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. Guest of Cindy Sherman
    At once a fascinating behind-the-scenes glimpse, bittersweet autobiography and witty trip down art-world memory lane, Guest of Cindy Sherman isn't out to settle scores or exploit access, public or otherwise.
  2. Shall We Kiss?
    The players in this mouth-watering Gallic soufflé are so attractive, well mannered and comfortably grounded in the bourgeois world that you needn’t fear for their well-being, minor heartaches notwithstanding.
  3. Knowing
    The draggy, lurching two hours of Knowing will make you long for the end of the world, even as you worry that there will not be time for all your questions to be answered.
  4. Sin Nombre
    What keeps the movie from tipping into full-blown exploitation like "City of God," which turns third-world misery into art-house thrills, is Mr. Fukunaga's sincerity. What keeps you watching is his superb eye.
  5. I Love You, Man
    A fitfully funny comedy.
  6. Duplicity
    Superior entertainment, the most elegantly pleasurable movie of its kind to come around in a very long time.
  7. Bob Funk
    Looks like a comedy, acts like a comedy and sounds like a comedy, but it isn't funny. This is a problem in a movie that aims for laughs.
  8. The Great Buck Howard
    An agreeable show business satire with a warm heart.
  9. Skills Like This
    Drawing much of its energy from an eclectic and fully integrated soundtrack, Skills Like This gazes indulgently on 20-something aimlessness and the comfort of assigned roles. In Mr. Miranda's hands sloth can be more appealing than you might think.
  10. Valentino: The Last Emperor
    Watching the movie is a little like gorging on chocolate and Champagne until that queasy moment arrives when you realize you’ve consumed far too much.
  11. Sunshine Cleaning
    All in all, it's a mess, and much as Ms. Blunt pouts, Ms. Adams twinkles, and Mr. Arkin growls, there's nothing they can do to clean it up.
  12. Miss March
    The problem with Miss March is that it isn't very funny.
  13. The Last House on the Left
    Replacing the earlier movie's more depraved sequences with sustained tension and truly unnerving editing, the director proves adept at managing mayhem in cramped spaces.
  14. The Cake Eaters
    Superior acting elevates a small, overcrowded ensemble piece set in rural upstate New York into something a little deeper and truer than the mawkish disease-of-the-week movie it threatens to become.
  15. The Edge of Love
    The story here, plucked from Thomas's life and embellished, proves almost entirely devoid of interest.
  16. The Perfect Sleep
    Easy on the eyes but brutal on the ears.
  17. Race to Witch Mountain
    Modest and diverting, rough and bland, with some good (if not quite Bette Davis caliber) actors and so-so special effects.
  18. Severed Ways: The Norse Discovery of America
    Though there's no doubt that Mr. Stone is as serious as a heart attack when it comes to creating an air of authenticity -- hence the sloppily butchered chickens and authorial defecation -- he never settles on a coherent tone for the movie.
  19. Tokyo Sonata
    Tokyo Sonata, looks like a family melodrama -- if a distinctly eccentric variant on the typical domestic affair -- there is more than a touch of horror to its story of a salaryman whose downsizing sets off a series of cataclysmic events.
  20. Brothers at War
    Well shot but generically scored, Brothers at War has its share of potent moments, most of them with Mr. Rademacher’s family in the States.
  21. This Is the Life
    In the illuminating This Is the Life, DuVernay not only fills in an important formative gap in California’s hip-hop history, she displays the inventive eye that would later lead to her future cinematic successes.
  22. Watchmen
    As it is, the film is more curiosity than provocation, an artifact of a faded world brought to zombie half-life by the cinematic technology of the present.
  23. Phoebe in Wonderland
    Soon after that the movie simply stops dead in its tracks, as though the money had run out and the project had been called off in the middle of a scene that makes no psychological or dramatic sense. It leaves you frustrated and annoyed.
  24. Everlasting Moments
    The result is an experience that, even as it feels a bit familiar, is nonetheless engrossing and satisfying.
  25. Fados
    This veteran Spanish director has, in his latest, created both a tribute to an art form and a performance archive.
  26. Sherman's Way
    The director, Craig Saavedra, generates surprising warmth from the familiar tropes of the odd-couple road movie. Shooting mostly in the verdant sweep of California's wine country -- and with a superb supporting cast -- he allows Mr. Le Gros room to engage.
  27. Tokyo!
    Both in its parts and in the sum of them Tokyo! is playfully and sometimes disorientingly apocalyptic.
