The New York Times' Scores

Select another publication »
For 20,324 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: 9,408 out of 20324
  2. Mixed: 8,449 out of 20324
  3. Negative: 2,467 out of 20324
20324 movie reviews
view
per page
  1. Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Suess
    Only ends up skimming the surface. But even the skimming is largely interesting and thought-provoking, and of course very bleak.
  2. Severe Clear
    At its most provocative, Severe Clear pungently evokes a heroic Marine Corps mystique.
  3. Children of Invention
    A modestly scaled, quietly effective independent movie about a struggling single mother and her two children.
  4. City Island
    Softened by some sweet, low-key moments between Vince and a fellow acting student (a very good Emily Mortimer) and by Mr. Garcia’s embodiment of disappointed middle age.
  5. Godspeed
    A weird, wordy but oddly compelling thriller.
  6. Breaking Upwards
    Like many relationships, Breaking Upwards starts in bed and ends on the street. The journey in between, however, feels as new as anything a tiny budget and a boatload of talent could produce.
  7. It Came from Kuchar
    A valuable and intelligent introduction and tribute to their anarchic, uncompromising and absolutely peculiar genius.
  8. The City of Your Final Destination
    Besides Ms. Linney’s excellent performance and Mr. Hopkins’s good one, the best things about the movie are its sensuous cinematography by Javier Aguirresarobe (“Talk to Her,” “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”) and a gorgeous soundtrack.
  9. From Selma to Soweto
    Even at the level of average-to-mediocre television, though, “Have You Heard” tells an amazing story. If you don’t know it, or you want reminding, the clumsy storytelling can be endured.
  10. World on a Wire (1973)
    World on a Wire, while too slow and diffuse to count as a lost masterpiece, is valuable in expanding our sense of what Fassbinder could do and is also a source of much visual and intellectual pleasure in its own right.
  11. Nobody's Perfect
    Rare enough to make NoBody’s Perfect an exemplar of fresh-air filmmaking that addresses the devastating legacy of the drug thalidomide with acidic wit and grumpy honesty.
  12. Kenny Chesney: Summer in 3D
    His fans will undoubtedly be satisfied: the film packs 23 songs into less than 100 minutes and spotlights the full Chesney, with his tight jeans, faded tank top, worn cowboy hat.
  13. Behind the Burly Q
    A charming, uncritical, often entertaining jumble, the documentary was written and directed by Leslie Zemeckis.
  14. Breath Made Visible: Anna Halprin
    Packed with illuminating interviews and lyrical movement, Breath Made Visible portrays a woman with angels in her feet and innovation in her blood. Long may she rock.
  15. Please Give
    Few American filmmakers create female characters as realistically funny, attractively imperfect and flat-out annoying as does Ms. Holofcener, whose features include “Friends With Money” and “Lovely & Amazing.”
  16. A Nightmare on Elm Street
    A Nightmare on Elm Street puts more emphasis on bizarre special effects, which aren't at all bad.
  17. The Infidel
    The director, Josh Appignanesi, has a nice sense of comic timing, slipping in some of the best jokes when you least expect them.
  18. The Oath
    It has staying power. In place of large revelations, you’ll find yourself remembering scenes like the one in which Abu Jandal sits absorbed by a news report of a bombing in Kabul, until his son requests a change of channel. It’s time for “Tom and Jerry.”
  19. Babies
    But Babies just might restore your faith in our perplexing, peculiar and stubbornly lovable species.
  20. Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo
    The diverting Beetle Queen, like “Lost in Translation” or Takashi Murakami’s art, says less about Japan than it does about America’s continuing fascination with modern Japanese culture.
  21. After the Cup: Sons of Sakhnin United
    Never forgetting the rush of the game, the directors regularly serve up fleet footage of the team’s highs and lows, allowing the rhythms of the field to set the film’s volatile beat.
  22. Kites
    The result is a lovers-on-the-lam blast of pure pulp escapism, so devoted to diversion that you probably won’t even notice the corn.
  23. Looking for Eric
    Mr. Loach’s touch is a bit lighter here. “Sweet Sixteen” is a coming-of-age story shot through the lens of social tragedy, while “The Wind That Shakes the Barley” is an epic of historical disaster. Looking for Eric is, by comparison, gentle and sweet and often very funny.
  24. The Last Exorcism
    An unusually restrained and genuinely eerie little movie perched at the intersection of faith, folklore and female puberty.
  25. Agora
    A bit of a puzzle. This is a good thing, since most movies plop down in easily recognizable categories and stay there, troubling neither their own intellectual inertia nor that of the audience.
  26. Cropsey
    Its straggling, true-crime narrative, leaping hither and yon like a dog chasing butterflies, is not what holds the film together; the real glue is the emergence of a parallel between location and suspect, between literal dumping ground and figurative. This is so effective that there was no need for the directors to conduct a handheld, "Blair Witch"-y foray into the nighttime woods -- their film is creepy enough in broad daylight.
  27. Whiz Kids
    Tom Shepard's quietly observant documentary tracks its stressed-out subjects through an array of personal and scholarly challenges.
  28. Double Take
    Although it is composed mainly of archival footage and touches on a great many actual events, Double Take, as you may already have gathered, is not quite a documentary. It is, instead, a meditation on a series of loosely related themes drawn together, somewhat tenuously, by the familiar yet elusive sensibility that Hitchcock brought to Hollywood and then to American television.
  29. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
    And yet something vital here works. There are, come to think of it, a lot of little things.
  30. Gangster's Paradise: Jerusalema
    Between Mr. Ziman's music-video skills and his close approximation of the kinetic style of Michael Mann (a scene from Mr. Mann's "Heat" has a key role in the plot), it's easy to overlook the formulas and just enjoy the ride.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »