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. Hoot
    This sweet-natured but plodding adaptation of a young-adult novel by Carl Hiaasen could have used a little less broad satire of corporate greed and a few more, well, owls.
  2. One Last Thing...
    Shrewdly divided against itself. What begins as a small, cleareyed drama about a teenager with terminal cancer morphs into a gauzy tear-jerker.
  3. Poseidon
    Pretty much pure boilerplate: a reasonably well-executed throwaway that, when you finally get around to seeing it in its proper setting, will make you glad you decided to travel by air instead of by sea.
  4. X-Men: The Last Stand
    Mostly, as so often with these types of empty entertainments, you are left to wonder why companies that hire so many fine actors to run around under latex and foam and have the best technological wizardry money can buy seem to spend so little attention to the screenplay.
  5. Just My Luck
    Just My Luck is a bit of lukewarm cappuccino froth confected to float Ms. Lohan to the next stage of her career.
  6. The Mistress of Spices
    This is a one-dimensional, sometimes illogical film, but it's certainly good-looking.
  7. Russian Dolls
    The shallowness of this idealized depiction of European cultural homogeneity is largely camouflaged by the comfortable fit of its director's sensibility with the actors' likable, lived-in performances. An apt alternative title for Russian Dolls might be "Lovers Without Borders."
  8. The King
    Fitfully engaging, finally exasperating.
  9. The Break-Up
    The script (by Jeremy Garelick and Jay Lavender) strains hard after a few easy jokes, and the whole movie feels dull and trivial.
  10. Shem
    By the time the frustratingly silly ending arrives, it's confirmed that Shem, which translates to "name" in Hebrew, is just as confused as its protagonist. Daniel's looks may charm everyone who crosses his path, but he is like the movie: most of the depth that does exist remains buried beneath the surface.
  11. The Puffy Chair
    Its fidelity to its characters’ view of the world -- although they are presumably college graduates, they seem never to have read a book or expressed an opinion -- is more a liability than a virtue. The Puffy Chair is as modest as their ambitions and as narrow as their curiosity about the world beyond themselves.
  12. Typhoon
    Typhoon aims high but misses the emotional mark in most instances, resulting in some awkward melodramatics. Even so, it flourishes during its well-executed action sequences and commands attention almost instantaneously, though, in the end, it will be forgotten just as quickly.
  13. The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift
    As in the previous two installments of the Fast and Furious franchise, this largely consists of macho tantrums, vying for the girl, intense vehicular mayhem and high-octane homoeroticism.
  14. Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties
    To borrow and slightly emend the words of Shakespeare: That cat will mew, but this dog will have the day.
  15. Loverboy
    Almost until the end, Loverboy maintains a shaky integrity. But in its final moments it caves in to convention with a mawkish epilogue to a story that ends with an appalling act of selfishness.
  16. Lower City
    The movie turns out to be a predictable and somewhat sentimental lower-depths love triangle, but Ms. Braga almost makes it work.
  17. The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green
    More often than not, these tactics fall flat, and the mostly unfunny - and unfabulous - trifle never rises above sitcom level.
  18. Waist Deep
    Unapologetically a B movie, its narrative premise whittled down to a mean little nub and placed carefully on the borderline between the wildly implausible and the completely absurd.
  19. Superman Returns
    It's hard to see what the point is beyond the usual grandiosity that comes whenever B-movie material is pumped up with ambition and money.
  20. The Great New Wonderful
    It is hard to feel much warmth toward people whose most salient feature is their disconnection from reality.
  21. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
    It batters you with novelty and works so hard to top itself that exhaustion sets in long before the second hour is over.
  22. Beowulf & Grendel
    With all the mystery and meaning sucked from the story, the filmmakers do what filmmakers often do when faced with their own lack of imagination: they toss a little sex in with the violence.
  23. Lady in the Water
    One of the more watchable films of the summer. A folly, true, but watchable.
