The New York Times' Scores

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For 20,311 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: 9,399 out of 20311
  2. Mixed: 8,446 out of 20311
  3. Negative: 2,466 out of 20311
20311 movie reviews
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  1. Mariachi Gringo
    As the moving concluding scenes cement, Mariachi Gringo is right on pitch — and, happily, not simply as you’d expect.
  2. The Kill Hole
    The film grasps for credibility with scenes of a support group (featuring some real veterans) and cryptic voice-overs that strive for profundity but achieve only pretentiousness.
  3. K-11
    To borrow RuPaul’s delightful catchphrase, the only possible response to a project like this is to advise it to “sashay away.”
  4. Crazy and Thief
    It’s a far cry from the wonders of Morris Engel’s “Little Fugitive” and might have been better off in a kid’s-size portion as a short.
  5. Vanishing Waves
    This Lithuanian love story from Kristina Buozyte offers a discomfiting blend of visual ecstasy and narrative sterility.
  6. Upside Down
    Did I mention that Upside Down is simply awful?
  7. Reality
    Reality is a story about one man’s desire to make it big on the small screen, and something of a familiar exploration of the blurring between reality and its simulations. More elliptically and more interestingly, it is also a look at an Italy engrossed with rituals and spectacle, in watching and being watched.
  8. If I Were You
    A comedy that is so scatterbrained and long-winded that much of it feels invented on the spot. (It’s also a half-hour too long.)
  9. The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
    Because Mr. Carell doesn’t go in for the kind of all-out caricature that Mr. Ferrell embraces with a manic glee, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone has an underlying soulfulness that cuts against its farcical aspirations. This is not to say that Mr. Carell isn’t just fine, only that his performance, as impressive as it is, lacks a shark’s bite.
  10. Ginger & Rosa
    Ms. Fanning, who is younger than her character, shows a nearly Streepian mixture of poise, intensity and technical precision. It is frightening how good she is and hard to imagine anything she could not do.
  11. The Call
    An effectively creepy thriller about a 911 operator and a young miss in peril, The Call is a model of low-budget filmmaking.
  12. From Up on Poppy Hill
    This movie...is a lovely example of the strong realist tendency in Japanese animation. Its visual magic lies in painterly compositions of foliage, clouds, architecture and water, and its emotional impact comes from the way everyday life is washed in the colors of memory.
  13. Spring Breakers
    In Spring Breakers [Mr. Korine] bores into a contested, deeply American topic — the pursuit of happiness taken to nihilistic extremes — but turns his exploration into such a gonzo, outrageously funny party that it takes a while to appreciate that this is more of a horror film than a comedy.
  14. I Killed My Mother
    As a director, Mr. Dolan has a freewheeling style, and he’s self-dramatizing enough to want to call attention to it without being too much of a visual show-off.
  15. Philip Roth: Unmasked
    Fittingly enough, given that his great subject has always been himself, it is Mr. Roth who dominates the screen...He is, for 90 minutes, marvelous company — expansive, funny, generous and candid.
  16. The Bitter Buddha
    The film’s unvarying lack of drama or direction can be wearing, but the schlubby originality of its subject fully repays the longueurs.
  17. The Other Side of the Ice
    This tedious chronicle has the interest level of a home movie of a vacation with bickering and yammering left intact.
  18. Downeast
    This is not an easy documentary to watch, in the sense that the filmmakers let the story tell itself, without narration or expert commentary. That ultimately makes it all the more touching.
  19. Don't Stop Believin': Everyman's Journey
    This one-note documentary from Ramona S. Diaz is as hostile to conflict as the group’s songs themselves.
  20. Girl Rising
    Though some of the writers inject a force of metaphor and strength of voice, no one would confuse the movie with a short-story collection. But it’s more ambitious and effective at blunting cynicism than most consciousness-raising efforts.
  21. The ABCs of Death
    At its best when merging shocks with social commentary, this halting compilation improves significantly as it nears the end of the alphabet.
  22. Language of a Broken Heart
    Although Language of a Broken Heart, a romantic comedy written by and starring Juddy Talt, eventually drowns in clichés and predictability, it has a few decent moments of humor and some appealing performances that make it marginally better than most vanity projects.
  23. Greedy Lying Bastards
    Collated for momentum, the film’s many interviews, wide-ranging archival footage and montage of modern ecological disasters form a blunt but carefully positioned instrument. And despite a bit of Michael Moore-style nonsense at the end the tightly edited narrative displays a reach (nine countries) and clarity of composition that hold the attention.
  24. The Silence
    [Mr. Odar] allows the story to unfold at a deliberate pace, emphasizing the psychological nuances of the mystery rather than its procedural details, and using graceful wide-screen compositions and haunting sound design to create a compelling mood of menace, anxiety and sorrow.
  25. Electrick Children
    Electrick Children is well acted and refreshingly nonjudgmental, but its narrative continuity is tenuous at best. As it jounces along toward a pat, unsatisfying ending, it leaves essential questions unanswered. But the movie’s underlying sweetness leaves a residual glow.
  26. The Monk
    Mr. Moll, whose films include “With a Friend Like Harry...,” somewhat heroically manages to keep the story’s manifold twists from becoming knotted, but he’s less adept at setting up the characters and their relationships and especially the depth and significance of their faith.
  27. Emperor
    Mr. Jones’s performance is the only spark within this otherwise dull, well-mannered exercise.
  28. Dead Man Down
    Dead Man Down, unfortunately, turns out to be too innocuous to qualify as either actually good or delectably bad.
  29. Beyond the Hills
    Even as Mr. Mungiu maintains a detached, objective point of view, allowing the details of the story to speak for themselves, he also allows you to glimpse the complex and volatile inner lives of his characters.
  30. Oz the Great and Powerful
    Can the major studios still make magic? From the looks of Oz the Great and Powerful, a dispiriting, infuriating jumble of big money, small ideas and ugly visuals, the answer seems to be no — unless, perhaps, the man behind the curtain is Martin Scorsese or James Cameron.
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