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. Evergreen: The Road to Legalization
    This record of Washington State’s battle over Initiative 502, which legalized possession of small amounts of recreational marijuana in 2012, is predictably loaded with rancor. The battle isn’t over whether pot should be legalized, but to what extent.
  2. Nan Goldin: I Remember Your Face
    Charmingly slight and casually confessional.
  3. Hellion
    Writer and director Kat Candler struggles to shape an undercooked story into compelling drama.
  4. Policeman
    In Policeman, Mr. Lapid, making an electrifying feature directing debut, traces the line between the group and the individual in a story that can be read as a commentary on the world as much as on Israel.
  5. Violette
    [A] handsome, intelligently absorbing and stirring biographical portrait.
  6. The Rover
    There is both too much story and not enough. The contours of this desolate future are lightly sketched rather than fully explained, which is always a good choice. But that minimalism serves as an excuse for an irritating lack of narrative clarity, so that much of what happens seems arbitrary rather than haunting.
  7. Where We Started
    Written and directed by Chris Hansen, this romance has its authentic moments. As it happens, Mr. Brumlow and Ms. Vander Broek are married, but their familiarity hurts as much as it helps.
  8. Breakthrough Weekend
    This New York shaggy-dog story from Sujewa Ekanayake is an example of extreme-makeshift filmmaking — but not, unfortunately, a successful one.
  9. 22 Jump Street
    More is more and is, at times, just right in 22 Jump Street, an exploding piñata of gags, pratfalls, winking asides, throwaway one-liners and self-reflexive waggery.
  10. How to Train Your Dragon 2
    Dragon 2 is considerably darker and more self-aware than its forerunner. Both films are speedier than the average animated blockbuster. In places, Dragon 2 is almost too fast to keep up with, and, in other places, it’s a little too dark, at least in 3-D.
  11. Burning Bush
    Ms. Holland, working from a script by Stepan Hulik, a Czech screenwriter born in 1984, turns a sprawling story into a tight and suspenseful ethical thriller.
  12. This Is Not a Ball
    The journey, an exploration of the passion for soccer that evolves into a history of the ball (a sort of film version of the anthropologist John Fox’s 2012 book, “The Ball”), is somewhat illuminating, often indulgent and never wholly satisfying.
  13. Filmistaan
    Teetering somewhere between audacious and offensive, the stylistically voracious Filmistaan only intermittently reveals any sense of danger in its comedy.
  14. Rigor Mortis
    Applying ghoulish special effects and atmospheric slow pacing, the film also maintains a dark palette of blacks, browns and ash grays, the better to serve as a backdrop when the blood starts spattering.
  15. Small Small Thing
    There is no gore here, and no on-screen violence, but this is in every way a horror movie. With a devastating ending.
  16. Burning Blue
    The script, by Mr. Greer and Helene Kvale, rolls along with lifeless, profoundly unimaginative dialogue.
  17. The Moment
    Disorientation is a double-edged sword, especially when the ostensible reorientation is as unsatisfying as it is here.
  18. Walking the Camino: Six Ways to Santiago
    As travelogue, this is a persuasive introduction.
  19. Burt's Buzz
    The film, by Jody Shapiro, seems so hagiographic that when it finally gets around to its 20 minutes’ worth of interesting stuff, you’re not sure whether to trust it.
  20. Dormant Beauty
    If Dormant Beauty does not rank among Mr. Bellocchio’s best movies, it nonetheless still occasionally shows him at his best. His eye for the latent beauty and evident absurdity of Italian life remains acute, as does his appreciation for vivid performance.
  21. Master of the Universe
    Mr. Voss’s metaphors pile up helplessly: Finance is like being in the army, like catching a virus and as hard to grasp as quantum particles. The film in which he appears is a vertiginous look inside the bubble behind the financial bubble, with no end in sight.
  22. The Only Real Game
    The history lesson is fascinating, and it’s nice to see an American export other than a Hollywood blockbuster engendering good will.
  23. The Case Against 8
    The Case Against 8 functions as a valuable record of the nuts-and-bolts conference room side of advocacy — an aspect of civil rights work not often seen on screen.
  24. 2 Autumns, 3 Winters
    The wistful, overarching theme is the passing of time in the lives of young adults, aware of growing older, who seek to ground themselves in relationships and work, but relationships most of all. The movie reminds you with a series of gentle nudges that whether you want it to or not, the future happens.
  25. The Sacrament
    Mr. West sets the scene reasonably well, ratcheting up a sense of unease with old-fashioned shadows and some nighttime scrambling, but he gets lost once he shifts from fooling around in the dark to recreating mass death.
  26. Willow Creek
    Mr. Goldthwait exercises so much caution that you want to get behind his characters and push.
  27. Trust Me
    As the movie picks up speed and undergoes sudden, confusing plot reversals, it loses its satirical edge.
  28. Ping Pong Summer
    This gentle comedy, while entirely unmemorable, releases a genuine warmth that deflects harsh judgment. It doesn’t, however, excuse characters that are little more than props for embarrassing fashion or delivery systems for dated slang.
  29. Borgman
    That Borgman restrains itself from turning into a full-scale horror movie makes it all the more unsettling, although it has its bumpy moments.
  30. Obvious Child
    It’s both funny and serious without trying too hard to be either, and by trying above all to be honest.
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