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. God Bless America
    Mr. Goldthwait's screenplay is essentially a comedy act fleshed out with a story he doesn't try to make convincing.
  2. Girl in Progress
    The movie, by virtue of its self-conscious parody of the kind of movie it is, turns out to be an unusually smart and sensitive example of the genre.
  3. I Wish
    I Wish tends toward the vaporous and not just because of its volcano; but whenever its children are on screen, lighted up with joy or dimmed by hard adult truths, the film burns bright.
  4. Dark Shadows
    Dark Shadows isn't among Mr. Burton's most richly realized works, but it's very enjoyable, visually sumptuous and, despite its lugubrious source material and a sporadic tremor of violence, surprisingly effervescent.
  5. Chronicling a Crisis
    Alternately tedious and illuminating, this deeply honest and scattered movie revels in its lack of purpose.
  6. Mother's Day
    Crisply shot and surprisingly well acted, Mother's Day suffers from an overly long script (a tornado hovers off screen to no apparent purpose) and annoying glitches in continuity.
  7. You Hurt My Feelings
    Unfolding in New England over four vibrantly represented seasons, "Feelings" is a small-scale wonder. Pivotal events play out in the spaces between scenes, leaving only emotional imprints that we interpret within a timeline that may not be entirely linear.
  8. The Perfect Family
    The dialogue in the film, directed by Anne Renton from a screenplay by Claire V. Riley and Paula Goldberg, has the loud, mechanical clicketyclack of a 40-year-old episode of "All in the Family."
  9. A Little Bit of Heaven
    A cringe-inducing romantic comedy turned cancer tragedy turned inspirational hosanna about living in the moment, embracing your bliss and other clichés.
  10. Last Call at the Oasis
    However frustrated they may be by political paralysis, corporate trickery or plain human stupidity, none of them seem inclined to give up. When they do, we really will be screwed, and we won't have or need movies like this to tell us so.
  11. First Position
    An appealing, largely upbeat documentary about young ballet dancers duking it out.
  12. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
    This leisurely paced two-hour movie is a reasonably tasty banquet for the same Anglophiles who embrace "Downton Abbey."
  13. Jesus Henry Christ
    Whatever it intends, Jesus Henry Christ is not especially funny. There are witticisms galore in both the thematically recurrent imagery and the dialogue, but very few qualify as jokes, and any laughter is hard to come by. Willfully zany would be a more apt description.
  14. The Avengers
    The light, amusing bits cannot overcome the grinding, hectic emptiness, the bloated cynicism that is less a shortcoming of this particular film than a feature of the genre.
  15. The Giant Mechanical Man
    Pleasantly charming but instantly forgettable.
  16. Citizen Gangster
    A good-looking but passionless affair that remains stubbornly aloof from its audience.
  17. Restless City
    Mr. Dosunmu seems to have directed all his actors to pause before delivering lines, giving a languor to the film that comes to feel studied.
  18. 96 Minutes
    The talented Mr. Ross makes Dre's panic and adrenaline-fueled behavior all too believable. You watch as he sees his horizons dim. What could be sadder?
  19. Dolphin Boy
    More grounded in simple observation than in fanciful theories, this effortlessly engaging story of sudden tragedy and halting recovery wisely focuses on the facts and leaves the wonder to the audience.
  20. Joffrey: Mavericks of American Dance
    Alas, dance films like Wim Wenders's innovative, kinetic "Pina" have now set a high barre, and by comparison the traditional talking-head style of this documentary seems primed for showings on public television.
  21. Headhunters
    As black comedy, the film is crude and downright sloppy when compared with the clockwork machinations of the Coen brothers' creations, as it has been since its premiere. Brown's panic is capably rendered, but his ordeals are not worth enduring to the bitter end.
  22. Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale
    Despite the movie's considerable visual splendor, the pacing of Warriors of the Rainbow is clumsy, its battle scenes chaotic and its computer effects (especially of a fire that ravages the Seediq hunting forest) cheesy.
  23. Whores' Glory
    Quietly powerful but dispiriting documentary, which compares the world's oldest profession as practiced from place to place.
  24. Booker's Place: A Mississippi Story
    Mr. De Felitta's moody, well-rounded film is a kind of excavation and investigation of Mr. Wright's actions as a piece of civil rights history.
  25. Sound of My Voice
    A smart, effectively unsettling movie about the need to believe and the hard, cruel arts of persuasion.
  26. Elles
    In case you have forgotten, all women are prostitutes, and all men are johns.
  27. Bernie
    Gaudily vibrant, at times morbidly funny.
  28. The Raven
    The Raven tries to blend all of these motley genres together, and though the effort is valiant, the result is a mess. I suspect Poe's review of it would have been much more savage than mine.
  29. The Five-Year Engagement
    The Five-Year Engagement dutifully hits the marks of its genre, but it is also about the unpredictability of life and the everyday challenges of love. The sensitivity and honesty with which it addresses those matters is a pleasant surprise.
  30. The Pirates! Band of Misfits
    The movie is a curiosity cabinet of visual pleasures but so breezy and lightly funny that you may not realize at first how good it is.
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