The New York Times' Scores

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For 20,271 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 20271
  2. Mixed: 8,430 out of 20271
  3. Negative: 2,464 out of 20271
20271 movie reviews
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  1. Medea
    No admirer of Mr. von Trier's work should miss this compelling rarity.
  2. A Simple Plan
    When you get the shivers watching this wintry tale unfold, it won't be from the cold.
  3. Insomnia
    The anomalous proliferation of scenic beauty gives Mr. Nolan irony to play with, and he uses it spectacularly. The director and his gifted cinematographer, Wally Pfister, are clearly turned on by all this wasted beauty.
  4. Buena Vista Social Club
    The concert scenes find the stage awash in such intense joy, camaraderie and nationalist pride that you become convinced that making music is a key to longevity and spiritual well-being.
  5. Ronin
    Ronin can be watched as appreciatively for its hard-boiled performances as for its visceral excitement.
  6. A Walk on the Moon
    Even when it turns turbulent, the film sustains its warm summer glow, and makes itself a conversation piece about the moral issues it means to raise.
  7. The Thin Blue Line
    Morris has fashioned a brilliant work of pulp fiction around this crime. [26 Aug 1988, p.C6]
  8. Dirty Pretty Things
    This film has a conquering spirit. The dankness is replaced by an optimistic blast of sunlight at the end, a contrast to the earlier lighting dimmed with human misery. Mr. Frears blasts away the blight, though he doesn't have to work to restore Okwe's dignity. It shines through from the start.
  9. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
    "E.T." is as contemporary as laser-beam technology, but it's full of the timeless longings expressed in children's literature of all eras.
  10. Teacher's Pet
    Marvelously quick-witted and gloriously goofy hand-drawn feature shows there's still more than 21 grams of life left in the form.
  11. The Quiet American
    Fowler may be the richest character of Mr. Caine's screen career. Slipping into his skin with an effortless grace, this great English actor gives a performance of astonishing understatement whose tone wavers delicately between irony and sadness.
  12. The Legend of Drunken Master
    Has enough going on to make it a classic. You'll want to own it.
  13. Osama
    Osama's unvarnished vulnerability, along with the director's combination of tough-mindedness and lyricism, prevents the movie from becoming at all sentimental; instead, it is beautiful, thoughtful and almost unbearably sad.
  14. Lisa Picard Is Famous
    This hilarious fake documentary -- deserves a place beside the comedies of Christopher Guest in the hall of fame of semi-deadpan spoofs.
  15. Happiness
    It has taken only two films, "Welcome to the Dollhouse" and now Happiness, for Todd Solondz to establish his as one of the most lacerating, funny and distinctive voices in American film.
  16. The Horse Whisperer
    Mr. Redford has found his own visually eloquent way to turn the potboiler into a panorama, with a deep-seated love for the Montana landscape against which his rapturously beautiful film unfolds.
  17. Grazia's Island
    Not since "Y Tu Mamá También" has a movie so palpably captured the down-to-earth, flesh-and-blood reality of high-spirited people living their lives without self-consciousness.
  18. Shattered Glass
    An astute and surprisingly gripping drama not only about the ethics of magazine writing, but also, more generally, about the subtle political and psychological dynamics of modern office culture.
  19. Blood Simple
    BLACK humor, abundant originality and a brilliant visual style make Joel Coen's Blood Simple a directorial debut of extraordinary promise.
  20. Bloody Sunday
    The level of accomplishment in the filmmaking is overwhelming.
  21. Chicken Run
    Doesn't try to cram messages of uplift down its audience's gullet. It's a great eggscape from banality.
  22. Harry Is Here to Help
    A strange and funny film, smart, complex and difficult to shake.
  23. The Agronomist
    It seems almost unthinkable that such a charismatic, generous and lively man could be gone. It also makes you understand what it means for a country like Haiti to lose a citizen like Jean Dominique.
  24. Concert for George
    The sweet, solemn music of George Harrison, who died two years ago, has rarely sounded more majestic than in the sweeping performances of the enlarged star-studded band that gathered in London at Royal Albert Hall on Nov. 29 to commemorate his legacy.
  25. The Insider
    Is still sleek, gripping entertainment with a raw-nerved, changeable camera style that helps to amplify its meaning.
  26. Raising Victor Vargas
    Delicate and altogether satisfying romantic comedy.
  27. Serpico
    It is galvanizing because of Al Pacino's splendid performance in the title role and because of the tremendous intensity that Mr. Lumet brings to this sort of subject. (Review of Original Release)
  28. Spellbound
    Enough drama, humor and unfiltered nail-biting suspense to put all the thrill-mongering screenwriters in Hollywood to shame.
  29. Time Out
    Recoing's performance is a sensitive portrayal of a man in the throes of an excruciating spiritual crisis.
  30. Bright Leaves
    By the end of this reflective, wise, often hilarious movie, you feel as though he (McElwee) has slapped a huge chunk of raw, palpitating life onto the screen.
  31. Dial M for Murder
    The thrills come in following a succession of dawnings in people's minds.But Mr. Hitchcock has presented this mental material on the screen with remarkable visual definition of developing intrigue and mood.
