The New York Times' Scores

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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
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  1. Stung
    Mr. Diez, a former effects specialist, skillfully blends viscous textures with cheesy digital flourishes. The screenwriter, Adam Aresty, also earns points for the dialogue’s blithe hit-or-miss humor. But it’s Tilman Hahn’s sound design, with its unsettling buzz, that will burrow most unforgettably into your memory.
  2. Closer to God
    Having painted Victor as a transgressive offender, Mr. Senese backpedals furiously with a coda asserting the potential rewards of genetic manipulation. It isn’t convincing.
  3. Zarafa
    Zarafa may not be the most groundbreaking feat of storytelling, but it does have a giraffe in a balloon.
  4. Stray Dog
    Ms. Granik’s tact and curiosity are remarkable. So is her subject’s openness.
  5. Jackie & Ryan
    It uses a terrific score of bluegrass and old-timey songs, many of them written by Nick Hans, to underscore the connection and to evoke a fundamental American spirit epitomized by traveling musicians with banjos, fiddles and guitars.
  6. Jimmy's Hall
    The screenplay is vague not only about politics but also about the history of Jimmy’s unconsummated relationship with his former sweetheart, Oonagh (Simone Kirby), now married, whose wide Susan Sarandon eyes express a wistful sadness.
  7. Amy
    With Amy, Mr. Kapadia isn’t simply revisiting Ms. Winehouse’s life and death, but also — by pulling you in close to her, first pleasantly and then unpleasantly — telling the story of contemporary celebrity and, crucially, fandom’s cost.
  8. Mala Mala
    While affirming the dignity of its subjects, Mala Mala shows there’s little glamour attached to the pursuit of selfhood.
  9. A Poem Is a Naked Person
    This film, commissioned by Mr. Russell and directed by Les Blank, is among other things a strange and gorgeous artifact of its moment. Happily indifferent to the conventions of its genre, it’s neither the record of a concert nor a talking-head-driven biography.
  10. Magic Mike XXL
    Magic Mike XXL boldly flouts pop-cultural conventional wisdom. It’s often said that an explanation of a joke can’t be funny, and that the analysis of pornography is never sexy. But here is a coherent and rigorous theory of pleasure that is also an absolute blast.
  11. Terminator Genisys
    It’s amusing to see identical Arnolds clash like titans, but nobody here seems to have fully grasped that they had another heavyweight in Mr. Clarke.
  12. K'na, the Dreamweaver
    This static movie digs no deeper, but it is important in that it preserves a sliver of civilization and language (with native speakers in small roles) that might not otherwise get global exposure.
  13. Runoff
    The movie’s extreme compression is its biggest failing. The business end is so minimally sketched, you are left wanting to know a lot more.
  14. The Princess of France
    The Princess of France has an appealing lightness and modesty, but it also feels flimsy and thin, like clever scribblings in the margins of a book, fleeting insights in search of form and energy.
  15. A Murder in the Park
    The filmmakers have skillfully laid out a complex and murky story of crime and justice that, more than 30 years on, continues to scandalize.
  16. The Little Death
    The only sketch that’s inspired is the final one.
  17. Fresh Dressed
    Much of this film is told through interviews: Mr. Kani is fascinating and also funny; Mr. Combs is cocksure; and Kanye West is appealingly hyper. (“Being fresh is more important than having money!”) The film is rounded out with great archival footage and, especially in the first half of the film, excellent cartoons by Hectah Arias.
  18. Felt
    This vague, arty horror film from Jason Banker (“Toad Road”), who shares a story credit with his star, Amy Everson, is at once underwritten and overconceptualized.
  19. A Borrowed Identity
    Impressive acting (especially from Mr. Suliman and Yael Abecassis as Yonatan’s mother) enhances this thoughtful drama, directed with a sure hand by Mr. Riklis, a film veteran.
  20. Advantageous
    It’s a kick to see how effectively Ms. Phang has created the future on a shoestring even if she hasn’t yet figured out how to turn all her smart ideas into a fully realized feature.
  21. Batkid Begins
    Marveling without questioning, the movie is content to package the phenomenon and coast on its feel-good wave. Yet, somewhere around the midpoint, I began to wonder who was most thrilled by all this fuss.
  22. Escobar: Paradise Lost
    Nick might usurp most of the screen time, but it’s Mr. Del Toro, face flickering from benevolent to vicious and body heaving with literal and symbolic weight, who seizes the film.
  23. Glass Chin
    Despite an appealing fondness for New York locations and habits, Mr. Buschel and his cinematographer, Ryan Samul, have embalmed their film in style. J. J.’s ostentatious speeches feel like a projection of self-conscious cleverness, and the film’s virtuoso lighting doesn’t always match up to the needs of a scene.
  24. 7 Minutes
    7 Minutes knows exactly what it is: a directorial calling card to the Quentin Tarantino school of blood-bath cinema.... This film is a nasty piece of work.
  25. Max
    As the intrepid kids and the fearless hound unravel a nefarious weapons-dealing scheme, Max finds its sweet spot, leaving behind its overwrought patriotic swagger and settling into the kind of story that would fill a decent hour of television.
  26. The Midnight Swim
    The pieces don’t entirely cohere, but Ms. Smith has a promising sensibility.
  27. A Little Chaos
    Mr. Schoenaerts’s dour André may make conceptual sense, but he leaves a hole in this handsomely mounted costume drama that would have profited from more intrigue and a steamier erotic atmosphere.
  28. Big Game
    Onni Tommila, Mr. Helander’s nephew, has an expressive face and marvelous understatement. And Mr. Jackson has never seemed so unblustery; his scenes with the younger actor have ease and humor.
  29. Ted 2
    Mr. MacFarlane can be funny, but Ted 2 is insultingly lazy hack work that is worth discussing primarily because of how he tries and fails to turn race, and specifically black men, into comedy fodder.
  30. What Happened, Miss Simone?
    An often electric, bracingly urgent documentary.
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