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. Age of Uprising: The Legend of Michael Kohlhaas
    The severely beautiful film is painted in a dauntingly austere manner, as if lost in a war against itself, with confrontations underplayed and the rural landscapes making more of an impression than the detoured drama.
  2. Elena
    With its free-floating imagery, Elena unfolds like a cinematic dream whose central image is water, which symbolizes the washing away of grief. But more than that, it represents the stream of life, with beautiful images of women floating through time.
  3. Night Moves
    Some of the climactic turns seem to follow the kind of narrative rules that this film, and this filmmaker, have otherwise defied.
  4. Maleficent
    Consciously or not, coherently or not, Maleficent tells a new kind of story about how we live now, not once upon another time. And it does so by suggesting, among other things, that budding girls and older women are not natural foes, even if that’s what fairy tales, Hollywood and the world like to tell us.
  5. We Are the Best!
    There is hardly a shortage of movies about rock ’n’ roll, but there are few as perfect — which is to say as ragged, as silly, as touching or as true — as We Are the Best!.
  6. A Million Ways to Die in the West
    A Million Ways to Die in the West seems serious about only one thing: its contempt for the gun-crazed macho ethos exalted in countless Hollywood westerns. You might call the movie “Revenge of the Übernerd.”
  7. Gebo and the Shadow
    Mr. Oliveira relishes the formality of conversation, and there is great pleasure to be found in listening to the actors and watching the small adjustments of posture and gesture that accompany their words.
  8. The Life and Crimes of Doris Payne
    The Life & Crimes of Doris Payne has an embarrassment of riches in Ms. Payne’s story, and it’s often a ripping good yarn, but, as a film, it lacks the nimbleness and resourcefulness of its subject.
  9. Grand Départ
    Although the subject is potent, the film, directed with a seemingly effortless commercial acumen, doesn’t burrow deeply.
  10. Wolf
    The movie’s grittiness — the director, Jim Taihuttu (“Rabat”), shoots Wolf in black and white — its intrigues, its graphic violence and Mr. Kenzari’s performance make for a worthy addition to the annals of gangster films, Interpol edition.
  11. A World Not Ours
    Mr. Fleifel helps walk us through the history with an ingratiating voice-over that lightens the seemingly permanent clouds of a dire history.
  12. Frequencies
    While the detached, deadpan tone and occasionally stilted acting might leave some viewers flat, there’s no doubting the fierce intelligence behind this admirable puzzle box of a movie.
  13. Lila Lila
    The actors — the deft Mr. Brühl and the charming Ms. Herzsprung — add what levity they can.
  14. The Love Punch
    Some wonderful actors add class to the material, which struggles to find a consistent register of cartoonishness.
  15. The Angriest Man in Brooklyn
    The movie is predictably sentimental at its root, but it’s also meant to be comedy, partly resting on Mr. Williams’s energetic but failed attempt to play a jerk.
  16. The Fatal Encounter
    For all its spectacle, The Fatal Encounter is wanting for profundity.
  17. Blended
    Most of Blended has the look and pacing of a three-camera sitcom filmed by a bunch of eighth graders and conceived by their less bright classmates. Shots don’t match. Jokes misfire. Gags that are visible from a mile away fail to deliver.
  18. Cold in July
    As the movie’s resident live wire, Mr. Johnson, obviously having the time of his life, is a hoot, and the feisty camaraderie among these three men gives Cold in July a euphoric goofiness.
  19. X-Men: Days of Future Past
    As usual, the characters — and the performers playing them — step unto the breach to provide just enough wit and feeling to make Days of Future Past something other than a waste of a reasonable person’s time.
  20. Stand Clear of the Closing Doors
    A small miracle of a film.
  21. Words and Pictures
    Words and Pictures has a host of flaws, but the performances by Mr. Owen and Ms. Binoche have a crackling vitality, and the screenplay’s strongest moments set off the kind of trains of thought that dedicated teachers hope to spur in their students.
  22. Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia
    Heavily seasoned with epigrams worthy of Oscar Wilde, this entertaining documentary portrays Vidal as a pessimistic political prophet with streaks of paranoia and misanthropy, but a truth teller nonetheless.
  23. The Dance of Reality
    The Dance of Reality is the work of a highly disciplined anarchist, whose principal weapon against authority is his own imagination.
  24. Cyber-Seniors
    This is a sweet tale that will resonate with anyone who has tried to make a Skype call to a grandparent.
  25. Don Peyote
    A bit too true to a frugal indie philosophy, where winging it beats reshooting, the film gets more woolly and unfocused; many scenes feel improvised and only occasionally hit their marks.
  26. Chinese Puzzle
    This warm-blooded paean to globalization is just enough in touch with reality to keep your eyes from rolling. For Chinese Puzzle genuinely likes people. It overlooks the faults and misbehavior of its eccentric characters to express a lighthearted optimism that doesn’t feel forced or manipulative. It is in love with life.
  27. Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case
    Mr. Johnsen offers viewers the challenge and pleasure of an important artist’s company, and a chance to appreciate anew his wisdom, his wit and his bravery.
  28. The American Nurse
    If the film is workmanlike at times, it is also elegantly cleareyed.
  29. The Discoverers
    Mr. Schwarz falters with his ending, which feels overly tidy. Still, it’s not the destination; it’s the journey.
  30. Half of a Yellow Sun
    Half of a Yellow Sun, adapted from the 2006 novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, emerges on screen as a well-acted, finely wrought epic that nevertheless struggles to balance the requirements of melodrama with its drive to capture a historical moment.
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