  28. Explicit Ills
    It's a beautiful message: surely there's no arguing with "Hey, hey, ho, ho, poverty has got to go!" But there is much to argue with, and much to regret, about a film whose director thinks he needs to drop an anvil on our heads when art would suffice.
  29. Reunion
    Reunion overflows with catharsis -- at least for those on screen. This may not be quite the moment to solicit our sympathy for self-absorbed beneficiaries of Ivy League privilege.
  30. 12
    With its thunderous drama and larger-than-life characters, which lend it a brawling energy, 12 is never dull.
  31. Red Riding Trilogy
    The Red Riding trilogy looks fine blown up on the big screen, though it’s easier to watch at home, where the remote offers fast relief from a grim fiction that, with its murky palette and unyielding cruelty, serves up a nihilistic vision that is unyielding, hermetic, unpersuasive and finally self-indulgent.
  32. Crossing Over
    If Mr. Kramer's outrage felt honest, his film would be easier to respect. But time and again, he undermines his own righteousness by pumping up the violence and stripping down his talent.
  33. Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience
    Isn't a movie so much as a devotional object, a kind of secular fetish designed to induce rapture.
  34. Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li
    Reveling in the vivid Bangkok locations, Geoff Boyle’s photography is crisp and bright, and Dion Lam’s action choreography unusually witty.
  35. The Trouble with Romance
    Unlike Michael Knowles's similarly plotted and vastly superior "Room 314," The Trouble With Romance is visually stagnant and tonally bewildered.
  36. An American Affair
    Were it a farce instead of an earnest, paranoid thriller with pretensions to historicity, An American Affair might not seem so offensively exploitative. The fact that it is quite well acted, especially by Ms. Mol, who has the air of a sophisticated 1960s party animal down pat, only compounds the insult.
  37. Examined Life
    A modest, intermittently engaging film.
  38. Madea Goes to Jail
    There is something both satisfying and frustrating about Madea Goes to Jail. Mr. Perry dutifully gives his audience what it wants, but you can't help feeling that he might also have more to offer: more coherent narratives, smoother direction, better movies.
  39. Eleven Minutes
    Might be described as a low-rent answer to Douglas Keeve's documentary about Isaac Mizrahi, "Unzipped," a movie that also revealed the fundamental silliness of fashion, though it had some glamour attached.
  40. Fired Up!
    A kind of dumb but also kind of smart-about-being-dumb comedy.
  41. Delhi-6
    Delhi-6 can be maddeningly vague, which robs its ending -- a finale as joltingly (melo)dramatic as any in Bollywood -- of the impact it intends.
  42. Must Read After My Death
    An alternately fascinating and disquietingly intimate portrait of a 1960s American family falling apart.
  43. Katyn
    The result is a film with a stately, deliberate quality that insulates it against sentimentality and makes it all the more devastating.
  44. Gomorrah
    Part of what's bracing about Gomorrah, and makes it feel different from so many American crime movies, is both its deadly serious take on violence and its global understanding of how far and wide the mob's tentacles reach, from high fashion to the very dirt.
  45. Two Lovers
    The flaws in Two Lovers are inseparable from its strengths. You could, I suppose, criticize the movie for being too sincere; too generous to its imperfect, self-deluded characters; too absorbed in their small crises and disproportionate reactions. But that criticism might sound a lot like praise.
  46. Friday the 13th
    There's an itch for this kind of material, and here it is scratched -- to the bone.
  47. Under the Sea 3D
    A visually enthralling 40-minute tour of the southwestern Pacific depths.
  48. The Caller
    Turns into an impenetrable essay on guilt, memory and the fear of death that even Mr. Langella's gravity cannot salvage.
  49. Coraline
    Coraline lingers in an atmosphere that is creepy, wonderfully strange and full of feeling.
  50. He's Just Not That Into You
    Whenever faced with another puerile movie ostensibly about women, I play a little game called What Would Thelma and Louise Do?
  51. The Pink Panther 2
    Although the stunts come thick and fast in The Pink Panther 2, they are jammed together in a way that gives most of them barely enough time to register.
  52. Push
    Imaginatively filmed by Peter Sova, Push has a dizzying, chaotic energy that pulls you along. Paul McGuigan directs with maximum efficiency and minimum use of computers, creating effects that feel satisfyingly tangible.
  53. The International
    So undistinguished that the moments you remember best are those that you wish another, more original director had tackled.
  54. Fanboys
    There are enough good jokes in Fanboys, a road comedy about geeks on a "Star Wars"-related quest, to satisfy hard-core fans of that George Lucas franchise. But the film doesn't have the boosters, or thrusters, or whatever, to elevate it to more ambitious heights; it's weighed down by tired conventions and a general sense of having missed its moment.
  55. Memorial Day
    Moves from clever mock documentary to groan-inducing conceptualism. Mr. Fox may well have put his finger on certain shared impulses between these repellent bacchanalia, but his manner of drawing them out is heavy-handed.
  56. Taken
    Taken starts in low gear and almost immediately stalls out.
  57. The Uninvited
    The main problem with The Uninvited lies in its refusal to decide just what movie it wants to be a commercial for. It certainly doesn’t have much in common with "A Tale of Two Sisters," the creepy Korean horror film of which it is supposedly a remake.
  58. New in Town
    Watching Ms. Zellweger’s joyless performance, you have to wonder what happened to this formerly charming actress who not so long ago seemed on the verge of becoming a softer, more vulnerable Shirley MacLaine.
  59. Service (Serbis)
    Gentle, bawdy and at times rambunctiously, ticklishly rude.
  60. Luck by Chance
    It is Mr. Akhtar whose understated performance holds together this far-ranging, cameo-filled film.
  61. 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.
  62. Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh
    Documents courage, but steers clear of character.
  63. The Lodger
    Prostitutes are not the only things butchered in The Lodger, a spooky story ruined by lumpen dialogue, cloddish performances and a director and writer (David Ondaatje) oblivious to both.
  64. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans
    Although the presence of Mr. Sheen is initially distracting, it soon becomes the movie's greatest asset. There is, as it turns out, some benefit to having a real performance even in a formulaic entertainment like this.
  65. Donkey Punch
    Until it plunges into gore, the movie remains above the typical splatter 'n' scream fest. These careless hedonists are convincing, and the ensemble acting feels believable; the orgy looks very real. But the realism turns to caricature once the panicked party monsters begin viciously turning on one another.
  66. Inkheart
    Aims for a blend of whimsy and tingly suspense but botches nearly every spell it tries to cast.
  67. Of Time and the City
    It is a deeply personal piece of art that never descends into the confessional or the therapeutic, and a work of social and literary criticism that never lectures or hectors, but rather, with melancholy, tenderness and wit, manages to sing.
  68. Chandni Chowk to China
    Starts too frantically but settles down to become an enjoyable if slight Saturday-matinee picture.
  69. Cherry Blossoms
    While Ms. Dörrie’s film is exquisitely shot, its themes and metaphors are obvious rather than subtle, and its emotional rhythms -- rueful laughter punctuating the pathos -- would not be out of place in a television drama.
  70. Hotel for Dogs
    Although you wouldn't want an entire movie devoted to such shenanigans, Hotel for Dogs isn't half as zany as it might have been.
  71. My Bloody Valentine
    A strange synergy of old and new, My Bloody Valentine 3D blends cutting-edge technology and old-school prosthetics to produce something both familiar and alien: gore you can believe in.
  72. Notorious
    Notorious settles into a curious comfort zone; it's half pop fable, half naturalistic docudrama. Not a bad movie, but nowhere near as strong as its soundtrack.
  73. Paul Blart: Mall Cop
    A tossed-off comedy from Adam Sandler's production company that makes one long for the comparative genius of "I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry."
  74. Bride Wars
    A dopey if largely painless romantic comedy.
  75. Not Easily Broken
    Mr. Duke’s filmmaking is functional at best, and the extreme shifts in emotional tone -- especially a late and disastrous swerve into tragedy -- are handled clumsily in Brian Bird’s script. Yet Not Easily Broken is not easily dismissed. For one thing, the cast is excellent, and for another, its intentions are serious and generous.
  76. The Unborn
    The film teeters so perilously and routinely at the edge of camp, both with some of its casting choices and some unfortunate dialogue (the repeated warning that "Jumby wants to be born now"), that it's hard to know if Mr. Goyer wants to make us howl with fear or laughter.
  77. Yonkers Joe
    For all its attention to detail, Yonkers Joe isn't half as tough as it pretends to be. The real story of these bottom-feeders and the sad young man they exploit is a lot uglier than the movie even begins to let on.
