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. Gran Torino
    Mr. Eastwood is also an adept director of his own performances and, perhaps more important, a canny manipulator of his own iconographic presence.
  2. Che
    Mr. Soderbergh once again offers a master class in filmmaking. As history, though, Che is finally not epic but romance. It takes great care to be true to the factual record, but it is, nonetheless, a fairy tale.
  3. Timecrimes
    The Spanish writer and director Nacho Vigalondo has audacity to spare. Constructing a looping, economical plot and directing like a fire marshal in a flaming building, he conjures urgency and disorientation from the thinnest of air.
  4. The Day the Earth Stood Still
    Any movie that awards a former Monty Python cast member a Nobel Prize in anything cannot be all bad. And The Day the Earth Stood Still could be worse.
  5. Doubt
    Mainstream moviemaking, with its commercial directives and slavish attachment to narrative codes isn't particularly hospitable to ambiguity...which may help explain why Mr. Shanley's film feels caught between two mediums and why Ms. Streep appears to be in a Gothic horror thriller while everyone else looks and sounds closer to life or at least dramatic realism.
  6. Nothing Like the Holidays
    The only distinguishing characteristic of this mildly agreeable variation of a worn-out formula is that the boisterous family under examination is Puerto Rican, and the screenplay includes a smattering of Spanish.
  7. Adam Resurrected
    The film is so flat that it leaves you wondering if Mr. Kaniuk's book is ultimately untranslatable to the screen.
  8. Dark Streets
    Diverting enough as a series of music videos, Dark Streets strikes postures in place of drama.
  9. Delgo
    Too leaden for adults and too baffling for kids.
  10. What Doesn't Kill You
    It tells a good story well, and in the process quietly says a little something about what it means to look at the American dream from the bottom up.
  11. Where God Left His Shoes
    Although Mr. Leguizamo wisely underplays a role that is just short of saintly, the character is still a filmmaker's bogus, bleeding-heart contrivance in a movie that is much less truthful than it pretends to be.
  12. While She Was Out
    Embracing outraged victimhood the way Angelina Jolie embraces a close-up, Ms. Basinger, doing double duty here as an executive producer, appears oblivious to the script's idiocies.
  13. The Reader
    The film is neither about the Holocaust nor about those Germans who grappled with its legacy: it's about making the audience feel good about a historical catastrophe that grows fainter with each new tasteful interpolation.
  14. Wendy and Lucy
    What will happen to her? The strength of this short, simple, perfect story of a young woman and her dog is that this does not seem, by the end, to be an idle or trivial question. What happens to Wendy -- and to Lucy -- matters a lot, which is to say that Wendy and Lucy, for all its modesty, matters a lot too.
  15. Hunger
    The brutality in the film is pervasive and often stomach turningly graphic, but what is perhaps most unnerving is the tact, patience and care with which Mr. McQueen depicts its causes and effects.
  16. Cadillac Records
    This movie is crowded and sprawling, and if it rambles sometimes, that's just fine. Like those big, boxy Caddies (and like Howlin’ Wolf, if he did say so himself), it's built for comfort, not for speed. It hums, it purrs and it roars.
  17. Nobel Son
    An aggressively noisy exercise in style over substance about nasty people doing nasty things to one another in (sigh) Southern California.
  18. Punisher: War Zone
    Does it have to be so witless, so stupid, so openly contemptuous of the very audience it’s supposed to be pandering to?
  19. Frost/Nixon
    Stories of lost crowns lend themselves to drama, but not necessarily audience-pleasing entertainments, which may explain why Frost/Nixon registers as such a soothing, agreeably amusing experience, more palliative than purgative.
  20. The Black Balloon
    Ms. Collette’s Maggie is the film's prime mover. This wonderful Australian actress, who hasn't a shred of vanity, virtually disappears into the complicated characters she plays, and Maggie is one of the strongest.
  21. Let Them Chirp Awhile
    This sort of thing was indulgent enough the first time around; transplanted to the mumblecore milieu, it's intolerable.
  22. Four Christmases
    Refreshingly tart and lean, forgoing the usual schmaltz and syrup.
  23. Milk
    Harvey Milk was an intriguing, inspiring figure. Milk is a marvel.
  24. Transporter 3
    Though the car chases have grown more banal as the franchise has started to run on fumes, the smackdowns have retained their zing.
  25. Twilight
    Though Edward and Bella reach certain heights in Twilight, notably during a charming scene that finds them leaping from piney treetop to treetop against the spectacular wilderness backdrop, the story’s moral undertow keeps dragging them down.
