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 Bottle in the Gaza Sea (Une bouteille à la mer)
    Fueled by neither anger nor religious extremism - the director, Thierry Binisti, remains rigidly nonpartisan - "Bottle" is a gentle pairing of youthful idealism and tenacious hope.
  2. My Brooklyn
    My Brooklyn, Kelly Anderson's sensitive study of gentrification in her home borough, is as much personal essay as urban-policy survey.
  3. Allegiance
    This well-acted debut feature from Michael Connors (a former Army captain) is too limited in ambition and scope to satisfy our expectations.
  4. Promised Land
    An earnest attempt, sometimes effective, sometimes clumsy, to dramatize the central arguments about fracking and its impact.
  5. West of Memphis
    The film is inspiring because it has a semi-happy ending attached to a love story.
  6. Tabu
    It is, of course, art rather than history - an elegant composition of dreams, memories and suggestive images - but its artfulness seems like an alibi, an excuse for keeping the ugliness of history out of the picture.
  7. Parental Guidance
    It could be worse, and would be without Bette Midler or Marisa Tomei.
  8. Django Unchained
    Like "Inglourious Basterds," Django Unchained is crazily entertaining, brazenly irresponsible and also ethically serious in a way that is entirely consistent with its playfulness.
  9. Les Miserables
    Song after song, as relationships and rebellion bloom, you wait in vain for the movie to, as well, and for the filmmaking to rise to the occasion of both its source material and its hard-working performers.
  10. The Impossible
    There is a troubling complacency and a lack of compassion in The Impossible, which is less an examination of mass destruction than the tale of a spoiled holiday.
  11. Not Fade Away
    By focusing on musicians who are talented but finally not good or persistent enough to succeed in the big time, Not Fade Away offers a poignant, alternative, antiheroic history of the big beat.
  12. On the Road
    It all seems - dare I say it? - of little consequence.
  13. Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away
    While the bodies of the performers do amazing things, the hectic editing and frequent use of slow motion distract from their physical artistry rather than enhance it. The 3-D, on the other hand, gives some sense of the scale of a Cirque du Soleil performance, and even if the film is no substitute for the real thing, it is at least an effective advertisement.
  14. Aquí y Allá (Here and There)
    If the intent was to keep the characters here just as anonymous as most migrant workers are to prosperous people in the United States, it succeeds: Pedro and his family remain mere sketches. If, however, the aim was a more meaningful portrait of hardship and aspiration, the film is merely underdone. It's no secret that life in many places is hard.
  15. Barbara
    Barbara is a film about the old Germany from one of the best directors working in the new: Christian Petzold. For more than a decade Mr. Petzold has been making his mark on the international cinema scene with smart, tense films that resemble psychological thrillers, but are distinguished by their strange story turns, moral thorns, visual beauty and filmmaking intelligence.
  16. This Is 40
    There are a lot of loose ends and a few forced conclusions. But, then again, the acceptance of imperfection is Mr. Apatow's theme, so a degree of sloppiness is to be expected. That's life.
  17. Jack Reacher
    Apart from the car chase, the only real fun in Jack Reacher comes from Mr. Herzog and Robert Duvall, called in near the end for some marvelously gratuitous scenery chewing as a gruff former Marine. They enliven the movie's atmosphere of weary brutality for a few moments, but they also call attention to the dullness of their dramatic surroundings.
  18. Amour
    A masterpiece about life, death and everything in between.
  19. Zero Dark Thirty
    Ms. Bigelow's direction here is unexpectedly stunning, at once bold and intimate: she has a genius for infusing even large-scale action set pieces with the human element.
  20. The Guilt Trip
    The chief pleasures of this mild-mannered dud lie in watching two resourceful comic actors go through their paces like the pros they are.
  21. Let Fury Have the Hour
    Infinitely less than the sum of its parts, Antonino D'Ambrosio's Let Fury Have the Hour crams 50 thoughtful artists into a disappointingly muddled film.
  22. Jason Becker: Not Dead Yet
    This heartfelt documentary is also, more subtly, a tribute to the squadron of caregivers that has enabled Mr. Becker not only to survive for an extraordinarily long time but also to continue to compose music, using virtually the only part of him that still moves, his eyes.
  23. Trashed
    If we must talk trash, Mr. Irons - assisted by a scientist or two and Vangelis's doomy score - is an inspired choice of guide. Soothing and sensitive, his liquid gaze alighting on oozing landfills and belching incinerators, he moves through the film with a tragic dignity that belies his whimsical neckwear and jaunty hats.
  24. Save the Date
    The reunion of Ms. Caplan and Mr. Starr, cast mates on Starz network's "Party Down," seemed intriguing. That series, though, with all the fizz and social comedy that this movie lacks, was a better showcase for them.
  25. Yelling to the Sky
    It's disconcerting to watch Sweetness, tiny and light-skinned, assaulting Latonya, large and dark-skinned, partly because it bluntly if inconclusively underscores a crucial color divide that runs through this film like a throbbing vein.
  26. The Girl
    What at first came across as a tale of dawning conscience increasingly starts to feel rigged.
  27. Saving Grace B. Jones
    Ms. O'Neal's Grace is a fluttery Blanche DuBois type who transforms into a ranting madwoman wreaking havoc. Instead of an ax, she wields scissors. From here on, the movie is a grotesquely overacted, ineptly staged screamfest.
  28. Stand Up Guys
    Most of the modest pleasures are in the ways the men expertly play off one another and invest their shallow characters with more depth than any filmmaker could reasonably expect.
  29. Any Day Now
    An outraged, unblinking depiction of institutionalized homophobia three decades ago, when the prevailing court opinion in adoption cases was that exposing a child to a homosexual environment was harmful. Never mind that nobody else wants Marco.
  30. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
    Tolkien's inventive, episodic tale of a modest homebody on a dangerous journey has been turned into an overscale and plodding spectacle.
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