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. True Grit
    In some ways, much like Charles Laughton's "Night of the Hunter," which the Coens quote both musically and visually, True Grit is a parable about good and evil. Only here, the lines between the two are so blurred as to be indistinguishable, making this a true picture of how the West was won, or - depending on your view - lost.
  2. Somewhere
    The opening shot of Somewhere, Sofia Coppola's exquisite, melancholy and formally audacious fourth feature, prepares you for what is to follow in a characteristically oblique and subtle manner.
  3. Alien Girl
    Soulless, joyless and depressingly graceless, Alien Girl plays like an early Guy Ritchie knockoff without the jokes or Cockney accents.
  4. Satan Hates You
    Best appreciated drunk or otherwise impaired, Satan Hates You is the kind of horror movie that appears to have been shot in someone's basement using a box of old Halloween costumes.
  5. Yogi Bear
    There's exactly one thing about the misbegotten big-screen Yogi Bear that might make you think back with any fondness to the Hanna-Barbera cartoons on which it's based. That would be Justin Timberlake's charming performance as the voice of Boo-Boo Bear.
  6. Casino Jack
    The plot has so many moving parts - so many envelopes of money, dropped names, half-explained schemes and hasty flights - that it quickly becomes more frustrating than illuminating.
  7. How Do You Know
    An airless, sometimes distressingly mirthless comedy.
  8. Rabbit Hole
    Rabbit Hole could easily have been maudlin, grim or exploitative, and it is none of those things. It is sensitive, considerate, and, in the end, not entirely persuasive.
  9. TRON: Legacy
    A sequel with far less color and cinematic imagination, and many more bells and whistles, including a freakishly special-effected Mr. Bridges going mano a mano in cyberspace with the grizzled real deal. Twice as much Jeff Bridges does not necessarily mean twice as much entertainment - bummer.
  10. Megamind
    Visually Megamind is immaculately sleek and gracefully enhanced by 3-D. The score by Hans Zimmer and Lorne Balfe is refreshingly subtle for an action comedy.
  11. I Am Secretly an Important Man
    While I Am Secretly an Important Man skims the surface of Mr. Bernstein's life, it's a surface with more than enough texture to keep you interested.
  12. 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
  13. Cool It
    Cool It finally blossoms into an engrossing, brain-tickling picture as many of Al Gore's meticulously graphed assertions are systematically - and persuasively - refuted.
  14. Unstoppable
    It's the kind of outrageous, excessive flourish that can make Mr. Scott's work so enjoyable in the moment. He doesn't do much, but with a handful of appealing actors in tow, he sure keeps that machine going.
    • The New York Times
      • Posted Dec 14, 2010
  15. Saw 3D
    Be aware: if you see the film in a theater equipped with RealD 3D and Dolby sound, you'll come away with a pretty good idea of what it would feel like to have flying body parts hit you in the face.
  16. White Material
    Ms. Denis has an extraordinary gift for finding the perfect image that expresses her ideas, the cinematic equivalent of what Flaubert called le mot juste.
    • The New York Times
      • Posted Dec 14, 2010
  17. Love and Other Drugs
    A sometimes intoxicating, sometimes headache-inducing cocktail: a sweet, libidinous love story; a candid comedy of bedroom and workplace manners; and, most bravely, if also most jarringly, a medical melodrama involving a chronic and very serious disease.
  18. Faster
    Faster, a turgid, ultraviolent parable of revenge and forgiveness, is as muscle-bound as its monosyllabic antihero.
  19. Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench
    Visually distinctive and aurally delightful, "Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench" has style to burn. A soulful black-and-white commentary on love, art and their competing demands, this Boston-based musical from Damien Chazelle floats on a wave of spontaneity and charm.
  20. Nothing Personal
    Not since "Flashdance" has a lobster dinner been seasoned with so much unspoken emotion.
  21. 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.
  22. Tiny Furniture
    Tiny Furniture is at times more pleasurable to think about than it is to watch, more of a conceptual coup than an enjoyable experience.
  23. The King's Speech
    That film does have its attractions, notably in its two solid leads and standout support from Mr. Pearce.
  24. Saint Misbehavin': The Wavy Gravy Movie
    Make of it what you will: like its subject, Saint Misbehavin' is an unabashed love letter to the world that defies the cynicism of our age.
