The New York Times' Scores

Select another publication »
For 20,304 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: 9,394 out of 20304
  2. Mixed: 8,445 out of 20304
  3. Negative: 2,465 out of 20304
20304 movie reviews
view
per page
  1. Amira & Sam
    Written and directed by Sean Mullin, a comedian and onetime Army officer (he plays a comic in the film), Amira & Sam is more successful as a portrait of veteran alienation than as a romance.
  2. Alien Outpost
    The writing is so poor and the visual embellishments so few that some of the violence, like the frequent attacks on the base by local villagers, make little sense.
  3. Project Almanac
    The wish fulfillment of time travel tends to be fun to watch, and the director, Dean Israelite, feeds on the friends’ giddy escapades for a while.
  4. Girlhood
    Even as she stops at familiar stations on the road to maturity — problems at home and school, new friendships and first love — Ms. Sciamma revels in the risky, reckless exuberance of adolescence and in the sheer joy of filming it.
  5. Black or White
    Mike Binder’s steady, well-intentioned exploration of the racial tensions affecting two branches of a Southern California family, is notable for what it doesn’t try to do.
  6. My Name Is Hmmm...
    My Name Is Hmmm ... has its magical moments, but they are sabotaged by the director’s showy, ham-handed technique applied to a frustratingly threadbare screenplay that leaves you wanting more.
  7. Timbuktu
    Timbuktu is an act of resistance and revenge because it asserts the power of secularism not as an ideology but rather as a stubborn fact of life.
  8. Miss Hill: Making Dance Matter
    The director, Greg Vander Veer, makes this case through the sheer number of people he interviews.
  9. We'll Never Have Paris
    This derivative comedy, in addition to not being particularly funny, gives off a sense of telling us more than we needed to know.
  10. Americons
    Mr. Avgerinos’s glossy, overripe take on high-flying, unscrupulous lenders — the wolves of Main Street — deteriorates into a hot mess of montages, trailer-ready one-liners and thudding drama.
  11. Song One
    Heartfelt but enervated, Song One noodles around the Brooklyn music scene without stirring up magic.
  12. Salvation Army
    For a film rooted in a personal story, Salvation Army feels awfully remote.
  13. Against the Sun
    Against the Sun is a groaningly tedious survival story that will at least leave you with a renewed commitment to wearing sunscreen.
  14. Killers
    At heart a repulsive slash-and-bash with philosophical pretensions, Killers is classed up considerably by strong acting, a multi-strand plot and a tone that’s both nihilistic and mournful.
  15. The Humbling
    The movie is too shrewd to qualify as a jeremiad, but underneath the comedy are boiling undercurrents of anger and despair.
  16. Cake
    It’s the sort of well-intentioned independent effort that can make criticism feel like overkill. There’s nothing to hate, nothing to love. The movie’s greatest virtue is that it gives Ms. Aniston a little room to play against the somewhat sardonic tough-cookie type that she deploys in vulgar comedies.
  17. Son of a Gun
    Son of a Gun adds to the mystique that Australian crime films are meaner, nastier and more brutish than their American counterparts. But it changes style roughly every half-hour. And behind its macho preening is a preposterous, routinely executed story.
  18. R100
    Mr. Matsumoto, as if realizing that viewers might need to wake up, stuffs a ball gag in a child’s mouth and throws in some reflexive nonsense involving an old director and some critics who seem to be watching the same movie you are. They think it’s terrible and finally it’s hard to disagree.
  19. Strange Magic
    At once disarming and calculated, Strange Magic is a film of commodified feelings, evoking memories of other experiences — whether of Shakespeare, the original songs or authentic enchantment.
  20. The Boy Next Door
    Mr. Cohen, no stranger to delivering pulp product, employs visual clichés as if they were flash cards; no exposed thigh or made-you-jump reveal goes unexploited.
  21. Mortdecai
    What a frantically dull spectacle this vanity project is.
  22. Manny
    The narrative has been fashioned mostly in Mr. Pacquiao’s favor, although there are mentions of overwork, infidelity and gambling. Banal, stentorian narration by Liam Neeson (“Once victory is stolen from you, what are you left with?”) mostly gives the sense that it’s the viewer being carried around the ring.
  23. Black Sea
    The story loses credibility as it goes along, as the body count escalates, and Robinson’s solutions to life-and-death crises grow increasingly far-fetched.
  24. The Duke of Burgundy
    In the end there is nothing especially campy about “The Duke of Burgundy,” which neither mocks its heroines nor the breathless, naughty screen tradition to which they belong. It’s a love story, and also a perversely sincere (and sincerely perverse) labor of love.
  25. Mommy
    To take Mommy as an undisciplined outpouring of aggression and angst is to underestimate its artistry. [Mr. Dolan] has both advanced beyond the romanticism of “Heartbeats” and “Laurence Anyways” and regressed toward a more primal and confrontational mode of storytelling. Mommy may seem out of control, but it knows exactly what it’s doing.
  26. Mille soleils (A Thousand Suns)
    Heartbreaking and thought-provoking, Mille Soleils traces connections between Senegal’s past and present, and reflects on a cinematic legacy that remains insufficiently appreciated, in the West and perhaps also in Africa.
  27. The Guitar Mongoloid
    Mr. Ostlund’s 2004 debut, begins as a free-floating portrait of mischief and compulsion — a cousin to Harmony Korine’s “Gummo” that comments obliquely on fascism and violence.
  28. Play
    It is provocative simply in showing how trust is gained and kept, even after the swindled kids have understood their robbers’ motives.
  29. Involuntary
    The bitterly funny, multistrand Involuntary, from 2008, is a step forward in the director’s ambition.
  30. 20 Once Again
    Mining deeper emotions from the fanciful premise doesn’t work out for the film, which gets tied down to a generic musical-contest subplot. It’s a workable comedy that’s sunk by its attempts to impersonate something else too.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »