The New York Times' Scores

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:
20335 movie reviews
  1. With its off-center dialogue and upscale industrial settings, Gigantic strains to be original. But beneath its indie affectations it is really another contemplation of generational misunderstanding.
  2. So shameless in its pandering, sentimental vision of Frenchness as to constitute something of a national embarrassment.
  3. Although The Song of Sparrows has some of the trappings of a naturalistic drama, it is really a series of strict moral lessons pieced together into an austere Islamic sermon.
  4. Cool-headed, lighthearted and outrageously entertaining.
  5. Starts promisingly, with a sharp comedic bite and genuine compassion for this fraught family dynamic, but soon gives way to the kind of compressed, schematic psychodrama endemic to (if no more welcome on) the stage.
  6. Might be described as an epic landscape film, a sweetly comic coming-of-age story or a lyrical work of social realism. But the setting -- a windswept, sparely populated steppe in southern Kazakhstan -- gives the movie a mood that sometimes feels closer to that of science fiction.
  7. Grace is also what defines Mr. Bahrani's filmmaking. I can't think of anything else to call the quality of exquisite attention, wry humor and wide-awake intelligence that informs every frame of this almost perfect film.
  8. The movie is curiously unmemorable, partly because nearly all of its humor depends on your having seen something like it before, even if you haven't.
  9. Less a movie than an essay.
  10. Probes class consciousness with rather more sensitivity than originality.
  11. There are, as you may have guessed, 12 rounds of this arbitrary nonsense. Annoying as the conceit may be, it neatly functions as a means to gauge how much is left to endure.
  12. It leaves you feeling queasy.
  13. Gives you the creeps, the giggles and the groans in almost equal measure.
  14. At once a fascinating behind-the-scenes glimpse, bittersweet autobiography and witty trip down art-world memory lane, Guest of Cindy Sherman isn't out to settle scores or exploit access, public or otherwise.
  15. The players in this mouth-watering Gallic soufflé are so attractive, well mannered and comfortably grounded in the bourgeois world that you needn’t fear for their well-being, minor heartaches notwithstanding.
  16. The draggy, lurching two hours of Knowing will make you long for the end of the world, even as you worry that there will not be time for all your questions to be answered.
  17. What keeps the movie from tipping into full-blown exploitation like "City of God," which turns third-world misery into art-house thrills, is Mr. Fukunaga's sincerity. What keeps you watching is his superb eye.
  18. A fitfully funny comedy.
  19. Superior entertainment, the most elegantly pleasurable movie of its kind to come around in a very long time.
  20. Looks like a comedy, acts like a comedy and sounds like a comedy, but it isn't funny. This is a problem in a movie that aims for laughs.
  21. An agreeable show business satire with a warm heart.
  22. Drawing much of its energy from an eclectic and fully integrated soundtrack, Skills Like This gazes indulgently on 20-something aimlessness and the comfort of assigned roles. In Mr. Miranda's hands sloth can be more appealing than you might think.
  23. Watching the movie is a little like gorging on chocolate and Champagne until that queasy moment arrives when you realize you’ve consumed far too much.
  24. All in all, it's a mess, and much as Ms. Blunt pouts, Ms. Adams twinkles, and Mr. Arkin growls, there's nothing they can do to clean it up.
  25. The problem with Miss March is that it isn't very funny.
  26. Replacing the earlier movie's more depraved sequences with sustained tension and truly unnerving editing, the director proves adept at managing mayhem in cramped spaces.
  27. Superior acting elevates a small, overcrowded ensemble piece set in rural upstate New York into something a little deeper and truer than the mawkish disease-of-the-week movie it threatens to become.
  28. The story here, plucked from Thomas's life and embellished, proves almost entirely devoid of interest.
  29. Easy on the eyes but brutal on the ears.
  30. Modest and diverting, rough and bland, with some good (if not quite Bette Davis caliber) actors and so-so special effects.

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