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. A Tale of Love and Darkness
    There are many lovely and memorable moments in this film, which is in every way the opposite of a vanity project. If anything, Ms. Portman seems constrained by her own modesty, by a justified but nonetheless limiting reverence for her source material.
  2. Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping
    “Popstar” takes aim at everything that is artificial and plastic in contemporary pop in a spirit of love rather than spite. It’s a celebration of the curious authenticity — the innocence, the sweetness, the guiltless pleasure — of music whose badness is sometimes hard to separate from its genius.
  3. Welcome to this House
    Ms. Hammer’s gauzier sequences notwithstanding, the film’s most commanding image is the housekeeper’s description of the ruthless monasticism Bishop maintained and the compulsive writing she practiced in her studio. Amid excesses and entanglements, that concentration ensured her place in literary history.
  4. The True Cost
    Offering few solutions beyond a single fair-trade fashion company, The True Cost — whose serene interludes compete with sickening recordings of Black Friday shopping riots and so-called clothing haul videos — stirs and saddens. Not least because it’s unlikely to reach the young consumers most in need of its revelations.
  5. Every Last Child
    As the film makes abundantly clear, if left untreated, contagions — of ignorance, fear and conflict — will spread wherever they can.
  6. Charlie's Country
    Unlike those in many art-house releases, this wilderness is not an abstract arena for playing out alienation but a living, breathing land with deep, abiding significance for Charlie and his fellow Aborigines cast adrift.
  7. The Yes Men Are Revolting
    The Yes Men Are Revolting, their third film, has a personal poignancy that is missing in the forerunners, “The Yes Men” (2003) and “The Yes Men Fix the World” (2009).
  8. Gabriel
    This film maintains its anxious themes throughout, which makes for some tedious stretches because the tension never breaks. Despite that, or maybe because of it, Gabriel is unexpectedly absorbing.
  9. 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.
  10. Doomsdays
    Wrapping an existential question in the random rhythms of the road movie, Doomsdays comes at you sideways, its melancholy catching you off guard.
  11. Do I Sound Gay?
    Mr. Thorpe’s explorations of a painful subject are an exercise in healing. His discovery of how many gay men share his anxiety and discomfort leads him to greater self-acceptance.
  12. Listen to Me Marlon
    While its subject means that "Listen to Me” is easy to like, Mr. Riley’s shaping of Brando’s words can make the movie, every so often, difficult to fully embrace.
  13. The Equalizer 2
    Mr. Washington is especially strong when he trusts his director, as he did with Tony Scott and does with Mr. Fuqua. Like all great actors, Mr. Washington commits to the performance, but every so often he also breathes fire, imbuing a scene with such shocking ferocity and bone-deep moral certitude that everything else falls blissfully away.
  14. The Wanted 18
    Even at 75 minutes, it can feel padded with footage whose connection to the central plot is tenuous. But at its best, The Wanted 18 follows a worthy tradition of highlighting absurdities that arise during conflict.
  15. 3 1/2 Minutes, 10 Bullets
    At the time of a fervent national debate on race and justice, part of what is impressive about 3 ½ Minutes is the cool temperature at which it is often served.
  16. Being Evel
    The movie overreaches when trying to contextualize Knievel as a hero inspiring the country after Vietnam-Watergate disillusionment. He was simply an all-American self-promoter. But Being Evel largely nails his story.
  17. 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.
  18. Mala Mala
    While affirming the dignity of its subjects, Mala Mala shows there’s little glamour attached to the pursuit of selfhood.
  19. 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.
  20. 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.
  21. Zarafa
    Zarafa may not be the most groundbreaking feat of storytelling, but it does have a giraffe in a balloon.
  22. Beasts of No Nation
    The movie itself is an effective nightmare, and a solid piece of filmmaking, strong enough to make you wish that it could have borne the full weight of the tragedy it set out to depict.
  23. Steak (R)evolution
    This informative foodie film is more than just footage of assorted chefs cooking delicious-looking cuts of meat. The tour encompasses breeders, butchers, grazing practices and genetics.
  24. When Animals Dream
    When Animals Dream is a beguiling parable of cruelty and the resistance to it. Its special effects are pretty minimal, its scope is modest, and it is, in the end, more touching than terrifying, intent on jolting its audience not with dread but with compassion.
  25. Twinsters
    The film has too many fits of uncontrolled laughter and other awkwardness that suggest an unedited home movie, but, in general, Twinsters makes for a heartfelt alternative to a traditional documentary approach.
  26. A Gay Girl in Damascus: The Amina Profile
    Even knowing the secret of A Gay Girl in Damascus doesn’t make this documentary any less tense. That’s a testament to Sophie Deraspe, a director who understands how to let a plot unfold.
  27. How to Smell a Rose: A Visit with Ricky Leacock at his Farm in Normandy
    Documentary masters like Mr. Leacock and Mr. Blank have long been drawn to filming other artists, even though the enigma of artistic endeavor may appear to elude portrayal on film. But in How to Smell a Rose, it’s just as important to feel the relationship between these two, with Mr. Leacock as something of a mentor.
  28. Misunderstood
    A buoyantly funny, sometimes desperately sad film.
  29. Peace Officer
    While Peace Officer could offer more information, what is here is disturbing and sometimes eye-opening.
  30. Arabian Nights: Volume 2, The Desolate One
    It is worth sticking with it until the end, since the third part is the most powerful.
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