  26. The Betrayal - Nerakhoon
    The result is imperfect, but its roughness is entirely consistent with the way the filmmakers understand the traumatic experiences of displacement, loss and deprivation.
  27. Special
    Either way, it doesn’t quite go far enough as psychological study or cultural commentary.
  28. Bolt
    What keeps Bolt fresh is an unaffected exuberance, a genuine sense of fun, that is expressed above all through obsessive attention to craft.
  29. Lake City
    Feels like a movie whose story was slapped together during filming. Its three phases -- Southern pastorale, Sudsville and Kablooie -- don’t really connect.
  30. Harvard Beats Yale 29-29
    Filmmaker Kevin Rafferty makes the case for remembrance and for the art of the story in his preposterously entertaining documentary Harvard Beats Yale 29-29, preposterous at least for those of us who routinely shun that pagan sacrament.
  31. Australia
    A testament to movie love at its most devout, cinematic spectacle at its most extreme, and kitsch as an act of aesthetic communion.
  32. Quantum of Solace
    The violence in his (Craig's) first outing, "Casino Royale," was notably intense, and while Quantum of Solace is not quite as brutal, the mood is if anything even more grim and downcast.
  33. A Christmas Tale
    A movie that is almost indecently satisfying and at the same time elusive, at once intellectually lofty -- marked by allusions to Emerson, Shakespeare and Seamus Heaney as well as Nietzsche -- and as earthy as the passionate provincial family that is its heart and cosmos and reason for being.
  34. Eden
    A picture so modest and minor-key that the emotional bruise it leaves may take days to develop.
  35. House of the Sleeping Beauties
    Not even the august presence of Maximilian Schell can dispel the odor of fusty smut that clings to House of the Sleeping Beauties, a clammy meditation on sex, death and the endless fascination of unclothed innocence.
  36. We Are Wizards
    Amusing if unfocused documentary peek at some of the more engaged fans (and opportunists) circulating in the Harry Potter world.
  37. The Dukes
    Plods along in its sloppy, joshing way, it tastes like pasta sauce that has sat on the shelf long after the expiration date on the can.
  38. How About You ...
    Appeal[s] to the delicate palates of an audience that craves the movie equivalent of tea and biscuits: stiff upper lips conceal hearts of gold, and all psychological conflicts are resolved with tearful confessions of vulnerability.
  39. Slumdog Millionaire
    In the end, what gives me reluctant pause about this bright, cheery, hard-to-resist movie is that its joyfulness feels more like a filmmaker's calculation than an honest cry from the heart about the human spirit (or, better yet, a moral tale).
  40. Role Models
    With the ferocity of a drill instructor and the boundless confidence of a self-help guru who combines psychobabble clichés with embarrassingly explicit confessions, Ms. Lynch's Gayle redeems the movie from utter banality.
  41. JCVD
    Some of this is affecting, some of it tedious, and the film's inconsistencies of tone are made more glaring by its peculiar look.
  42. The Alphabet Killer
    Relies less on the novelty of its premise than on the positioning of solid actors in minor roles (including Melissa Leo and Martin Donovan as the tortured parents of a murdered child) and the intelligence of its star.
  43. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
    See the Holocaust trivialized, glossed over, kitsched up, commercially exploited and hijacked for a tragedy about a Nazi family. Better yet and in all sincerity: don't.
  44. Gardens of the Night
    Recovery time is recommended after seeing Gardens of the Night, a harrowing, obliquely told story of kidnapping and forced child prostitution that conjures a world entirely populated by predators and prey.
  45. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
    Good enough in patches to make its distracting star turns, storybook clichés and stereotypes harder to take than they would be in a less enjoyable movie.
  46. Pray the Devil Back to Hell
    Uplifting, disheartening, inspiring, enraging -- the mind reels while watching the documentary Pray the Devil Back to Hell, even as the eyes water, the temples pound and the body trembles.
  47. Repo! The Genetic Opera
    Feels destined to please a campy coterie of fans and no one else.
  48. Soul Men
    A raucous, rambling comedy, offering some laughs, some groans and a feast for fans of the musical idioms it mocks and celebrates.
  49. Otto; or, Up with Dead People
    One of the more disciplined entries in the LaBruce oeuvre, Otto is sexy and silly in just the right proportions, a cult item with a real heart.
  50. Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father
    It is impossible not to be fired up by Kurt Kuenne's incendiary cri de coeur, Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father.
  51. The Haunting of Molly Hartley
    Tame and inoffensive, The Haunting of Molly Hartley is no more than a big-screen lasso for the "Gossip Girl" and "Supernatural" demographic.
