The New York Times' Scores

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:
20280 movie reviews
  1. The movie uses the talent show Afghan Star as a prism through which to examine the fragmented tribal culture of Afghanistan as reflected in the backgrounds of four finalists (two of them women) and the public responses to their performances.
  2. It is startling that a three-hour film dealing largely with the history of the Middle East should find no time to mention either the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the role of oil in the region. And it is more than a little unsatisfying to see the complex history of American conservatism reduced to the dreams and schemes of a handful of intellectuals.
  3. Mr. Bielinsky, in what would sadly be his last film, demonstrates a mastery of the form that is downright scary.
  4. Instead of being contemptuous and sardonic, the portrait of inchoate adolescent longing in Paradise: Hope is poignant.
  5. Logan Lucky is a terrific movie. That’s a matter of skill, and maybe also of luck. But mostly it’s a matter of generosity.
  6. A technological marvel, arch and innovative with a daringly offbeat visual conception. But it's also a strenuously artful film with a macabre edge that may scare small children. And beyond that, it lacks a clear idea of who its audience might be.
  7. A tender tale, The Starling Girl twirls through a spate of clichés — many surround Jem’s relationship to her alcoholic father, Paul (Jimmi Simpson) — but sticks the landing thanks to Parmet’s rapt attention to the shifting desires of her central character.
  8. Too often the ideas here, visual and otherwise, feel haphazard — outer and inner space, Pattinson’s head, sexual taboo, apocalypse now or maybe then — more like material for a vision board than a fully realized vision.
  9. Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore is an American comedy of the sort of vitality that dazzles European film critics and we take for granted. It's full of attachments and associations to very particular times and places, even in the various regional accents of its characters. It's beautifully written (by Robert Getchell) and acted, but it's not especially neatly tailored. [29 Jan 1975]
  10. Setting aside some gratuitous jump scares, Eggers has now made a Dracula movie that’s more than an exercise, more than an assertion of talent. There’s a vision at work.
  11. Alas, Tereza, whose interior life remains largely obscured from start to finish, isn’t a compelling vessel for whatever Mascaro is trying to do in this movie. And, as it drifts from one place to another, one encounter to another, one sketchy idea to another, so may your attention.
  12. Missing is Mr. Costa-Gavras's most beautifully achieved political melodrama to date, a suspense-thriller of real cinematic style, acted with immense authority by Jack Lemmon, as Charles Horman's father, Ed Horman, and Sissy Spacek as Charles's wife, Beth.
  13. The result is imperfect, but its roughness is entirely consistent with the way the filmmakers understand the traumatic experiences of displacement, loss and deprivation.
  14. Like Hitchcock, Mr. Wong is at once a voyeur and fetishist par excellence.
  15. Grooving through the decades, this entertaining documentary aspires to prove that the Bee Gees were more than a hitmaker for disco nightclubs. Rather, Barry, Maurice and Robin were master songwriters and chameleons, continually reinventing themselves to harmonize with the times.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It is a cool, balanced, proportionate spirit, affectionate but unillusioned, and wonderfully suited to the intricacies (and the idiosyncracies) of the subject matter. Sembene does not grab you; he engages you.
  16. Mr. Davies, whose work often blends public history and private memory, possesses a poetic sensibility perfectly suited to his subject and a deep, idiosyncratic intuition about what might have made her tick.
  17. The film, ultimately, still lacks Liberto’s own sense of agency.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Briskly paced under the direction of William Wellman, the caustic comedy by Ben Hecht treads harshly on many a taboo. [16 May 1999, p.5]
    • The New York Times
  18. Where "Pusher" worked fresh texture and authenticity into a classic noir template, Pusher II reaches toward the mode of hyperrealist allegory perfected by the Dardenne brothers.
  19. What Ms. Tragos succeeds in illustrating is that if you take away the signs and listen to the stories, there is little difference between women on opposite sides of the debate — at least in the region she covers.
  20. There’s a lot to laugh at, and to learn from, in Tickling Giants, a documentary that starts off by telling the story of one man and ends up speaking volumes about satire, freedom of expression and political pressure.
  21. Employing minimal background music and a bleak, blue-gray color palette, Rasoulof evokes a sense of nihilism that is as suffocating as it is affecting.
  22. For all its punches, kicks, whacks and thumps, the movie does not have much impact, and for all its affectionate nostalgia, it produces a strange kind of amnesia. It knocks the sense right out of your head, and its own as well.
  23. You can know every glitch that made this such a dangerous mission, and Apollo 13 will still have you by the throat.
  24. The director Julien Temple — who has excellent documentaries on the Sex Pistols, Joe Strummer and other galvanic musicians under his belt — is very good at this sort of thing.
  25. Blindingly beautiful and meticulously assembled by the award-winning editor Bob Eisenhardt, Meru easily makes you forget that what you are watching is completely bananas.
  26. Restructuring some story arcs and jettisoning others, Iannucci and his collaborator, Simon Blackwell, have created a souped-up, trimmed-down adaptation so fleet and entertaining that its cleverness doesn’t immediately register.
  27. Moreno is given full rein of her story, which doubles as a case study in the highs and lows of showbiz for a woman of color.
  28. Woodard’s performance gathers its astonishing force incrementally, in subtle choices and inflections that you might not even register as actorly decisions.

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