The New York Times' Scores

Select another publication »
For 20,280 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: 9,381 out of 20280
  2. Mixed: 8,435 out of 20280
  3. Negative: 2,464 out of 20280
20280 movie reviews
view
per page
  1. Wolf
    Wolf may lead with an open curiosity, but in tackling big ideas about identity, openness is not always enough.
  2. Little Boxes
    It avoids the big confrontation or grand statement; doing so allows it to be an effective, if somewhat uneventful, study of the Brooklyn bubble effect.
  3. A Little Romance
    A Little Romance is a movie that seems to have melted the minds of everyone of any stature connected with it.
  4. Cobweb
    Cobweb, directed by Kim Jee-woon, mines the comically absurd reality that is filmmaking, at times with bouncy cinematic verve, at others somewhat aimlessly and a little too indulgently.
  5. Coming 2 America
    A genial, mostly inoffensive, sometimes quite funny sequel.
  6. Little Manhattan
    Small-scale, perfectly acted family film.
  7. Moby Doc
    What Moby leaves out of his account is as revealing as the tales of homelessness and addiction he puts in.
  8. Wild Tigers I Have Known
    Like "Twelve and Holding," another film from last year's New Directors series, Wild Tigers achingly sympathizes with the desperate lengths an obsessed adolescent will go to in pursuit of love. As you watch the movie, you pray that, in the language of "Tea and Sympathy," the future teachers of Logan's life lessons will "be kind."
  9. Insidious: Chapter 3
    Ms. Shaye gives Insidious more than sufficient reason for a Chapter 4.
  10. 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.
  11. The Switch
    The first third of The Switch, directed by Josh Gordon and Will Speck, is so bizarre that it leads you to wonder if, through some miraculous lack of oversight, the movie will blaze an unpredictable path. No such luck.
  12. Citizen Koch
    It’s a hodgepodge that Michael Moore (whose movies Ms. Lessin and Mr. Deal have produced) and his editors might snappily dice together, but here the construction falls short.
  13. Kill Your Idols
    Despite his access to both No Wave luminaries and atmospherically battered footage of various bands wreaking havoc at various venues, Mr. Crary never figures out what story he wants to tell.
  14. Cuban Fury
    Not that some of this isn’t amusing, but you feel the considerable improvisational skills of the cast going to waste.
  15. Mad As Hell
    It’s a job requirement for a show host like Mr. Uygur to project his personality and beliefs; this filmmaker doesn’t muster a healthy skepticism to match.
  16. Sunset Edge
    The film uses nonprofessional actors and has a good eye, but more story development and fewer lingering shots of the trash-strewn trailer park would have been an improvement.
  17. 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.
  18. Pusher (2012)
    There's an ugly, jittery beauty to Pusher, a very fine British redo of a 1996 Danish movie of the same title.
  19. Con Air
    The colorfully written Con Air is a solid chip off "The Rock," pumped up and very well cast, with the prettiness and polish of advertising art.
  20. The Lodgers
    Working with an uneven cast and an undercooked story, Mr. O’Malley hits the horror beats just fine (slam, creak, squeak) without putting a sinister spin on the assorted strange doings. For all the genre exertions, none of this feels the least bit spooky.
  21. Kandahar
    Stupefyingly sluggish.
  22. Boulevard
    As truthful as it is, Boulevard conveys little insight into characters who are believable and well acted but incapable of change.
  23. The Lake House
    The movie is, above all, a showcase for its stars, who seem gratifyingly comfortable in their own skin and delighted to be in each other's company again, in another deeply silly, effortlessly entertaining movie.
  24. Wind Chill
    A moody, spooky tale, rendered with laudable economy.
  25. Last Stop for Paul
    An overall sense that the movie was infinitely more fun to make than it is to watch.
  26. Deadfall
    A diverting neo-noir, Deadfall brings to mind those dark, old-fashioned entertainments in rotation on Turner Classic Movies that suck you in with their genre machinery, sullen beauties and despair.
  27. Bare
    The Sarah character isn’t developed well enough to make her journey enlightening or involving.
  28. The Dark
    Mina and Alex seem less like teenagers and more like case studies with traumas rather than personalities. The horror genre can be a pipeline into the dark corners of the psyche, but the impact of The Dark is more clinical than cathartic.
  29. Clara's Heart
    Directed by Robert Mulligan in an unapologetically sentimental style, Clara's Heart succeeds in tugging the heartstrings only when Clara herself is on screen.
  30. Trap
    The bigger the scope and the more Cooper’s psychology is explained, the less taut the film feels.
  31. Death on the Nile
    Death on the Nile, Kenneth Branagh’s second adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot stories, forgets the simple pleasures of ensemble excess and pure messing about.
  32. Bean
    But while rooted in British sensibilities, Bean is not to be confused with a Noel Coward comedy. Not every gag in Bean succeeds, but compared with most comedies, this one is a keeper.
  33. That's the Way I Like It
    Amounts to recycling rather than reinvention.
  34. Cotton Mary
    Forlorn melodrama, which is low on drama and high on mellow.
  35. Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron
    As it stands, "Spirit" provides neither the profound human touch of the great Disney animation of the past, nor the dazzling, high-tech fun of present-day digital cartooning.
  36. Beefcake
    A fascinating double-edged portrait of 1950s Los Angeles.
  37. The Hand That Rocks the Cradle
    While De Mornay was chilling as a woman haunted by a miscarriage and her husband’s suicide, Monroe is merely chilly, lumbering like a mopey teenager stuck with reciting unintentionally funny lines that aim for sexy but kill the mood.
  38. Eternals
    The actors are the movie’s great superpower and give it warmth, even a bit of heat, and a pulse of life that’s never fully quelled by the numerous clamorous action sequences.
  39. 47 Meters Down
    In the lulls between bouts of yammering, however, the director, Johannes Roberts, concentrates on building a solid atmosphere of desperation.
  40. The United States vs. Billie Holiday
    Like nearly everything else in this feverish, frustrating movie, the political themes are handled with maximal melodrama and minimal clarity.
  41. The Next Three Days
    There is all kinds of potential here, but Mr. Haggis lacks the Hitchcockian sense of mischief to make it blossom.
  42. HouseSitter
    Too much of the film seems unfinished. Almost every four scenes could be condensed into one. The comedy doesn't build to any climax. It just rolls on, with Ms. Hawn doggedly working to create some sense of oddball fun. The characters, as written, are as flimsy as Newton's dream house, which, even though based on a House Beautiful award-winning design, looks less habitable than a billboard. Even its brand-new furnishings are tacky.
  43. The Accidental Tourist
    The Accidental Tourist often relies on Miss Tyler's methods without tempering them, and gives a tone of crashing obviousness to material that need not have seemed that way. [23 Dec 1988, p.C12]
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Weird World of Blowfly
    Somehow Mr. Reid has an ability to push so far into the depths of stupidity that he breaks out the other side, making you laugh in spite of yourself.
  45. Crimes of Passion
    FOR all their extravagance, Ken Russell's films have never lacked exuberance or humor, which makes the flat, joyless tone of Crimes of Passion a surprise. Much of this is attributable to a screenplay by Barry Sandler filled with smutty double-entendres and weighty ironies. Only intermittently does Mr. Russell break through with the kind of manic flamboyance that is so singularly and rudely his own.
  46. G20
    Intensions aside, G20 plays well as a silly action movie. I certainly cackled throughout, making it easy to shrug off the incoherence of the conspiracy plot and the obligatory supermom additions.
  47. Black Beauty
    Avis loses the novel’s sincerity by watering down Sewell’s animal welfare plea. In this update, the humans are not as villainous. Beauty is not as prominent. And the novel’s mustang spirit diminishes into a ho-hum horse movie.
  48. Maggie
    Zombies, Arnold Schwarzenegger and a certain Terrence Malick je ne sais quoi — what could go wrong? More or less everything in this low-budget head-scratcher and periodic knee-slapper.
  49. VHYes
    Even when the ghost of a point materializes — that recording ephemera can be a self-soothing behavior — VHYes is too unsophisticated to develop it.
  50. The Woman on the 6th Floor
    Lighter than a meringue and as insubstantial, the French boulevard comedy The Women on the 6th Floor was designed for the gentle laughter it easily earns.
  51. My Worst Nightmare
    Its tepid satire of art world pretensions culminates with a visual dirty joke that is mildly amusing but still not worth the wait.
  52. Bomb the System
    Bomb the System, which rides on a subtle hip-hop soundtrack, might be described as soulful pulp; cult recognition awaits it.