  52. Splinter
    A diverting if not terribly original on-the-cheap horror film.
  53. Zack and Miri Make a Porno
    In spite of its sometimes tiresome, sometimes amusing lewdness, follows a gee-whiz romantic-comedy formula that would not be out of place on the Disney Channel.
  54. My Name Is Bruce
    Filled with awful, recycled jokes.
  55. The Matador
    Barbaric, elegant, primitive, erotic, revolting, thrilling: the movie, like bullfighting itself, is all of these.
  56. What Just Happened
    The lampooning is sometimes funny and occasionally offers up a tidbit of small truth. But much of it is awfully familiar.
  57. The First Basket
    The First Basket, a functional (if narrowly interesting) history lesson by the filmmaker David Vyorst, recollects the rich history of Jewish participation in basketball.
  58. Let the Right One In
    There is a remarkable stillness to many of the film's most indelible images, particularly the exteriors, which are so carefully photographed, and without the usual tiresome camera jiggling, as to look almost frozen.
  59. Synecdoche, New York
    To say that Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York is one of the best films of the year or even one closest to my heart is such a pathetic response to its soaring ambition that I might as well pack it in right now.
  60. Changeling
    The truth about the case of Christine Collins is so shocking and dramatic that embellishment must have seemed pointless, but in sticking so close to the historical record, Mr. Straczynski and Mr. Eastwood have produced a distended, awkward narrative whose strongest themes are lost in the murky pomp of period detail.
  61. I've Loved You So Long
    A revelation comes near the end that is both tremendously moving and a bit disappointing, in the way that the solutions to great mysteries frequently are. This turn does not diminish the accomplishment of Ms. Scott Thomas's deep, subtle and altogether stunning performance, but it does alter the scale of the movie, turning it into a more manageable, less existentially unsettling drama.
  62. Passengers
    A supernatural thriller so mechanically inept and lacking in suspense that it doesn't even pass muster as lowbrow Halloween-ready entertainment.
  63. Saw V
    Skips back and forth in time, trying to piece together who did what, when and why. The only question really worth asking here: Who cares?
  64. Pride and Glory
    Not especially good, but there is enough rough artistry in Mr. O’Connor’s direction to make you wish the film were better.
  65. High School Musical 3: Senior Year
    A candy-colored never-never land that Peter Pan might envy.
  66. Johnny Got His Gun
    As his character battles to grasp his newly fractured sense of time, audiences may also find themselves more aware of the time, which seems to creep along at an alarmingly slow rate.
  67. Roadside Romeo
    Perhaps Bollywood’s most ingratiating quality is how hard the actors work to entertain you: they dance, they cry, they risk appearing silly. The animated dogs in "Romeo" aren't particularly appealing.
  68. The Universe of Keith Haring
    A loving if routine primer on this bright young man.
  69. Fear(s) of the Dark
    Shot in luminous whites, pulsing blacks and gorgeous grays, the stories explore sexual insecurity, rural superstition and sociopolitical anxieties with an inventiveness that's seldom scary but never less than mesmerizing.
  70. Stranded: I've Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains
    Gonzalo Arijón’s documentary offers an incontrovertible argument for the necessity of team spirit in the face of catastrophe.
  71. W.
    The pleasure of Mr. Stone's work has never been located in restraint but in excess, a commitment to extremes that can drown out the world or, as in this film, give it newly vivid, hilarious and horrible form.
  72. The Elephant King
    Tells a colorful if conventional tale of dysfunctional Americans abroad. The misadventures of Jake and Oliver play off against the conflicted sympathies of the locals, who simultaneously resent, enjoy, prosper from and exploit the tourist scene.
  73. Filth and Wisdom
    Not that Madonna has gone in for originality, which isn't really her thing: rather, instead of repurposing a genre, she has riffled through the art-house catalog for inspiration, as evidenced by the film's intentionally grubby visual texture, jumpy editing, direct-address commentary, freeze frames and other tricks.
  74. Max Payne
    Max’s righteous anger finds various allies and targets, though it is not always clear who is which. They are played by Mila Kunis, Beau Bridges and Ludacris with just enough panache and expressiveness to uphold the (increasingly irrelevant) distinction between a movie and a video game.
  75. Morning Light
    Like the disastrously overpopulated "Amazing Race: Family Edition," Morning Light never finds a way to make us care who wins.
  76. The Secret Life of Bees
    The film insists so strenuously on its themes of redemption, tolerance, love and healing that it winds up defeating itself, and robbing Ms. Kidd’s already maudlin tale of its melodramatic heat.