  25. Rabbit à la Berlin
    Teasing and shrewd, Rabbit à la Berlin is a floppy-eared fable about the uneasy trade-offs between liberty and security.
  26. 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.
  27. And Everything Is Going Fine
    This sense of intimacy makes And Everything Is Going Fine both vibrant - what amazing company this man was! - and terribly sad.
  28. Vengeance
    Both newcomers to Mr. To and longtime admirers should be prepared for a master class in directing.
  29. Tangled
    Tangled is the 50th animated feature from Disney, and its look and spirit convey a modified, updated but nonetheless sincere and unmistakable quality of old-fashioned Disneyness.
  30. Burlesque
    Once again, Bob Fosse's "Cabaret" haunts the stage with derbies and splayed legs, but with results that are strictly Sally Bowdlerized.
  31. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
    A strong filmmaking voice was clearly not called for in an entertainment that has been carefully calibrated for maximum blandness. Mr. Apted is aboard to keep the franchise sailing along or at least afloat, which he does.
  32. You Won't Miss Me
    For all its many irritations, You Wont Miss Me has undeniable punch, a frayed energy that feels janglingly unstable. Is Shelly crazy or just a pain in the neck? We're not really sure, and neither is she.
  33. The Tempest
    Ms. Taymor's overscaled sense of stage spectacle can be impressive and effective, even moving, but her three-dimensional, high-volume compositions translate awkwardly into the cosmos of cinema, which turns her pageantry into mummery and the physical exuberance she likes to draw from performers into mugging.
  34. Hemingway's Garden of Eden
    For all the cinematic crimes against him, there has been no book-to-screen translation of his work quite as atrocious as Hemingway's Garden of Eden.
  35. The Company Men
    The movie is realistic enough to make all corporate climbers, but especially men over 50, quake in their boots. If you are what you do, what are you if you're no longer doing it?
  36. The Tourist
    Jolie never ignites, and neither does the movie. Mr. Depp doesn't fare better with a role that forces him to play meek and disappointingly mild, despite a few screenwriter-supplied tics.
  37. The Fighter
    With solid bodywork, clever feints and tremendous heart, it scores at least a TKO, by which I mean both that it falls just short of overpowering greatness - I can't quite exclaim, "It's a knockout!" - and that the most impressive thing about it is technique.
  38. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I
    The movie, in other words, belongs solidly to Mr. Radcliffe, Mr. Grint and Ms. Watson, who have grown into nimble actors, capable of nuances of feeling that would do their elders proud.
  39. Mars
    The plot of Mars owes at least as much to bodily fluids as it does to science fiction.
  40. Come Undone
    Like Mr. Soldini's last film, "Days and Clouds," a calm, very sad examination of the effects of a husband's sudden job loss on an affluent couple's relationship and social life, Come Undone is solidly grounded in mundane reality. If the movie tells an old story, its unvarnished realism lends it poignancy and depth.
  41. Queen of the Lot
    There is something cozy and a little claustrophobic about Henry Jaglom's indulgent Hollywood satires.
  42. Night Catches Us
    Ms. Hamilton tells a modest, complex story with admirable clarity and nuance. That her film is so quiet, so evidently invested in contemplation rather than confrontation, gives it power as well as insight.
  43. Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale
    The focus of this bizarre Finnish fairy tale - as black as anything the Brothers Grimm could have dreamed up - is a sinister old codger who chews off ears and whose demon minion kidnaps innocent children. Ho ho no!
  44. 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.
  45. Bhutto
    If nothing else, the directors, Duane Baughman and Johnny O'Hara, deserve praise for devoting this kind of attention to a foreign leader and to the internal politics of another country (as opposed to how those politics affect the United States).
  46. All Good Things
    Certainly the fictionalized brood in All Good Things is equal to the Friedmans in terms of dysfunction, and they're loaded.
  47. Barney's Version
    In spite of Mr. Giamatti's ferociously energetic performance Barney's Version never figures out just who Barney is.
  48. I Love You Phillip Morris
    A Jim Carrey movie all the way: a good one, I might add. With his manic glare, ferociously eager smile, hyperkinetic body language and talent for instant self-transformation, Mr. Carrey has rarely been more charismatic on the screen.
