The New York Times' Scores

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For 20,269 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: 9,377 out of 20269
  2. Mixed: 8,428 out of 20269
  3. Negative: 2,464 out of 20269
20269 movie reviews
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  1. When in Rome
    There are dull stabs at verbal wit that leave you baffled, bored or slightly grossed out.
  2. Happy Tears
    Mr. Lichtenstein seems to want your tears. Nothing wrong there. The problem is that, because he never settles persuasively into one groove -- you don’t believe the tears or the smiles or anything in between -- he can’t begin to approach the complex contradictions suggested by his movie’s title.
  3. Nine
    Straining to capture artistic frenzy, it descends into vulgar chaos, less a homage to Federico Fellini’s “8 ½” (its putative inspiration) than a travesty.
  4. Pandorum
    According to the press notes, pandorum means “Orbital Dysfunctional Syndrome”; whatever that is, by the end of the movie I was convinced I had caught it.
  5. Law Abiding Citizen
    Wears its preposterousness with a certain pride. It’s about the cat-and-mouse game between two very smart guys, and it’s perfectly happy to be as dumb as it wants.
  6. Antichrist
    The scandal of Antichrist is not that it is grisly or upsetting but that it is so ponderous, so conceptually thin and so dull.
  7. Cop Out
    It’s a phoned-in, gutless piece of hack work that reminds you of other, better films in the same vein.
  8. Taken
    Taken starts in low gear and almost immediately stalls out.
  9. I Hate Valentine's Day
    You might blame Nora Ephron, whose screenplay for “When Harry Met Sally” established the formula that I Hate Valentine’s Day runs into the ground. Compared with this, Ms. Ephron is Chekhov.
  10. Happy Gilmore
    Doesn't deliver.
  11. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
    Try as it might to be refined and provocative, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer never rises above the pedestrian creepiness of its conceit.
  12. 300
    Another movie -- Matt Stone and Trey Parker's "Team America," whose wooden puppets were more compelling actors than most of the cast of 300 -- calculated the cost [of freedom] at $1.05. I would happily pay a nickel less, in quarters or arcade tokens, for a vigorous 10-minute session with the video game that 300 aspires to become.
  13. Miss March
    The problem with Miss March is that it isn't very funny.
  14. Mindhunters
    A quintessential Renny Harlin film: a big, dumb, loud action movie.
  15. White Noise
    A film worthy neither of Mr. Keaton's talents nor even a desperate horror fan's attention.
  16. Boogeyman
    The filmmakers are smart enough to keep the monster out of sight for a long time and then to show only glimpses, but a similar tactic of providing only glimpses of plot and character is disastrous.
  17. Bigger Than the Sky
    Finally it becomes clear that Mr. Corley's film is meant to be a tribute to the love of theater. It has just been posing as the story of one man's finding himself.
  18. Cursed
    It's not bad enough to make you curse, but you are likely to laugh when you should scream, and to roll your eyes when you are meant to laugh.
  19. Man of the House
    Nearly every one of the film's emotional scenes is too predictable to hit its mark, but Mr. Jones's dry delivery has its moments.
  20. The Ring Two
    Despite Mr. Nakata's track record and the radiant presence of its star, Naomi Watts, The Ring Two is a dud.
  21. Eating Out
    Think of it as a modern-day variant on a Shakespearean comedy, only without the verbal felicity or dramatic structure.
  22. Palindromes
    The human landscape of Palindromes is a vista of grotesqueness, dishonesty and creepiness. These are qualities Mr. Solondz has explored before, but this time he fails to make them interesting, partly because he lets himself and the audience off the hook.
  23. 15: The Movie
    The law of averages demands that every once in a while a movie must come along starring young nonprofessional actors who aren't very good. That's unfortunately the case in 15.
  24. House of D
    The burden of the story, which is maudlin and entirely unbelievable, weighs down even the more credible performances.
  25. The Girl from Monday
    Evokes a mood of tenderness. Beyond that, it is a weightless, sentimental and intellectually lazy effort from an independent filmmaker whose movies seem increasingly insubstantial.
  26. Dead & Breakfast
    Not a shred of suspense enlivens the proceedings, and the movie's idea of humor is having a man slip and slide on a floor covered in blood.
  27. Writer of O
    A most unfortunate film that combines standard documentary techniques, including talking-head interviews, with some maladroit dramatizations from Aury's life and her novel.
  28. A Hole in One
    With its heavy symbolism and awkward, lurching pace, A Hole in One leaves viewers with little more than the vague conviction - which I think I already had going in - that falling in love is better than an ice pick to the brain.
