The New York Times' Scores

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For 20,280 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: 9,381 out of 20280
  2. Mixed: 8,435 out of 20280
  3. Negative: 2,464 out of 20280
20280 movie reviews
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  1. Falling
    It’s a theme as familiar as life. The five women, all perfectly cast and almost perfectly played.
  2. The Sugar Curtain
    A pensive valentine to literacy programs and childhood idealism left in the ashes of broken families and an economically bifurcated society.
  3. Zebraman
    Driven less by civic duty than by the need to escape his dreary life, Zebraman is a tragic, touching figure too often obscured by Kankurou Kudo’s hyperactive screenplay and a special-effects team drunk on alien slime.
  4. Love for Sale
    Not half as exotic or as compelling as Mr. Aïnouz’s 2002 film, “Madame Satã,” which examined the fantastic life of a transvestite prostitute and underground entertainer in 1930s and ’40s Rio de Janeiro. But it shares the earlier film’s deep sympathy with sexual free spirits in a rigid macho society.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Beauty Remains
    The story seems to be occurring in a China of the imagination, an airless place at once sensually ripe and icily formal. Like “Far From Heaven,” it denies its characters and viewers the ecstatic release they crave.
  6. The Price of Sugar
    Like most documentary polemics, it simplifies the issues it confronts and selects facts that bolster its black-and-white, heroes-and-villains view of raw economic power.
    • The New York Times
  7. Mr. Untouchable
    There is some acknowledgment of the terrible effects of the drug trade on residents of Harlem and other poor New York neighborhoods, but for the most part Mr. Untouchable clings to the standard hip-hop mythology of the pusher as entrepreneur, rebel, celebrity and folk hero.
  8. What Would Jesus Buy?
    At the very least, the documentary What Would Jesus Buy? might make a viewer think twice about that next purchase at the Gap.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Midnight Eagle
    Izuru Narushima’s film is a personal and political melodrama with perfunctory gunplay and explosions.
  10. Man in the Chair
    Man in the Chair has few surprises. Once its machinery is humming, it settles into a soothing fable of a last hurrah.
  11. The Unforeseen
    There’s nothing wrong with Mr. Redford and his love of nature. But there’s something irritatingly softheaded about the generic, nostalgia-tinged blandishments that the film finally resorts to -- a Wendell Berry poem, a grizzled old farmer wielding a sickle -- in place of truly hard questions and solutions that may effect meaningful change. With the polar ice caps melting, I want more than poetry and blame. I want a plan.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fighting for Life
    Some of the most upsetting images are from a century and a half ago: Mathew Brady photos of the Battle of Antietam during the Civil War, the conflict that gave birth to modern battlefield surgery.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Meat Loaf: In Search of Paradise
    In Search of Paradise portrays Meat Loaf as an obsessive, self-punishing performer, striving in vain to put on a live show that matches the visions in his head.
  14. Anamorph
    Mr. Miller and his co-writer, Tom Phelan, manage to get under your skin largely with borrowed implements, though they receive solid support from Willem Dafoe and the resourceful veteran cinematographer Fred Murphy.
  15. Operation Filmmaker
    Although Ms. Davenport pushes the analogy between this modest rescue operation with America’s invasion of Iraq a bit too forcefully, she nonetheless makes her point with persuasive, touching candor.
  16. To the Limit
    This disorienting, dippy documentary makes one thing abundantly clear: for the Hubers, the toughest climb may be into their own heads.
  17. Irina Palm
    Irina Palm is, for the most part, a phony trifle, but at its heart, somehow, is a real and fascinating person.
  18. The Stone Angel
    This multigenerational family history has enough gripping moments to hold your attention, but ultimately it leaves you frustrated by its failure to braid subplots and characters into a gripping narrative.
  19. American Teen
    This is the kind of movie the people in it might have made, which means that its revelatory power as an investigation of teenage life in America is limited.
  20. Canary
    In images veering from literal to cryptic to surreal, the movie presents a society where the weak are exploited and the vulnerable unprotected.
  21. In Search of a Midnight Kiss
    In Search of a Midnight Kiss has its derivative moments along with awkward patches -- the inelegantly shaped climax tries to force uninteresting parallels between the two central couples -- it manages the difficult task of creating a sustained, plausible and inviting world.
  22. Shoot on Sight
    The movie's lack of subtlety is countered by an unswerving commitment to impartiality.
  23. The Universe of Keith Haring
    A loving if routine primer on this bright young man.
  24. Shadows
    As Shadows vacillates between the historical and the occult, you may snicker at the way hackneyed horror movie conventions are redeployed for more serious ends. But you won't be bored. The movie is well acted (especially by Ms. Stanojevska) and very sexy.
  25. Must Read After My Death
    An alternately fascinating and disquietingly intimate portrait of a 1960s American family falling apart.
  26. Sex Positive
    The movie jolts you with the realization that the AIDS epidemic and the public debate about such issues have retreated so far under the news radar as to be half-forgotten.
  27. Quiet Chaos
    Thankfully, Mr. Grimaldi and the screenwriters have no great lessons to impart or messages to deliver, and the film, while uneven -- sometimes too on the nose, sometimes anecdotal and diffuse -- is generally absorbing, thanks mostly to the quality of the acting.
  28. Gogol Bordello Non-Stop
    Choppy, high-energy documentary.
  29. Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly
    The movie develops, as far as it does, through repeated visual motifs, jokes and symbols.
  30. L'ennemi intime
    The movie goes flat, though, when Mr. Siri and his co-writer, Patrick Rotman, shift their attention from the action to the moral math of guerrilla warfare.
  31. Splinterheads
    Splinterheads gains traction from an eclectic cast that knows how to work a line.
  32. Ten9Eight: Shoot for the Moon
    It’s the type of film you might expect to see at a fund-raising dinner or a convention banquet, not in a commercial theater. That said, it’s a very well-made piece of boosterism.
  33. Until the Light Takes Us
    Absorbing, low-key documentary.
  34. Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year
    Mr. Kapoor, a heartthrob who has quickly become a star playing cads, turns in a skillfully understated performance. His Harpreet is an old-school hero: solid, righteous, compassionate. You can’t help cheering for him.
  35. Pop Star on Ice
    One part hagiography and two parts psychotherapy. Together they showcase a talent both formidable and erratic, its bright and shining peaks sliding inexplicably into valleys of disaster.
  36. Formosa Betrayed
    Mr. Van Der Beek, manlier than in his “Dawson Creek” days, gives an able performance in a movie whose Asian actors tend to overplay the intrigue in an exaggerated 1940s style, exchanging sinister meaningful looks and, in general, hamming it up.
  37. Delta
    Unfolding like a medieval horror movie, Delta is sometimes laughable but often admirable.
  38. Lbs.
    Those concerned with obesity issues may find Lbs. authentic and inspirational. Otherwise it’s an earnest little low-budget indie without much to distinguish it beyond the appearances of Miriam Shor and Sharon Angela.
  39. Don McKay
    Quirky goes a surprisingly long way before stalling out in Don McKay, an oddball comedy with the knowing, festering heart of a neo-noir.
  40. Who Do You Love
    Has neither the star power nor the epic sense of itself that infused “Cadillac Records,” the 2008 film on the same subject.
  41. Handsome Harry
    A powerfully acted but strident road movie.
  42. Just Wright
    A formulaic sports romance with the texture of a strawberry smoothie.
  43. Mother and Child
    You may not quite trust Mother and Child -- its soft spots and fuzzy edges give it away -- but you can believe just about everyone in it.
  44. Touching Home
    Suffused with a glow of apple-cheeked nostalgia that often clings to baseball movies. The movie may be set in the present, but its likable clean-cut twins exude more than a whiff of gee-whiz 1950s innocence.
  45. Holy Rollers
    Mr. Eisenberg and particularly Mr. Bartha give appropriately twitchy, live-wire performances, and the film tells its basically bleak story lucidly and with touches of dark humor.
  46. Cyrus
    Cyrus is more finely tuned than their earlier movies ("The Puffy Chair," "Baghead"), but it shares a similar, almost aggressive lack of ambition. John doesn't work hard and neither do the Duplasses, who don't want their audiences to break a sweat either. That's too bad, because Cyrus is more interesting and fun when you're recoiling at the effrontery of its comedy and not its conventionality.
  47. Wah Do Dem
    Horizons are expanded and exoticism explored in Wah Do Dem, a shaggy road movie about relinquishing your comforts to find your bliss.
  48. South of the Border
    As anyone who remembers "JFK," his 1991 film about the Kennedy assassination, can attest, Mr. Stone has his own paranoid tendencies, but they are muted in this provocative, if shallow, exaltation of Latin American socialism.
  49. Winnebago Man
    A small, mildly entertaining documentary.
  50. Kisses
    Kisses may strike you as either ingeniously magical or insufferably cute, depending on your taste. But more than the story, which circles back on itself, the natural performances of its young stars, Shane Curry and especially Kelly O'Neill, nonprofessional actors, lend the movie a core of integrity.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    MASH
    Although it is impudent, bold, and often very funny, it lacks the sense of order (even in the midst of disorder) that seems the special province of successful comedy.
