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. Grassroots
    Although it only glosses the mechanics of local politics, it exudes an endearingly scruffy charm.
  2. Deconstructing Dad: The Music, Machines and Mystery of Raymond Scott
    Like "My Architect," Nathaniel Kahn's film about his father, Louis I. Kahn, this documentary is a son's attempt to forge a posthumous bond with an elusive parent.
  3. The Imposter
    One of the most entertaining documentaries to appear since "Exit Through the Gift Shop," a film similarly obsessed with role playing and deception.
  4. Union Square
    Union Square has the busy, hemmed-in talkiness of a theater piece, with too much forced to happen in too short a time. But it also has a lively, nervous energy and an expansive sympathy for the mismatched women at its heart.
  5. Alps
    Like "Dogtooth," Alps works by systematically unsettling our sense of what is normal and habitual in human interactions.
  6. Farewell, My Queen
    Benoît Jacquot's tense, absorbing, pleasurably original look at three days in the life and lies of a doomed monarch.
  7. Trishna
    Life is suffering, as the Buddha said (including in Hardy's emotionally grinding novels), but it's more complex and contradictory than the ginned-up realism Mr. Winterbottom delivers here.
  8. Ice Age: Continental Drift
    Continental Drift, like its predecessors, is much too friendly to dislike, and its vision of interspecies multiculturalism is generous and appealing.
  9. Easy Money
    In a director's note Mr. Espinosa describes his fascination with "the idea of thief's honor" and with portraying criminals who, from their point of view, "are trying to do good through their own ethics." And this soul-searching quest lends Easy Money a depth rarely found in gangster films.
  10. Invisible
    The insensitivity of the news media and law enforcement is an implicit acknowledgment of the gap between men and women on the issue; in the film's view men just don't get it. And the submerged rage that wells up in Nira and Lily is boiling hot. The film is less successful in depicting their personal lives.
  11. China Heavyweight
    Illustrating the film's rags-to-ring narrative with panoramic mountain views and compact shots of young bodies punching their way up the food chain, Mr. Sun straddles ancient and modern, tranquillity and turmoil, with equal sureness.
  12. United in Anger: A History of ACT UP
    And by exploring the lighter side of communal action - the camaraderie and cruising that turned weekly meetings into what one member calls "a combination of serious politics and joyful living" - he uncouples the gravity of the cause from the perceived humorlessness of advocacy. Foot soldiers for the dying, the members of Act Up never forgot how to live.
  13. The Magic of Belle Isle
    Ms. Madsen, radiant and tousled, without a trace of narcissism, conveys maternal devotion, undaunted courage and a serene sensuality. Real, if idealized, grown-ups: We haven't seen them much in the movies lately, but here they are.
  14. Last Ride
    Mr. Ivin doesn't have a strong narrative line to play with or become distracted by, but he takes off on some lovely detours, whether he's narrowing in on Chook or going wide to take in the world that waits beyond.
  15. Crazy Eyes
    If it feels uncomfortably real, it's because its vision of decadence (if you'll pardon the word) is almost unwatchably creepy. Crazy Eyes awakens the same queasiness. Yes, it feels true. But why bother?
  16. Starry Starry Night
    Crammed with color and imagination, every one of Jake Pollock's gorgeously photographed images feels timelessly suspended between innocence and awareness.
  17. The Pact
    In the end, like a lot of genre movies, this one pulls from different inspirations, and so weighs in, by turns, as overly predictable and satisfyingly recognizable (part of genre cinema's one-two punch).
  18. Collaborator
    Collaborator has the tone and structure of an extended one-act play. Its uniformly wooden dialogue lends it the stage-bound feel of a tortured writing exercise.
  19. The Do-Deca-Pentathlon
    The most gripping scene in this near-perfect little sports comedy is a fraternal arm-wrestling contest that reaches apoplectic intensity.
  20. Savages
    Savages is a daylight noir, a western, a stoner buddy movie and a love story, which is to say that it is a bit of a mess. But also a lot of fun, especially as its pulp elements rub up against some gritty geopolitical and economic themes.
  21. Katy Perry: Part of Me
    There are several reasons that Katy Perry: Part of Me is more interesting than similar movies about Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers. Most simply, she just has more talent than any of them, and her songs have a wider emotional range.
  22. The Amazing Spider-Man
    Mr. Webb's Spider-Man movie works only because he keeps the whole package, at least until the requisite final blowout, tethered to his two appealing leads.
  23. Neil Young Journeys
    Mr. Young's passionate cracked whine assumes an oracular power.
  24. Madea's Witness Protection
    A comedy that's too late to the Ponzi-scheme party to be topical, and not outrageous enough to take advantage of its own setups.
  25. Unforgivable
    Unforgivable isn't one of Mr. Téchiné's greatest achievements, but it's engrossing even when its increasingly populated story falters, tripped up by unpersuasive actions, connections and details.
  26. People Like Us
    If its tone is considerably tougher than that of movies adapted from Nicholas Sparks novels, it is still a grown-up soap opera. And as the overly determined plot progresses, it feels increasingly Sparks-like, although there are no dewy young lovebirds to swoon over.
  27. A Burning Hot Summer
    In A Burning Hot Summer (a pulpy title that sounds better in the original, "Un Été Brûlant), two men fall into friendship, and while little happens, everything is at stake.
  28. Take This Waltz
    Take This Waltz, Sarah Polley's honest, sure-footed, emotionally generous second feature. Ms. Williams, one of the bravest and smartest actresses working in movies today, portrays a young woman who is indecisive and confused, but never passive.
  29. Magic Mike
    It works - beautifully.
  30. Ted
    The sin of Ted is not that it is offensive but that it is boring, lazy and wildly unoriginal. If Triumph the Insult Comic Dog ever got a hold of Ted, there would be nothing left but a pile of fluff and a few scraps of fur.
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