  24. My Super Ex-Girlfriend
    The shaky comedy My Super Ex-Girlfriend must have been a dream to pitch: "Fatal Attraction" meets "Wonder Woman," but funny.
  25. John Tucker Must Die
    Penn Badgley is wildly charismatic in the role of John Tucker's younger brother. The entire picture could hang on his cheekbones alone. If only Mr. Metcalfe shared his talents.
  26. The Ant Bully
    In the end, though, The Ant Bully is adequate rather than enchanting. Unsure of its ability to charm, it compensates with noise, sentiment and low humor, the usual synthetic stew served to children,
  27. The Night Listener
    The film has its creepy, suspenseful moments -- but it shrinks a rich, strange story to the dimensions of an anecdote.
  28. I Like Killing Flies
    Mr. Mahurin is obviously enchanted by his subject, but he never gets past his delight to say anything of real, sustaining interest.
  29. Lunacy
    Mr. Svankmajer’s provocations skew toward the intellectual and the shivery rather than the pop and the visceral, and at his best, he doesn’t just get under your skin, but also deep in your head, too. Here, unfortunately, he does neither, despite some marvelous stop-motion animated sequences involving a literal moveable feast of severed animal tongues, loose eyeballs and errant brains.
  30. The Trouble with Men and Women
    It all feels utterly real and banal. You could describe The Trouble With Men and Women as a comfortable armchair to come back to: too comfortable.
  31. Accepted
    Accepted will make for a passable alternative to sold-out shows of "Snakes on a Plane," but it's a disappointing debut for the director Steve Pink.
  32. 10th & Wolf
    The characters never transcend the clichés embedded in the culture since "The Godfather."
  33. Beerfest
    The five comedians known collectively as Broken Lizard have created a frat-house staple for the ages.
  34. Hollywoodland
    Ben Affleck has packed on the pounds, slipped on some tights and given this exasperating film far more than it gives in return.
  35. Crossover
    A decent example of Sidekick Cinema: a movie to glance up at from time to time while you download ring tones or text-message your friends.
  36. Looking for Kitty
    This is a modest film on various levels, in terms of budget, length, cast size and technical craft. Though passable at best, the digital camerawork does aptly convey the bleakness of the city’s sidewalks and streets during winter.
  37. Al Franken: God Spoke
    Even his fans may find themselves frustrated, since the film observes Mr. Franken closely without generating much insight into him.
  38. Everyone's Hero
    Everyone's Hero enters multiplexes already shadowed by tragedy. And while that may not be the best start for a kiddie feature, the movie's sentimental provenance could earn it a critical pass it doesn't deserve.
  39. Gridiron Gang
    The movie's good intentions are consistently undermined by its simplistic notion of redemption, and its inspirational thrust is diluted by an epilogue that suggests the program still has a ways to go in the life-altering department.
  40. The Last Kiss
    The fallibility of the romantic ideal -- which is nonetheless indispensable on screen and off -- is something Hollywood has trouble dealing with. "The Break-up," in which Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughan did just what the title promised, would have been a more notable exception if it were anything like a good movie. The Last Kiss, while not quite a good movie either, at least deserves credit for its honesty.
  41. Aurora Borealis
    The fixation of independent movies on the arrested development of bourgeois dullards may have less to do with the relevance of the topic than the class of people who get to make movies. Whatever the case, James Burke directs from a screenplay by Brent Boyd.
  42. Flyboys
    Despite its empty head and arduous length, Flyboys is ever so nice, in the manner of a Norman Rockwell illustration. The director, Tony Bill, may not be a philosopher but he is a gentleman, moving things along with a tidy, well-mannered hand. In another context, such politesse might feel tonic. Given the state of things, it’s nearly toxic.