  78. Just Another Love Story
    It may not go anywhere in particular, but it is as exciting as a trip through a well-equipped, scary fun house.
  79. Silent Light
    The film was written, directed and somehow willed into unlikely existence by the extravagantly talented Carlos Reygadas, whose immersion in this exotic world feels so deep and true that it seems like an act of faith.
  80. Cargo 200
    Art house meets grind house in Cargo 200, Alexey Balabanov’s morbidly compelling thriller set in the Soviet Union.
  81. Defiance
    Defiance presents itself as an explicit correction of the cultural record, a counterpoint to all those lachrymose World War II tales of helplessness and victimhood. This is a perfectly honorable intention, but the problem is that, in setting out to overturn historical stereotypes of Jewish passivity, Mr. Zwick (who co-wrote the screenplay with Clayton Frohman) ends up affirming them.
  82. Good
    In Good, the anemic screen adaptation of C. P. Taylor's play about a respectable "good German" who passively acquiesces to Hitler's agenda, Viggo Mortensen, miscast and ineptly directed by Vicente Amorim, plays John Halder, a liberal, mild-mannered literature professor who becomes a Nazi.
  83. Revolutionary Road
    "Revolutionary Road" is the kind of great novel that Hollywood tends to botch, because much of it takes place inside the heads of its characters, and because the Wheelers aren't especially likeable and because pessimism without obvious redemption is a tough sell.
  84. Waltz with Bashir
    A memoir, a history lesson, a combat picture, a piece of investigative journalism and an altogether amazing film.
  85. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
    Above all, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a triumph of technique.
  86. The Spirit
    What is most striking about The Spirit is how little pleasure it affords, in spite of its efforts to by sly, sexy, heartfelt and clever all at once.
  87. Bedtime Stories
    Soured by its enervated star and uninspired writing, the movie offers only tiny moments of joy, like a hailstorm of gumballs that's unexpectedly magical.
  88. Last Chance Harvey
    There’s something irresistible about watching two people fall in love, even in contrived, sniffle- and sometimes gag-inducing films like Last Chance Harvey.
  89. Marley & Me
    Bland, obsequious adaptation of John Grogan’s best-selling memoir.
  90. Valkyrie
    If Mr. Cruise doesn't work in Valkyrie, it's partly because he's too modern, too American and way too Tom Cruise to make sense in the role, but also because what passes for movie realism keeps changing, sometimes faster than even a star can change his brand.
  91. The Secret of the Grain
    An entire family chronicle, along with four decades of French social and economic history, is recapitulated as a lavish, hectic dinner, complete with music and belly dancing. It will leave you stunned and sated, having savored an intimate and sumptuous epic of elation and defeat, jealousy and tenderness, life and death, grain and fish.
  92. Theater of War
    Because this is also a document of an actress actually at work, much of the movie's pleasure comes from watching another brilliant performance take shape as Ms. Streep tries out different line readings, gestures and poses in her search for Mother Courage.
  93. The Tale of Despereaux
    A pleasantly immersive, beautifully animated, occasionally sleepy tale.
  94. The Class
    Here Mr. Cantet -- whose earlier features include "Human Resources" and "Time Out," two other dramas about systems of power -- has done that rarest of things in movies about children: He has allowed them to talk.
  95. Moscow, Belgium
    The movie's steady attention to detail lends it a texture rarely found in films about domestic life. Its eye and ear for the particular and for what is left unsaid in tense conversation is unerring.
  96. Seven Pounds
    The most transcendently, eye-poppingly, call-your-friend-ranting-in-the-middle-of-the-night-just-to-go-over-it-one-more-time crazily awful motion pictures ever made.
  97. Yes Man
    Yes Man rarely rises to genuine hilarity. It takes no risks, finds no inspiration and settles, like its hero, into a dull, noncommittal middle ground. Should you see this movie? Maybe. Whatever. I don't care.
  98. The Wrestler
    Like its hero, the movie has a blunt, exuberant honesty, pulling off even its false moves with conviction and flair.
  99. Nothing But the Truth
    Nothing but the Truth has nothing much at all to do with the historical record, which wouldn't be bad if it offered something persuasive and worthwhile in return, like a reckoning of journalism and its abuses.
  100. Scott Walker: 30 Century Man
    In a movie that avoids examining Mr. Walker’s personal history, there are hints of a man struggling with chronic depression and problems with alcohol, but they are only hints. No major personal relationships are mentioned or even alluded to. The music speaks for itself.
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