The New York Times' Scores

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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:
  1. Positive: 9,399 out of 20311
  2. Mixed: 8,446 out of 20311
  3. Negative: 2,466 out of 20311
20311 movie reviews
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  1. Happythankyoumoreplease
    It is no wonder that the insufferable romantic comedy Happythankyoumoreplease, set in New York, looks and sounds like a flop pilot for a television sitcom.
  2. The Human Resources Manager
    A disappointingly shallow story in which only the dead are named, and the living are reduced to stereotypes.
  3. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
    Encountered in an appropriately exploratory frame of mind, it can produce something close to bliss.
  4. Rango
    Rango, which may take place entirely within its hero's head - that kind of ambiguity worked in "Inception" and "Black Swan," so why not here? - is about the appetite for myths and stories, whether or not they make sense. It is about the worlds we dream inside our fishbowls, helped by the weird reflections on the walls.
  5. The Adjustment Bureau
    One reason filmmakers like Mr. Nolfi seem attracted to Philip K. Dick's work, beyond the brilliance of its ideas, is that his unembellished writing style leaves them room to make the stories visually their own.
  6. Beastly
    This is the kind of cornball entertainment that rainy afternoons were made for. Throw in a cozy sofa too. Beastly will size down well on your television.
  7. Lemmy
    Diverting if hagiographic documentary with an unprintable subtitle.
  8. Drive Angry 3D
    Apart from some half-cartoonish digital effects and the whole 3-D thing, Drive Angry could almost be mistaken for a raunchy, cheesy exploitation programmer of the same vintage as some of its cars.
  9. A Good Man
    Ms. Uberoi's straight-shooting style is a perfect match for her salt-of-the-earth subject, a hard-working husband and father with more on his plate than most.
  10. The Over the Hill Band
    This drippy dramedy embraces every inappropriate-oldster cliché with depressing calculation.
  11. 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.
  12. Everything Strange and New
    This intriguing, sometimes frustrating, in some ways amateurish movie is a work of vaulting artistic ambition.
  13. Heartbeats
    Monologues delivered by assorted unidentified losers in love who relate their unhappy stories to an unseen listener lend Heartbeats the semblance of a structure. But beyond that, the movie is a gush of gorgeous images and music.
  14. Hall Pass
    Whatever the case, it's dispiriting that the draggiest, soppiest scenes in Hall Pass, as well as the most disgusting gag, involve women.
  15. Of Gods and Men
    Of Gods and Men is supple and suspenseful, appropriately austere without being overly harsh, and without forgoing the customary pleasures of cinema. The performances are strong, the narrative gathers momentum as it progresses, and the camera is alive to the beauty of the Algerian countryside.
  16. Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son
    About the only honestly funny thing in the movie is Faizon Love's uncredited performance in the Joe E. Brown role, as the school maintenance man who's immediately smitten with Big Momma.
  17. Now & Later
    Offensive only in Mr. Wortham's dreadful acting, Now & Later is part of a series at the Quad called "Unrated: A Week of Sex in Cinema" - a title that should ensure plenty of backsides on seats.
  18. Loveless
    An aimless film about an aimless fellow, but it's not without its charms. It may be without a point, but hey, you can't have everything in a no-budget film like this.
  19. The Chaperone
    A lightweight comedy aimed, presumably, at tweeners and fans of World Wrestling Entertainment.
  20. Immigration Tango
    It's not outlandish enough to work as slapstick, not intelligent enough to make a comment on the fickleness of immigration policy.
  21. I Am Number Four
    Sluggish and derivative, I Am Number Four is another elaborate puberty metaphor with superpowers substituting for testosterone.
  22. We Are What We Are
    This ghastly scenario of poor preying on poor is, like the film's gray-green palette, profoundly depressing and entirely pitiless.
  23. Unknown
    Despite its A-movie aspirations, as the chases continue and the plot holes widen, Unknown quickly settles into the familiar B-movie comfort zone.
