New York Daily News' Scores

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For 6,911 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 42% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 55% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 8.2 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 57
Highest review score: 100 Fruitvale Station
Lowest review score: 0 The Fourth Kind
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2,885 out of 6911
  2. Mixed: 2,801 out of 6911
  3. Negative: 1,225 out of 6911
6911 movie reviews
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  1. Aliens of the Deep
    After dazzling us with its undersea discoveries, "Aliens" turns downright silly at the end, with a fantasy sequence set in a presumed ocean on Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter.
  2. The Weekend
    Intelligent and holds your attention, like a mystery story unraveling.
  3. Interview with the Assassin
    Barry, with a raspy Southern accent, gives a chilling portrait of a man who is absolutely sure he killed JFK. Whether he's a psychopath or a schizophrenic is not satisfactorily answered, but it's a fascinating question nonetheless.
  4. Blue Car
    Even without nudity, the sex scene between Meg and Auster is one of the most uncomfortable on film. Not just because of the actors' age difference (Strathairn is 54, Bruckner 17), but because of Meg's inexperience and misplaced trust.
  5. Dummy
    Jovovich needed a steadying hand to keep her from flying out of her socks, and Pritikin, on his maiden solo as a director, couldn't or didn't have the heart to provide it.
  6. Lakeboat
    Students of acting will appreciate the relish with which the characters bite off juicy chunks of dialogue.
    • New York Daily News
  7. Kiss of the Dragon
    The action scenes, including one on that tourist sightseeing staple, the Bateau Mouche, were directed by Cory Yuen with some creative touches, including a hail of chopsticks during a fight in a restaurant kitchen.
  8. The Emperor's Club
    The ethical issues driving Michael Hoffman's The Emperor's Club almost outweigh the improbable arc of its story, and Kevin Kline's endearing performance as a prep school classics teacher is almost worth the price of admission.
  9. Music Within
    The performances are all solid, but Sheen, last seen as Tony Blair in "The Queen," is so good in his incredibly demanding role that he makes the natural discomfort people feel at seeing someone so debilitated disappear completely.
  10. The Scorpion King
    Has been fine-tuned for adolescent boys, from the hectic pace right down to the way Cassandra's breasts are always barely draped.
    • New York Daily News
  11. Pokémon 3: The Movie
    Kids will love it.
  12. 24 Hour Party People
    Personally, I'd rather have my brain invaded by flesh-eating beetles than listen to 10 seconds of the Sex Pistols -- Truth is, I've rarely had a worse time watching a good movie.
  13. Saudate for the Future
    It's sort of like getting off the plane in a strange place without a guide. We can figure it out, but it takes some work, and the music is more of a distraction than an aid.
  14. Primo Levi's Journey
    The film lacks a certain coherence, and Levi - one of Italy's most important postwar writers - is mostly relegated to an excuse for a sociopolitical travelogue.
  15. In Bruges
    The banter between these unlikely partners seems inspired by Quentin Tarantino's ingeniously insipid dialogue, delivered with indelible deadpan sincerity by John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson in "Pulp Fiction." Neither the dialogue nor the characters are as interesting here.
  16. After Innocence
    Though Jessica Sanders' rambling documentary about the damaged lives of wrongfully imprisoned men would have made a better subject for an hour-long "Dateline" special, it's still a powerful indictment of a judicial system too anxious to close cases, and then close ranks when someone tries to reopen them.
  17. Shortbus
    Some viewers will call the whole business pornography, though it doesn't really qualify. The sex is blunt and enthusiastic, but arousing it ain't. In fact, when Shortbus arrives on DVD, viewers may be fast-forwarding through the sex to get to the acting.
  18. Snow Cake
    In the end, Weaver provides a moving and sensitive portrait of one person out of an estimated 400,000 in America with this mental disorder we are just beginning to understand.
  19. Collateral Damages
    The final image of the snow-covered landfill, having consumed the debris, provides a kind of closure for Sauret. But for the firemen, the nightmare continues.
  20. The Door in the Floor
    That Williams occasionally comes close to the author's layered spirit is a tribute to his passion. But the film fails on a number of levels. First, it is what it is: the prologue to a story that covers four(!) decades.
