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. 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.
  2. Guidelines
    Communicating much with very little, Guidelines (“La Marche à Suivre”) presents a profoundly hopeful view of education as a civilizing force and a haven for transformation. There have been many more eventful high school movies, but rarely one that’s more absorbed in the forming of adults and the shaping of citizens.
  3. Poltergeist
    All in all there’s not much to complain about here, except that — as with a lot of revisited classics — the story’s not as revolutionary as you remember it. For veterans of the 1982 Poltergeist, it’s more like scary but pleasant nostalgia.
  4. The Farewell Party
    For all its sensitivity to the subject, The Farewell Party makes a number of tonal missteps of which the most glaring is the insertion of a musical number that upsets the movie’s otherwise sensible balance between the comedic and the morbid.
  5. Seeds of Time
    Perhaps it’s a hazard tied to a subject, seeds, which are all about potential, but Ms. McLeod’s film feels naggingly diffuse and insufficiently vivid in evoking diversity.
  6. Love at First Fight
    For its first two-thirds, the film, written and directed by Thomas Cailley, seems to be groundbreaking. Then it slides into comforting familiarity.
  7. Aloft
    For all its brooding atmosphere and visual poeticism, the film offers a perspective on the lives of its characters that feels narrow and superficial.
  8. Something Better to Come
    Approach Something Better to Come with the same patience that the filmmaker exhibited in shooting it and you’ll be rewarded. That is, if your definition of “rewarded” includes being dismayed by the bleakness that exists on the edges of prosperity.
  9. (Dis)Honesty: The Truth About Lies
    Because the film doesn’t begin to explore the wider implications of that loss of trust, its findings don’t add up to more than a sardonic gloss on a provocative subject.
  10. Sunshine Superman
    Glorious daredevilry is wrapped in a slowly evolving ache in Sunshine Superman, a bittersweet documentary about Carl Boenish, who looked at very tall things and saw an opportunity to leap.
  11. When Marnie Was There
    The conclusion is rushed and poorly staged, yet the damp caul of loneliness that envelops the film’s early scenes feels moving and true.
  12. The Human Centipede III (Final Sequence)
    A caldron of unspeakable acts and unpalatable language, The Human Centipede 3 takes the bottom-feeding standards of its previous chapters (released in 2010 and 2011) to new lows of debasement.
  13. Tomorrowland
    Its idea of the future is abstract, theoretical and empty, and it can only fill in the blank space with exhortations to believe and to hope. But belief without content, without a critical picture of the world as it is, is really just propaganda. Tomorrowland, searching for incitements to dream, finds slogans and mistakes them for poetry.
  14. The Japanese Dog
    While it lacks the richness of some of Ozu’s masterworks, “The Japanese Dog” steers clear of sentimentality — an impressive feat, given that the title somewhat preciously refers to a toy dog. The movie depicts a hopeful side of Romania, peeking through even Costache’s lonely world.
  15. Güeros
    The story pops and swerves; the images are by turns comical, banal and ravishing; and the result is a briskly shaken cocktail made of equal parts provocation and comfort. You come away with a buzz that is invigorating and pleasantly familiar.
  16. It's Such a Beautiful Day
    Considering that he’s a stick figure, Bill, the main character in It’s Such a Beautiful Day, sure does have a complex internal life. And this animated film by Don Hertzfeldt does an amazing job of making you feel it, in all its sadness, terror and transcendence.
  17. Bombay Velvet
    For much of its first half, Bombay Velvet hums with the kind of energy found in movies by the 1970s American directors....Mr. Kashyap is perhaps too faithful to his Bollywood imperatives, though. In the grand tradition, his film is overlong (149 minutes) and overplotted.
  18. Childless
    There’s solid acting in Childless, but mostly there are words — torrents of them.
  19. Where Hope Grows
    Once the proselytizing takes over, so does the predictability.
  20. Our Man in Tehran
    There’s nothing like hearing a harrowing tale from the people who lived it.
  21. Know How
    Know How is a robust, youthful call to be seen, heard and appreciated — to be a little less invisible.
  22. Dark Star: HR Giger's World
    This disordered portrait seems heavily influenced by its equally jumbled setting.
  23. L for Leisure
    It is possible to admire Mr. Kalman and Ms. Horn’s ambition and at the same time have no idea what they were trying to achieve.
  24. The Connection
    Fetishizing the tired tokens of the American gangster movie, The Connection is a slickly styled, overlong pastiche. Yet its denizens have a retro glamour and the soundtrack a shameless literalness that’s rather endearing.
  25. In the Name of My Daughter
    Mr. Téchiné ’s methodical storytelling covers more narrative ground than the drama requires, sapping the film’s energy.
  26. Every Secret Thing
    [Amy Berg's] instincts about how to pace a true story serve her well with this imaginary one, and so do the performances by Ms. Fanning and especially Ms. Macdonald.
  27. Echoes of War
    The scriptwriters, Kane Senes (who also directed) and John Chriss, keep the family secrets too bottled up, but the actors, who include William Forsythe as the McCluskey patriarch, play it with dark vigor.
  28. Slow West
    The glorious cinematography, by Robbie Ryan, sharply illustrates the disparity between the rugged majesty of the landscape and the savagery of its outlaws and adventurers, who resemble vermin scuttling through the underbrush of a perilous no man’s land.
  29. Good Kill
    Mr. Hawke’s anguished performance gives Good Kill a hot emotional center.
  30. I'll See You in My Dreams
    A modest, quietly touching portrait of an older woman radiantly embodied by Blythe Danner.
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