  53. London Boulevard
    Cultivation and fine manners are nowhere to be found in the foul urban cesspool of William Monahan's London Boulevard. This palpitating mess of a movie certainly doesn't lack for pungent atmosphere.
  54. Bobbi Jene
    Enigmatic to an extreme, the documentary Bobbi Jene may interest viewers who are well versed in contemporary dance. All others are on their own.
  55. Cannery Row
    The only people who emerge from this precious nonsense smelling good are Richard MacDonald, the English production designer, and Sven Nykvist, the Swedish cameraman.
  56. The Hills Have Eyes
    Snobs may balk, purists will be appalled, but this new and exceedingly nasty version of Wes Craven's 1977 cult shocker is awfully good at what it does. And mostly what it does is make you feel awful.
  57. Queen Bees
    Each of these stalwarts bring more than charisma to their roles, and when the writing itself displays some snap (which admittedly isn’t that often) the performers bite right into it.
  58. Murder on the Orient Express
    Most radically, this is a Poirot with heart. This interpretation is a dumb idea, but Mr. Branagh, an actor of prodigious skills, can at least pull this one half off. It’s not the only dumb idea in this film, which nevertheless bounces along in a way that’s sometimes almost entertaining.
  59. Magnus
    [An] insipid and uninformative portrait of singularity and obsession.
  60. Nanny McPhee Returns
    Neither the dangers of the plot - a dissolute uncle who wants to sell the farm, a father missing in action - nor the forbidding Nanny McPhee herself are as fearsome as they were the first time around.
  61. DamNation
    If the film is less persuasive for its lack of balance, it’s at least heartening to learn that undesirable dams can be destroyed and their rivers restored to their old ways and means.
  62. Ghost
    Nothing if not earnest. It's also eccentric enough to remain interesting even when its ghost story isn't easy to believe.
  63. Run Rabbit Run
    Gloomy and vague, Run Rabbit Run is a moody, noncommittal tease replete with the usual spectral signifiers: clammy dreams, scary drawings, unsettling masks. Snook does everything but rend her garments in a performance that only emphasizes the busy vapidity of Hannah Kent’s script.
  64. Eleanor the Great
    There’s enough in Eleanor the Great to still make it watchable, especially the genuinely moving intergenerational connection between two women who need each other to move past their particular grief. If only the world around them had been developed more carefully, too.
  65. [Rec] 2
    Enjoy it; according to the spectacularly nauseating final moments, a cure for this virus seems unlikely, but “[REC] 3” (a k a “[REC] Apocalypse”) is a virtual certainty.
  66. Putin's Kiss
    Political menace stalks youthful idealism in Putin's Kiss, a portentous, rather creepy documentary that masks its lack of historical context with an atmosphere of accumulating threat.
  67. Electric Dreams
    In the failure of Electric Dreams to blend and balance its ingredients properly, plot elements are lost (the brick), credibility is overtaxed (the lovelorn computer), and what remains is high tech without being high art.
  68. Three Amigos!
    Though Three Amigos is the kind of skin-deep contemporary comedy that assembles its stars and then just coasts, it's friendlier than most. And it contains a few elements that are destined for immortality.
  69. Da Sweet Blood of Jesus
    It’s not especially horrifying, or even very thought-provoking. It is touching, however, because it represents one frequently misunderstood, intermittently great filmmaker’s tribute to another.
  70. The Red Stuff
    Sublime in its involvement with the yearning of mankind to explore the heavens.
  71. House of Fools
    Only adds to the sense that Mr. Konchalovsky has lost his artistic moorings. He has certainly lost his common sense.
  72. Ghost River
    Expressive touches are finally inadequate. Ms. Huppert's hard work notwithstanding, they don't take the place of psychological texture and narrative weight.
  73. Possession
    Possession is in the end an honorable, interesting failure. It falls far short of poetry, but it's not bad prose.
  74. Center Stage
    Sexy and infectious in spite of itself.
  75. Halloween H20: 20 Years Later
    For horror film devotees eager to know how this unseasonable visit from the darker spirits of autumn rates, frankly, it's more marketing trick than moviegoer treat.
  76. I Know What You Did Last Summer
    Though it flies in the face of credibility and becomes downright silly by its end, I Know What You Did Last Summer knows its way around the rules of the popular horror-film genre.