  21. Roll Bounce
    Whether today's tweens will go for such wholesomely retro entertainment is questionable, but their parents - at least the ones who once donned rainbow knee socks and too-tight Calvins - will love to love it, baby.
  22. Shrek the Third
    It's not all bad. There is a funny early sequence where Prince Charming is being jeered for his lousy cabaret act in a village pub and a hilarious death-lily scene with the bullfrog King Harold (John Cleese) trying to squeak out the name of his heir while snapping up one last fly.
  23. The Last Kiss
    Paints itself into a corner from which it cannot escape. By the end, the movie is still in that corner, tossing out overlapping notes of hope and gloom and counting on viewers to write the ending they want. I'd leave the movie in the corner.
  24. Fever Pitch
    Relationship comedy like this is mother's milk to Drew Barrymore, who, as usual, is adorable and perfect.
  25. Presumed Guilty: Tales of the Public Defenders
    Shines an admiring light on some lawyers who endure low pay, terrible win-loss records and the occasional scorn of family, friends and the media for "defending the bad guys."
  26. Steve + Sky
    For everyone who has been waiting on a movie in the Ghent dialect, your patience has paid off. Happily, Felix Van Groeningen's low-budget romance is also sly - if utterly superficial - fun.
  27. Agnes and His Brothers
    Roehler aims scattershot barbs at so many targets, from political hypocrisy to suburban entitlement, that he often misses. But whenever he takes the time to line up his toxic arrows, usually with the help of a compellingly squirmy Bleibtreu, he hits the bull's-eye.
  28. Across the Universe
    Julie Taymor says the idea for her Across the Universe was "to create an original musical using only the songs of the Beatles." That's like saying you're going to create a new element using only gold.
  29. Smiley Face
    This is a midnight stoner movie if there ever was one.
  30. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
    If Lazarescu's experience is typical in the former Soviet bloc, democracy hasn't done much to humanize the bureaucracy.
  31. Resident Evil: Apocalypse
    Witt, who cut his teeth as a second unit director on action thrillers "Speed," "XXX" and "The Bourne Identity," instead pours all his energy into stylized, blood-spattered fight scenes that come at a breakneck pace and should please the target audience, who grew up blasting the walking undead on Nintendos.
  32. The Tavern
    Won't change the world, but thanks to its casual intimacy, it was a risk worth taking.
  33. Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles
    He (Hogan) and the other backers of the movie are betting that Dundee has been gone long enough to make him seem fresh, or -- like that old uncle -- at least welcome.
  34. Owning Mahowny
    Hoffman is a fine actor in a rut, working on a string of socially alienated characters who are variations on the same theme. That's too bad, because the story being told around his static presence is amazing.
  35. Down to Earth
    It's Rock's first venture into leading-man territory, and the material is carefully tailored to his measurements. He's fully believable as a standup comic. How he'll fare as a character other than Chris Rock is yet to be determined.
  36. Talk to Me
    Despite being abandoned in the late going by his director, Cheadle gives one of the year's most fully realized performances, and Henson is a revelation.
  37. Pushing Tin
    Uneven but fitfully entertaining.
    • New York Daily News
  38. Feast of Love
    You'll find more authenticity listening in on conversations at your corner diner. But this is a gentler alternative, especially if you prefer your coffee with extra cream and sugar anyway.
  39. I Capture the Castle
    A Jane Austen-like tale of sense and sensibility, with some of the wit, but, alas, none of the linguistic legerdemain.
  40. The Mudge Boy
    Deeply disturbing, but dramatically realized, and the movie marks Burke as a young talent to watch.
  41. Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry
    Does an excellent job of telling Kerry's side of it.
  42. Blade: Trinity
    I don't know if it was intentional, but Drake seems to come out of the same sandy hole in which our troops found the cowering Saddam Hussein.
  43. Brick
    Johnson combines the elements of classic 1940s film noir and "Rebel Without a Cause"-style teen angst in a movie that is as phony as it is ambitious. It's an A+ film school exercise with zero emotional or social impact.
  44. Nomad
    Though it has a familiar inevitability, the journey is generally compelling, thanks to fierce battles, a gorgeous landscape and heartfelt performances.