  49. Black Swan
    Black Swan is visceral and real even while it's one delirious, phantasmagoric freakout.
  50. 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.
  51. Undertow
    A small movie with a full heart, Undertow takes an old idea - the loving, lingering ghost - and gives it reverberant, resuscitated life.
  52. The Legend of Pale Male
    A sugary, aggressively anthropomorphized story of one avian interloper and a whole bunch of human obsessives.
  53. Kawasaki's Rose
    The point of this thoughtful, moving film is that the motives and actions that define human ethics are never simple and that the Communist regime was especially adept at exploiting this complexity for its own ends.
  54. The Nutcracker
    The talented Ms. Fanning gives a capable performance, and Mr. Konchalovsky and his camera and special-effects crews put a few arresting images on screen, including some frightening metal rat-dogs. But even there they fall short of obvious models like Jean-Pierre Jeunet's "City of Lost Children," and the 3-D treatment adds nothing.
  55. Me, Too
    Sensitive without being unrealistically utopian (this isn't a fairy tale), Me, Too movingly represents the frustration of the high-functioning yet falling-short individual.
  56. Today's Special
    An immigrant-family comedy that hits all the sentimental clichés of the genre as if they were stops on the No. 7 train.
  57. Family Affair
    The filmmaking is rough and rather clumsy, but by ceding the floor to his open, highly articulate sisters, Mr. Colvard has created a fascinatingly raw study of ferociously wielded male power.
  58. Made in Dagenham
    Uplifting it may be, but to swallow it whole is to believe in happily ever after.
  59. The Next Three Days
    There is all kinds of potential here, but Mr. Haggis lacks the Hitchcockian sense of mischief to make it blossom.
  60. William S. Burroughs: A Man Within
    It is all either blood-chilling or hilarious. For those who celebrate Burroughs as one of the darkest and greatest of all comic artists, he is an extreme social satirist of Swiftian stature, whose quasi-pornographic images offer a stark, ghastly/funny photonegative image of the American body politic.
  61. Skyline
    Some obvious comparables for Skyline are "Independence Day" and Steven Spielberg's "War of the Worlds," but there is nothing here that even approaches the comic-book verve of the first or the churning dread of the second.
  62. Eichmann
    Mr. Kretschmann holds your attention through each whining complaint and bland denial. His character may be banal, but his portrayal is the only thing that keeps you watching.
  63. Helena from the Wedding
    Helena From the Wedding has a little more to offer than many films of its type.
  64. 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.
  65. Shake Hands with the Devil
    Filmed in Rwanda, Shake Hands With the Devil is certainly panoramic. But the best that can be said of the film is that it is an honorable dud.
  66. 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.
  67. Outside the Law
    As powerful and well made as it is, Outside the Law is too schematic and single-minded to lodge itself in your mind as a fully realized cinematic epic. Its few female characters are sketchy at best. It is all politics, all the time.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story
    Were it not for a masterly production coup - an extensive interview with the camera-shy Mr. Koufax - this slight and unambitious work would be wholly indistinguishable from basic-cable filler.
  69. A Marine Story
    Ms. Weber (Mr. Farr's wife) anchors the movie with a gritty, honest performance that has the same to-the-bone quality as Melissa Leo's in "Frozen River." There's not a false note or inflection.
  70. Red Hill
    Like the best westerns, Red Hill is a stripped-down morality tale; like the best horror movies, its true monsters remain cloaked until the final reel.
  71. Four Lions
    A shockingly hilarious, stiletto-sharp satire directed by Chris Morris and written by a squad of British wits.
  72. For Colored Girls
    As it turns out, Mr. Perry, while busily establishing his economic independence, has been finding his voice as a filmmaker. And here, working with fine performers like Ms. Elise, Anika Noni Rose, Phylicia Rashad and Kerry Washington, he sings the song the way he likes it - with force, feeling and tremendous sincerity.
  73. Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer
    Those swayed by the argument in Client 9 that some of the rich and powerful whom Mr. Spitzer crusaded against might have exploited his stupidity should find all this enthralling. Others might just remember the hubris.
  74. Fair Game
    Things worked out between Joe and Valerie, and for their real-life models, who are now the subjects of a terrifically entertaining movie. But that does not mean that justice was done, or that truth prevailed.
  75. 127 Hours
    Mr. Boyle has a knack for tackling painful, violent or unpleasant subjects with unremitting verve and unstoppable joie de vivre.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Change Nothing (Ne Change Rien)
    Ne Change Rien is about the work, the mix of inspiration and hard labor that performers draw on from moment to moment, an alchemical event that cinema rarely shows.
  77. Jolene
    Jolene's skin may smell like warm milk to Brad, but to the rest of us it has curdled long before she leaves his bed.
  78. Walkaway
    Walkaway is a pleasant enough time-pass, as they say in India, but stays too near the surface to be memorable.
  79. A Small Act
    The film couldn't be more heartening - yes, individual actions do make a difference. But it's bittersweet as well. You can't help wondering about all the children who don't get tapped on the shoulder by the hand of fate.
  80. Wild Target
    The considerable wit, style, and skill that Mr. Nighy and Ms. Blunt bring to the project are squandered.
  81. The Kids Grow Up
    You are not Doug Block, of course. Except to the extent - measured by the depth of your absorption in this remarkable film - that you are.
  82. Monsters
    Monsters effortlessly compels. The ending may be pure sci-fi schmaltz, but it's schmaltz that this viewer, at least, could believe in.
  83. Waste Land
    "We are not pickers of garbage; we are pickers of recyclable materials," Tião, an impoverished Brazilian catadore, or trash picker, declares to a talk-show host in Lucy Walker's inspiring documentary Waste Land.
  84. Inspector Bellamy
    The ease and professionalism that distinguished this prolific director's later work is very much in evidence, as is an insouciant attitude, at once resigned and dismissive, toward mortality.
  85. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
    Mr. Alfredson directed the second movie as well, and his work is again essentially functional, limited to clumsy action sequences and television-ready conversations. He doesn't prettify the violence in either movie, which might be unintentional but makes them feel more honest than the first did.
  86. Amer
    What does it all mean? Less than meets the eye. Amer is a voluptuous wallow in recycled psychosexual kitsch.
  87. Welcome to the Rileys
    What keeps the film's fragile realism intact are actors who can make even small moments count.
  88. Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields
    In her director's statement for Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields, Gail O'Hara writes that "this one's for the fans." Rarely has that been more true.
  89. Vision: From the Life of Hildegard Von Bingen
    Vision offers a hard-headed view of 12th-century religiosity in which church politics and money conflict with the characters' asceticism. It portrays Hildegard as a passionate humanitarian and a lover of nature.
  90. Paranormal Activity 2
    Frozen camera setups and blurry night-vision images raise goose bumps without the assistance of eerie music or showy effects, though the strain of stretching the gimmick to a second movie is palpable.
  91. Punching the Clown
    Holding things together are Mr. Phillips's quiet charm and his songs, which really are funny.
  92. The Taqwacores
    The Taqwacores aims for a provocative, anarchic cool by juxtaposing Islam and punk rock. But the storytelling is so muddled and the filmmaking so unpolished - and not in a good way - that mostly this movie is just unpleasant. It's also not nearly as insightful as it thinks it is.
  93. Knucklehead
    A number of talented performers are stymied by this mediocre material.
  94. The Portuguese Nun
    The Portuguese Nun has wit and feeling, though the wit is at times almost imperceptibly subtle and the feeling somewhat stylized.
  95. Inhale
    Inhale is a creepy medical thriller in the tradition of "Coma" that amps up the tension and suspense by slicing up time.
  96. Kalamity
    For all its seriousness, Kalamity lacks a steady narrative drive; its speeches are too long, and its themes become repetitive.
  97. Boxing Gym
    Pugilists and philosophers of all kinds converge in Frederick Wiseman's mesmerizing documentary Boxing Gym.
  98. Conviction
    It would be easy to dismiss Conviction on the ground that it plays like a made-for-television movie, but the truth is that, as often as not, movies made for the small screen are better than this: braver, darker, more willing to explore odd corners of feeling.
  99. Hereafter
    One of the reasons that Hereafter works as well as it does - it has the power to haunt the skeptical, to mystify the credulous and to fascinate everyone in between.
  100. Tamara Drewe
    There is something shallow and cautious about this film, which strains to maintain a glib, cheery demeanor that is not always appropriate to the details of the story.
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