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. After.Life
    Icky, nasty, calculatingly odd and a little funny, though more often strained and inadvertently absurd, After.Life changes its mood and apparent intentions from scene to scene, sometimes minute to minute.
  2. Everyone Else
    A sun-kissed German film about a young couple in love and in doubt, might not be perfect, but so much is right and true in this lovely, delicate work that it comes breathtakingly close.
  3. La mission
    The distinguished cinematographer Hiro Narita (“Never Cry Wolf”) captures the hard San Francisco light and the burnished glow of the beautifully painted cars. Unfortunately, this care is lavished on an overwrought, predictable story of an angry ethnic father.
  4. Letters to God
    Mr. Johnson and Ms. Lively are both pretty good, and with a more nuanced approach could have made this a powerful film.
  5. The Square
    By the time the final measure of rough cosmic justice is meted out, The Square has completed a tour of moral squalor that is suspenseful, invigorating and sometimes harshly funny.
  6. When You're Strange
    Muddled, pretentious assemblage of film clips of the band shot between 1966 and 1971.
  7. 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.
  8. Women Without Men
    With its intense chiaroscuro and meticulous manipulation of color that ranges from stark black and white to richer, shifting hues in scenes set in a metaphorical orchard, the film surpasses even Michael Haneke's "White Ribbon" in the fierce beauty and precision of its cinematography (by Martin Gschlacht).
  9. It Came from Kuchar
    A valuable and intelligent introduction and tribute to their anarchic, uncompromising and absolutely peculiar genius.
  10. The Misfortunates
    They drink at the pub, they drink at home. They drink until they pass out and then, after they have had a good vomit, they drink again. If that sounds too disgusting to watch, it almost is.
  11. See What I'm Saying: The Deaf Entertainers Documentary
    Educates without lecturing and engages without effort.
  12. 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.
  13. The Greatest
    Not even the skillful performances of its stars, Susan Sarandon and Pierce Brosnan, playing the boy’s parents, can cover up the mysterious gaps in continuity of a screenplay whose thudding dialogue spells out every emotion while refusing to clarify many crucial plot details.
  14. The Thorn in the Heart
    You might think that the small-scale, straightforward style and intimate connections of The Thorn in the Heart would result in something more emotionally resonant than we’re accustomed to from Mr. Gondry, but you’d be disappointed.
  15. Why Did I Get Married Too?
    Mr. Perry himself plays Terry, the most reserved and mature of the group. At the risk of being condescending, it has to be said that if he had put on his dress and wig and shown up as Madea the movie might have been funnier.
  16. Warlords
    Epic in scope but intimate in theme, The Warlordsheaves with spectacular battles and the relentless sway of self-interest over conscience.
  17. Breaking Upwards
    Like many relationships, Breaking Upwards starts in bed and ends on the street. The journey in between, however, feels as new as anything a tiny budget and a boatload of talent could produce.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Teza
    Has all the hallmarks of a career summation -- and early on it seems fated to collapse beneath the weight of its ambitions. Instead, it soars, thanks to Mr. Gerima’s bracingly direct storytelling.
  19. Clash of the Titans
    The remake doesn’t as much improve on the original as match it goofily amusing moment for moment.
  20. The Last Song
    A movie that is as stuffed with bogus feeling and overwrought incident as a fast-food burrito.
  21. The Sun Behind the Clouds: Tibet's Struggle for Freedom
    The filmmakers, chronicling the Dalai Lama’s somewhat muddled attempts to respond to the protesters’ calls while not antagonizing China, do a fair amount of muddling themselves. They lurch awkwardly between reverence for the Dalai Lama and hints that he has become, politically, irrelevant or an obstacle.
  22. Hot Tub Time Machine
    The movie itself is a nonstop barrage -- somewhere between a riot and an orgy -- of crude, obnoxious gags and riffs. If you are a connoisseur of sexual, scatological or just plain stupid humor, you will find your appetite satisfied, even glutted.
  23. Chloe
    Mr. Egoyan has shown off these etchings before -- a solemn young woman in lingerie, a handsome older man in the throes of erotic distress -- and the artistry he brings to the display feels tired and thin this time around. Chloe works hard at seduction, but its heart isn’t really in the game.
  24. The Eclipse
    A moody little number, The Eclipse makes good on its name by sometimes obscuring its themes and even point, which can have its charms though also severe drawbacks.
