The New York Times' Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. Caesar Must Die
    There’s an elemental, almost primitive quality to the Tavianis’ condensing that, at its most effective, dovetails with the prison’s severely circumscribed material reality, as if the high walls, barred windows and suffocating rooms were manifestations of the characters’ states of mind.
  2. David
    Rather than being a star- or song-driven showcase (despite a notably eclectic soundtrack), David zigzags tonally and visually thanks to Mr. Nambiar, an eager student of flair.
  3. Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary
    The samples of Mr. Abu-Jamal's writings aren't generous enough to establish whether his is a singular voice or just a prolific one, with Mr. Vittoria instead letting the film wander considerably.
  4. Girls Against Boys
    Men are pigs, and women are sick of it, says Girls Against Boys, a dumb, dreary, let's-get-back-at-them slasher in which pulverized genitals pass for feminist critique.
  5. Bullet to the Head
    While the veteran action director Walter Hill hasn't done much to enliven this dull, unmemorable material, with its mechanically moving parts and popping gunfire, its dull-red splatter and spray, he has brought a spark of wit to the proceedings, starting with the figure of Sylvester Stallone.
  6. John Dies at the End
    It lays waste to linear narration, thematic coherence, psychological plausibility and just about everything else you might expect to encounter. It zigs, zags and trips over its own feet and on its own home-brewed hallucinogens. It's a ridiculous, preposterous, sometimes maddening experience, but also kind of a blast.
  7. The Last Gladiators
    [Mr. Gibney] scales down his approach considerably here, generally for the better, rather than extrapolate a theory of violence and everything.
  8. Warm Bodies
    Warm Bodies is an improbable romance sweetened with appealing performances and buoyed by one of the better cute meets in recent romantic comedy.
  9. Koch
    Like Walt Whitman, another hard-to-classify embodiment of the spirit of New York, he is contradictory and multitudinous. The hour and a half Mr. Barsky provides might be enough time for a lesser figure. Mr. Koch...needs more.
  10. Sound City
    [Grohl] shows a decent grasp of how to pace a documentary and how to push nostalgia buttons, avoiding the marsh of smarminess most - though not quite all - of the time.
  11. Race 2
    Race 2, directed by Abbas-Mastan, has little to offer besides its loving gaze at wealth and flesh.
  12. Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters
    There isn't much swashbuckling chemistry between Mr. Renner and Ms. Arterton, and the script doesn't give them enough of the witty lines that can elevate these types of movies to must-see status.
  13. Movie 43
    The kindest thing to be said of Movie 43, a star-saturated collection of crude one-joke vignettes made with big-time directors, is that most of the participants seem to relish being naughty.
  14. Knife Fight
    The tone of Knife Fight is mean until the movie flips a switch and turns pious and mawkish as Paul tries to make amends for past sins. Whether playing it sleazy or noble, Mr. Lowe brings little emotional weight to his role.
  15. Nana
    Naturalistic and mysterious, Nana is terrifyingly dependent on its diminutive star. Insisting on neither written lines nor predetermined actions (the film's short script was used primarily to obtain financing), Ms. Massadian, who worked with the child for almost two years, has coaxed a performance of remarkable lucidity.
  16. Supporting Characters
    This well-acted film captures a generational and occupational sliver of New York life that rings true.
  17. Happy People: A Year in the Taiga
    Some limitations of adapting secondhand material show through in the uneven visual quality and diminished control over mood. Yet Mr. Herzog is openly inspired, as ever, by the rugged independence of these resourceful trappers, who seem stoic about everything but their faithful dogs.
  18. Parker
    Parker...is not a great movie....But Parker is nonetheless great fun. It is part of a welcome trend, or counter-trend, in action filmmaking, an effort to strip away the apocalyptic bloat and digital fakery that have overtaken the genre and return to its pulpy, nasty, mechanical roots.
  19. The Taste of Money
    Even as The Taste of Money swerves toward a frantic climax and a sentimental denouement, it remains intriguing. It feeds an insatiable curiosity about how the other half - or, in current parlance, the 1 percent - lives, and what it shows us is gorgeous, grotesque and disconcertingly human.
  20. Yossi
    What began as a reasonably hardheaded look at profound and rapid cultural change turns into a feel-good fantasy of salvation.
  21. The Pirogue
    The most powerful thing about The Pirogue is the way it deals with emotionally charged events matter-of-factly, rather than melodramatically. The story Mr. Touré has chosen to tell is both painfully specific - about these individuals, in this boat - and immeasurably vast, since the experience it depicts is shared by millions of people around the world. And yet somehow he gets the scale just right.
  22. Stolen Seas
    A documentary that yearns to be an adventure movie, Stolen Seas can't resist drowning its invaluable insights in thundering, drum-heavy music and flashing visuals. Magnificent in its thoroughness and nuance, this dense, multifaceted study of Somali piracy really needs to settle down.
  23. Our School
    Discrimination against nomadic populations is hardly restricted to Romania, but the integration of that country's largest ethnic minority seems particularly pressing. If only that view were shared by the Romanian adults on screen, most of whom display a shocking degree of prejudice.
  24. Greenwich Village: Music That Defined a Generation
    Evokes the flavor of the era just before the music business exploded into a mass-market juggernaut. The film's pleasures are the same ones offered by a sprawling, lavishly illustrated magazine spread.
  25. The Last Stand
    The South Korean director Kim Jee-woon fails to dazzle with the endless speeding-car sequences, but that 60-second flourish during a lengthy firefight is almost worth the tedium.
  26. Mama
    Instead of delivering buckets of guts and gore, this ghost story offers a strong sense of time and place, along with the kind of niceties that don't often figure into horror flicks, notably pictorial beauty, an atmosphere throbbing with dread and actors so good that you don't want anyone to take an ax to them.
  27. Hors Satan (Outside Satan)
    Despite its pictorial intensity and the extremity of some of its scenes, the film proceeds in a mood of detachment, turning the suffering physical beings under its scrutiny into abstractions.
  28. LUV
    It does not entirely succeed, but at its best Luv shows the kind of heart and intelligence that is always welcome - and often missing - in American movies.
  29. Birth Story: Ina May Gaskin and The Farm Midwives
    A granola ode to natural childbirth that makes you want to hop into a tub of warm water and start pushing.
  30. Brief Reunion
    The film's biggest weakness is its unsympathetic main character, a snippy, nervous, expressionless control freak who gets more despicable as the story unfolds.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »