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. Captivity
    The movie has been thoroughly eclipsed by "Captivity" the marketing.
  2. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
    A sleek, swift and exciting adaptation of J. K. Rowling’s longest novel to date.
  3. Drama/Mex
    Drama/Mex means to say something about its country of origin, though it’s hard to know exactly what.
  4. Dynamite Warrior
    Chalerm Wongpim keeps it all moving along at such a clip that you’re more likely to leave the theater smiling than yawning.
  5. Joshua
    Poised self-consciously between art and entertainment, Joshua offers imaginative staging and some superb performances.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Method
    The sum total of this gamesmanship is a suspenseful, funny film that touches on a corporation’s responsibility to society, the price of ambition, the persistence of workplace sexism, the destructive competition between women, and why it’s a good idea to take an extra shirt to your next interview.
  7. Introducing the Dwights
    A funny-sad, icky-sweet comedy of family dysfunction.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Rescue Dawn
    For the most part, Rescue Dawn is a marvel: a satisfying genre picture that challenges the viewer’s expectations.
  9. Transformers
    A movie of epically assaultive noise and nonsense.
  10. License to Wed
    The only thing that kept me watching License to Wed until the end (apart from being paid to do so) was the faith, perhaps misplaced, that I will not see a worse movie this year.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Fifth Empire
    Mr. Oliveira’s script talks itself hoarse, but his images sing.
  12. Ratatouille
    A nearly flawless piece of popular art, as well as one of the most persuasive portraits of an artist ever committed to film. It provides the kind of deep, transporting pleasure, at once simple and sophisticated, that movies at their best have always promised.
  13. Sicko
    Sicko is the least controversial and most broadly appealing of Mr. Moore’s movies. (It is also, perhaps improbably, the funniest and the most tightly edited.) The argument it inspires will mainly be about the nature of the cure, and it is here that Mr. Moore’s contribution will be most provocative and also, therefore, most useful.
  14. Evening
    Doesn’t seem as if it would translate easily to the big screen. It hasn't.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    One to Another
    The notion that French cinema consists mainly of pretentious soft-core pornography is an ignorant cliché, but One to Another does little to disprove it.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Vitus
    The triumphant musical cues and comic double takes encourage us to cheer Vitus's high jinks as if he were Ferris Bueller's ivory-tickling kid brother.
  17. Dr. Bronner's Magic Soapbox
    Mixes method and madness to chart the evolution of a counterculture phenomenon.
  18. Falling
    It’s a theme as familiar as life. The five women, all perfectly cast and almost perfectly played.
  19. Live Free or Die Hard
    Bruce Willis is ready to earn our love again by performing the same lovably violent, meathead tricks as before.
  20. Ghosts of Cité Soleil
    In spite of occasional gestures in the direction of political or sociological context -- interviews with anti-Aristide activists, news images of battles beyond Cité Soleil -- Mr. Leth is not, in the end, much concerned with offering an analysis of the Haitian situation. Like Lele, he'd rather have a party with the thugs.
  21. In Between Days
    Sensitive, modest, thrillingly self-assured first feature by So Yong Kim, was one of the standouts of the 2006 Sundance Film Festival -- exactly the kind of thoughtful, independent work one hopes to find there and too rarely does.
  22. Over the GW
    A disturbing look at reprogramming that masquerades as rehabilitation. Having been forced to drink the Kool-Aid, Mr. Gaglia has produced a work that's as much an act of emesis as of filmmaking.
  23. 1408
    The movie is most effective in its early scenes of prickly menace, and while the Dolphin is no Overlook (the haunted hotel in "The Shining"), its old-world creepiness is exactly right.
  24. Evan Almighty
    A movie far less interesting than its premise. It is also slightly less interesting than its hugely popular predecessor, "Bruce Almighty."
  25. A Mighty Heart
    Effectively fashioned, as jolting as it is polished, as well as a surprising, insistently political work of commercial art.
  26. Black Sheep
    Once you have seen a sheep munching on a bloody human leg, you may think twice about your next leg of lamb. On the other hand maybe you'll be inspired to seek vengeance. To provoke one of these responses -- vegetarianism or a defiant meat eating -- may be the point of this odd, amusing film.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Broken English
    A well-acted, smartly directed film that’s depressing because it could have amounted to so much more. It departs from the studio-financed romantic-comedy template in just one, unfortunately fatal respect: it makes a point of pride out of rejecting cliché, then swoons into its embrace.
  28. Lady Chatterley
    This Lady Chatterley, winner of five César awards in France, feels bracingly fresh, vital and modern.
  29. You Kill Me
    Straight-up ridiculous, but it's also consistently funny and nicely played by a well-complemented cast that finds its collective groove and never misses a beat.
  30. Klimt
    The shortened version is lovely to look at, but the stilted dialogue and crude overdubbing in scenes where English is not spoken often make it an impenetrable hodgepodge.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Longing
    Intrigues because it presents an outwardly decent man falling equally in love with two women but eschews simplistic judgments.
  32. Manufactured Landscapes
    Absorbing if unsettling documentary.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    White Palms
    The term "sports film" doesn't do justice to the director Szabolcs Hajdu's movie White Palms, a punishing, beautiful drama.
  34. 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.
  35. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
    This existentially and aesthetically unnecessary sequel to the equally irrelevant if depressingly successful "Fantastic Four."
  36. Nancy Drew
    As it is, Nancy Drew stands as an example of how to take a foolproof, time-tested formula -- a young detective using smarts and determination to solve a case -- and mess it up with superficial cleverness and pandering hackwork. How this happened is hardly a mystery; botched adaptations are as common as BlackBerries in Hollywood. But it is nonetheless something of a crime.
  37. Eagle vs Shark
    Intermittently charming, sometimes tiresome celebration of quirkiness.
  38. Fido
    It won't make you bleed, just howl.
  39. When the Road Bends: Tales of a Gypsy Caravan
    As a music document and as a labor of unabashed love, the nonfiction feature Gypsy Caravan could hardly be better; as a movie, it could stand some improvement.
  40. Strike
    Schlöndorff calls the film "a ballad inspired by true events," and its occasional bouts of clumsiness and sentimentality are inseparable from its power.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Beyond Hatred
    An example of a film whose style doesn’t merely suit its story but amplifies its meanings.
  42. Jhoom Barabar Jhoom
    A giddy romantic comedy with star power.
  43. Czech Dream
    When they discover they've been made fools of, they accept this performance event with surprising equanimity. There is a lot of grumbling but no riot. They get the joke.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Macbeth
    For four centuries William Shakespeare’s plays have been reinvented to fit contemporary sensibilities. But few recent efforts can match the Australian writer and director Geoffrey Wright’s brutal and thrilling new version.
    • 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.
  46. Lights in the Dusk
    This spare, minimalist film is not realistic. It has the simplicity of a silent movie, and the blocking of the actors, especially in the scenes with Koistinen and Mirja, emphasizes the distances between them.
  47. Ocean's Thirteen
    "Ocean's 23," oops, Ocean's Thirteen, is also a gas; it's lighter than air, prettier than life, a romp, a goof and an attentively oiled machine.
  48. Hostel: Part II
    Mr. Roth, part of a new breed of horror directors affectionately labeled the "Splat Pack," is regarded by some as a savior of the genre, though it could be argued that he is more effectively a saboteur. He might have mastered the cheap sadism-as-entertainment gross-out, but he has yet to produce a single genuine, old-fashioned fright.
  49. 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.
  50. 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.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    You're Gonna Miss Me
    Luckily, the director Keven McAlester keeps Mr. Erickson's humanity front and center. He lets music critics and musicians praise Mr. Erickson's smiling banshee voice (which influenced Janis Joplin) and pioneering use of feedback, but he doesn't insist on his subject's genius or oversell his importance.