  52. Smash His Camera
    In Smash His Camera Mr. Galella emerges as a kindred soul for the curious documentarian and as a large, complicated personality in his own right, not entirely likable but admirable for his persistence and the quickness of his index finger.
  53. Going the Distance
    Romantic comedies nowadays tend to be either aggressively coarse or artificially sweet, and Going the Distance finds a workable middle ground.
  54. Secretariat
    The bigger and truer stars of this enjoyable, sometimes accidentally entertaining movie are the five horses that take turns playing Secretariat.
  55. I Spit on Your Grave
    Female-empowerment fantasy or just plain prurience, "Grave" is extremely efficient grindhouse. If there is any message here at all, it's don't mess with a novelist: being creative is her job.
  56. Last Letters from Monte Rosa
    What leaves a bad taste in the mouth is not the film itself, which is passable for a low-budget war picture, but the fact that neither the official Web site nor the press notes even suggest that it largely has been scavenged from an existing movie.
  57. The American
    It is a reasonably skillful exercise in genre and style, a well-made vessel containing nothing in particular, though some of its features - European setting, slow pacing, full-frontal female nudity - are more evocative of the art house than of the multiplex.
  58. It's Kind of a Funny Story
    There are humor and pathos, but a crucial dimension of intensity is missing. The best I can say is that it's kind of a good movie.
  59. Due Date
    Equal parts appealing and appalling innocence, with a spark of anarchic menace, Mr. Galifianakis is good enough to make you almost forget the movie.
    • The New York Times
      • Posted Dec 15, 2010
  60. Catfish
    When the going gets weird, Hunter S. Thompson used to say, the weird turn pro, but these filmmakers never transcend their own amateurism. They turn what could have been a brilliant exploration of the hidden corners of contemporary reality into an opportunity for gawking and condescension.
  61. Max Manus
    Buffed to an expensive-looking gloss and dressed in period-perfect finery, Max Manus has an old-fashioned sincerity that entertains without engaging.
  62. It's a Wonderful Afterlife
    May be a busy trifle, but it has its good-natured charms and agreeable gross-outs.
  63. Sequestro: A Story of Kidnapping
    Filming over four years and tracking several cases, the Brazilian director Jorge W. Atalla favors a fevered shooting style that's repetitious and disorienting but also effortlessly dramatic.
  64. Morning Glory
    A passably amusing romantic comedy with a laugh-strewn script that's almost undone by the hard sell of an enterprise that drills every emotional beat into your head.
  65. Made in Dagenham
    Uplifting it may be, but to swallow it whole is to believe in happily ever after.
  66. Letters to Father Jaakob
    Letters transforms a picture-postcard location and odd-couple narrative into a pretty, and pretty predictable, snooze. Yet the acting is flawless, the tone gentle and observational, and Leila's transformation, when it occurs, is unforced and unaccompanied by pious lecturing.
  67. As Good as Dead
    Several varieties of creepy run through As Good as Dead, a gruesomely alluring tale of long-simmering revenge.
  68. The Warrior's Way
    The sometimes impressive visual effects make these battles entertaining, in a mindless way, but it's impossible to work up any feeling about them. The only thing supplying that is the occasional laugh, pout or gurgle by Ms. Rudd.
  69. The Anchorage
    At several points the depiction of Ulla's isolation takes on slasher-movie overtones, which undercuts the general solemnity but doesn't really add anything to the experience.
  70. Rachel
    Regrettably, the film, almost devoid of music, is drastically undermined at its end by an inadvertently comic rap tribute by the Kansas City performance artist to the "American citizen with Palestinian blood."
  71. Punching the Clown
    Holding things together are Mr. Phillips's quiet charm and his songs, which really are funny.
  72. Disco and Atomic War
    Disco and Atomic War describes propaganda battles between the Soviet Union and the West, with Estonian Communist officials charged to gain the upper hand, but they were helpless amid the onslaught.
  73. Heartless
    Best appreciated for its sustained creepy vibe and sporadically arresting images, Heartless moves from one outré moment to another, from one self-conscious allusion to the next ("Donnie Darko" and "Taxi Driver"). It doesn't go anywhere special or much of anywhere, though it goes there in appreciably icky style.
  74. Biutiful
    Mr. Bardem, best known to American audiences for his chillingly persuasive embodiment of evil in "No Country for Old Men," combines muscular, charismatic physicality with an almost delicate sensitivity, and this blend of the rough and the tender gives Biutiful a measure of emotional credibility that it may not entirely deserve.
  75. Justin Bieber: Never Say Never
    Everyone involved in "Never Say Never" is working overtime to prove that he is, as one of them puts it, "just a regular kid who had a dream," while everything about the movie screams the opposite.
