honoring them.
  3. The movie, directed by Antonio Tibaldi and Alex Lora, is quiet and quietly moving and quite different from “Hoarders” in its steady pace and poetic vérité style.
  4. Even moviegoers who know “Psycho” backward and forward...are bound to learn something new from the movie, which addresses the shower scene from critical, historical, theoretical and technical angles, down to the blinding white of the bathroom tiles.
  5. While the film ends at a logical stopping point, it feels incomplete. It probably could have used a few more years of filming.
  6. Niftily paced and tight as a chokehold, the script (by the comic-book writer Scott Lobdell) delivers just enough variation to hold our interest.
  7. Mr. Chan is in his early 60s, and he doesn’t deliver the action pizazz here that he used to. Nor, frankly, does he summon enough gravitas to be persuasive in the role of a grief-maddened father. For what it’s worth, Mr. Brosnan, as Quon’s nemesis, sells the angry-all-the-time requirement for his character.
  8. As is customary in Mr. Baumbach’s pictures, the acting is spectacular.
  9. Erratically paced and with a pitch-black heart, the movie manipulates at every turn.
  10. The men refused to be deterred by institutional rigidity, political apathy or a skeptical scientific community. Their perseverance is cheering, giving the movie a brightly buoyant tone that belies the suffering at its center and renders the sometimes distracting musical score largely unnecessary.
  11. This movie accomplishes something almost miraculous — two things, actually. It casts a spell and tells the truth.
  12. So B. It aims for an inclusive message. But Mama’s artificiality makes it hard to buy the movie’s themes of acceptance.
  13. Even when its plot starts to sag, Walking Out remains beautiful to watch.
  14. Paradise is a strikingly shot Holocaust drama that ultimately seems confused about whose story it’s telling or to what end.
  15. For one thing, the buildup is so grippingly patient that we’re more than halfway through before the titular battleground is reached. And for another, this painstakingly paced thriller displays an intensity of purpose that makes it impossible to dismiss as well-executed trash.
  16. The filmmakers might have cleared up suspicions about their motivations and ethics had they worked them into the narrative.
  17. Given the audacity, gusto and hell-for-leather filmmaking on display, the prospect of subsequent installments does not seem unreasonable.
  18. Caught between the harsh demands of a survival story and the emotional beats of a romantic drama, the director, Hany Abu-Assad, grabs hold of neither.
  19. Overdrive has all the features of a potentially entertaining action B-movie for overgrown boys: gorgeous near-mint vintage cars, rugged male performers, seductive female performers, ravishing European locations. What it doesn’t have is a lot of cinematic adrenaline.
  20. The documentary stirs up most of its sporadic excitement in the surfing footage, of which there is plenty. The imagery, especially the aerial shots, gives a sense of Mr. Hamilton’s precision and how close he comes to wiping out.
  21. There are several strong stories in The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson, a documentary that, in trying to tell them all, takes on too much.
  22. 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.
  23. Faces Places reveals itself as a powerful, complex and radical work.
  24. Those looking to learn the basic outlines of the life of the singer Chavela Vargas could do worse than watch Chavela, but this plodding documentary from Catherine Gund and Daresha Kyi rarely transcends simple biography
  25. Mr. Villeneuve’s film, by contrast, is a carefully engineered narrative puzzle, and its power dissipates as the pieces snap into place. As sumptuous and surprising as it is from one scene to the next, it lacks the creative excess, the intriguing opacity and the haunting residue of its predecessor.
  26. Mr. Schumacher’s movie is more a failed tone poem than a horror picture, and to its credit, this new version, with a trickier script by Ben Ripley and hyper-competent direction from the Swedish filmmaker Niels Arden Oplev improves on it — by making it behave like a horror movie every now and then.
  27. Mr. Cruise’s brisk, ingratiating performance — all smiles, hard-charging physicality and beads of sweat — does a lot to soften the edges. But Mr. Liman doesn’t press Mr. Cruise to dig into the character, and the actor mostly hurdles forward in a movie that never gets around to asking what makes Barry run and why.
  28. It shares a side of Mr. Vedder his fans will enjoy: the baseball aficionado who fills out a scorecard and treats Wrigley sod as holy ground.
  29. “Mark Felt” is a sharp portrait set against a blurry background, a history lesson that won’t help you on the test. It is possible to savor the crags and shadows of Mr. Neeson’s performance without quite grasping why Mr. Landesman thinks the story is worthy of such somber, serious and sustained attention.
  30. The film offers an enlightening glimpse into how the gay experience informed Mr. Maupin’s art.

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