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. Frankenweenie
    While Frankenweenie is fun, it is not nearly strange or original enough to join the undead, monstrous ranks of the classics it adores.
  2. Avé
    No one can really run away - that's the animating principle of the Bulgarian film Avé, which is placid and unchallenging, with tiny eruptions of striking purpose.
  3. Bel Borba Aqui
    Bel Borba Aqui gives us plenty to look at, but not much to think about.
  4. Now, Forager
    This uneven, slow-brewed film begins by observing a brittle relationship about to crumble, but it is better at portraying how the exacting standards of food professionals can lead to personal grief.
  5. V/H/S
    A low-budget horror anthology with segments both ghastly and moronic.
  6. Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You
    Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You, a film based on Peter Cameron's novel, is several kinds of excruciating.
  7. Butter
    Well acted and sporadically amusing - especially when Olivia Wilde's profanity-spewing stripper is around - Butter alternates between looking down its nose at Midwestern passions and cooing over smugly liberal values.
  8. Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare
    Advocating freedom from a system that "doesn't want you to die and doesn't want you to get well," this hard-hitting film leaves us finally more hopeful than despairing.
  9. Taken 2
    What follows seems like a nonstop car and foot chase, with Albanian after Albanian falling victim to Bryan's remarkable aim and hand-fighting skills. Foreigners bad, Americans good, box office busy.
  10. The Paperboy
    It is by turns lurid, humid, florid, languid and stupid, but it is pretty much all id all the time.
  11. The Double Steps
    It's never clear how Mr. Lacuesta, whose use of other art-cinema conventions (like nonprofessional performers) risks cliché, sees these parts working together or what he wants you to take from them. He's so committed to non-transparency as a principle that he locks you out.
  12. Dear Mandela
    Following the efforts of a South African housing rights group, the documentary Dear Mandela illustrates how fresh injustices have succeeded the inequality once enforced by apartheid.
  13. 186 Dollars to Freedom
    Unable to shape these events into a dramatic structure, the director, Camilo Vila, resorts to a meandering tale of random indignities suffered by a lead so bland he comes across less as principled than as stupendously naïve.
  14. Heroine
    Pulpy but attenuated, Heroine tries to do too much: deliver an exposé of the back-stabbing film business while also drawing a portrait of a woman caught in its vice.
  15. American Autumn: an Occudoc
    As manifestoes go it is calm and smart, offsetting its stridency with discussion, music, even humor, while issuing a call to arms.
  16. The Yakuza and the Mermaid
    If wallowing in the creative hiccups of tortured scribblers is your moviegoing goal, there are much better options.
  17. My Life as Abraham Lincoln
    The accessible and appealing Ms. Luft is a strong anchor. And Ms. Berman can be funny (especially with a black-and-white Ingmar Bergman send-up). It's intriguing to imagine what she could do with a tighter, more linear script.
  18. Six Million and One
    It is an emotional journey for these grown children, now in their 40s and 50s, who engage in sometimes heated conversations, several taking place on the actual sites where Joseph and other prisoners endured unimaginable suffering.
  19. The Other Dream Team
    Augmented by a trove of archival footage reaching back to the 1930s, Jesse Feldman's buoyant cinematography merges political history and sports mania into a triumphant timeline.
  20. Bringing Up Bobby
    Despite Ms. Janssen's fine taste in music - it's lovely to hear Jorma Kaukonen's "Genesis" on the soundtrack - her film's downfall was ensured by a leading lady who will always be more credible chasing zombies than the American dream.
  21. Harvest of Empire
    The filmmakers retain a touching faith that most Americans won't tolerate injustice when they know about it. This film is meant to teach them.
  22. Vulgaria
    The film's kinky energy eventually wanes, the pileup of profanities losing its initial zing.
  23. Solomon Kane
    Mr. Basset is too enamored of the usual action film clichés, down to some Hollywood-gangsta gun play. But he has a graphic visual style that suits the simplistic material and he keeps you watching even as the wet, sucking sounds of skewered flesh grow tedious.
  24. Headshot
    A dreamy, elliptical neo-noir about a cop turned killer turned something else altogether.
  25. Pitch Perfect
    Only occasionally funny and not at all illuminating about the rich world of a cappella singing.
  26. Won't Back Down
    However you take its politics, the film upholds a dreary tradition of simplifying and sentimentalizing matters of serious social concern, and dumbing down issues that call for clarity and creative thinking. Our children deserve better.
  27. Hotel Transylvania
    For the first half of the film, amusing monster humor keeps things interesting; some monsters, it turns out, are better at party games than others.
  28. Looper
    Mr. Johnson throws a lot at the screen, blasted corpses included, yet little here is as initially transfixing as Mr. Gordon-Levitt's mug.
  29. Tales of the Night
    The narratives - involving princesses, sorcerers, dragons, talking animals - are familiar. But Mr. Ocelot invigorates them with lyricism: silhouettes evoke shadow plays, and often brilliant palettes reflect the cultures presented.
  30. The Waiting Room
    Scrupulously apolitical, The Waiting Room is the opposite of a polemic like Michael Moore's "Sicko." But by removing any editorial screen, it confronts you head-on with human suffering that a more humane and equitable system might help alleviate.
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