The New York Times' Scores

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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
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  1. Disneynature: Wings of Life
    Wings of Life is almost so lovely that you suspect it’s as computer-generated as “Life of Pi.” But it’s reality captured, through time-lapse and high-speed techniques: if not the most exciting moviegoing, it’s praiseworthy.
  2. Bert Stern: Original Madman
    An unappealing jumble of sex, regret and hero worship, “Bert Stern” is an odd tribute to brilliance muffled by lust.
  3. Free Angela & All Political Prisoners
    Shola Lynch’s documentary about Angela Davis, the activist and beacon of counterculture radicalism, is a snappily edited, archivally wallpapered recollection of fearless behavior in the face of an antsy establishment. But it’s equally significant as a pointed act of retelling.
  4. Smyrna: The Destruction of a Cosmopolitan City - 1900-1922
    A sobering study in how individual human beings can become afterthoughts in the face of broad movements like nationalism, a phenomenon that is still much in evidence almost a century later.
  5. Down the Shore
    The director, Harold Guskin, and writer, Sandra Jennings, show admirable patience in letting the story unspool, and the actors reward them.
  6. No Place on Earth
    The bare facts of the feat seize the imagination, even if Ms. Tobias’s competent documentary doesn’t quite rise to the challenge.
  7. 6 Souls
    The filmmakers’ aversion to coherent narrative and genuinely suspenseful visuals (not to mention a penchant for having Ms. Moore receive terrible news via cellphone) keep the movie’s mystery stew from hitting the spot.
  8. Stranger Things
    Something unexpectedly profound emerges from the flimsiest of stories in Stranger Things, a drama so modest and trusting of its two leads that any directing flourishes might have shattered its spell.
  9. Lotus Eaters
    What Lotus Eaters can take pride in are Gareth Munden’s stunning black-and-white cinematography and Ms. Campbell-Hughes, a riveting visual subject suggesting miles of internal depth. She makes this wallow in callow company watchable.
  10. Evil Dead
    Doesn’t have the original’s wooden performances, puffy clothes and hairdos or its amusingly crude special effects, but it does share its blood lust.
  11. The Company You Keep
    This earnest, well-intentioned movie elicits frustration that its story had to be packaged as a conventional, not very suspenseful fugitive thriller with a bogus Hollywood ending.
  12. Trance
    For all Mr. Boyle’s labors Trance principally comes off as a showcase for his brio, a spirit that animates all his choices, visual and otherwise.
  13. Upstream Color
    With its fragmentation and mysteries, Upstream Color offers itself up as a puzzle as well as a philosophical toy that you can spin and spin until the cafe closes and kicks you into the night.
  14. Andre Gregory: Before and After Dinner
    An indelible, gripping documentary portrait.
  15. Himmatwala
    Himmatwala feels timid and overeager. Except when it’s terrible.
  16. Tyler Perry's Temptation
    Limp pacing and countless shots of Washington’s skyline plague the narrative. Ms. Smollett-Bell exudes an earthy appeal, but it’s the charismatic Mr. Jones who steals the picture. Given all the stifling preachiness, that’s to be expected.
  17. The Revolutionary Optimists
    As heartening as it is to see a slum child tutored about vicious cycles of adversity and using the buzzword “partnership” with aplomb, the film comes to feel cut and dried.
  18. Detour
    At times the groan and scream of collapsing metal sounds so authentic you might mistake Jackson’s heavy breathing for your own.
  19. Rescue in the Philippines
    Ultimately, this compelling story will leave viewers wanting even more information about this mission and the daily lives of the émigrés in Manila.
  20. Somebody Up There Likes Me
    It’s all kind of cute. Maybe a little too cute, but it does have a nice circle-of-life ending. And along the way, Mr. Byington shows a knack for observational humor, slipping in sly jokes that force you to keep paying attention despite the slim plot. Droll and interesting; just not very substantial.
  21. Dog Pound
    Kim Chapiron, proves an excellent choreographer of brutality...But without a strong political point (unlike its source material), Dog Pound feels hollow and hopeless.
  22. Violeta Went to Heaven
    Mr. Wood has created a poignant portrait of an artist unable to escape the stamp of her class or the burdens of aging.
  23. Code of the West
    This film from Rebecca Richman Cohen is a mostly dutiful documentary that drifts dangerously close to earnestness.
  24. G.I. Joe: Retaliation
    The film’s director, Jon M. Chu, executes a pretty good high-altitude fight scene. Still, there should be a “Fans Only” sign at the door of every theater.
  25. Family Weekend
    This belabored comedy, directed by Benjamin Epps, has a slick visual veneer and some capable performances, especially by Ms. Rulin and Ms. King. But the script, by Matt K. Turner, is loaded with contradictions, its hollow flirtation with subversion amount to airplane pablum.
  26. Wrong
    Wrong lets most of its random gags and view-askew premises twist in the wind like hamhandedly wacky improv comedy, punctuated with synthesizer effects. The film’s misguided flatness is perhaps its fatal flaw, not so much deadpan or existential as just monotonous.
  27. Mental
    Mental wildly overplays the kookiness and quirk.
  28. The Host
    Dopey, derivative and dull, The Host is a brazen combination of unoriginal science-fiction themes, young-adult pandering and bottom-line calculation. That sounds like it should work (really!), but it never does, largely because the story is as drained of energy as are its moony aliens.
  29. The Place Beyond the Pines
    The three-part story, spread over nearly two and a half hours, represents a triumph of sympathetic imagination and a failure of narrative economy. But if, in the end, the film can’t quite sustain its epic vision, it does, along the way, achieve the density and momentum of a good novel.
  30. Renoir
    The movie, like its subject, refuses to stir up unnecessary melodrama. There are many small conflicts and psychological undercurrents, but the closest thing to a narrative theme is the effect Andrée has on the Renoir household.
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