The New York Times' Scores

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:
20324 movie reviews
  1. The film is a riveting portrait of young men in shock and in mourning as the tragedy stirs feelings that have long lain dormant.
  2. His (Rivera) movie hits its targets, but softly, more in amusement than in anger.
  3. Mr. Trier and Mr. Lie - a quiet, recessive but nonetheless magnetically self-assured screen presence - emphasize Anders's individuality above all. Oslo, August 31st has the satisfying gravity of specific experience, and also, true to its title, a prickly sense of place.
  4. Mighty Fine chugs along heartily until it abruptly stops on the edge of cliff, leaving you feeling shortchanged. It is a couple of crucial scenes away from feeling complete.
  5. It is possible to summarize the experience of watching The Intouchables in nine words: You will laugh; you will cry; you will cringe.
  6. American fans of "The Hunger Games" may not embrace - or even be permitted to see - Battle Royale, which is too bad. It is in many ways a better movie and in any case a fascinating companion, drawn from a parallel cultural universe. It is a lot uglier and also, perversely, a lot more fun.
  7. Moonrise Kingdom breezes along with a beautifully coordinated admixture of droll humor, deadpan and slapstick. Like all of Mr. Anderson's films, though, there's a deep, pervasive melancholia here too.
  8. It manages, in the end, to be touching as well as hectic and whimsical, and to send a few interesting thematic bubbles into the air, having to do with lost fathers, obscure regrets and racial reconciliation.
  9. The scenes with Karl Markovics, as Freud, are the lingering appeal of this artfully composed film.
  10. This film has the everyday vibe of a bunch of friends putting together a summer camp video. Gosh, the substance of Jacob's Pillow should be a little less sleepy.
  11. Serves up its material with an excess of treacly music and an overabundance of glowing reminiscences. This has the odd effect of making his story less powerful than it actually is.
  12. Unless you're among those who still drop acid as a midnight-movie apéritif, your enjoyment of this retro oddity remains far from guaranteed.
  13. Along the way comes a bracing, honest confession about these interactive creations, voiced by one designer but no doubt applying to many more makers of all kinds: "I made it for myself."
  14. Generating suspense without blowing the special-effects budget, Mr. Sanchez paints an intimate portrait of a tormented personality. Though horrors are eventually unveiled, the film is more chilling in its slower, quieter moments.
  15. His (Jackson) doleful revenant is in almost every scene, and this hardworking actor seems to know that the film around him should be a light-footed caper instead of a grim noir with a side order of deviance.
  16. Therein lies the essence of this simple, bluntly effective movie. Its principal selling point - the supreme watchability of dogs, especially working dogs - is undeniably powerful.
  17. Mr. Spurlock's film already feels a few years late to the discussion of an easily mockable subject, but it is a dud as a diversion.
  18. It's showtime!" says Jimmy, the one-man band of American Animal. And for Matt D'Elia, who plays him in this hour and a half of pretentious mind games, it certainly is. There are other players, but it's all about Jimmy, portrayed with a free-associative, Jim Carrey-like mania.
  19. Virginia is a wildly unpredictable piece of work. Playing the kind of role that is often associated with Laura Dern, Ms. Connelly gives a brave, full-tilt performance that is true to the character but can't hold the movie together.
  20. Silly, featherweight comedy.
  21. A singularly unpleasant movie: full of obnoxious characters in scenes that seem overwritten and under-rehearsed, oblivious to the most basic standards of tonal consistency, narrative coherence or visual decorum. But it is also sly, daring, genuinely original and at times perversely brilliant.
  22. The messiness of the film seems appropriate to its subject, which is the attempt to bring at least a measure of order - and even a touch of grace - to a chaotic and frequently ugly reality.
  23. Has a plot as unambitious as a macaroni dinner, familiar and easy to eat and not particularly nutritious.
  24. The overall mood is of warm reassurance, and some of it is even pretty funny.
  25. The shriller its didacticism, the more unhinged it becomes. But even at its most ludicrous - when it is shouting into your ear - its sheer audacity grabs your attention.
  26. Post-Soviet Russia in Andrei Zvyagintsev's somber, gripping film Elena is a moral vacuum where money rules, the haves are contemptuous of the have-nots, and class resentment simmers. The movie, which shuttles between the center of Moscow and its outskirts, is grim enough to suggest that even if you were rich, you wouldn't want to live there.
  27. That potential is mostly squandered in The Dictator, which gestures halfheartedly toward topicality and, with equal lack of conviction, toward pure, anarchic silliness.
  28. Moments of insight flare like fireflies and disappear, whether from underfinancing or overambition is unclear. Either way, this maddening mind game is likely to be more enthusiastically received in philosophy classrooms than in the multiplex.
  29. The best thing about Small, Beautifully Moving Parts is its admission that a positive pregnancy test is not always cause for giddy celebration; the worst thing is that, even at a lean 73 minutes, this flimsy road movie feels at least 43 minutes too long.
  30. Solitude is a character, so much so that, 25 minutes in, when the first human voice is heard, it feels like an intrusion. And when the weather warms enough for tourists to make the trek up to the observatory, they register not as a welcome relief from loneliness but as annoyances.

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