  32. The Station Agent
    The movie's writer and director, Tom McCarthy, has such an appreciation for quiet that it occupies the same space as a character in this film, a delicate, thoughtful and often hilarious take on loneliness.
  33. Calle 54
    Even better on a second viewing because the film is such a pure expression of the director's love for the music, a love so infectious it should leave you elated.
  34. Pretty Woman
    Something special.
  35. Bowfinger
    Smoothly directed and acted with glee... showing quick-witted comic spirit.
  36. Y Tu Mamá También
    Director Alfonso Cuarón works with a quicksilver fluidity, and the movie is fast, funny, unafraid of sexuality and finally devastating.
  37. The Wind Will Carry Us
    Its effects seem more like those of a poem or a piece of music than a movie. Requires the reverent darkness and communal solitude of a theater.
  38. Le Cercle Rouge (1970)
    Offers the kind of experience that makes you glad movies exist.
  39. A Civil Action
    It tells a finely nuanced tale of right, wrong and the gray area in between.
  40. 7 Days in September
    An almost unbearably powerful documentary.
  41. Nine Queens
    The kind of movie that seduces you into becoming putty in its manipulative card-sharking hands and making you enjoy being taken in by its shameless contrivance.
  42. Il Postino: The Postman
    A rueful, warmly affecting film featuring a wonderful performance by Mr. Troisi, The Postman would be attention-getting even without the sadness that overshadows it. [14 June 1995, p. C15]
  43. Goodbye, Dragon Inn
    Has a quiet, cumulative magic, whose source is hard to identify. Its simple, meticulously composed frames are full of mystery and feeling; it's an action movie that stands perfectly still.
  44. Va Savoir (Who Knows?)
    It's undeniably a trifle, but rarely is something like this done with such skill and, well, savoir-faire.
  45. The Shawshank Redemption
    There are times when The Shawshank Redemption comes dangerously close to sounding one of those "triumph of the spirit" notes. But most of it is eloquently restrained.
  46. Boyz n the Hood
    The film's strength is that it sustains an intimate and realistic tone. Mr. Fishburne, who is called upon to deliver several lectures, manages to do so with enormous dignity and grace, and makes Furious a compelling role model, someone on whom the whole film easily pivots.
  47. What Time Is It Over There?
    Tsai not only gives the audience a chance to breathe but also lets us luxuriate in the mood of deadpan melancholy his movie evokes so beautifully.
  48. Catch Me If You Can
    Supremely entertaining.
  49. Since Otar Left
    Sustains a perfect balance of pathos, humor and a clear-headed realism. One tiny misstep, and it could have tumbled into an abyss of tears.
  50. You Can Count on Me
    Melancholy little gem of a movie.
  51. Safe Conduct
    The movie is full of juices that give it a healthy, pungent flow.
  52. The Leopard (re-release)
    For the most part, Nino Rota's music provides a rich melodic surrounding for the pictorial magnificence, and a heretofore unknown Verdi waltz that is played at the ball at the finish appropriately supplements this remarkably vivid, panoramic, and eventually morbid show. (Review of Original Release)
  53. Read My Lips
    Like so many European pictures these days, Read My Lips seems destined to be remade in Hollywood, and it is unlikely to be improved by the addition of vainer actors, a simpler screenplay and flashier direction.
  54. The Good Girl
    There's more to everyone here than we're initially led to think. The Good Girl is like a neurotically charged post-millennial take on the trailer-park comedies that Jonathan Demme once claimed for himself.
  55. Gattaca
    A handsome and fully imagined work of cautionary futuristic fiction.
  56. The Rainmaker
    Drawing a parade of colorful performances from a constantly surprising cast, the curiously titled ''John Grisham's 'The Rainmaker' '' is Mr. Coppola's best and sharpest film in years.
  57. Russian Ark
    A magnificent conjuring act, an eerie historical mirage.
  58. The Ice Storm
    Elegant and deeply disquieting drama.
  59. Intolerable Cruelty
    Something not seen in movie theaters for a long time: an intelligent, modern screwball comedy, a minor classic on the order of competent, fast-talking curve balls about deception and greed like Mitchell Leisen's "Easy Living" and Billy Wilder's "Major and the Minor."
  60. Dead Man Walking
    Quietly courageous drama .
  61. The Original Kings of Comedy
    Their comedy gives audiences that have never seen anything like it a hilarious window on a new world.
  62. All or Nothing
    All the drinking, arguing and brooding, which in lesser hands might have produced oppressive and unvarying dreariness, somehow adds up to a tableau of extraordinary vividness and variety.
  63. Secrets & Lies
    Unfolds beautifully, with a rueful, knowing intelligence that rises above easy assumptions. [27 September 1996, p.C1]
  64. Topsy-Turvy
    One of those films that create a mix of erudition, pageantry and delectable acting opportunities, much as "Shakespeare in Love."
  65. The Return
    At once highly naturalistic and dreamily abstract, playing out its mythic themes through vibrantly detailed characterizations (and remarkable performances by the entire cast). The Return announces the arrival of a major new talent.