  24. Putty Hill
    Putty Hill doesn't strive for overt social commentary. It drops you into a world that the director, who grew up in the area, knows firsthand: a suburban fringe of stasis, downward mobility and lowered expectations.
  25. Even the Rain (Tambien la Lluvia)
    Splendidly panoramic. The scenes of Columbus's arrival and of his imperialist and religious sloganeering, and of the carnage he wreaks, have a grandeur and a force reminiscent of Terrence Malick films. The segments about the chaotic water riots have a documentary immediacy.
  26. The Last Lions
    A worthy, intensive labor of love that took years to shoot and edit, and it's also more gripping than a lot of recent Hollywood thrillers.
  27. 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.
  28. Zero Bridge
    Handicapped by Mr. Tapa's sometimes sketchy screenplay and the limitations of his nonprofessional cast. (His clumsy staging of their dialogue scenes doesn't help.)
  29. Port of Memory
    The movie too often fails to reward the close watching it requires. While its stillness powerfully suggests stasis, its fragmentary approach doesn't achieve a cumulative power.
  30. The Sky Turns
    The overall effect is one of lulling beauty and immersion in the landscape and culture - certainly enough to carry you through the film - but also an irritating sensation of being led by the nose through Ms. Álvarez's highly aestheticized ruminations.
  31. Carbon Nation
    This film seems blissfully unaware that political obstructionists are paralyzing the legislative process; that deep-pocketed influence peddlers have a vested interest in maintaining the fossil fuel culture; that, in general, people resist change.
  32. Orgasm Inc.
    Explores the link between female sexuality and corporate profits with a style that's as entertaining as it is revelatory.
  33. Certifiably Jonathan
    Teeming with smart American humorists - and a passel of Arquettes - all unconditionally admiring. What's astonishing, then, is that not one of them stepped in to dissuade their friend from participating in such an embarrassingly awful project.
  34. Carancho
    At heart an unlovely love story illuminated by sudden flares of violence, the film reeks of hopelessness and moral destitution, offering its lovers few means of escape.
  35. Lovers of Hate
    Smartly written and flawlessly acted, Lovers of Hate is a Trojan horse, the kind of movie that begins so self-effacingly that we don't expect any surprises.
  36. Vidal Sassoon: The Movie
    Its upbeat tone, perky visual rhythm and sleek graphics capture the "swinging '60s" aesthetic epitomized by Mr. Sassoon's major invention: the geometric "five-point" haircut.
  37. Just Go with It
    There is some cheap homophobia at the end, and a lot of the kind of misogyny that treats the existence of nonthin, nonrich, nonwhite women as a joke in itself.
  38. Gnomeo and Juliet
    There is some fun to be found in this goofy riff on Shakespeare.
  39. Poetry
    The importance of seeing, seeing the world deeply, is at the heart of this quietly devastating, humanistic work from the South Korean filmmaker Lee Chang-dong.
  40. 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.
  41. Cedar Rapids
    Tim isn't super anything (though he proves heroic), and what makes Cedar Rapids a low-wattage pleasure is its insistence that his ordinariness - with his decency and sense of wonder - is pretty extraordinary.
  42. The Eagle
    Lumbering along for a bit less than two hours, which passes like three, it feels more like a chore than like an adventure.
  43. The Roommate
    Substituting sex for suspense and pop music for ideas, the director Christian E. Christiansen drags The Roommate from limp beginning to lame conclusion.
  44. Home
    We've heard it all before, if not in the schoolmarmish tones of Glenn Close, whose patronizing narration ("The earth is a miracle") makes the film feel almost as long as the life of its subject.
  45. Dressed
    Even those viewers who share the film's conviction that preparing a collection for New York Fashion Week is inherently fascinating may lose interest long before the final frock is fitted.
  46. Sanctum
    The director Alister Grierson, not grasping that bad dialogue is sometimes best delivered quietly, encourages his actors to shout and thrash about, and so they do, like fish out of water and performers out of their depth.
  47. Waiting for Forever
    I felt tentative stirrings of admiration for an indie movie that so aggressively flouts the hard-shelled conventions of romantic comedy. But more often than not, I felt suffocated by the gaseous sentimentality and lightheadedness of a story that drops in subplots that it can't begin to develop.
  48. Cold Weather
    With no grand speeches or oversized gestures, Mr. Katz creates a specific world that gracefully enlarges with universal meaning.
  49. The Other Woman
    In spite of its air of seriousness and sophistication, The Other Woman feels oddly shapeless and pokey.
  50. Troubadours
    The enjoyable, lightweight Troubadours is a musical scrapbook that throws together a bit of this and a bit of that.
  51. Into Eternity
    There is something apocalyptically awful about Onkalo, to be sure, but the impulse behind it is noble, and the installation itself has an undeniable grandeur.
  52. How I Ended This Summer
    Above all How I Ended This Summer is a merciless contemplation of the fragile human psyche under siege.
  53. Blackmail Boys
    What a shame the Shumanskis won't sign their real names to the film. You'd almost think they were as afraid as Andrew.
  54. Rage
    Offsetting its outlandish premise with believable performances, Rage (Rabia) delivers a heavy-handed metaphor for immigrant invisibility.
  55. From Prada to Nada
    Angel Gracia, whose career has been in European music videos and commercials, imbues his feature directing debut with a televisionlike crispness and disposability.
  56. Ip Man 2
    Choreographed by the film martial-arts veteran Sammo Hung, the fights are spectacularly designed and performed, relying more on muscle and skill than wirework.
  57. When We Leave
    It is frequently gripping and sincere in its intentions, but never quite as revelatory, or as devastating, as it should be.
  58. Kaboom
    Chaotic, trifling, oddly likable film.
  59. The Rite
    Dull, pretentiously verbose movie.
  60. The Mechanic
    There's some limited entertainment to be found in a movie as insistently conflicted as The Mechanic, but the accretion of sadism, humorlessness and antediluvian sexual politics is finally more exhausting than enlivening.
  61. Strongman
    Though filming his hulking hero off and on for nine long years, he (Levy) has created a work that feels remarkably out of time, a snapshot of a man - and a relationship - running in circles.
  62. Gabi on the Roof in July
    Their characters are instantly recognizable; how you respond to the film may depend largely on whether you find any of them in the least likable and whether you think that matters.
  63. Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance
    It's strictly for the fans, who will furiously parse the changes in the narrative (including a new female pilot) and the nonsensical stew of philosophical and religious symbolism.
  64. Dhobi Ghat (Mumbai Diaries)
    Ms. Rao gives the city an immediacy it doesn't usually have in films. But she has more feel for mood than for storytelling.
  65. The Housemaid
    An admiring, clever remake of Kim Ki-young's legendary film of the same title from 1960, this version, directed by Im Sang-soo, is at once more explicit than the original and less kinky.
  66. Applause
    When an actress gives herself as wholly as Ms. Steen does here, a filmmaker should return the favor with a comparable level of craft and commitment, which is largely absent from this movie.
  67. No Strings Attached
    Not entirely terrible. That is high praise indeed, given that this is a film aspiring to match the achievement of "27 Dresses," "When in Rome" and "Leap Year."
  68. The Way Back
    It's impossible not to cry at their suffering, but whether you'll feel anything is another story.
  69. The Woodmans
    Family dynamics examined through the prism of art: The Woodmans, C. Scott Willis's compelling documentary study of an artistic clan whose comfortable life was shattered by the suicide of its youngest member, asks profound questions to which there really are no answers.
  70. Johnny Mad Dog
    An assaultive fiction about Liberian child soldiers made with boys and girls who actually fought in that country's recent war, left me wrung out - furious, confused, deep in thought.
  71. Ong Bak 3
    Ong Bak 3, which picks up the largely incoherent story of the rebel prince Tien battling evil lords and demons in some mythical pocket of Thai history, is actually less bloody than its predecessor.
  72. My Dog Tulip
    One of the most sophisticated dog movies ever created.
  73. Plastic Planet
    Does little but raise an alarm, then leave it jangling.
  74. Repo Chick
    Comic mishap, whose satire already feels out of date.
  75. A Somewhat Gentle Man
    Patiently directed by Hans Petter Moland, Ulrik's journey back to life slowly draws you in.
  76. 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.
  77. Every Day
    Very well written and acted, Every Day feels like a glorified television drama softened with comic and surreal trimmings.
  78. The Green Hornet
    Quite a bit less than the sum of its appealing parts.
  79. The Dilemma
    Ms. Ryder, playing the least sympathetic character with unflinching dignity and candor, is in many ways the reason The Dilemma works as well as it does.
  80. 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.
  81. Americatown
    This bizarre sort-of satire featuring insane characters doing incomprehensible things might be forgivable if it were even mildly amusing. It's not.
  82. Season of the Witch
    The entire film seems to be happening on the other side of a dirty window - good news for the dreadful computer-generated effects, if not for our eyes.
  83. The Time That Remains
    The Time That Remains has the scope of a historical epic with none of the expected heaviness.
  84. Go Go Tales
    A lovely drift of a movie, Go Go Tales commands your attention even as it lulls you along. Conspicuously inspired by John Cassavetes's "Killing of a Chinese Bookie," among other touchstones, it is a sincere and inspired meditation on art and creation, but in a loose, funny key.
  85. Country Strong
    Though seriously miscast as an unreformed alcoholic, the bronzed Ms. Paltrow gets by with a thin, serviceable voice (she sings her own songs) and an actor's confidence.
  86. Phil Ochs: There But for Fortune
    The story told by Mr. Bowser's film is complicated and tragic.
  87. 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.
  88. The Red Chapel
    The product - sloppy even by guerrilla filmmaking standards - has no revelations to offer that are worth the slog of watching it.
  89. Summer Wars
    There's a lovely, unhurried quality to Mr. Hosoda's storytelling, which nicely matches the clean, classically composed images of his outer story.
  90. 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.
  91. Blue Valentine
    Cindy and Dean remain, for all their sustained agony and flickering joy, something less than completely realized human beings. Mr. Cianfrance's ingenious chronological gimmick, coupled with his anxious, clumsy plotting, leaves them without enough oxygen to burst into breathing, loving life.
  92. Another Year
    Splendidly rich and wise.
  93. The Strange Case of Angelica
    The charm of The Strange Case of Angelica lies in the way it balances this mysticism with a thoroughly secular sense of the business of everyday life.
  94. Hadewijch
    If Hadewijch is Mr. Dumont's most overtly religious film, it is not pro-faith in any specific way, although the director clearly respects the religious impulse.
  95. Gulliver's Travels
    For myself, I was but seldom inspired to peals of true laughter, though I did relish that part when Mr. Black, confronting a fire raging in the Palace of Lilliput, douses the blaze through heroic use of such means as Nature has provided him.
  96. The Illusionist
    The Illusionist is both a modest homage to its writer and a melancholy look at a lost world.
  97. The Sound of Insects
    Mr. Liechti clearly finds value and even a measure of spiritual grace in this man's radical renunciation of life. You'll be pardoned for finding it numbing.
  98. Nénette
    Beautiful in its minimalism, Nénette is no antizoo rant but a melancholy meditation on captivity.
  99. Secret Sunshine
    It is a great movie, by a major figure in world cinema.
  100. Little Fockers
    Apparently, because all the good jokes were used up in the first two "Fockers" movies, the wisenheimers behind the latest installment in this unnecessary trilogy decided to bring in some spew, opening a sick toddler's mouth like a fire hydrant and letting it rip.
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