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. Boulevard
    As truthful as it is, Boulevard conveys little insight into characters who are believable and well acted but incapable of change.
  2. The Princess of France
    The Princess of France has an appealing lightness and modesty, but it also feels flimsy and thin, like clever scribblings in the margins of a book, fleeting insights in search of form and energy.
  3. Samba
    Mr. Toledano and Mr. Nakache, who wrote the scattered screenplay, have a well-honed touch for comic beats and a feel for workaday details. That comes in handy when their points about French identity miss the mark, or when the main characters share special moments without really acquiring depth.
  4. K'na, the Dreamweaver
    This static movie digs no deeper, but it is important in that it preserves a sliver of civilization and language (with native speakers in small roles) that might not otherwise get global exposure.
  5. Mad Women
    This film overstays its welcome and has pacing problems. But its eclectic characters certainly linger.
  6. Closer to God
    Having painted Victor as a transgressive offender, Mr. Senese backpedals furiously with a coda asserting the potential rewards of genetic manipulation. It isn’t convincing.
  7. I Am Chris Farley
    The story of dependence and excess is sadly familiar — and as with most of its material, I Am Chris Farley doesn’t find a fresh way to tell it.
  8. Return to Sender
    For most of the way, Return to Sender merges creepy and sexy to good effect, thanks to a close-to-the-vest performance by Rosamund Pike.
  9. Call Me Lucky
    The movie strains to drum up mystery as to the sources of Mr. Crimmins’s rage. When it finally spills the beans, you feel unnecessarily manipulated.
  10. The Boy
    The Boy, despite remarkable performances and gorgeous imagery, does not sufficiently flesh out its subject.
  11. Only You
    Only You is served very well by Ms. Tang (a star of Ang Lee’s “Lust, Caution”). Whether playing elated, sorrowful, coy or petulant, she consistently provides the spark the movie could use more of.
  12. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
    “Fallen Kingdom,” directed by J. A. Bayona, is in most respects a dumber, less ambitious movie than its immediate predecessor, and also, for just that reason, a little bit more fun. Some of its high jinks have a hokey, silly, old-fashioned mad-scientist feeling to them, especially when the dinosaurs are chasing people or vice versa. Which is reasonably often.
  13. Contracted: Phase II
    Mr. Mercer’s character doesn’t attract sympathy comparable to that for Ms. Townsend’s (Ms. Lore’s Harper fares better), but there is no holding back on the worms, dermatologic nightmares, venereal-disease metaphors and hints of future sequels. Start stocking up now on the Pepto-Bismol.
  14. The Dressmaker
    Unfortunately, and despite its promising start, The Dressmaker doesn’t move much beyond the level of well-costumed playacting.
  15. Sneakerheadz
    Rapid editing leaves little time to absorb vocabulary (such as “deadstock,” a new shoe that has never been worn) or intricacies of design.
  16. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
    The performances by Mr. Johnson, Mr. Hart and Mr. Black seem informed by the conviction that if they amuse themselves, they will also amuse others. They are not entirely wrong, but they are also not sufficiently right.
  17. Bad Boys for Life
    Lawrence’s riffs almost always land. They especially need to in the final quarter, when the movie sets the bar high for this year’s Dopiest Movie Plot Twist competition.
  18. Prince
    At times tender and at others unflinchingly brutal, this small drama of innocence and temptation could have aimed much higher.
  19. Shanghai
    The spectacular international cast... bring a lot of life to the movie’s uncooperative story material.
  20. Tab Hunter Confidential
    Jeffrey Schwarz’s documentary portrait Tab Hunter Confidential is as mild-mannered and blandly likable as its subject.
  21. Memories of the Sword
    Though rich in period detail, the movie grows tiresome with solemn, protracted soap-operatic encounters laden with glowering stares and tearful outbursts.
  22. Tokyo Tribe
    "The Warriors” and the “Mad Max” films will come to mind as you watch Tokyo Tribe, and from scene to scene Mr. Sono’s visual inventiveness and sure hand with action stand up to the comparison. The cumulative effect, however, is numbing.
  23. High-Rise
    The retro-futurist production design is gorgeously awful, the cast is awfully gorgeous, and the dystopian setting is explored with an appropriately Ballardian blend of suavity and aggression. But onscreen, High-Rise is curiously inert. The themes don’t resonate, and the story lags and lumbers.
  24. Lost in Hong Kong
    Perhaps because it tries too hard to be too many things, the movie loses its punch.
  25. Into the Forest
    Ms. Rozema tries to build tension and sustain interest by thickening the atmosphere and layering on details rather than big incidents. Yet while she creates intimacy as well as interiority by visually closing in on each sister...the movie lacks urgency.
  26. Remember
    Christopher Plummer puts on a master class in acting, and his director, Atom Egoyan, delivers one in audience manipulation in Remember.
  27. Flowers of Shanghai
    Lavish in its depiction of surfaces -- clothing, furniture, lighting fixtures -- Flowers of Shanghai proves deficient in its revelation of inner lives.
  28. The Forest
    A decently executed creeper built around a convincing performance by Natalie Dormer.
  29. Therapy for a Vampire
    It has little bite and not nearly enough laughs or thought.
  30. Submerged
    There’s claustrophobia to burn in Steven C. Miller’s Submerged, a modest thriller offering glints of talent amid predictable plot threads.
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