  29. The Longest Yard
    Softer, louder and cleaner than the 1974 version, the new film sentimentalizes the prisoners and the game, filing down their sharpest edges so that winning becomes a matter of triumph rather than resistance.
  30. Slutty Summer
    The film is a labor of love for Casper Andreas, who wrote, directed and starred in this first feature. For the actors he has chosen, it's a labor of lust, with copious necking and grappling required. For the audience, it's just a labor.
  31. The Bridge of San Luis Rey
    May be the opposite of trash, but it is something just as disposable: dead literary meat. Dragged down by a stuffy screenplay clotted with generic period oratory, overdressed to the point that the actors seem physically impeded by their ornate costumes, and hopelessly muddled in its storytelling, the movie is edited with a haphazardness that leaves many dots unconnected.
  32. Ethan Mao
    By the time we reach the "Butch Cassidy"-inspired climax, any filaments of credibility still clinging to these characters have completely disappeared.
  33. Yes
    Yes is not just a movie, in other words, it's a poem. A bad poem. There is no denying Ms. Potter's skill at versifying - or for that matter, at composing clear, striking visual images - but her intricate, measured lines amount to doggerel, not art.
  34. Dark Water
    Wildly overproduced and filled with fussy flourishes that make even a derelict hallway look like a million bucks, Dark Water fails to rustle up either meaning or meaningful scares.
  35. Must Love Dogs
    Proving once again that skillful performances can't create something out of almost nothing - the best they can do is make it palatable.
  36. Stealth
    What's interesting about Stealth isn't its nitwit story... No, what's interesting about this movie - and many others of its kind - is that it continues the love affair Hollywood, that hotbed of liberalism, has long had with militarism.
  37. Saint Ralph
    This crude, inspirational tear-jerker is as sweet as a bowl of instant oatmeal smothered in molasses. It should please those who honestly believe that Santa Claus and God are synonymous; others may retch.
  38. Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo
    There is an essential meanness to the entire project, tapping the manipulative power of taunts. Such jokes don't jibe with the times, the culture.
  39. The Great Raid
    A tedious World War II epic that slogs across the screen like a forced march in quicksand.
  40. Undiscovered
    Though filled with romantic contrivances and overlong musical numbers, Undiscovered is curiously lifeless. Bland actors portray single-cell characters in a plot scarcely more diverting than Ms. Simpson's reality vehicle, "The Ashlee Simpson Show."
  41. An Unfinished Life
    Solemn, sentimental bore of a movie that suffocates in its own predictability and watered-down psychobabble.
  42. Cote d'Azur
    Neither funny nor sexy, nor leavened by the wistful laissez-faire wisdom of the typical sophisticated Gallic comedy, it is less than a trifle.
  43. Stay
    Marc Forster takes a maximalist approach to this mumbo jumbo, which means that in addition to lots of wacky angles, shiny surfaces, seemingly endless stairs, and sets of twins, triplets and quadruplets, he deploys the unsettling vision of three talented actors - Ewan McGregor, Naomi Watts and Ryan Gosling - straining credulity and neck tendons in the service of serious claptrap.
  44. Chicken Little
    A hectic, uninspired pastiche of catchphrases and clichés, with very little wit, inspiration or originality to bring its frantically moving images to genuine life.
  45. Derailed
    Riddled with holes and undeveloped characters, and marred by lurching rhythms that may reflect some triage editing, so it's hard to see what Mr. Hafstrom brings to this film other than a murky palette.
  46. The Ice Harvest
    There is very little fun in The Ice Harvest, which wouldn't pose a problem if the film had some fleshed-out ideas to go along with the booze, the booty and the recycled plot points.
  47. Just Friends
    Overcompensates for its sloppiness with loud, knockabout farce.
  48. The Kid & I
    Good intentions do not guarantee good movies, or even watchable ones. A sad case in point is The Kid and I.
  49. Cheaper by the Dozen 2
    This messy blend of silly slapstick and oversentimentality probably won't please children, teenagers or adults.
  50. Hoodwinked!
    Less sassy than shrill, more crass than clever, the maiden cartoon from the Weinstein Company turns the Little Red Riding Hood legend into a sub- "Shrek" bummer that appears to have been manufactured for the pleasure of tone-deaf kids with a thing for sarcasm, extreme sports, and Andy Dick.
  51. Rumor Has It...
    I suppose Rumor Has It could be worse, though at the moment I'm at a loss to say just how.