  77. Sex Drive
    The sweetheart leads, Josh Zuckerman and Amanda Crew, are easy to spend time with, and Seth Green as an Amish hipster and Clark Duke as an unlikely lady-killer hit every sweet-and-sardonic note with panache.
  78. Mary
    A convoluted, hysterical mess of a movie with grandiose spiritual airs and not a drop of humor.
  79. Frontrunners
    Polite, detached documentary in which there are no highs or lows. Politically and emotionally, the movie's thermostat remains at medium cool.
  80. Body of Lies
    As it is, the movie is a hodgepodge of borrowings and half-cooked ideas, flung together into a feverishly edited jet-setting exercise in purposeless intensity.
  81. Breakfast with Scot
    For its courage to address a ticklish subject with warmhearted humor, Breakfast With Scot, adapted from a novel by Michael Downing, deserves a light round of applause.
  82. City of Ember
    At only 95 minutes, the movie feels as though it had been shredded in the editing room. In Hollywood-speak, it has a weak second act.
  83. The Express
    If a movie of this kind didn't traffic in overstatement, it wouldn't be doing its job, which is to provide a strong dose of simple, rousing emotion.
  84. Good Dick
    Good Dick surmounts its indie-movie quirkiness with exceptional acting and a sincere belief in the salvation of its wounded characters.
  85. Happy-Go-Lucky
    Mr. Leigh has never been an artist for whom happy (word or idea) has been an easy fit. Life is sweet, as the title of another of his films puts it with a heart-swelling yes, but it’s also an eternal fight against doom and gloom, the soul-crushing no.
  86. Quarantine
    The template is familiar, but Quarantine delivers the heebie-jeebies with solid acting and perfectly calibrated shocks.
  87. Choose Connor
    What makes the journey compelling is the relaxed chemistry between the young actors and an insistently apprehensive tone that pervades even the most prosaic exchanges.
  88. Nights and Weekends
    The problem with the movie is that James and Mattie exhibit little but shallow, infantile neurosis, with next to no hint of a complex -- or even legible -- inner life.
  89. RocknRolla
    Like the filmmaking itself, the violence has no passion, no oomph, no sense of real or even feigned purpose.
  90. Rachel Getting Married
    It’s a small movie, and in some ways a very sad one, but it has an undeniable and authentic vitality, an exuberance of spirit, that feels welcome and rare.
  91. Religulous
    Much of Mr. Maher's film is extremely funny in a similarly irreverent, offhanded way. Some true believers -- at least those who have a sense of humor about their faith -- may even be amused. But most will not.
  92. Beverly Hills Chihuahua
    As multimillion-dollar frivolities about the pets of the ruling class go, Chihuahua is reasonably diverting. As one that happens to be opening in the middle of an economic meltdown, its mere existence feels utterly insane.
  93. Blindness
    Not a great film, mainly because it can't transcend -- and, indeed, lays bare -- the intellectual flimsiness of its source. But it is, nonetheless, full of examples of what good filmmaking looks like. For all its chin-rubbing, brow-furrowing attitudes, it does not, in the end, give you much to think about. But there is, nonetheless, a lot here to see.
  94. Flash of Genius
    It has the tone and texture of a well-made but forgettable television movie.
  95. An American Carol
    Cheap shots and mean spirits abound, as do celebrity cameos (James Woods, Jon Voight, Dennis Hopper, Kelsey Grammer). But it's the laziness of the writing that most offends.
  96. How to Lose Friends & Alienate People
    The crushingly unfunny and slopped-together How to Lose Friends & Alienate People has neither the ambition nor the intelligence to do justice to its source material.
  97. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
    Regards its characters with affectionate detachment, and assures its audience that no great calamities or revelations are in store. Instead, there are a series of small crises and tiny epiphanies, all adding up to a story that courts triviality in its pursuit of charm.
  98. Allah Made Me Funny: Live in Concert
    The title doesn't lie. These guys know how to tell a joke, often at the expense of their customs, religious holidays, families and themselves.
  99. Ballast
    Shot with a sure hand and a cast of unknowns, the film doesn't so much tell a story as develop a tone and root around a place that, despite the intimate camerawork, remains shrouded in ambiguity.
  100. The Lucky Ones
    Because the lead actors work so well together, adding depth and levels of vulnerability to fairly underwritten roles, the emotional consequences of the sense of displacement these "lucky" characters -- lucky to be alive, lucky to have met one another -- must deal with always ring true.
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