  45. Under solen
    Ultimately, it's the casting and the story that are too good to be true. If a newspaper's classified ad section could document a success like this one, there would never be a slump.
  46. Wondrous Oblivion
    Good intentions and some nicely playful moments go a long way toward balancing out Paul Morrison's uneven story of British immigrants in the early 1960s.
  47. Snatch.
    The movie was snatched, all right, and Ritchie is the culprit.
  48. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
    Missing beneath its fabulous surface, however, is anything like a beating heart.
  49. Easy
    The movie ends on exactly the right note, but it hits a lot of bad ones on the way.
  50. Melancholian 3 huonetta
    Consistently moving but never quite coalesces into a strongly coherent whole.
  51. Cry_Wolf
    The low splatter quotient may not be enough to quell the blood lust of slasher fans, but several neat plot twists - and a surprise ending - make Cry Wolf a cut above the rest.
  52. Fleeing by Night
    The many opera scenes are so beautifully mounted, they make up for the moments when the story veers toward melodrama.
  53. L'ennui
    Only mildly interesting.
  54. Titus
    Julie Taymor's beautifully stylized but nauseatingly violent adaptation of Shakespeare's first play.
  55. Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace
    In the end, Phantom needed more human and less digital scale. The magic of "Star Wars" lay in Lucas' ability to play the human comedy in a fantastic future. With Phantom, he has brought the series to the brink of total artificiality, the future as a video game.
  56. Assault on Precinct 13
    In a preamble that sets up Hawke's character, the jittery hand-held camera and grainy palette establish the look and feel of a '70s movie, thus paying homage to the Carpenter version, which, frankly, had more suspense.
  57. An Unfinished Life
    It's no great thing, but in their (Weinstein brothers') heyday as Oscar campaigners, they could have made Redford a contender.
  58. Surf's Up
    The voice performances are great, particularly those from LaBeouf and Bridges, who's in a "Big Lebowski" mood. But a moratorium on penguin movies may be in order.
  59. American Gangster
    The problem is that the movie spends as much time on the boring detective chasing Lucas as on the drug lord himself.
  60. Leela
    So far beyond Bollywood, I think it's set in the suburbs of L.A.
  61. A Silent Love
    Strong, subtle performances elevate A Silent Love, a slow-moving drama about an unlikely love triangle from first-time director Federico Hidalgo.
  62. The Family Stone
    A machine-tooled entertainment that's as fake and flimsy as a plastic Christmas tree. The only reason the movie isn't as bad as it has a right to be is the marvelous Diane Keaton.
  63. Aurora Borealis
    The latest "Dawson's Creek" alumnus to break out of his WB bonds, Joshua Jackson proves himself all grown up in this sweetly scrappy indie.
  64. The Vertical Ray of the Sun
    Here's the downside, and it's not just me: You need a scorecard to keep track of the sisters, their brother, two husbands, a boyfriend, two (or three?) extramarital lovers.
  65. Big Animal
    This black-and-white movie features an enduring image: an ordinary couple at the dinner table with the giant, Dr. Seuss-like head of the camel ­filling their window ominously, ridiculously, like another dinner guest -- or like the proverbial elephant in the room that no one will address.
  66. Veronica Guerin
    The movie portrays Guerin -- regarded by many as a hero -- as an irritating figure.
  67. Summer Storm
    There's nothing truly new to be found here, but Kreuzpaintner treats Tobi's confusion with respect and gentle humor, making this an especially sensitive coming-of-age/coming-out story.
  68. White King, Red Rubber, Black Death
    Unfortunately, Bate saddles his otherwise compelling chronicle with awkward re-creations and an aggressively overbearing narration.
  69. Mendy
    Vardy draws the moral conflicts in broad strokes, but as a portrait of a man torn between his faith and the urges of his liberated hormones, it has honest depth.
  70. Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London
    With lots of cool gadgets, plenty of silliness and a clever concept guaranteed to appeal to preteens, this should be an unflagging, high-octane romp.
  71. Home of the Brave
    While Mark Friedman's script is as unsubtle as Winkler's direction, their sincerity and the subject's sharp immediacy lend the film a certain power.
