The New York Times' Scores

Select another publication »
For 20,269 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: 9,377 out of 20269
  2. Mixed: 8,428 out of 20269
  3. Negative: 2,464 out of 20269
20269 movie reviews
view
per page
  1. Nise: The Heart of Madness
    It’s a study of courageous innovation against an entrenched medical orthodoxy.
  2. LA 92
    [A] taut and commanding primer.
  3. Harold and Lillian: A Hollywood Love Story
    Like flipping through misplaced leaves in a photo book, the documentary maintains a free-flowing tone as it uncovers the work that went into creating some of the indelible scenes in Hollywood history.
  4. Natasha
    Mr. Bezmozgis creates a disturbing portrait of a girl turned calculating and nihilistic by her upbringing, and there is no coyness here.
  5. A Dark Song
    The movie dives into the black arts with methodical restraint and escalating unease.
  6. Rupture
    Dreary, derivative and flat-out dopey, this dragged-out torture tale will disappoint even those whose hearts race whenever they see a female character strapped to a bed.
  7. Bang! The Bert Berns Story
    If you love the music Berns made, you’ll love this movie; if you don’t, I feel for you, but “Bang!” might nevertheless entertain with its dish.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Obit
    It is modest, observant, graceful and nonchalantly witty.
  9. Behind the White Glasses
    At its most enjoyable, Valerio Ruiz’s rambling profile cedes the floor to Ms. Wertmüller, who recalls her creative partnership with her husband, the production designer Enrico Job, and her cultural importance in representing Italy’s south onscreen.
  10. Let It Fall: L.A. 1982-1992
    Teeming with acts both heroic and reprehensible, John Ridley’s wrenchingly humane documentary, Let It Fall: Los Angeles 1982-1992, reveals the Los Angeles riots as the almost inevitable culmination of a decade of heightening racial tensions.
  11. The Penguin Counters
    Here’s what sounds like one dud job: calculating bird populations in Antarctica. But here’s what that work has inspired: one swell documentary.
  12. Slack Bay
    As it turns out, modes of farce and fantasy enable Mr. Dumont to pull the rug out from under the viewer in a number of new and upsetting ways. Be prepared.
  13. The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki
    The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Maki deepens quietly. This is Mr. Kuosmanen’s first feature (he has directed a few shorts), and if he had any rookie jitters you wouldn’t know it.
  14. Unforgettable
    Here, both the director (Denise Di Novi) and the writer (Christina Hodson) are women, yet that doesn’t translate into a reimagining of the tired formula.
  15. Free Fire
    Free Fire is an action movie finely tuned to even the most potentially vicious audiences’ tolerances. It is filled with mayhem, but avoids grisly violence — at least until the finale pulls out some gory, and not inapt, punch lines. Luxuriating in disreputability in all the right ways, the film also contains no shortage of profane verbal wit.
  16. The Promise
    Weighed down by the worthiness of its intentions, The Promise is a big, barren wartime romance that approaches the Armenian genocide with too much calculation and not nearly enough heat.
  17. Tomorrow
    It’s refreshing to see concrete solutions at work, many of them at the grass-roots level. And the optimism of those countering ineffective politicians and big business is infectious.
  18. Jeremiah Tower: The Last Magnificent
    Throughout, the solitary Mr. Tower maintains an unflappable refinement, dedicated, a college friend says, to “looking for some utopian possibility of living, because that’s what kept the darkness away.”
  19. Citizen Jane: Battle for the City
    Only intermittently stimulating.
  20. Born in China
    The narrative, read by John Krasinski, is kid-friendly in a cloying sort of way, and unpleasant realities like China’s pollution are not mentioned. So as an introduction for children to exotic creatures in picturesque landscapes, the movie is harmless enough.
  21. By the Time It Gets Dark
    By the Time It Gets Dark has clearly been thought through, but it’s so cryptic that it cries out for, if not perfect explanations, perhaps footnotes. It’s so conceptual that it offers little for those not in sync.
  22. Maurizio Cattelan: Be Right Back
    The art is the star and Ms. Axelrod features plenty of it. She also outlines a knowing path through Mr. Cattelan’s career, leaving just enough room to have you wondering if the artist is more of a con man than a genius.
  23. Finding Oscar
    The barbarity described in Finding Oscar is stomach-turning, but moments of courage still shine through in this unsettling yet vital documentary.
  24. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer
    It’s less that Mr. Cedar blends realism with absurdity than that he refuses to acknowledge any distinction between them.
  25. A Quiet Passion
    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.
  26. Mimosas
    At best ambiguous and at worst unfathomable, Mimosas, the sophomore feature from the Spanish director Oliver Laxe, merges harsh reality and offbeat mysticism into a reflection on the tug between our higher powers and baser instincts.
  27. My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea
    An eccentric and lively animated fantasy.
  28. Tommy's Honour
    The performances are desultory, the musical score bullying and the drama — aside from the game-changing placement of inconvenient shrubbery — as predictable as Tom senior’s steadily sprouting beard.
  29. All These Sleepless Nights
    For all its visual and sonic pleasures — see it in a theater with a good subwoofer — All These Sleepless Nights feels simple-minded in its commitment to drift above all else.
  30. Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary
    While the recordings are wall-to-wall, this somewhat busy documentary rarely accords time for simply listening.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »