The New York Times' Scores

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For 20,280 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: 9,381 out of 20280
  2. Mixed: 8,435 out of 20280
  3. Negative: 2,464 out of 20280
20280 movie reviews
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  1. Ridicule
    As written by Remi Waterhouse, who draws on real historical detail here, Ridicule satirizes this world of absurd protocol while it proves that skewering fatuousness and snobbery, however obviously, is never out of style.
  2. Wendy and Lucy
    What will happen to her? The strength of this short, simple, perfect story of a young woman and her dog is that this does not seem, by the end, to be an idle or trivial question. What happens to Wendy -- and to Lucy -- matters a lot, which is to say that Wendy and Lucy, for all its modesty, matters a lot too.
  3. Young Mothers
    Because of the ensemble structure, each tale is interrupted by another, so “Young Mothers” lacks some of the suspense that powers many of the Dardennes’ other films. Yet that slower pace allows a tenderness to develop, and the tension between the girls’ youth and newfound maternal instincts to emerge.
  4. The Testament of Ann Lee
    That it may not be to everyone’s taste, or to yours, feels almost besides the point. When an artist takes a swing this colossal and stays true to their vision in every way, the resulting work deserves respect, and is always worth seeing.
  5. Salesman
    It’s such a fine, pure picture of a small section of American life that I can’t imagine its ever seeming irrelevant, either as a social document or as one of the best examples of what’s called cinema verite or direct cinema.
  6. X
    X is a clever and exuberant throwback to a less innocent time, when movies could be naughty, disreputable and idiosyncratic.
  7. The Sparks Brothers
    The Sparks Brothers, an energetic documentary directed by Edgar Wright, explains their appeal in part by emphasizing how it cannot be explained.
  8. Uppercase Print
    The film, a rousing, form-bending new feature by the Romanian auteur Radu Jude, rails at the tyrannical potential of language — particularly when backed by government power — to suffocate people’s freedoms.
  9. Little Girl
    [A] disarmingly sensitive documentary.
  10. The Wrestler
    Like its hero, the movie has a blunt, exuberant honesty, pulling off even its false moves with conviction and flair.
  11. The Hours
    Ms. Kidman, in a performance of astounding bravery, evokes the savage inner war waged by a brilliant mind against a system of faulty wiring that transmits a searing, crazy static into her brain.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Sounder
    And if Sounder, an intelligent enough movie, avoids all the major pitfalls of its type, it also lacks the excitement that may have come from plumbing greater depths and discovering a few tougher, less accessible insights.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Bang the Drum Slowly
    A simply marvelous cinematic experience.
  14. The Roaring Twenties
    With a commentator's voice interpolating ultra-dramatic commonplaces as the film unreels, their melodrama has taken on an annoying pretentiousness which neither the theme nor its treatment can justify.
  15. Knock Down the House
    Exuberant.
  16. The Train
    It is a vivid melodrama through which Mr. Lancaster bolts with all that straight, strong, American sporting instinct and physical agility for which he is famous.
  17. Junebug
    Junebug envelops us in texture of a world the movies rarely visit.
  18. Dinner in America
    There is, perhaps, an argument to be made for representing a time and place truthfully, but because the film does not critically engage with the uglier elements of the society it portrays, these become a distraction. And a viewer might find it difficult to get sucked into the love and music story at its center.
  19. Café Lumière
    Café Lumière stands in relation to "Tokyo Story" as a faint, diminished echo. It is nonetheless a fascinating curiosity, a chance to witness one major filmmaker paying tribute to another in the form of a rigorously minor film.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Footlight Parade
    It is not until Footlight Parade has been struggling through its plot for more than an hour that the fragments of song, costumed nymphs and technical virtuosity are finally integrated in a complete performance.
  21. Coup 53
    Is Coup 53 trustworthy in every respect? Perhaps not. Both as a detective story and as a deep dive into a world event whose consequences linger, it is bracing, absorbing filmmaking.
  22. Children of the Mist
    The filmmaker Ha Le Diem shot Children of the Mist over the course of three years, integrating herself into Di’s life in a way that complicates the documentary’s otherwise unobtrusive, observational approach.
  23. Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles
    Some shows deserve reverential treatment. And the love letter is, to use a word so associated with this show it influences the way many say it, tradition.
  24. Bad Press
    Landsberry-Baker and Peeler could linger more on details about the people involved instead of the horse-race suspense of vote counts. But who can blame them when freedom is in the balance, and as local media outlets dwindle nationally.
  25. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
    The self-reflexiveness of the entire enterprise only breaks the spell that Slate and Camp work hard to maintain — one which Rossellini effortlessly keeps intact with intelligence, beautifully controlled phrasing and a soft, melodious warmth that feels like a tender caress.
  26. Promises
    Demonstrates the unusual power of thoughtful, subjective filmmaking.
  27. The Secret in Their Eyes
    An attractive, messy drama riddled with violence and edged with comedy that comes with a hint of Grand Guignol, a suggestion of politics and three resonant, deeply appealing performances.
  28. King Coal
    In this melancholic, thoughtfully attuned cinematic essay, no mountain is more important than the people who are still confined to the claustrophobic tunnels of the past.
  29. Good Time
    Sometimes it flaunts its clichés...and other times it cloaks them in rough visual textures and jumpy, bumpy camera movements, so that a rickety genre thrill ride feels like something daring and new. It isn’t. It’s stale, empty and cold.
  30. Food, Inc.
    Time and again the movie stops short before it really gets started, as with the debates over the big business of organic food.
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