The New York Times' Scores

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:
20311 movie reviews
  1. The film would be stronger if it told us a little more about what the survivors have been doing since the camp was liberated by the Soviets in 1944, but their reactions to revisiting the camp are wrenching to watch.
  2. A rich opportunity is squandered with Laredoans Speak, a documentary of laudable aspirations suffering from its pronounced sympathies.
  3. Dry but thoughtful drama.
  4. Well made, and for once the talking-heads format is satisfying.
  5. A Warrior's Heart is factory-issue jingoism, yielding no surprises and frightfully few insights.
  6. Warmhearted and defiantly unsentimental, Grandma, a Thousand Times gains lightness from Teta's tart observations.
  7. Mr. DeHaan, whose vulnerability and physical awkwardness here can evoke the young Leonardo DiCaprio in "What's Eating Gilbert Grape," is invaluable. Mr. Russell and Mr. Jordan are as likable as their characters, but it's Mr. DeHaan who pulls you uneasily in.
  8. The most expensive home movie ever made, is one man's genial account of his trip into outer space.
  9. This kind of movie is all about the special effects. They start out great - cool helicopter crash, very convincing giant lizard - but grow more amateurish as the film goes along, with a flight sequence on giant bees proving particularly clunky.
  10. Much better to focus on the tempestuous Mercutio (Hale Appleman, a standout), whose increasing volatility forms the perfect counterpoint to Mr. Doyle's beaming Juliet and Seth Numrich's sensitive Romeo. Punctuated by eerily static shots of empty basketball courts and deserted hallways, Mercutio's blustering menace is as timeless as the romance he seeks to derail.
  11. In this stratum of Middle American society during wartime and hardship, the movie suggests, life is tough and challenging. You admire these characters for their considerable resilience while understanding that even the best-intentioned people can break under the stress.
  12. Sexy, sweet and laced with a sadness at once specific to its place and time and accessible to anyone with a breakable heart, Chico & Rita is an animated valentine to Cuba and its music.
  13. This wisp of a movie doesn't pretend to be more than a series of disconnected vignettes in a moody story that sometimes seems invented on the spot. The boy, for all his eccentricities, is a healing spirit who, without realizing it, gives Rose the fortitude to face her problems and resume her old life, for better or for worse.
  14. When they are on the screen together here, there is enough physical charm and emotional warmth to distract from the threadbare setting and the paper-thin plot. But those defects ultimately get in the way of the stars and leave you wondering: Is this a romance about neurological impairment or a neurologically impaired romance?
  15. The result is a movie that feels more like a free-market sales pitch than like a critical look at one weapon in the poverty-fighting arsenal that may or may not offer long-term hope.
  16. The movie is too beautiful to be described as an ordeal, but it is sufficiently intense and unyielding that when it is over, you may feel, along with awe, a measure of relief. Which may sound like a reason to stay away, but is exactly the opposite.
  17. Essentially and very effectively a rollicking smash-and-crash chase movie that happens to be surprisingly well acted.
  18. This history is too recent to seem dry, and the film gets an added emotional punch from interviews with former tenants, whose memories mix fondness with anger and loss.
  19. An elegant, elegiac found-footage work from Bill Morrison, best known for his silent-film reverie "Decasia."
  20. Mr. Wiseman's particular genius has always been to convey, through judicious editing and dogged filming, the tedium, busyness and quiet intensity of group labor.
  21. Urgent, informative and artfully assembled documentary.
  22. Mr. Defa and his cinematographer, Mike Gioulakis, are united in their disdain for information over mood: as the camera skitters spastically around its troubled schlub, the film becomes a muddy, minimalist moan of desperation.
  23. A real-life examination of competitive surfing in Papua New Guinea, the film derives tension from the proverbial big tournament but also from how the event helps foster a worthy morality.
  24. Big Miracle gets off to a shaky start, but once revved up, it becomes an involving work-against-the-clock-and-the-odds action movie.
  25. That assured style is the spackle that holds Kill List together: when the plot doglegs into insanity, and the characters follow suit, this brutal fever dream refuses to fall apart.
  26. The love story doesn't quite work. Mr. McGregor and Ms. Green make an attractive couple. But the movie's notion of two self-centered people ill suited to each other, shedding their defenses and clinging together, feels forced and sentimental.
  27. A preternatural self-confidence and buoyancy infuse every syllable out of Ms. Channing's mouth in this entertaining film.
  28. The upshot is that instead of a film about a love that conquered a king and nearly undid a kingdom, Madonna has come up with a female friendship movie, which would be fine if she weren't busy trying to prove her art-film bona fides.
  29. Luke and Claire are guilty, above all, of being dumb and bored. Even their interest in the ghost that may dwell in the dark corners of the Pedlar seems tepid and lacking in conviction. The movie, clever and rigorous though it is, feels that way too.
  30. Less gore is more here, and what a relief. The Woman in Black isn't especially scary, but it keeps you on edge, and without the usual vivisectionist imagery.

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