  43. Sólo con tu pareja
    Mr. Cuarón never quite finds the tone that would allow him to fuse belly laughs with the horror of illness and death, but then perhaps Pedro Almodóvar is the only filmmaker able to mix darkness and light in that way. Still it is hard not to admire the younger man's cheeky self-confidence, and hard not to enjoy the dexterity of his camera movements and the flair with which he attempts both low comedy and high melodrama.
  44. Renaissance
    Over the course of 105 minutes, the brutal high contrast begins to strain the eyes. Effectively moody as it is, the style makes a convoluted story of corporate greed, high-tech espionage and science run amok even more difficult to follow.
  45. Open Season
    Periodic bursts of cleverness and eye-popping imagery, further enhanced in the 3-D Imax version, can't disguise that this is just another movie full of jive-talking computer-generated animals with little new to say.
  46. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
    Mindlessly repeats the archetypal "Chainsaw" scenario.
  47. Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker
    Mr. Pettyfer is no Sean Connery, no Roger Moore, no Pierce Brosnan, no Timothy Dalton and no George Lazenby even, but the director, Geoffrey Sax, compensates for his zero of a hero by indulging the exceedingly amused and amusing supporting cast.
  48. Heartthrob
    There is something good-natured about Jaan-E-Mann that makes it possible to forgive its many faults -- even the film's opening, a "2001: A Space Odyssey" ripoff with a space station gliding through the cosmos to the tune of the "Blue Danube" Waltz.
  49. Catch a Fire
    It’s a film that wants to play as if it were ripped from today’s headlines, but has been shredded into near incoherence.
  50. Conversations with God
    Mr. Walsch’s books have sold millions of copies, and his devotees may flock to this movie. Other seekers of enlightenment might prefer the 2004 New Age curiosity "What the Bleep Do We Know!?," whose playful sense of scientific inquiry is refreshing by comparison.
  51. Wondrous Oblivion
    Form and content fight to the death in Wondrous Oblivion, Paul Morrison's defiantly gauzy tale of racial friction in 1960s England.
  52. A Good Year
    A Good Year is a three-P movie: pleasant, pretty and predictable. One might add piddling.
  53. Harsh Times
    Mr. Bales's spectacular technical performance of a toxic bad boy on the fast track to hell somehow lacks an inner core.
  54. Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus
    Fur is a folly, though not a dishonorable one.
  55. The Cave of the Yellow Dog
    The dog is cute, the children are adorable, and the earth and the sky seem to stretch on without limit in The Cave of the Yellow Dog. Unfortunately, so does the slight story.
  56. Captive
    The middle section of the film has some of the superficiality of a made-for-Lifetime drama of female distress and resilience, a bit too eager to make its points and solve its dramatic problems at the cost of the messiness that would bring the story fully to life.
  57. Dance Party, USA
    Directed with extraordinary empathy by Aaron Katz (who also wrote the story), Dance Party, USA is an admittedly slight movie, but one that is given heft by a yearning tone and a camera fascinated by the emotional shifts and shadows on a young person's face.
  58. The Fountain
    The problem, though, is that its techniques run too far beyond its ideas, which are blurry and banal, rather than mysterious and resonant. The Fountain is something to see, but it is also much less, finally, than meets the eye.
  59. Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny
    As it wobbles from one episode to the next, The Pick of Destiny is a garish mess, and some of it feels padded. But it has enough jokes to keep you smiling, and the spirit Mr. Black brings to it is a fervent (and touching) affection for the music he spoofs but obviously adores.
  60. Backstage
    As long as it focuses on its feverishly needy central characters, neither of whom you would ever want to have as a friend, it remains true to itself.
  61. The Architect
    Deteriorates from a potentially enlightening exploration of urban development and class conflict into a preposterous melodrama.
  62. Two Weeks
    Two Weeks gets into serious trouble in its clumsy attempts to offset the sadness and anxiety with humor. This pursuit of sitcom levity contaminates a movie that might have been an American answer to the hardheaded Romanian masterpiece "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu."
  63. Unaccompanied Minors
    Not for the faint of heart, the movie is unsettling and startlingly true to life. At least that’s how it seemed to me. To the minors I happened to be accompanying, it seemed to be reasonably good fun.
  64. Danielson: A Family Movie (or, Make a Joyful Noise Here)
    This being a film review, the relevant question is whether J L Aronson's documentary about Danielson is worth watching. The answer, for about two-thirds of it, is yes. Though ultimately, alas, the movie has a little too much Danielson in it.
  65. Miss Potter
    This much sweetness and light in a movie is all very well. But there's a reason that recipes for cake and cookies call for a pinch of salt. In Miss Potter, there is only a grain or two -- not enough to dilute the sugary overload. The film is the cinematic equivalent of a delicate English tea cake whose substance is buried under too many layers of icing.
  66. Code Name: The Cleaner
    Cedric the Entertainer's artless performance deadens what could have been a much funnier comedy.
  67. The Flying Scotsman
    A conventional underdog sports movie that should have been much more gripping.
  68. Alpha Dog
    The cretins rule in Alpha Dog, which has much the same entertainment value you get from watching monkeys fling scat at one another in a zoo or reading the latest issue of Star magazine. Of course a little of that nasty stuff may land on you, but such are the perils of voyeurism.
  69. Stomp the Yard
    A strange and at times strangely compelling mix of black fraternity recruitment video and inspirational tale about a hip-hop boy in a stepping world.
  70. Making Grace
    A small, intimate documentary that patiently observes the highs and lows of a 30-something couple who want to become parents. That the couple are lesbians is perhaps the most remarkable feature of an unremarkable film.
  71. Seraphim Falls
    Archetypes and symbols solemnly parade through Seraphim Falls, a handsome, old-fashioned western of few words and heavy meanings that unfolds with the sanctimonious grandeur of a biblical allegory.
  72. Because I Said So
    A mild exercise in deliberate mediocrity, with chuckles and heartwarming moments distributed as carefully as nuts in a factory-made brownie. The movie's lack of ambition is hardly surprising, but both Ms. Moore and Ms. Keaton, who can wring flustered comedy out of the mildest provocation, deserve better.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Messengers
    Like too many horror pictures, The Messengers becomes more boringly prosaic as it goes along, and there's an 11th-hour plot twist so dumb and poorly articulated that it destroys the movie. That's a shame, because shot for shot, the Pangs might be the most terrifying filmmakers alive.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Daddy's Little Girls
    As a director, Mr. Perry has his strong points, including a genuine interest in showing the resilience of African-American life and traditions (including church sermons and blues music, which are accorded equal significance here). But those aspects get lost in this turgid and ungainly film.
  75. Gray Matters
    Compared to Gray Matters, even a Nora Ephron bonbon has the weight of urban neo-realism.
  76. Black Snake Moan
    In spite of Amelia Vincent's toothsome cinematography and the down-home locations, the movie often has the lumbering, literal-minded rhythms of a second-rate stage play -- not a moan or a howl, but a slow, anxious groan.
  77. Maxed Out: Hard Times, Easy Credit and the Era of Predatory Lenders
    Although Maxed Out would like to be this year’s "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room," it doesn’t measure up. "Enron" was a stronger film because its focus was specific, the personalities under its microscope were outsize, and its story had a beginning, middle and end. Maxed Out, which has no narrator, gathers facts, opinions and impressions and tosses them into a blender. And its story is still unfinished.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Adam's Apples
    Smart-aleck comedy and spirituality aren't incompatible, but in Adam's Apples they cancel each other out.
  79. The Last Mimzy
    Despite leaden direction and a story crammed with pseudoscientific flotsam -- including palm reading, levitation, time travel and telepathy -- The Last Mimzy is a wholesome, eager entertainment that doesn't talk down.
