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. Seymour: An Introduction
    So effective does it close the distance between you and Mr. Bernstein that afterward you may find yourself scanning the streets, hoping to catch sight of him, as if for an old friend.
  2. It Follows
    It Follows recycles familiar teenage horror tropes — a girl alone in a house, evil forces banging on a door — but its mood is dreamy. Seldom do you feel manipulated by exploitative formulas. The violence, when it comes, is sudden, and the camera doesn’t linger over the gore.
  3. Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief
    Mr. Gibney, who enters swinging and keeps on swinging, comes across as less interested in understanding Scientology than in exposing its secrets, which makes for a lively and watchable documentary if not an especially enlightening one.
  4. Of Horses and Men
    Mr. Erlingsson’s upbeat outlook suggests that generations of horses and men have coexisted and will continue to do so for centuries more.
  5. Allure
    These drifting, unresolved stories may lack dramatic punch, but Mr. Nikolic, who teaches film at the New School, draws lovely performances from his cosmopolitan cast and oodles of atmosphere from a spare piano-and-strings soundtrack.
  6. Earth's Golden Playground
    Mr. Horvath’s procedural, increasingly dry documentary takes the “rush” out of “gold rush.”
  7. Deli Man
    This documentary goes heavy on the schmaltz, in all senses.
  8. The Mafia Only Kills in Summer
    The swings from goofy to gory and jokey to tragic cancel one another out, and Mr. Diliberto’s near-constant voice-over is irksome. As is the pivotal romance.
  9. These Final Hours
    The lesson may not be particularly original, but the film has some striking moments as it follows him to his destiny.
  10. Road Hard
    Mr. Carolla’s wide-ranging résumé includes writing, voice-over work, talk-show appearances and a popular podcast, but it’s light on acting, and he shows why here, proving himself unable to perform the difficult trick of making a loathsome character sympathetic.
  11. The Life and Mind of Mark DeFriest
    The indomitable personality and talents of the serial prison escapee Mark DeFriest outshine the weaknesses of this documentary that bears his name.
  12. An Honest Liar
    Directors Justin Weinstein and Tyler Measom have produced a jaunty, jovial portrait with a surprising sting in its tail.
  13. Two Men in Town
    The desert landscapes are gorgeously shot by Yves Cape, but Two Men in Town never seems to fully inhabit its setting. Nor does the schematic, occasionally clumsy story do justice to the skills of the cast.
  14. Unfinished Business
    A “EuroTrip” with balance sheets, the slick, innocuous comedy Unfinished Business fails to seal the deal.
  15. October Gale
    Ms. Clarkson and Mr. Speedman do what they can with their underwritten and overly contrived roles... Late in the game, Tim Roth boats in as Tom, a local with a grudge, and shocks the movie to life by throwing some lightning bolts of his own.
  16. Kidnapping Mr. Heineken
    Mr. Hopkins doesn’t have much to do, but it can be amusing to see him upstage everyone else with sonorous murmurings and imperious demands for a robe and Chinese takeout.
  17. Faults
    While Faults glances at the narcissism of cult leaders, its most penetrating investigation is into the root emptiness within disciples, the desperate hunger to relinquish personal initiative.
  18. Buzzard
    With its casual deadpan attitude, Buzzard offers a nightmare portrait of arrested development and anomie for the age of inequality.
  19. Chappie
    Even at his shakiest, Mr. Blomkamp holds your attention with stories about characters banding together to emerge from a hell not of their own making, a liberation journey that just isn’t the same old, same old when a director was born in South Africa.
  20. Merchants of Doubt
    Merchants of Doubt, Robert Kenner’s informative and infuriating new documentary, ought to remind us that the denial of climate change is hardly a joke.
  21. The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
    In aggressively sunny picker-uppers like the Marigold movies, there is a thin line between adorable and insufferable. And in the second “Marigold,” Mr. Patel has succumbed to his tendency toward cuteness.
  22. The Lesson
    The plot undermines the film’s power. At the end you may be impressed at the skill on display, but you may also wish that you were more fully moved by the spectacle of a soul laid bare and transformed.
  23. Around The World In 50 Concerts
    If the movie gets a bit gooey at times that’s probably an occupational hazard when considering the sublime. And Ms. Honigmann’s restraint — there’s something classical in her style, too — keeps the film from floating away. When it threatens to, something piercing or traumatic brings it back to earth, where any account of art belongs.
  24. Focus
    The preposterousness of the story doesn’t seem like a rip-off, since the twists in the plot, for the most part, pay off nicely.
  25. Eastern Boys
    Explores interlocking themes of sexuality, immigration and power dynamics with a cleareyed sensitivity and refuses to demonize even its shadiest characters.
  26. Young Bodies Heal Quickly
    Some of the deadpan moments and more fraught exchanges don’t really come off. But all in all, it’s one curious, and furious, escapade.
  27. Futuro Beach
    Balancing its abstract storytelling with commanding visuals (by the gifted cinematographer Ali Olcay Gözkaya), Futuro Beach explores liberation and reinvention, the tug of familiarity versus the allure of the foreign.
  28. Out of the Dark
    Ornamenting its flimsy back story with assaultive sound effects and asinine behavior, Out of the Dark strains to shock.
  29. Bluebird
    On one level, Bluebird is a bitter slice of life about hardy, stoic New Englanders battling the elements and a crumbling regional economy. On another, it’s a poetic meditation on the human struggle to make sense of a cruel and indifferent universe.
  30. The Widowmaker
    The Widowmaker is commendable in that although it is a work of advocacy, it gives an array of opinions.
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