  52. Last Holiday
    As witless as it is formulaic.
  53. Underworld: Evolution
    The fascist undercurrents of this battle remain unexplored. Maybe one day, Hollywood will figure out that pouring acting-challenged starlets into black neoprene and sticking them in front of a blue screen do not a movie make. We can but hope.
  54. Film Geek
    Film Geek has a likable premise, an unusual setting in downtown Portland, Ore., and a pleasantly homemade indie feel. Unfortunately, Scotty Pelk, as written by James Westby and played by Mr. Malkasian, is actually so irritating, so genuinely hard to take, that like the rest of the characters in this semiautobiographical movie, we soon find ourselves itching to get away from him.
  55. Annapolis
    Annapolis has enough material for an exciting trailer. But that's all the movie really is: a trailer tricked out with protracted boxing sequences and an undernourished romantic subplot that culminates in a single tepid kiss.
  56. Final Destination 3
    The third installment lacks the novelty of the first, the panache of the second and the twisted sense of humor that gives the series its participatory sense of fun.
  57. Date Movie
    Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg, who wrote the screenplay, have crammed dozens of movie parodies into this deliberately juvenile spoof of romantic comedies. Mr. Seltzer, who directed, has made very few of them funny.
  58. Doogal
    An animated clunker.
  59. Ultraviolet
    Mr. Wimmer is more concerned with fetishizing his heroine and patronizing his audience. The verdict? Ultrasilly.
  60. Sorry, Haters
    Unfolds with such utter looniness that the horrible final moments are more likely to inspire laughter than shock. Casually insulting our emotions and intelligence, Mr. Stanzler seems to have shaped his film with one goal in mind: to prove that audacity and recklessness are acceptable substitutes for craft and common sense. Needless to say, they're not.
  61. She's the Man
    Everything projects as if for the benefit of a nearsighted and dimwitted ticket holder at the back of the room. To his credit, Mr. Fickman has mastered one device unique to the cinema, making repeated use of the corny training montage.
  62. Adam & Steve
    The gay, independent comedy Adam & Steve is as crude and nonsensical as any number of B-list studio equivalents, with the added disadvantages of a low budget and shaky direction by Craig Chester, who wrote and also stars.
  63. The Benchwarmers
    The Benchwarmers is the sort of trash that Hollywood does really well. It is also, to quote Mr. Schneider, "a master's thesis on the form of a quintessential Adam Sandler comedy."
  64. When Do We Eat?
    In his sour little movie When Do We Eat?, the director Salvador Litvak, like many before him, misses the target, landing instead in the adjacent territories of Tries Too Hard and Bad Taste.
  65. American Dreamz
    The jokes don't just fizzle into insignificance; they flop about with gaudy ineffectualness, gasping for air like newly landed trout.
  66. The Sentinel
    The question is why. Why would a star of Michael Douglas's stature and intelligence attach himself to a Washington thriller as deeply ridiculous, suspense-free and potentially career-damaging as The Sentinel?
  67. Hard Candy
    During the ensuing narrative unpleasantness and visual incoherence (meaningless choker close-ups, pointless slow motion), Hayley subjects Jeff to a range of torture, all in the name of, well, what? Despite the two fine performances, it's hard to say.
  68. RV
    Nowadays no family movie is complete without a values-oriented agenda and a bountiful supply of fecal matter, and RV supplies both.
  69. Kiss Me Again
    The movie is so earnest that it's embarrassing.
  70. See No Evil
    See No Evil devolves into an increasingly bloody and creative string of butcherings and impalings.
  71. Mouth to Mouth
    The upbeat ending can't erase the lingering aura of being trapped in an insane asylum with the Manson family.
  72. The Omen
    Terminally glum and waterlogged.
  73. Click
    Following the lead tendered by the credited screenwriters, Steve Koren and Mark O'Keefe, the director Frank Coraci struggles to push the character toward the kind of age-appropriate complexity lost on Mr. Sandler, forgetting that his star only works when, as all those ponderous bosoms suggest, he's un-weaned.
  74. Say Uncle
    Say Uncle may be trying to address gay persecution and social paranoia, but it mostly comes off as a study of arrested development. The movie's most laudable gamble is its refusal to make either Maggie or Paul sympathetic, but the moral subtleties are obscured by a one-dimensional script and a protagonist as self-centered and lacking in expression as a fetus.
