The New York Times' Scores

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For 20,336 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: 9,413 out of 20336
  2. Mixed: 8,455 out of 20336
  3. Negative: 2,468 out of 20336
20336 movie reviews
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  1. For Ahkeem
    While the film ends at a logical stopping point, it feels incomplete. It probably could have used a few more years of filming.
  2. The Haunting
    So it looks as though this film simply makes more goose pimples than sense, which is rather surprising and disappointing for a picture with two such actresses, who are very good all the way through it, and produced and directed by the able Robert Wise.
  3. Blockers
    It features a casually diverse cast and is openly, at times dutifully, feminist, with you-go-girl speeches that sound as if everyone involved had tried too hard to be decent. Funny and enlightened would have been better.
  4. Psycho II
    Though Psycho II is essentially camp entertainment, Mr. Perkins plays Norman as legitimately as possible, and sometimes to real comic effect. His new Norman doesn't seem as much rehabilitated as reconstituted, but as what? That's the point of the film.
  5. Liberation Day
    Liberation Day, a documentary of preparations for the concert directed by Mr. Traavik and Ugis Olte, is a consistently understated chronicle of Westerners who are very carefully playing with fire.
  6. Mully
    Mr. Mully’s actions speak for themselves, and his robust personality makes him a pleasure to listen to. If the film doesn’t always dig deeply into this man’s life, we still see the results of his efforts. Those are enough to admire.
  7. Dream Boat
    Some of the tougher interviews suggest that Mr. Milewski would like Dream Boat to be more substantial, but that impulse is mostly kept at bay in favor of lighter scenes.
  8. Cobb
    As a film maker who has his own love-hate romance with the sports world, Mr. Shelton is naturally drawn to his writer's uneasy relationship to Cobb. And at its best, this film explores the edgy compromises that link these two, while at worst it dramatizes the relationship broadly and histrionically.
  9. The Seventh Continent (1989)
    The Seventh Continent is one of the most stylish films in this year's New Directors/New Films series. With its fragmented pattern of beautifully composed and repeated images from middle-class life, it rejuvenates a 1960's style that would seem to be exhausted by now. But the Austrian writer and director Michael Haneke pulls viewers through a good portion of the film on the sheer strength of his visual flair, avoiding the classic trap of how to create a film about boredom that is not boring.
  10. Beirut
    Mr. Hamm certainly makes it easy to care for Mason and all that he signifies, and it’s a pleasure to watch him just silently nurse another drink, a lifetime of regret weighing on him. Yet as Mason sits alone, the shadows closing around him, you also catch sight of a character whose past — including a cozy association with Henry Kissinger — suggests a tougher, harder and more interesting movie than the one you are watching.
  11. Eric Clapton: A Life in 12 Bars
    As a musical biography, this comes up short; it plays substantially better as a story of recovery and recovered integrity.
  12. Hello Again
    The movie benefits from Austin Schmidt’s neon-infused cinematography and Annie Simeone’s lush production design. But Mr. LaChiusa’s songs largely fail to resonate here. Dramatic traction suffers, probably as a result of the many, and diffuse, vignettes. And yet this is a commendably audacious effort by Mr. Gustafson (“Were the World Mine”).
  13. Casper
    Casper is not the kind of smartly written movie that works on children's and adult levels at once. But with its lively pace, smashing visual tricks and one of the cutest heroes on screen, it is an engaging fantasy for very small children.
  14. Voyeur
    Choosing not to delve too deeply into the mind of either man — or to question Mr. Talese’s journalistic ethics and less-than-scrupulous fact-checking — the directors are content to mostly watch as each vies for control of the movie, and his legacy. It’s an entertainingly desperate joust, playing out beneath defiantly unattractive lighting.
  15. Hollow in the Land
    Alison closely resembles Jennifer Lawrence’s character in “Winter’s Bone,” another self-sufficient young woman whose family and community turn against her. This movie is not as tense, but it gets close thanks to Ms. Agron’s resolute performance and the movie’s hostile small town setting.
  16. The Mercy
    In prioritizing Crowhurst’s psychological frailty over his physical challenges (both conveyed more evocatively in the excellent 2007 documentary “Deep Water”), Firth and his director find something quietly touching, even soulful, in the character’s wretchedness. In this somber tragedy, the real demons are never anywhere but right inside that boat.
  17. Smallfoot
    The movie, directed by Karey Kirkpatrick, has just enough wit and visual invention to get by. (The “Bad Santa” team of John Requa and Glenn Ficarra are among those credited with the story.) But for all the hints of darkness around its edges, the film is ultimately like its heroes: cuddly, cute and harmless.
  18. At Close Range
    At Close Range is never boring. There's something bold about the film's wealth of imagery, but it also so overstates the material of the screenplay that it eventually annihilates both it and the story, which might possibly have been moving and terrifying. This just looks like fancy movie making.
  19. Hammett
    Hammett, the first major American movie by Wim Wenders, isn't quite the mess one might expect, considering the length of time it's been in production and the number of people who seem to have contributed to it. It's not ever boring, but heaven only knows what it's supposed to be about or why it was made. One answer would serve both questions.
  20. Dragnet
    Mr. Aykroyd and Mr. Hanks play well together, but the funniest performance in the film is that of Dabney Coleman, as the smut king (who lisps). Somewhat less diverting are the car chases and the time out necessary to explain the throwaway story.
  21. Sundowners
    Closure may be missing, but at least glimpses of promising Canadian performers are in abundant supply.
  22. Every Day
    The director is Michael Sucsy, who is not always up to the challenges of the knotty material — we live in a world of mainstream movies with clumsy edits, but this one has more conspicuously bad cuts than most.
  23. The Life of Jesus
    I wanted to show how the underlying racism of society can transform a banal love story into a tragedy, Mr. Dumont has said. His film, for all its characters' uncommunicativeness, is too flat and unswerving to convey that idea surprisingly. But it does bring haunting power to the bitter, tongue-tied helplessness that sets its tragedy in motion.
  24. Humor Me
    The movie never gets too deep, which is half of its charm. The other half involves the low-key comic performances by a stellar cast including Annie Potts and Bebe Neuwirth.
  25. Mortal Engines
    As these things go, Mortal Engines offers a fair amount of fun.
  26. Entanglement
    Impressively photographed and perkily paced, Jason Filiatrault’s story never droops quite as much as its lead character, injecting a welcome poignancy that tempers the cuteness.
  27. Arachnophobia
    The specifics of the spider rampage have been very enjoyably executed by Mr. Marshall and particularly well played by Mr. Daniels, whose dryly self-deprecating manner and underlying decency make him an irresistible hero. Arachnophobia falters only when it becomes too broad, as in a dopey nod to Psycho that captures none of Hitchcock's formal elegance, and in various minor characters who serve as comic grotesques, like the town's potato-chip-munching mortician. 
  28. Ophelia
    It’s an interesting exercise and, for the most part, a passably diverting one.
  29. Lu Over the Wall
    Lu sometimes feels more like a cynical plot device than a character. The problem is only amplified by the animation itself.
  30. Vazante
    By the end, it’s hard not to wish that Ms. Thomas had traded a bit of her art-film drift for something more direct.
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