    • 98 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Au hasard Balthazar
    This is neither an easy film, nor, in the show biz sense, an entertaining one. It makes large demands upon its audience, and in return confers exceptional rewards.
  67. Flirting with Disaster
    Mr. Russell's wonderfully mad odyssey of a movie, in which a man sets out to find his biological parents and winds up meeting more weirdos than Alice found down the rabbit hole.
  68. O Brother, Where Art Thou?
    It is, all in all, a rambunctious and inspired ride in which the Coen brothers' voracious fascination with the arcana of American popular culture and their whiz-kid inventiveness reach new heights of whimsy.
  69. Sense and Sensibility
    Grandly entertaining...matches the Austen-based "Clueless" for sheer fun. [13 Dec 1995]
  70. Boys Don't Cry
    Stunning...a film much tougher and more transfixing than its wan title.
  71. Fargo
    For all its exaggerated ordinariness, this film seems to start where others leave off.
  72. Blind Shaft
    Deftly swings to a spartan, engrossing climax, and the final twists spell out what the murderers are made of and the setting responsible for creating them. It is a true piece of film magic.
  73. Deconstructing Harry
    This poisonous, brazenly autobiographical comedy shows off the best of Mr. Allen's misanthropic humor.
  74. Roger Dodger
    One of the juiciest male characters to pop up in an independent film this year.
  75. George Washington
    This dream of a movie is set in such a place; with its delicate shifts of tone, it could be a fairy tale by Faulkner
  76. All the Real Girls
    Remarkable for its genuine, unpretentious lyricism.
  77. Metallica: Some Kind of Monster
    You realize you are witnessing a psychodrama of novelistic intricacy and epic scope.
  78. Festival Express
    To watch the biggest stars of their time in casual conversation, trading riffs and passing bottles, without benefit of publicists, handlers and security goons is to relive an innocent, anarchic time in the entertainment business when music, not marketing, was at the center of the enterprise.
  79. Ten
    A work of inspired simplicity.
  80. American Beauty
    If you don't share the film's piercing vision of what really matters, someday you will.
  81. Best in Show
    This comic jigsaw puzzle is crammed with deliriously funny little bits.
  82. Memento
    A brilliant feat of rug-pulling, sure to delight fans of movies like "The Usual Suspects" and "Pi."
  83. Mostly Martha
    Extremely enjoyable, though a few degrees shy of perfection.
  84. Wag the Dog
    Wag the Dog, the poison-tipped political satire that's as scarily plausible as it is swift, hilarious and impossible to resist.
  85. Sexy Beast
    He's (Kingsley) pure violence, a sociopath who radiates menace even while sitting perfectly still mouthing pleasantries.
  86. Rain
    The visual beauty of the film, rather than distracting from the troubling story, makes it more troubling still.
  87. Monster's Ball
    The raw intimacy of some of the scenes -- whether they take place at a diner, in the death house or in the bedroom -- is breathtaking.
  88. Toy Story 2
    Making sure that computer-generated animation will never be the same.
  89. A Bug's Life
    Makes jaunty, imaginative use of both extraordinary technology and bold storytelling possibilities within the insect world.
  90. Monsters, Inc.
    There hasn't been a film in years to use creative energy as efficiently as Monsters, Inc.
  91. The Straight Story
    Switching gears radically, bravely defying conventional wisdom about what it takes to excite moviegoers, Lynch presents the flip side of "Blue Velvet" and turns it into a supremely improbable triumph.
  92. The Boxer
    Mr. Day-Lewis, looking wearily rugged and battling his way through several plausible boxing matches, once again breathes fire into the character of a high-minded loner, and his vitality lends real force to the film's moral arguments.
  93. Bridget Jones's Diary
    Ms. Zellweger accomplishes the small miracle of making Bridget both entirely endearing and utterly real.
  94. High Fidelity
    Witty, exquisitely fine-tuned screen adaptation of Nick Hornby's 1995 novel
  95. Holes
    One of the few recent movies I have seen that plunged me into that rare, giddy state of pleasurable confusion, of not knowing what would happen next, which I associate with the reading and moviegoing experiences of my own childhood. But there is no reason that children should have a monopoly on this primal, wonderful experience.
  96. Lilya 4-Ever
    The most remarkable achievement of the film is its presentation of Lilya's story as both an archetypal case study and a personal drama whose spunky central character you come to care about so deeply that you want to cry out a warning at each step toward her ruination.
  97. Red Lights
    The brilliant, sinister French thriller Red Lights is a twisty road movie in which every sign points toward catastrophe.
  98. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring
    An exquisitely simple movie. Mr. Kim manages to isolate something essential about human nature and at the same time, even more astonishingly, to comprehend the scope of human experience.
  99. Alias Betty
    Such an accomplished piece of filmmaking that it interweaves enough characters and themes to fill three movies.
  100. This Is Spinal Tap
    ''It's such a fine line between stupid and . . . '' ''And clever,'' muse the band members collectively. It certainly is- and the delightful This Is Spinal Tap stays on the right side of that line.
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