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. For a Good Time, Call...
    Doesn't aspire to be more than a broad, sloppy, old-fashioned sitcom with a sexy gimmick. But it is quite funny.
  2. Side by Side
    For a film geek this movie is absolute heaven, a dream symposium in which directors, cinematographers, editors and a few actors gather to opine on the details of their craft. It is worth a year of film school and at least 1,000 hours of DVD bonus commentary.
  3. The Day
    The Day cycles through bursts of horrific violence only to end much as it begins: static, hollow and vague.
  4. The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure
    Hallie's dad said it was Rocky Horror for toddlers whatever that is. Me and Hallie are 7 and we thought it was for babies.
  5. Little Birds
    I don't think Mr. James intended to make a creepy, exploitative movie about teenage runaways - or, for that matter, a moralistic, cautionary tale of girls gone bad. But those are the default categories that Little Birds stumbles toward, perhaps because the filmmaker has not found a cogent way to channel his curiosity or his empathy.
  6. The Ambassador
    Mr. Brugger's portrait of shameless, routine collusion between exploitative foreigners and dysfunctional dictatorships is depressing and undeniable. Unless, that is, The Ambassador is even more of a hoax than it seems to be. This strikes me as plausible, since somebody having this much fun in such proximity to horror may not be completely trustworthy.
  7. Lawless
    There are too many action-movie clichés without enough dramatic purpose, and interesting themes and anecdotes are scattered around without being fully explored. This is weak and cloudy moonshine: it doesn't burn or intoxicate.
  8. The Apparition
    At one point Ben helpfully looks under the house to see what might be causing the ruckus. "Watch out for spiders!" Kelly says. Actually, Ben - and the filmmakers - have a lot more to worry about.
  9. Wild Horse, Wild Ride
    The first interactions between human and animal are fascinating, as the trainers often apply different approaches. As the horses learn to trust their trainers, connections grow into deep bonds.
  10. General Education
    Among the problems with the humorless comedy General Education is that the lead character's sister is more interesting than he is, and she spends much of her screen time as a mute mime.
  11. Knight Knight
    This comedy, the first feature by Ms. Bucher, suffers from technical limitations, perhaps imposed by a tough nine-day shooting schedule. The recording sounds muted; the whimsical musical score oversells the jokes; and the lackluster visuals fail to match the pungency of the language.
  12. The Victim
    Told with multiple flashbacks and minimal taste, this exuberantly scuzzy thriller - shot in less than two weeks with a budget as micro as the women's skirts - pits sleazy cops against fun-loving disrobers in the middle of scraggly foliage.
  13. Death by China
    It is also unabashedly one-sided and is short on solutions, other than the usual "Call your Congressional representatives." But its message, despite the hyperbole, certainly warrants examination and discussion.
  14. Somewhere Between
    Somewhere Between presents an effortlessly moving but superficial profile of four bright Chinese girls and their adoptive American families.
  15. The Revenant
    A middling zombie movie elevated by clever writing and gooeylicious special effects, Kerry Prior's Revenant toys with big themes but settles for uneasy laughs.
  16. Sleepwalk with Me
    These episodes, some staged as surreal dream sequences, inject this otherwise prosaic-looking movie with a visual pizazz that makes Sleepwalk With Me more than just a glorified stand-up act.
  17. Little White Lies
    With the exception of Marie Little White Lies focuses mostly on the men: whiny, strutting little boys whose exasperated, tight-lipped wives put up with their bad behavior and sometimes have to act like mommies.
  18. Samsara
    A spool of arresting, beautifully composed shots without narration or dialogue, Samsara is an invitation to watch closely and to suspend interpretation (another notion Sontag might have approved).
  19. Neighboring Sounds
    With his sound designer, Pablo Lamar, Mr. Mendonça has created the aural landscape of a horror movie. And, for much of its running time, a thriller without a plot.
  20. Premium Rush
    Stuffed with zingers and zippy stunts, it comes with pretty young things of all hues and hair types - few prettier than its lead, Joseph Gordon-Levitt - and start-to-finish clever special effects, none more clever or special than Michael Shannon.
  21. Teddy Bear
    Mr. Matthiesen has a way of consistently and gently upending expectations, sometimes with humor.
  22. Hit and Run
    The movie feels like a grown-up version of little boys making whooshing noises and staging collisions while playing with toys on a living room floor. It belongs to the same star-and-his-pals-cutting-up genre as the lesser comedies by Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack.
  23. 2016: Obama's America
    Mr. D'Souza stumbles when interviewing George Obama, the president's half-brother, an activist who voluntarily lives amid squalor in Nairobi, Kenya. "Obama has not done anything to help you," Mr. D'Souza says. "He's taking care of me; I'm part of the world," George Obama replies.
  24. The Matchmaker
    The efficient approach and tendency toward broad strokes prevent the movie from taking a deep hold, and Mr. Shafir is a hesitant young actor to have at the center. But, like the title character, Mr. Nesher demonstrates a practical intelligence for making basic connections.
  25. True Wolf
    Having devoted much of their lives to combating lupine myths by introducing Koani to wonder-struck schoolchildren, Mr. Weide and Ms. Tucker are ill served by a director who reduces the anti-wolf lobby to caricature and the debates over reintroducing wolves to the Northern Rockies to grossly biased clips.
  26. Painted Skin: The Resurrection
    That said, this deliciously nutty love story - sample dialogue: "Let me eat this heart, then we can pick azaleas together" - is blindingly gorgeous to look at and exceptionally well acted, at least by the women.
  27. Brother, Can You Spare a Dollar
    The whole enterprise has a get-off-my-lawn feel; it tries to pass off whining and a rose-colored-glasses view of the past as insight.
  28. The Awakening
    Most of the supernatural sightings are flickers at the corners of the screen, so that at certain moments watching the movie feels like taking an eye exam. You see it, then you don't. But the film is not especially scary, and even its boo! moments lack a visceral shock.
  29. Compliance
    A slow-motion punch to the groin. As such, it's fitting that one of our first sights is a large "NO" stenciled in the parking lot of a fast-food joint in suburban Ohio: as the film progresses, the word becomes a silent mantra for viewers who can't quite believe what they're seeing.
  30. The Green Wave
    By turns frustrating and moving, Ali Samadi Ahadi's documentary The Green Wave, about the Green Revolution in Iran, gets a jolt from footage shot by the people for the people on the people's cellphones.
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