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. DamNation
    If the film is less persuasive for its lack of balance, it’s at least heartening to learn that undesirable dams can be destroyed and their rivers restored to their old ways and means.
  2. Farmland
    Smooth and folksy, it traffics in broad, unchallenged claims that serve a single purpose: to persuade us that the only thing wrong with today’s farming methods is our misinformed perception of them.
  3. Devil's Knot
    In the opening images of Devil’s Knot, the camera sets a menacing, Hitchcockian mood by stealthily creeping into the woods where the murders took place. But the movie settles into being a police procedural with the tone of a superior episode of “Law & Order: SVU.”
  4. Fed Up
    A whirlwind of talking heads, found footage, scary statistics and cartoonish graphics, the movie is a fast, coolly incensed investigation into why people are getting fatter.
  5. The Double
    It never quite rises to the full potential of its theme or fully inhabits its intricately imagined space. It’s cool but not haunting — a brainteaser rather than a mindblower.
  6. Palo Alto
    What tethers the movie and especially April and Teddy is how Ms. Coppola captures that exquisitely tender, moving moment between fragile, self-interested youth and tentatively more outwardly aware adulthood, a coming into consciousness that she expresses through their broken sentences, diverted glances and abrupt turns.
  7. Chef
    [A] shallow but enjoyable all-American morality play.
  8. Neighbors
    Neighbors is not a great film and does not really aspire to be. It is more a status report on mainstream American movie comedy, operating in a sweet spot between the friendly and the nasty, and not straining to be daring, obnoxious or even especially original. It knows how to have fun. How very grown-up.
  9. Sol LeWitt
    The on-camera absence of its subject and its overall indifference to matters of biography make Sol LeWitt a welcome departure from most documentaries about artists, as well as a fitting and serious tribute to his art.
  10. Llyn Foulkes One Man Band
    The filmmakers are blessed and cursed with a subject who seems to lack the usual filters. We in turn witness Mr. Foulkes in action, at length — revamping his works, railing against the art world and speaking his neurotic mind.
  11. Breastmilk
    Empathetic and nosy, Ms. Ben-Ari is no unequivocal cheerleader for breast over bottle: If anything, her subjects’ time-consuming struggles and evident exhaustion could put a damper on the natural-feeding plans of the most sanguine new parent. Yet the film isn’t a downer.
  12. Apocalypse: A Bill Callahan Tour Film
    A tantalizing glimpse of a determinedly outsider talent.
  13. Walk of Shame
    The cast does a fine collective job, and Mr. Brill’s script flirts with clever charm here and there. But the whole film is a missed opportunity because the situations repeatedly defy credibility, and the humor never says anything remotely fresh about human nature or the world we live in.
  14. NOW: In the Wings on a World Stage
    What “NOW” does well is explain why these actors love the place- and time-bound quality of live theater, most evident in the troupe’s stop at the ancient Greek theater of Epidaurus.
  15. More Than the Rainbow
    Mr. Wechsler’s film might be loose to a fault, but Mr. Weber’s work yields its share of gratifying, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it New York moments.
  16. Documented
    His strategy is political — in a meaningful way — but not cinematic.
  17. Speak the Music: Robert Mann and the Mysteries of Chamber Music
    Though colleagues and former students chime in, Mr. Miller lets Mr. Mann and his violin do most of the talking, drawing on assorted interviews and vintage performance clips that convey both the skill and the enthusiasm underpinning his subject’s long career.
  18. Bad Johnson
    A sometimes amusing sex farce.
  19. Decoding Annie Parker
    Decoding Annie Parker is considerably better than the kind of disease-of-the-week fare that used to be a television cliché.
  20. Blood Glacier
    Sometimes genre-based filmmakers don’t know how to make their material fun without making fun of their material, but that’s not a failing of Mr. Kren’s.
  21. Unclaimed
    If we brush aside the unanswered questions, what we’re left with is a simple tale of two men: One who may have been lost, and one who only felt that way.
  22. The Protector 2
    With jokes and computer-generated spectacles diluting the action, this is not one for fight-film purists.
  23. Friended to Death
    Constant close-ups give the sense that the movie itself is violating viewers’ personal space, while an earnest moral suggests that online communication can’t substitute for face-to-face interaction: a topic Friended to Death doesn’t seem to know much about.
  24. Ida
    There is an implicit argument here between faith and materialism, one that is resolved with wit, conviction and generosity of spirit. Mr. Pawlikowski has made one of the finest European films (and one of most insightful films about Europe, past and present) in recent memory.
  25. Beneath the Harvest Sky
    Beneath the Harvest Sky reaches a dramatic climax that is so rushed and confusing, you are left scratching your head. But for all its missteps, the film feels authentic. Through thick and thin, it stubbornly maintains a thorny integrity.
  26. Belle
    The weave of the personal and the political finally proves as irresistible as it is moving, partly because it has been drawn from extraordinary life.
  27. For a Woman
    The 1980s sequences, with their tears and epiphanies, are less vivid and less convincing. An inviting sense of mystery hangs over the events of 1947, Ms. Kurys’s origin story.
  28. Altered States of Plaine
    Muddy sound contributes to the atmosphere of confusion, while the script (credited to the director, Nick Gaglia, along with Mr. Gallagher and Ms. Donohue) goes nowhere.
  29. Jobriath A.D.
    It’s cruel but must be said: Presented in hushed, reverent tones, Jobriath A.D. often comes across as mockumentary material; each ghastly career move is followed by another. Hampered by limited video of Jobriath, the film lacks a sense of him or his music.
  30. The Amazing Spider-Man 2
    A sequel that, until a late, lamentably foolish turn, balances blockbuster bombast with human-scale drama, child-friendly comedy and gushers of tears.
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