  76. Gnomeo and Juliet
    There is some fun to be found in this goofy riff on Shakespeare.
  77. Poison
    Poison, which won the grand prize as the best fiction work at this year's Sundance Film Festival, is an imaginative film that, like the infectious Tom Graves, is eventually overwhelmed by its ambitions. The movie needs to evoke more than the ghost of Genet to give it resonance.
  78. Willets Point
    Willets Point may not be the slickest of movies, but what it lacks in polish it more than makes up for in heart.
  79. Beijing Taxi
    The film works quite well as a melancholy travelogue - an elevated version of something you might see on cable television - but its aspirations for depth of feeling or more profound social commentary aren't quite realized.
  80. If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle
    As the movie becomes more explosive - and more demanding of its cast - it loses some of the quiet, careful intensity that made Silviu's situation worth attending to in the first place. The seams of the narrative start to show, and by the end you are more aware of the filmmakers' ideas than of the character's life.
  81. I'm Dangerous with Love
    The film, though, might have been more powerful with a little less grit. A few minutes of dispassionate discussion by experts about ibogaine and the obstacles to its legalization in the United States would have enhanced the film without damaging its street cred.
  82. Twelve Thirty
    Above all, it loves its characters and the actors who play them. A fearless, talented filmmaking auteur working on a limited budget, Mr. Lipsky insists on doing it his way and letting the chips fall where they may. More power to him.
  83. Kaboom
    Chaotic, trifling, oddly likable film.
  84. Hanna
    In the end there might not be much to this tale other than titillation, but there's plenty to be said for Ms. Ronan, who was the best thing about "Atonement" and holds her ground against forceful screen presences like Ms. Blanchett and Mr. Bana.
  85. Madea's Big Happy Family
    This time the suds outweigh the humor, and to its credit Mr. Perry's script doesn't duck tragic consequences.
  86. Vanishing on 7th Street
    The story, which starts promisingly only to stop, restart, sputter and come to a wheezing, disappointing puff of nada, proves the least satisfying part of the whole. The finale certainly isn't earned, but all the nasty, tiny jolts throughout the movie do prick the skin nicely.
  87. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2
    Despite the slow start Mr. Condon closes the series in fine, smooth style. He gives fans all the lovely flowers, conditioned hair and lightly erotic, dreamy kisses they deserve.
  88. The Help
    Save for Ms. Davis's, however, the performances are almost all overly broad, sometimes excruciatingly so, characterized by loud laughs, bugging eyes and pumping limbs.
  89. Super 8
    Like his (Abrams) previous features, "Mission: Impossible III" and "Star Trek," Super 8 is an enticing package without much inside.
  90. The Amazing Spider-Man
    Mr. Webb's Spider-Man movie works only because he keeps the whole package, at least until the requisite final blowout, tethered to his two appealing leads.
  91. The Hunger Games
    Again and again Katniss rescues herself with resourcefulness, guts and true aim, a combination that makes her insistently watchable, despite Mr. Ross's soft touch and Ms. Lawrence's bland performance.
  92. Mr. Popper's Penguins
    There is nothing new here, but Mr. Waters, as he showed with the smarter and more daring "Mean Girls" and "Freaky Friday," knows how to keep things buzzing along.
  93. Bad Teacher
    Ms. Diaz has found her down-and-dirty element in the kind of broad comedy that threatens to get ugly and more or less succeeds on that threat.
  94. Transformers: Dark of the Moon
    Nothing you see makes any sense at all, but the sensations are undeniable, and kind of fun in their vertiginous, supercaffeinated way.
  95. The Grace Card
    Responses to religious films are bound to be personal, so at the risk of sounding patronizing, I'll say that my main reaction to The Grace Card was one of pleasant surprise at its competence.
  96. Arthur Christmas
    The plot may be a little too cluttered for the toddler crowd to follow, but the next age group up should be amused, and the script by Peter Baynham and Sarah Smith has plenty of sly jokes for grown-ups.
  97. The Rum Diary
    A mild lark disguised as a wild bender, The Rum Diary is also a touching tribute to Thompson himself.
  98. We Bought a Zoo
    Whatever the case, you may not buy his happy endings, but it's a seductive ideal when all of God's creatures, great and small, buxom and blond, exist in such harmony.
  99. In Time
    The tick tick tock of the mortal clock gives the science-fiction thriller In Time its slick, sweet premise.
  100. Goon
    Behind the film's brass knuckles are tender fingers. Why else would Goon use music from Puccini's "Turandot" to underscore critical dramatic moments?
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