    • 18 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Miriam
    The title role is played by Ariana Savalas, daughter of Telly. She's good, but not inventive enough to rescue Miriam, which is hobbled by flatly lighted video imagery, unconvincing period details and an inclination to wallow in atrocity.
  53. 12:08 East of Bucharest
    Though it is modest, almost anecdotal, in scale, 12:08 East of Bucharest is also characterized by a precise and sneaky formal wit.
    • 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.
  55. Knocked Up
    An instant classic, a comedy that captures the sexual confusion and moral ambivalence of our moment without straining, pandering or preaching.
  56. Gracie
    A familiar underdog story told with unusual sensitivity.
  57. Mr. Brooks
    A werewolf movie masquerading as a thriller, it looks like a canny attempt by Bruce A. Evans, its director and screenwriter (with Raynold Gideon), to establish a "Saw"-like franchise using the names of fading ’80s stars to lend the project a semblance of respectability.
  58. 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.
  59. Day Watch
    Unfolding in a decrepit, present-day Moscow, Day Watch dazzles and confuses with equal determination.
  60. I'm Reed Fish
    Sweetness and whimsy fill the screen to capacity in I'm Reed Fish, a rural coming-of-age tale that's so laid-back that its cast is almost horizontal.
  61. Ten Canoes
    There is nothing more enthralling than a good yarn, and Ten Canoes interweaves two versions of the same story, one filmed in black and white and set a thousand years ago, and an even older one, filmed in color and set in a mythic, prehistoric past.
  62. Pierrepoint
    In Pierrepoint:The Last Hangman Timothy Spall sinks his teeth into one of the juiciest roles of his career.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Radiant City
    The cinematographer Patrick McLaughlin's eerie, sometimes monumental images italicize the experts' statements, making the suburbs seem like an asphalt-and-Sheetrock dreamscape where democracy goes to die.
  64. Bug
    The escalating hysteria and grisly set pieces of Bug may strain credulity, but Ms. Judd has never been more believable as a woman condemned to attract the wrong kind of man.
  65. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
    The cannibals, coconuts and landlocked locations have been replaced by the high-seas high jinks that made the first film so enjoyable.
  66. Angel-A
    Rie Rasmussen and Jamel Debbouze, the stars who portray Angela, the celestial therapist, and André, her star patient, display enough screwball romantic charm to keep this sugary trifle afloat longer than you'd expect.
  67. Golden Door
    What makes Mr. Crialese's telling unusual, apart from the gorgeousness of his wide-screen compositions, is that his emphasis is on departure and transition, rather than arrival.
  68. Paprika
    A gorgeous riot of future-shock ideas and brightly animated imagery, the doors of perception never close.
  69. Steel City
    Mostly Mr. Jun's script is sharp, and Laurie Metcalf, James McDaniel, America Ferrera and Raymond J. Barry in supporting roles help keep the tale mesmerizing, in a small-scale sort of way.
  70. 9 Star Hotel
    By ignoring Israeli voices and focusing only on the immigrants, Mr. Haar has produced a documentary filled with immediacy but free of analysis, a fascinating but ultimately unenlightening record of their plight.
  71. The Boss of It All
    Like all of Mr. von Trier's films, The Boss of It All is a cold, misanthropic work that places no faith in institutions and in humanity itself. But it's also very funny.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Orange Winter
    Orange Winter is more than a mere history lesson. Like Norman Mailer's nonfiction novel "The Armies of the Night," about the 1967 antiwar march on Washington, this movie characterizes a body politic as a living thing, and charts its internal changes as if it were the protagonist in a drama.
  73. Shrek the Third
    Shrek the Third seems at once more energetic and more relaxed, less desperate to prove its cleverness and therefore to some extent smarter.
  74. In Search of Mozart
    An adamantly linear, myth-busting stride through a prodigiously talented life.