  25. How to Train Your Dragon
    The reason it deserves to be seen in a theater with special glasses on, rather than slapped on the DVD player when the children are acting up -- lies in those airborne sequences.
  26. Waking Sleeping Beauty
    A sly retrospective exercise in corporate self-congratulation masquerading as an insider’s tell-all.
  27. Blue Beard
    Ms. Breillat narrates the fairy tale three ways: in the period story, through the little girls and, finally, through the overall film. None are fully satisfying, but together they offer a sharp, knowing gloss on how our stories define who we were and who we become.
  28. Dancing Across Borders
    Offered only hints of life away from the barre or of Sy’s relationship with his coolly poised benefactress, viewers will see either a very fortunate young man or a beautiful protégé, dancing as fast as he can to please everyone but himself.
  29. Godspeed
    A weird, wordy but oddly compelling thriller.
  30. 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.
  31. Repo Men
    It may have been a shrewd business decision by the film’s director, Miguel Sapochnik, to treat the story as a nasty, comic thriller. But when, after a certain point, Repo Men subsumes its satire to strenuous action sequences, it loses its edge and turns into a chase movie of no special distinction.
  32. The Bounty Hunter
    For his sins poor Stewart is kidnapped, tortured and shot up with horse tranquilizer after his leg is broken. It’s disturbing, and somewhat baffling too, until you grasp that this hapless sucker is a surrogate for the audience.
  33. Diary of a Wimpy Kid
    There is nothing wrong with the story itself, but the tone is grating and the pacing sluggish. Episodes that might be howlingly funny on the page turn weirdly gross and sadistic on screen.
  34. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
    Though Ms. Rapace is a fine professional scowler, with cheekbones that thrust like knives and a pout that’s mostly pucker, she tends to register as an intriguing idea instead of a thoroughly realized character. She more or less looks the part that the filmmakers don’t let her fully play.
  35. Greenberg
    It is the funniest and saddest movie Mr. Baumbach has made so far, and also the riskiest.
  36. IMAX: Hubble 3D
    Dazzling to look at of course. But such ponderous, cliché-heavy narration.
  37. The Runaways
    The movie may be a little too tame in the end, but at its best it is just wild enough.
  38. City Island
    Softened by some sweet, low-key moments between Vince and a fellow acting student (a very good Emily Mortimer) and by Mr. Garcia’s embodiment of disappointed middle age.
  39. The Killing Jar
    A cheapie hostage drama with a lot more swagger than substance, The Killing Jar strains to wring tension from a tired premise and an airless script.
  40. Kimjongilia
    These harrowing tales are reason enough to see the movie. But Ms. Heikin wants to provide a total experience, so she adds in propaganda films, her own animated presentation of Korean history and, most noticeably, a pair of female dancers… It’s as bad an idea as it sounds.
  41. Neil Young Trunk Show
    As concert documentaries go, both “Neil Young: Heart of Gold” (2006) and the new Neil Young Trunk Show are luxury goods.
  42. Vincere
    A sustained, alternatingly exhausting and aesthetically exhilarating howl of a film.
  43. Shutterbug
    Intermittently beautiful but frustratingly leaden, Shutterbug labors ineffectually to promote authenticity over artifice. A heavily stylized paean to undoctored images, the movie never quite clicks as a succession of moving ones.
  44. Mid-August Lunch
    A slender Chekhovian vignette about the joys and regrets of old age and the pleasures of sociability.
  45. The Exploding Girl
    The Exploding Girl can also make you feel bad about wishing that she were just a little more interesting.
  46. She's Out of My League
    If you’re going to make a romantic comedy called She’s Out of My League about a schlubby nice guy and a pneumatic blonde, the last thing you want is for the audience to be left thinking: “He’s right. She’s way out of his league.”
  47. Green Zone
    When Mr. Greengrass made "United 93," his 2006 reconstruction of one of the Sept. 11 hijackings, some people fretted that it was too soon. My own response to Green Zone is almost exactly the opposite: it's about time.
  48. Mother
    The hard-pounding heart of Mother, Ms. Kim is a wonderment. Perched on the knife edge between tragedy and comedy, her delivery gives the narrative -- which tends to drift, sometimes beguilingly, sometimes less so -- much of its momentum.
  49. Our Family Wedding
    Alternately rancid and ridiculous, strident and sickly sweet, Our Family Wedding”offers plenty that’s old, borrowed and blue; it’s the something new that’s missing.
  50. Remember Me
    It’s hard to know what the director Allen Coulter could have done to improve Will Fetters’s absurdly contrived, yakky script about love and loss, largely set in the summer of 2001. But Mr. Coulter doesn’t help matters by infusing the movie with grave self-importance.
  51. Delta
    Unfolding like a medieval horror movie, Delta is sometimes laughable but often admirable.
  52. Severe Clear
    At its most provocative, Severe Clear pungently evokes a heroic Marine Corps mystique.
  53. Children of Invention
    A modestly scaled, quietly effective independent movie about a struggling single mother and her two children.
  54. Stolen
    Plays like a middling episode of “Law & Order: SVU,” drawn out an extra half-hour and embellished with pretentious literary and cinematic flourishes.
  55. Alice in Wonderland
    Busy, garish and periodically amusing.
  56. Brooklyn's Finest
    Like Tango, Sal and Eddie, Mr. Fuqua and Mr. Martin dig themselves into a pulpy predicament, and then find themselves unable to do anything but shoot their way out. The movie is wounded, but it’s also too tough to kill.
  57. The Secret of Kells
    It is only fitting that a movie concerned with the power and beauty of drawing -- the almost sacred magic of color and line -- should be so gorgeously and intricately drawn.
  58. Harlem Aria
    Missing no stops on the road from cloying to annoying, Harlem Aria has waited more than 10 years for domestic release. Maybe its destiny has been written.
  59. Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Suess
    Only ends up skimming the surface. But even the skimming is largely interesting and thought-provoking, and of course very bleak.
  60. Cop Out
    It’s a phoned-in, gutless piece of hack work that reminds you of other, better films in the same vein.
  61. A Prophet
    One of those rare films in which the moral stakes are as insistent and thought through as the aesthetic choices.
  62. The Crazies
    Mr. Romero is executive producer of the new film. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have his style or sense of humor.
  63. The Yellow Handkerchief
    If Mr. Hurt gives a meticulously detailed performance, he is still so innately refined that Brett never quite registers as an authentic blue-collar type, either vocally or in his body language. Ultimately, men like Brett are just not in Mr. Hurt’s DNA, and you are left with the impression of observing a silk purse artfully (but only partially) disguised as a sow’s ear.
  64. Easier with Practice
    A tale about appearances in which not everything is as it seems, Easier With Practice tries to use phone sex as a way to explore contemporary alienation.
  65. The Art of the Steal
    One weakness is the too-brief, tantalizing peeks inside the Barnes. Yet, like the movie as a whole, this limitation comes with dividends: it made me want to hop on a plane to Philadelphia as soon as possible to see the original before it’s emptied.
  66. 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.
  67. Prodigal Sons
    A tale of two siblings -- one basking in memories, the other fleeing them -- Prodigal Sons grapples with identity through the prism of sibling rivalry. In the end its conclusions have little to do with gender and everything to do with acceptance.
  68. Toe to Toe
    Ms. Abt provides an unusually honest, compassionate and challenging view of contemporary youth, neither sugarcoated nor prurient.
  69. Shutter Island
    Something TERRIBLE is afoot. Sadly, that something turns out to be the movie itself.
  70. 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.
  71. The Good Guy
    The movie’s confident performances and its eye and ear for detail make The Good Guy a satisfying insider’s snapshot of a shark tank.
  72. Blood Done Sign My Name
    A curious, somewhat ungainly movie. But it is also rich and fascinating. At times you think you are watching a clumsy stage pageant superimposed on a documentary; it’s so stiff, and yet at the same time so real.
  73. The Ghost Writer
    Mr. Polanski’s work with his performers is consistently subtle even when the performances seem anything but, which is true of this very fine film from welcome start to finish.
  74. Phyllis and Harold
    The problem with these my-family-was-messed-up-and-I need-to-share projects is that they require an audience of complete strangers to give a damn. And while we sometimes do, it’s usually because the material is inherently compelling (“Tarnation”) or the filmmaking uncovers truths beyond the template of family therapy (“51 Birch Street”). Sadly, Phyllis and Harold fulfills neither requirement.
  75. The Last New Yorker
    The Last New Yorker would like to think of itself as a comic fairy tale, but Lenny’s pride and self-delusion are too pathetic to be amusing.
  76. Lourdes
    One of the pleasures of this intelligent, rigorously thoughtful, somewhat sly film is that it takes place in the space between the inexplicable (no explanation is possible) and the unexplained (enlightenment might be around the corner).
  77. The Wolfman
    In this shaggy-dog version the wolfman’s story is both gratuitously bloody and, finally, bloodless.
  78. Valentine's Day
    This might not be the Titanic of romantic comedies (it’s tugboat size), but it’s a disaster: cynically made, barely directed, terribly written. But quick: there’s still time to escape!
  79. Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief
    For all the earth shaking that goes on, “Percy Jackson” is agreeably tame and unthreatening.
  80. My Name Is Khan
    Skillfully directed by Karan Johar and with an evocative score by Shankar, Ehsaan & Loy, “Khan” jerks tears with ease, while teaching lessons about Islam and tolerance.
  81. Videocracy
    Given the stakes, it’s hard not to wish that Mr. Gandini had been more ambitious: at 85 minutes, Videocracy can only scratch the surface. Even so, after watching it, you realize that even a cursory look at Mr. Berlusconi is crucial to understanding an age in which celebrity is now the coin of the realm.
  82. October Country
    October Country feels at once personal and objective, a fascinating hybrid of two important tendencies in the modern documentary.
  83. American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein
    Because it is a film, American Radical can only begin to sketch the complicated historical and political debates that engage Mr. Finkelstein and his detractors, but it allows both sides to make their cases.
  84. Tano da morire
    An inexplicable multiple award winner, To Die for Tano left me more perplexed than pleased. But then I don’t really get Roberto Benigni either.
  85. From Paris with Love
    I am ashamed to admit that this empty-headed, preposterous, possibly evil mélange of gunplay and high-speed car chases on Parisian boulevards is a feel-good movie that produces a buzz.
  86. Dear John
    Dear John carefully distills selected elements of human experience and reduces them to a sweet and digestible syrup. It may not be strong medicine, but it delivers an effective, pleasing dose of pure sentiment and vicarious heartache.
  87. District 13: Ultimatum
    It’s pleasurable nonsense and another reminder that one of the great pulls of cinema is the spectacle of other bodies in blissful motion.
  88. Frozen
    A minimalist setup delivers maximum fright in Frozen, a nifty little chiller that balances its cold terrain with an unexpectedly warm heart.
  89. Terribly Happy
    Not a horror movie but a witty, expertly constructed psychological thriller.
  90. Eyes Wide Open
    Its scrupulous, humane sympathy gives this small, sorrowful film a glow of insight and a pulse of genuine, openhearted curiosity.
  91. Ajami
    One of the pleasures of Ajami, a tough and in many ways unsparing movie, is its deep immersion in the beats and melodies of everyday life in Jaffa and beyond.
  92. Edge of Darkness
    Edge of Darkness is reasonably well executed, but its competence reeks of fatigue. Another dead kid. Another angry dad. Another day at the office.
  93. When in Rome
    There are dull stabs at verbal wit that leave you baffled, bored or slightly grossed out.
  94. Saint John of Las Vegas
    This disjointed, desperately whimsical film is simply not funny: not for a minute.
  95. For My Father
    Well-intentioned but philosophically timid, For My Father wants to meditate on the moral reshuffling that can accompany imminent death. But the director, Dror Zahavi, is ill served by a screenplay (by Ido Dror and Jonatan Dror) too attracted to coincidence and too repelled by the existential brink.
  96. Off and Running
    The role played by her camera in exacerbating Avery’s natural, adolescent self-absorption continues to nag; in the end, I was less concerned for the wildly indulged Avery -- whose own narration reveals a charismatic and extremely fortunate young woman -- than for the hearts breaking around her.
  97. North Face
    Transfixing in the way that well-told life-and-death adventure tales inevitably are. It is the film’s more mundane elements -- an awkward, under-nourished love story and half-baked politics -- that are problematic.
  98. Still Bill
    Much of the biographical documentary Still Bill pleasant and even moving.
  99. Legion
    The leaden dialogue and flat-footed storytelling hobble a talented cast.
  100. Extraordinary Measures
    The storytelling and the visual style are rarely more than workmanlike, and the big scenes arrive punctually and are played with minimal nuance.
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