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. Apocalypse: A Bill Callahan Tour Film
    A tantalizing glimpse of a determinedly outsider talent.
  2. Walk of Shame
    The cast does a fine collective job, and Mr. Brill’s script flirts with clever charm here and there. But the whole film is a missed opportunity because the situations repeatedly defy credibility, and the humor never says anything remotely fresh about human nature or the world we live in.
  3. NOW: In the Wings on a World Stage
    What “NOW” does well is explain why these actors love the place- and time-bound quality of live theater, most evident in the troupe’s stop at the ancient Greek theater of Epidaurus.
  4. More Than the Rainbow
    Mr. Wechsler’s film might be loose to a fault, but Mr. Weber’s work yields its share of gratifying, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it New York moments.
  5. Documented
    His strategy is political — in a meaningful way — but not cinematic.
  6. Speak the Music: Robert Mann and the Mysteries of Chamber Music
    Though colleagues and former students chime in, Mr. Miller lets Mr. Mann and his violin do most of the talking, drawing on assorted interviews and vintage performance clips that convey both the skill and the enthusiasm underpinning his subject’s long career.
  7. Bad Johnson
    A sometimes amusing sex farce.
  8. Decoding Annie Parker
    Decoding Annie Parker is considerably better than the kind of disease-of-the-week fare that used to be a television cliché.
  9. Blood Glacier
    Sometimes genre-based filmmakers don’t know how to make their material fun without making fun of their material, but that’s not a failing of Mr. Kren’s.
  10. Unclaimed
    If we brush aside the unanswered questions, what we’re left with is a simple tale of two men: One who may have been lost, and one who only felt that way.
  11. The Protector 2
    With jokes and computer-generated spectacles diluting the action, this is not one for fight-film purists.
  12. Friended to Death
    Constant close-ups give the sense that the movie itself is violating viewers’ personal space, while an earnest moral suggests that online communication can’t substitute for face-to-face interaction: a topic Friended to Death doesn’t seem to know much about.
  13. Ida
    There is an implicit argument here between faith and materialism, one that is resolved with wit, conviction and generosity of spirit. Mr. Pawlikowski has made one of the finest European films (and one of most insightful films about Europe, past and present) in recent memory.
  14. Beneath the Harvest Sky
    Beneath the Harvest Sky reaches a dramatic climax that is so rushed and confusing, you are left scratching your head. But for all its missteps, the film feels authentic. Through thick and thin, it stubbornly maintains a thorny integrity.
  15. Belle
    The weave of the personal and the political finally proves as irresistible as it is moving, partly because it has been drawn from extraordinary life.
  16. For a Woman
    The 1980s sequences, with their tears and epiphanies, are less vivid and less convincing. An inviting sense of mystery hangs over the events of 1947, Ms. Kurys’s origin story.
  17. Altered States of Plaine
    Muddy sound contributes to the atmosphere of confusion, while the script (credited to the director, Nick Gaglia, along with Mr. Gallagher and Ms. Donohue) goes nowhere.
  18. Jobriath A.D.
    It’s cruel but must be said: Presented in hushed, reverent tones, Jobriath A.D. often comes across as mockumentary material; each ghastly career move is followed by another. Hampered by limited video of Jobriath, the film lacks a sense of him or his music.
  19. The Amazing Spider-Man 2
    A sequel that, until a late, lamentably foolish turn, balances blockbuster bombast with human-scale drama, child-friendly comedy and gushers of tears.
  20. The M Word
    As cavalier with structure as ever, Mr. Jaglom surrounds himself with familiars who embrace his cheery, disorderly style.
  21. Grand Slammed
    Amid the overheated, sometimes amateurish histrionics — Mr. Nizzari shoots a lengthy father-son blowout in a single, theatrical take — Grand Slammed contains inklings of a serious point about immobility in America.
  22. Tanzania: A Journey Within
    The documentary “Tanzania: A Journey Within” is two travel diaries woven together. One is somber and moving. The other is distractingly annoying.
  23. Ape
    A biting, sometimes droll look at the allure of humiliation, Ape appears simple, but its underlying machinery is joltingly clever.
  24. Marvin Seth and Stanley
    Marvin, Seth and Stanley aims to be a deadpan travels-with-my-wacky-dad story, but the father in it is almost an afterthought. It still has sublime moments, but it leaves you wanting more of them.
  25. Desert Riders
    Amid a cacophony of accusations and justifications, it’s the children’s broken limbs, ladderlike scars and disfigured, emaciated bodies that paradoxically hold the film together.
  26. Who is Dayani Cristal?
    A movie whose techniques present problems not containable by the noble intentions of its makers.
  27. For No Good Reason
    For No Good Reason is less revealing than a standard hourlong television tribute might have been... But there is enough of the man and artist here to rekindle interest and appreciation in his often disturbing pictures and an understanding of what motivated them.
  28. Bright Days Ahead
    Struggling to get out from under the film’s too-cheery surface is a much more serious movie about grown-ups confronting the depredations of old age.
  29. The Girl and Death
    The movie proves to be a fragile conceit. It’s as likely to fall apart and cause frustration as it is to induce a reverie.
  30. Walking with the Enemy
    Visually, Walking With the Enemy resembles a TV mini-series, a sense enhanced by the director Mark Schmidt’s habit of cutting away from bloodshed. Constant title cards introducing historical figures suggest the work of a completist rather than a filmmaker who has focused the material.
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