  75. Mini's First Time
    Delectably vulgar for 20 minutes or so, almost too bad to be true, but because it lacks the demented conviction of real camp, the glint of madness that keeps a bauble like "Valley of the Dolls" afloat, it soon loses its cheap-thrills appeal.
  76. America: Freedom to Fascism
    The mess we're in never looked so messy.
  77. Another Gay Movie
    A rude, rollicking and exceedingly raunchy attempt to turn "American Pie" into "American Quiche."
  78. Vacationland
    A generic coming-of-age movie whose arrival on the scene suggests that the audience for gay indie clunkers is inexhaustible.
  79. Pulse
    The American version of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's "Pulse" mimics the plot fundamentals, but lacks any traces of Mr. Kurosawa’s creepy minimalism and conceptual rigor.
  80. Zoom
    Bleeds boredom from every frame.
  81. Material Girls
    The real-life sisters Hilary and Haylie Duff star in this incompetent spin on the poor-little-rich-girl story.
  82. The Quiet
    Neither ambitious enough to take seriously nor sleazy enough to enjoy, The Quiet flirts with the trappings of exploitation cinema without going all the way.
  83. Crank
    For a movie premised on unrelenting action, Crank proves fatally turgid.
  84. The Wicker Man
    A movie like this can survive an absurd premise but not incompetent execution. And Mr. LaBute, never much of an artist with the camera, proves almost comically inept as a horror-movie technician...It's neither haunting nor amusing; just boring.
  85. Haven
    From a producer of "Crash" comes Haven, an even phonier exercise in manufactured conflict, facile irony and preposterous contrivance.
  86. All the King's Men
    Nothing in the picture works. It is both overwrought and tedious, its complicated narrative bogging down in lyrical voiceover, long flashbacks and endless expository conversations between people speaking radically incompatible accents.
  87. School for Scoundrels
    Billy Bob Thornton's leer is much in evidence in the shoddy comedy School for Scoundrels, though the tackiness of the film, its lazy direction and its self-satisfied stupidity may mean that Mr. Thornton curled his lip about the production rather than for it.
  88. El Cortez
    The script, by Chris Haddock, leaves numerous questions unanswered. It also reflects the character depth and conversational complexity of a 14-year-old’s first effort at fiction.
  89. One-Third
    When it finally seems likely to happen, the film crashes to a sudden and unsatisfying conclusion. But this is the first part of a projected trilogy and, assuming these characters’ lives -- or deaths -- will be further explored, it’s really just the beginning.
  90. Kettle of Fish
    Premised entirely on nonsense.
  91. Cocaine Cowboys
    Cocaine Cowboys is a tabloid headline, a movie as oppressive and inarticulate as the lives it represents.
  92. The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause
    One of the good things about bad movies is that when someone sneers about the unworthiness of a perfectly mediocre film like, say, "Crash," you can turn to a seriously unworthy film like, say, The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause and laugh. Ho. Ho. Ho.
  93. Color of the Cross
    Though the film's final, disturbing image forces race to the forefront and belatedly raises wider issues of persecution, its most controversial suggestion is not that Jesus might have been black but that he might have been a really terrible actor.
  94. Eating Out 2: Sloppy Seconds
    A Rubik’s Cube of shifting sexual orientation and elaborate sex fantasies, “Sloppy Seconds” gathers all the accouterments of soft pornography -- cheesy music, low-rent acting and attractively framed genitals -- into a plot of stunning imbecility.
  95. Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Taj
    National Lampoon’s Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Taj harnesses smut and silliness to an oddly innocent tale of true love.
  96. We Are Marshall
    A movie like We Are Marshall stands or falls on its ability to make you feel the pain and loss of individuals in a place where community pride and football are one and the same. As the film, directed by McG (the "Charlie's Angels" movies) from a wooden screenplay by Jamie Linden, follows a handful of Huntington residents during the months after the accident, not one of them comes fully to life.
  97. The Dead Girl
    Just when it seems as though the language of insult and humiliation couldn’t get any nastier, the movie escalates the barrage.
  98. Factory Girl
    The kindest thing to be said about this deluxe photo spread of a film is that Sienna Miller's Edie and Guy Pearce's Andy capture their characters' images and body language with relative precision.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Happily N'Ever After
    This is another tired kidsploitation product.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Hitcher
    The movie genuflects toward pop depth in a scene where Grace sprawls on a motel bed watching Alfred Hitchcock’s "Birds," another thriller about implacable, undefined evil, but there’s a difference between refusing to give viewers the answers and having nothing to say. For all its death-metal vigor, The Hitcher falls into the latter camp.
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