  77. Serendipity
    The cinematic equivalent of a plate made of spun sugar.
  78. Bring It On
    It is Ms. Dunst who carries the movie and unifies its disparate elements. She's a terrific comic actress.
  79. Milarepa
    There are stunning locales but not much subtlety on display in Milarepa, a straight-as-an-arrow mythical-historical telling of a mystic’s early life.
  80. American Animal
    It's showtime!" says Jimmy, the one-man band of American Animal. And for Matt D'Elia, who plays him in this hour and a half of pretentious mind games, it certainly is. There are other players, but it's all about Jimmy, portrayed with a free-associative, Jim Carrey-like mania.
  81. Charlie's Angels
    Banks wants to fight a righteous fight. But she is selling stale goods in which adult women spout girl-power clichés and conform to norms that make it very clear what kind of heroines still get to fly high: young, thin, beautiful, perfectly coifed, impeccably manicured and profoundly unthreatening.
  82. First Date
    What follows is a barrage of gunfire, wah-wah guitars and a surprising amount of novelty and heart for a film that can feel as if it’s a road trip through the directors’ inspirations.
  83. The Amateur
    It felt a bit like the life was draining away from the movie the longer it went on — as if this was more of an imitation of a good movie than an actually good movie. (The technical name for this among critics is a “nothingburger.”)
  84. Greed
    Coogan brings his usual comic reliability to his characterization, as does Isla Fisher as the rich man’s predictably estranged wife, and they wring laughs from the material.
  85. SuperFly
    The roomier scenario of this remake has the potential to yield a decent thriller, but Superfly too often prioritizes showy sequences for dubious reasons.
  86. Winter in the Blood
    The journey from page to screen may have battered Mr. Welch’s novel, but its lamenting heart beats loud and clear.
  87. Gracie
    A familiar underdog story told with unusual sensitivity.
  88. Windfall
    Windfall is dramatically flat and logically wanting.
  89. Dark Water
    Wildly overproduced and filled with fussy flourishes that make even a derelict hallway look like a million bucks, Dark Water fails to rustle up either meaning or meaningful scares.
  90. Mars Attacks!
    Just a parade of scattershot gags, more often weird than funny an dmost often just flat.
  91. Punchline
    Tepid...A big Punchline problem is that it's impossible to tell the difference between Miss Field's routines that are supposed to be awful, and the awful ones that are supposed to be funny.
  92. The Fifth Element
    As a yammering, swishy talk show host, Chris Tucker is flat-out incomprehensible, while Mr. Oldman preens evilly enough to leave tooth marks on the scenery.
  93. Anyone But You
    Sweeney and Powell could do wonders with a better script, something that makes more use of the way they grin at each other like they ate knives for lunch. She’s skilled at layered insincerity; he specializes in smirky, put-on machismo, shooting the camera a horrifically funny tongue waggle.
  94. Ghost in the Shell
    [Mr. Sanders] likes a dark palette and is good with actors, but there’s little here that feels personal, and he mostly functions as a blockbuster traffic cop, managing all the busily moving, conspicuously pricey parts.
  95. The Man of My Life
    The Man of My Life is a sumptuously illustrated but shallow fable of the grass-is-greener conflict between freedom and commitment.
  96. Race to Nowhere
    Spurred by the medical and emotional problems of her own three children, Ms. Abeles embarked on a deeply personal inquiry into the insanely hectic lives of too many of our offspring.
  97. The Battle of Pussy Willow Creek
    By the time the humor overreaches, escalating into the surreal, you’ve fallen under the movie’s spell. Audacity and invention more than compensate for the deficiencies. Who knows what Ms. Cohen will do next? But it should be interesting.
  98. Wolf
    The movie’s grittiness — the director, Jim Taihuttu (“Rabat”), shoots Wolf in black and white — its intrigues, its graphic violence and Mr. Kenzari’s performance make for a worthy addition to the annals of gangster films, Interpol edition.
  99. Magic Mike's Last Dance
    Hayek Pinault and Tatum have a tantalizing chemistry, but the script doesn’t always help them activate it.
  100. Detachment
    The shriller its didacticism, the more unhinged it becomes. But even at its most ludicrous - when it is shouting into your ear - its sheer audacity grabs your attention.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »