The New York Times' Scores

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For 20,303 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: 9,393 out of 20303
  2. Mixed: 8,445 out of 20303
  3. Negative: 2,465 out of 20303
20303 movie reviews
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  1. Little Hope Was Arson
    The filmmaker, Theo Love, presents the people in the story as they are, without passing judgment and without apology, whether they are investigators or pastors or just ordinary folks caught up in the inexplicable. It’s Americana unvarnished and, because of that, as absorbing as it is respectful.
  2. The King and the Mockingbird
    In its humor, its fairy tale origins and the characters’ rounded features, it plays more like a vintage Disney work, only nimbler and freer.
  3. Reach Me
    [A] preposterous ensemble piece.
  4. Four Moons
    This quiet romantic drama never soars but keeps its sense of humor and its balance while taking its subject matter for granted in the best possible way.
  5. All Relative
    All Relative, a tepid romantic comedy written and directed by J. C. Khoury, thinks it’s being surprising, but really it’s merely weaving several male sex fantasies together and making nothing insightful out of the resulting story.
  6. Late Phases
    The plot favors simplicity over rationality with a cheerful insouciance that’s hard to dislike.
  7. The Sleepwalker
    With strong assists from the cinematographer Zachary Galler and her ex-husband, the composer Sondre Lerche, Ms. Fastvold, previously a director of music videos, has painted a resonant tableau of dysfunction.
  8. Stones in the Sun
    Ms. Benoit’s screenplay is unapologetically schematic in its depiction of a cross-section of Haitian exiles, but each story forcefully registers.
  9. Story of My Death
    Mr. Serra has said his film portrays the eclipse of Enlightenment rationality by the violent forces of Romanticism. It’s a tidy overarching conceit, but the film’s lived-in feel does make for one vivid way of imagining shifts in thought.
  10. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1
    The script for Mockingjay Part 1, credited to Peter Craig and Danny Strong, gets the job done, but the performers matter far more than the words they deliver.
  11. Bad Hair
    Bad Hair is an uncomfortably accurate depiction of a poignant mother-son power struggle in a fatherless family in which each knows how to get under the other’s skin.
  12. Happy Valley
    Happy Valley, even as it revisits past events, has a chilling timeliness.
  13. Pulp: A Film About Life, Death & Supermarkets
    A kooky, affectionate tribute that’s happily superficial.
  14. Love Hunter
    In its feel for nocturnal light, this is one of the most refreshing New York independent features since Ramin Bahrani’s “Man Push Cart.” Both acoustically and dramatically, Mr. Mumin is a winning performer.
  15. Occupy the Farm
    Rather than present an evenhanded assessment of the issues at stake, the director, Todd Darling, is so busy fist-pumping for urban farming — and so dazzled by his granola heroes — that naysayers must be demeaned and denigrated.
  16. Beside Still Waters
    Bathed in a nostalgic glow that just avoids maudlin, the group’s problems — a sexless marriage, an unexpected job loss — bark but don’t bite. Scenes flirt with cliché, yet the writing has spark.
  17. Beyond the Lights
    Beyond the Lights may be a fantasy — movies about love, like songs about love, tend to fall into that category — but it is an uncommonly smart and honest fantasy.
  18. Dumb and Dumber To
    The Farrellys are still not much interested in film as a visual medium, and when Lloyd and Harry aren’t smacking each other or dropping their pants, you might as well be listening to a radio play. There’s a story, but it doesn’t matter, certainly not to the leads or the good-natured sidekicks like Kathleen Turner and Rob Riggle.
  19. Levitated Mass
    [A] sneakily compelling documentary.
  20. Wolves
    Silly beyond words, Wolves is indifferently acted and unconvincingly realized.
  21. Rosewater
    Mr. Stewart’s interest in the material is obviously personal, but his movie transcends mere self-interest.
  22. Miss Meadows
    The dark comedy (punctuated by the catchphrase “Toodle-oo”) doesn’t always come off, and the filmmaking is more off-kilter than necessary, with capricious camerawork and pacing.
  23. The Homesman
    The Homesman is both a captivating western and a meticulous, devastating feminist critique of the genre.
  24. Drug Lord: The Legend of Shorty
    Driven by mostly Spanish-language folk music, the movie provides a potent if piecemeal counterbalance to the sensationalism of “Breaking Bad.”
  25. Brahmin Bulls
    Mr. Pailoor (who wrote the screenplay with Anu Pradhan) shows a taste for blunt metaphor... It’s hard to find fault with the performances, though, particularly Mr. Seth’s.
  26. Always Woodstock
    This is a movie that runs on magical thinking.
  27. Starry Eyes
    A pretty young actress. A casting call. A private meeting with the lecherous man who has the power to give her the role. Starry Eyes tries to wring a horror movie out of this tired old setup but, halfway in, seems to realize it has nothing new to offer and becomes a mere gorefest.
  28. Penance
    Mr. Kurosawa expertly modulates an uncanny flow of energies between shame and grief, between venal urges and high-minded moral demands. The women’s travails suggest something that’s part curse, part mythic cycle of guilt and part kaleidoscopic dread.
  29. Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas
    Saving Christmas seems determined to win any perceived war on Christmas through brute force.
  30. Thou Wast Mild and Lovely
    The setup’s clichés grow harder to ignore, despite a welcome mischievous streak and some bucolic imagery.
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