  72. K-19: The Widowmaker
    The Cold War isn't exactly a hot ticket right now, but K-19 punches up the timeless aspects of the story -- adventure, danger, teamwork, noble self-sacrifice and two forceful actors butting heads, even if you don't buy them as Russian for a moment.
  73. For Love of the Game
    It could do without any kind of love story, let alone the one it got.
  74. X2: X-Men United
    A substantial improvement over "X-Men," in many ways, especially in visual and specialeffects departments.
  75. Spellbound
    This could be a documentary about reading the body language of childhood.
  76. Alias Betty
    Of the several threads interwoven here, only one is riveting, thanks to the performance of Sandrine Kiberlain as Betty.
  77. Been Rich All My Life
    An invaluable chapter in the story of our city.
  78. Gloomy Sunday
    Is it possible for an historically -based Holocaust movie to be schmaltzy? This one sure comes close.
  79. Comedy of Power
    Draggy for long stretches, and never funny, Comedy of Power is a showcase - as if she needed another - for Huppert's chameleon qualities. She's an actress who can make a phone-book reading interesting, and that is pretty much the challenge she meets here.
  80. Dirty Pretty Things
    Frears story's grotesque subject offers an opportunity for a sick audience payoff that is more "Death Wish" than social commentary, and he takes it. It works -- you'll laugh! you'll gulp! -- but it's cheap.
  81. Little Secrets
    Treu and screenwriter Jessica Barondes may not have their ears to the ground that's trod by real kids, but as they did with their previous film, "Wish Upon a Star," they're allowed to dream.
  82. I'm Not There.
    Some of it is brilliant, some is tedious and some is just plain incoherent.
  83. Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns)
    A fan's dream, A.J. Schnack's worshipful documentary about the musical duo They Might Be Giants does a nice job reflecting the thoughtful, quirky sensibility of its subjects' songs. Just don't expect to learn much about the guys themselves.
  84. Kippur
    Rather than heightening our sense of empathy, we become numbed by the repetition.
  85. Eight Below
    The dogs are fantastic. The humans need more work with their trainers.
  86. Copying Beethoven
    There are two reasons to see - and hear - Agnieszka Holland's Copying Beethoven. One is Ed Harris' performance as the nearly deaf and totally egocentric Ludwig van; the other is a cherry-picked 10-minute chunk of the composer's soaring Ninth Symphony.
  87. A Dirty Shame
    All trash, all all the time, a run-on burlesque of lust.
  88. The Holy Girl
    Alche has an amazingly expressive face and becomes such a magnetic presence that you'll feel a distinct need to rescue her.
  89. Tosca
    For the broader audience, this seems both suffocating and confusing -- True opera buffs, however, are more likely to feel thrilled, as if they're privy to a private production of the highest caliber.
  90. December Boys
    The movie is mildly notorious for a (relatively chaste) scene in which Radcliffe's character loses his virginity. But if you're looking to watch this former child star grownup, track down his classic guest turn on TV's "Extras" instead.
  91. The Mummy Returns
    The movie resembles a video game in which each victory whisks you to the next level, with slightly different antagonists and a faster pace.
  92. The Château
    Rudd delivers the best bad Franglais since Inspector Clouseau.
  93. The Four Feathers
    Ultimately, The Four Feathers is strong where its predecessors were weak (in the authenticity of combat) and weak where they were strong (in the larger-than-life quality of the characters). It's not a good exchange.
  94. The Heart of Me
    It has the feel of those romantic movies of the '40s that no one thinks are made anymore.
  95. Kill Bill: Vol. 1
    This long-awaited movie has been unwisely chopped into two pieces -- the second is due in February -- when it really needed to be one long, delirious ride.
  96. Luminarias
    There are so many small, satisfying moments when the women are allowed to be real that it's a jolt each time they become superficial symbols.
  97. Croupier
    There are certainly glimpses of his underused talent. But there aren't enough of those moments to elevate Croupier above the level of routine melodrama.
  98. The Art of Amália
    An unabashed celebration of her (Amalia) distinctive voice.
  99. The White Countess
    In any case, the movie moves only when she's (Richardson) in the center of it, and her complex performance as a woman balancing her dignity with her survival instincts is one of the year's very best.
  100. The Independent
    Dumb fun is the best way to describe The Independent, and I mean that as a compliment.
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