  80. Reign Over Me
    Reign Over Me uses the rhythms and moods of comedy to explore, and also to contain, overpowering feelings of loss, anger and hurt. And like that earlier movie ("The Upside of Anger"), this one is maddeningly uneven.
  81. Cobra Verde
    Connoisseurs of craziness need wait no longer. Cobra Verde opens today in all its feral, baffling glory. Along with "Aguirre" and "Fitzcarraldo," Cobra Verde completes a trilogy of mayhem and megalomania in hot climates.
  82. The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair
    It is a depressing story, certainly, as well as moving, confusing and, at a fast 72 minutes, at once undercooked and overpadded.
  83. Firehouse Dog
    Working with four interchangeable Deweys, the filmmakers create a sufficient number of lively stunts to keep the kiddies amused, though the film's wittiest moment -- a canine parody of Dudley Moore's first glimpse of Bo Derek in "10" -- will be appreciated only by their parents. In trying to straddle both age groups, however, Firehouse Dog proves decidedly less nimble than its furry star.
  84. Black Book
    Black Book works only if you take it for the pulpiest of fiction, not a historical gloss, its stated claims to "true events" notwithstanding.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis
    Ms. Jordan lets a few subjects contradict the image of Mr. Smith as martyr, but the overall tone is worshipful verging on reductive. You come away impressed by Smith's charisma, versatility and integrity, while also wondering if a man so abrasively self-important could have made such playful art.
  86. Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters
    Strictly for cultists, and even they might find less than 90 bongless minutes hard to sit through.
  87. Lucky You
    Even though it is sometimes dull and generally thin, there is something winning about the movie's genial lack of ambition.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Dreaming Lhasa
    A fine example of how feature films can be used to deliver urgent political messages, but as drama, it doesn’t quite work.
  89. Snow Cake
    Like "I Am Sam," it is a film that tests your cynicism.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Civic Duty
    Initially promising, ultimately irritating psychological thriller.
  91. Georgia Rule
    It's an interesting, maddening mess -- not a terrible movie, and by no means a dull one.
  92. Brooklyn Rules
    However authentic and heartfelt this film's depiction of life on the meaner streets of the Northeast corridor may be, it doesn't begin to match "The Sopranos'" epic vision of violence, class struggle and upward mobility in a barbarous culture.
  93. Crazy Love
    The overall vibe is morbidly entertaining, though something of a downer, partly because it's unclear if Mr. and Mrs. Pugach know that they are such sick puppies, partly because it's unclear if Mr. Klores cares that they are.
  94. Day Watch
    Unfolding in a decrepit, present-day Moscow, Day Watch dazzles and confuses with equal determination.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Fifth Empire
    Mr. Oliveira’s script talks itself hoarse, but his images sing.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Otoshimono
    The movie ultimately proves more unnerving than terrifying, and the monster, which probably shouldn't have been revealed in quite so much detail, looks too much like the title character of "Bride of Chucky," only with eyes in the back of her mossy head.
  97. Surf's Up
    Has a friendly, blue-collar vibe (Cody is an ex-fish-sorter from the Shiverpool, Antarctica) and some sly, low-key humor. Nevertheless, a moratorium on penguins might be called for, despite the inevitable anthropomorphic void.
  98. La Vie en Rose
    La Vie en Rose, which Mr. Dahan wrote as well as directed, has an intricate structure, which is a polite way of saying that it's a complete mess... In the end, as often happens in movies of this kind, La Vie en Rose is saved by Piaf herself.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Noriko's Dinner Table
    This 159-minute feature doesn't quite cohere. Mr. Sono's direction is haphazard; he oversells the first half's whimsical touches and the second half's spiral-of-doom emoting. Still, the movie is worth seeing, if only to experience a small story with impossibly grand ambitions.
  100. DOA: Dead or Alive
    Free of blood, bruises and visible trauma, DOA revels in its fakery. And though the film presents more exuberant female flesh than hiring day at Hooters, it's strictly for titillation.
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