  75. 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.
  76. Even Money
    A scare movie about gambling addiction, is as grim and lurid as any in the recent spate of films about the evils of crystal meth.
  77. Flanders
    Whether you like or loathe Mr. Dumont’s movies, his unsettling vision of humanity stripped of cultural finery feels profoundly truthful.
  78. The Last Time
    A Michael Keaton outing is always cause for celebration, no matter how ramshackle the vehicle ("First Daughter," anyone?) or paper-thin the role.
  79. Severance
    A lively romp through terrain less traveled than you might think.
  80. Fay Grim
    Too light-headed to qualify as satire, too poker-faced to register as comedy, Fay Grim belongs in its own stylistic niche: the Hal Hartley film.
  81. The Wendell Baker Story
    The appeal of The Wendell Baker Story depends on how charming you find the Wilson brothers, with their chipmunk grins and hip smart-aleck attitude. For my taste, a little goes a long way.
  82. Private Property
    Private Property embraces the banal and the monstrous, and affords Ms. Huppert opportunity to astonish rather than overwhelm.
  83. Hollywood Dreams
    Knowing but never jaded, Hollywood Dreams is driven by Ms. Frederick's no-boundaries commitment to her broken character, a performance that's as startling as it is touching. In Mr. Jaglom's maverick hands, the appeal of illusion over reality is both fatal and irresistible.
  84. Memories of Tomorrow
    Memories of Tomorrow finally understands that the real victim of this terrible affliction is the partner left behind.
  85. Once
    Its low-key affect and decidedly human scale endow Once with an easy, lovable charm that a flashier production could never have achieved. The formula is simple: two people, a few instruments, 88 minutes and not a single false note.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Changeling
    Much like watching a straightforward theatrical production of any play hailing from any century: you have to imagine a more detailed world beyond the bare-bones visuals.
  87. 28 Weeks Later
    28 Weeks Later is not for the faint of heart or the weak of stomach. It is brutal and almost exhaustingly terrifying, as any respectable zombie movie should be. It is also bracingly smart, both in its ideas and in its techniques.
  88. Delta Farce
    Perhaps the people most insulted are white Southerners, who presumably are expected to embrace one whopping brain-dead metaphor.
  89. Georgia Rule
    It's an interesting, maddening mess -- not a terrible movie, and by no means a dull one.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Casting About
    A solid documentary about how art is made.
  91. The Hip Hop Project
    Giving "inspirational" a good name, Matt Ruskin's vibrant and soulful documentary The Hip Hop Project sets its universal message to an inner-city beat.
  92. The Salon
    A tiresome blend of overacting and underwriting, The Salon moves from one predictable conversation to another -- the lack of available black men, the wondrousness of Bill Clinton -- without originality or comic rhythm.
  93. Chalk
    This loose-jointed ensemble comedy is funny in a squirm-inducing way.
  94. The Ex
    The best jokes in this scattershot screwball satire of job insecurity, upward mobility, political correctness and yuppie marital tensions have claws that leave scratches.
  95. Provoked: A True Story
    Unfortunately, in keeping its inflammatory subject matter at arm’s length, Provoked does exactly the same to its audience.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    ShowBusiness: The Road to Broadway
    ShowBusiness is packed with telling details that the director, Dori Berinstein, was lucky to catch on camera.
  97. Duck
    The quirky characters they meet aren't quirky enough, and the political points Ms. Bettauer sprinkles into her script thud awkwardly.
  98. Allegro
    Its most intriguing moments evoke the way that memory plays tricks and our visions of the past are actually scrambled composites of impressions and feelings.
  99. Day Night Day Night
    Maddeningly, purposefully evasive.
  100. I Don't Want to Sleep Alone
    Mr. Tsai's films are held together internally, and connected one to another, by an elusive, insistent logic that is easier to recognize than to describe. But once you do start to recognize it, each new movie offers passage to an exotic place that feels, uncannily, like home.
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