The New York Times' Scores

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For 20,335 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: 9,412 out of 20335
  2. Mixed: 8,455 out of 20335
  3. Negative: 2,468 out of 20335
20335 movie reviews
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  1. Fire in Babylon
    It all adds up to an entertaining 88 minutes, despite the film's ramshackle construction and its once-over-lightly approach to political, cultural and athletic history.
  2. A Little Help
    Though the enjoyable prickliness of the film's early scenes soon dissolves into cozy solutions, a sturdy supporting cast - even Ron Leibman's scenery-chewing turn as Laura's blowhard father is more amusing than annoying - balances the scales.
  3. Another Earth
    A coming-of-adulthood story that improbably blends a plaintive drama with romantic longing and far-out science fiction.
  4. Autoerotic
    Its tone is quietly comical, with each chapter treated as an extended joke, or as an R-rated O. Henry story angling toward a neat concluding twist.
  5. Sarah's Key
    Undone by its very premise: that the two stories it tells can coexist in the same film.
  6. The Myth of the American Sleepover
    What Mr. Mitchell gets splendidly right in this quiet, observant film, is the unsteady mixture of sophistication and naïveté that is central to the modern American teenage way of being in the world.
  7. Captain America: The First Avenger
    Has a winningly pulpy, jaunty, earnest spirit.
  8. Friends with Benefits
    The results are about as naughty as that sounds (not very), but it also makes for a fairly giggling good time.
  9. The Woman with the 5 Elephants
    It's an interesting story, well told, though Mr. Jendreyko overworks some documentary fallbacks: gnarled fingers, the view from a moving train.
  10. Impolex
    Mr. Perry, a New York University graduate whose second feature, "The Color Wheel," provoked passion and puzzlement at several festivals, has a natural eye, an offbeat sense of rhythm and no great interest in conventional storytelling. This is both intriguing and a bit tiresome, as Tyrone stumbles and mumbles his way through a series of inscrutable encounters.
  11. Hood to Coast
    Christoph Baaden, the director, loses sight of the fact that, for people who don't run, the cult of running is kind of boring.
  12. Girlfriend
    The overall mildness and inconsequence of Girlfriend is disrupted for a while by Amanda Plummer, who gives a vivid yet gentle performance in a small part as Evan's patient, protective mother.
  13. The Tree
    The movie is truly a tree-hugger's delight (I confess to being one such hugger) that makes the most of its metaphors without straining toward supernatural schmaltz.
  14. Lucky
    Pitching uncertainly between cute and creepy, engaging and weird, this farcical story draws energy from a wickedly eccentric Ann-Margret, having a high old time as Ben's doting mother.
  15. Daylight
    Not one for climactic endings or predictable histrionics, the director, David Barker (who wrote the script with Ms. Meierhans and Mr. Godere), sticks to the stylistic template of his debut feature, "Afraid of Everything," which was filmed in 1999. Preferring the tease over the tell, his films coax us into looking beneath the surface. What we find is mostly up to us.
  16. The Chameleon
    Ms. Barkin is almost unrecognizable as this bedraggled bundle of rage and disappointment. Exploding from deep within, her devastating performance hijacks the film.
  17. Winnie the Pooh
    It is comfortable with itself and confident in its ability to amuse and beguile young viewers.
  18. Tabloid
    The sheer heterogeneity of human experience is one of his (Morris) enduring preoccupations, and he has found, once again, an impossible and perfect embodiment of just how curious our species can be.
  19. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
    There are enough decent moments in "Snow Flower" that you can at times see the remains of a better movie amid the jolting transitions between past and present, but these eras never really speak to each other, much less to you.
  20. Life, Above All
    A grave and quietly moving story about a South African girl of extraordinary character, does something that few painful dramas accomplish: It tells a tale of resilience without platitudes about the triumph of the human spirit or without false promises about an unclouded future.
  21. Salvation Boulevard
    As the plot swerves toward an almost crazy conclusion, there is the inkling of a strong, interesting idea here, about how some versions of modern religion are predicated on the systematic denial of reality, but Salvation Boulevard is itself too loosely tethered to the actual world to make the point with the necessary vigor or acuity.
  22. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2
    Childhood ends, this time forever, with tears and howls, swirls of smoke, the shock of mortality and bittersweet smiles in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, the grave, deeply satisfying final movie in the series.
  23. Beats Rhymes & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest
    The actor Michael Rapaport (Brad Pitt's roommate in "True Romance"), in his feature directorial debut, does an admirable job recounting the group's formation and dissecting its dissolution.
  24. Farmageddon
    Nonetheless, the film's homespun quality (Ms. Canty, whose childlike voice provides intermittent narration, simply describes herself in the publicity notes as "the mom of four kids") works in its favor, as does its maker's agitated sincerity.
  25. Fading of the Cries
    "How are we going to get out of here?" Sarah squawks at one point, a question that Mr. Dourif ought to have asked his agent long before the cameras began to roll.
  26. Romeo and Juliet in Yiddish
    Sprawling and sometimes confusing, but its premise is charming and not at all far-fetched.
  27. Summer of Goliath
    Carrying far more weight than their screen time would warrant, the "interviews" with actors playing young children are the best part of the film.
  28. Zookeeper
    It's hard to completely dislike a movie in which Mr. James makes like Fay Wray, hitching a ride on the back of his gorilla pal, Bernie (voiced by Nick Nolte), as Bernie clambers up a bridge.
  29. The Ward
    Quaintly old-fashioned in style, plot and special effects, this familiar tale of female derangement and institutional abuse is too tame to scare and too shallow to engage.
  30. Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness
    It is a rich, beautifully organized and illustrated modern history of Eastern European Jewry examined through the life and work of the author, born Sholem Rabinovich in Pereyaslav (near Kiev) in 1859.
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