The New York Times' Scores

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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
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  1. Driving Lessons
    The screwball aging diva genre isn't the only formula guiding this stubbornly old-fashioned movie. Driving Lessons belongs to the silly feel-good mode of "The Full Monty," "Calendar Girls," "Billy Elliot," "Kinky Boots" and dozens of other celebrations of Britons defying convention to become "free," whatever that means.
  2. Infamous
    Less a parable of literary ethics than a showcase of literary personality, and it is in the end more touching than troubling.
  3. Nearing Grace
    There's nothing remotely surprising in the entire film. But the generally winning -- and freakishly good-looking -- cast, endowed by Jacob Aaron Estes's script with intelligent, if occasionally overwritten dialogue, makes for viewing that is easy on the eyes and the ears.
  4. The Ritchie Boys
    Those whose tolerance of Greatest Generation war stories isn't exhausted, not to mention those who still thrive on them, will find the group of men who called themselves the Ritchie Boys good company.
  5. Tideland
    The worst that can be said of the first two-thirds of Tideland is that it is tiresome. Toward the end it becomes creepy, and not in a good way.
  6. Zerophilia
    A novel teenage comedy with an astute understanding of adolescent sexual confusion and the nebulous nature of desire, Zerophilia suggests an elastic view of gender that's alternately gleeful and terrifying.
  7. 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.
  8. Frankenstein's Bloody Nightmare
    Purely for curiosity’s sake this unusual, intermittently hypnotic quasi monster flick is worth checking out, at least until the initial "what is this?" effect wears off and it becomes as tiresome as listening to someone relate long-winded tales about nightmares or drug-induced exploits.
  9. So Much So Fast
    Despite its immersion in tragedy and decline, So Much So Fast is leavened by unexpected humor.
  10. The Departed
    What helps make The Departed at once a success and a relief isn't that the director of "Kundun," Mr. Scorsese's deeply felt film about the Dalai Lama, is back on the mean streets where he belongs; what's at stake here is the film and the filmmaking, not the director's epic importance.
  11. Little Children
    The result is a movie that is challenging, accessible and hard to stop thinking about...But in too many recent movies intelligence is woefully undervalued, and it is this quality -- even more than its considerable beauty -- that distinguishes Little Children from its peers.
  12. Employee of the Month
    Employee of the Month is more tired than a Wal-Mart greeter at the end of a Saturday shift. One can only hope its halfhearted suggestion that winning isn't everything is some comfort if the movie's grosses are as disappointing as its jokes.
  13. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
    Mindlessly repeats the archetypal "Chainsaw" scenario.
  14. 49 Up
    Suzy's marriage, Nick's divorce, Paul's work history: none of it is my or anyone else's business. But these things -- these people -- have become, through Mr. Apted's films, a vital part of modern life, which seems to grow richer every seven years, when the new "Up" movie comes out.
  15. Black Gold
    One of the most disquieting (and challenging) statistics is left for last: if Africa's share of world trade increased by only one percentage point, it would generate $70 billion a year, five times what the continent receives in aid. Who wouldn't want that?
  16. El Cortez
    The script, by Chris Haddock, leaves numerous questions unanswered. It also reflects the character depth and conversational complexity of a 14-year-old’s first effort at fiction.
  17. One-Third
    When it finally seems likely to happen, the film crashes to a sudden and unsatisfying conclusion. But this is the first part of a projected trilogy and, assuming these characters’ lives -- or deaths -- will be further explored, it’s really just the beginning.
  18. Tales of the Rat Fink
    Depending on your age, sex and mechanical inclinations, Tales of the Rat Fink will convince you that Mr. Roth should either have been canonized or smothered at birth.
  19. Kettle of Fish
    Premised entirely on nonsense.
  20. Shortbus
    An ode to the joy and sweet release of sex, the film manages to be a sincere, modest political venture that finds humor where you might least expect it, notably in a ménage à trois featuring a cheeky rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner."
  21. Blood Tea and Red String
    As much a work of sculpture as of cinema, this 71-minute movie, 13 years in the making, is the handmade brainchild of Christiane Cegavske, an artist who dabbles in film but whose talents and sensibility align more naturally with those of the contemporary-art world.
  22. ...So Goes the Nation
    A clear-eyed and utterly ruthless dissection of the battle for Ohio in the months leading up to the 2004 presidential election.
  23. Wrestling with Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner
    Best approached as an admiring portrait of a likable, creative powerhouse at midcareer. No disapproving voices interrupt the stream of praise for his politics and his art. Mr. Kushner’s place in the history of American theater and in American culture, in general, is left unexamined. These are subjects well worth exploring in another, deeper film.
  24. The Queen
    A sublimely nimble evisceration of that cult of celebrity known as the British royal family.
  25. The Guardian
    An action movie, a basic training movie, a swaggering sea adventure, a home front melodrama and an inspiring tough-love heroic teacher fable. If the aggregate of all these movies is exhausting and occasionally overwrought, some of the parts are stirring and effective, though not exactly fresh.
  26. 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.
  27. School for Scoundrels
    Billy Bob Thornton's leer is much in evidence in the shoddy comedy School for Scoundrels, though the tackiness of the film, its lazy direction and its self-satisfied stupidity may mean that Mr. Thornton curled his lip about the production rather than for it.
  28. A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints
    hough the picture is wrenching, at times devastating, it leaves you with that buoyant feeling of having encountered a raw, authentic work of art.
  29. loudQUIETloud: A Film About the Pixies
    Boring people who made extraordinary music, the Pixies are inexplicable. In attempting to demystify them, the directors Steven Cantor and Matthew Galkin achieve the opposite.
  30. Be with Me
    The fact that her story of triumph over unimaginable odds doesn't come freighted with mystical and religious bromides makes it all the more inspiring.
  31. Broken Sky
    Mr. Hernández doesn't always grab what he's reaching for -- his talent soars untethered by discipline -- but the thrust of his effort lights up the sky.
  32. The Last King of Scotland
    Furiously paced, with excellent performances by Forest Whitaker as Amin and James McAvoy as the foolish Scotsman who becomes the leader's personal physician, the film has texture, if not depth and enough intelligence to almost persuade you that it actually has something of note to say.
  33. All the King's Men
    Nothing in the picture works. It is both overwrought and tedious, its complicated narrative bogging down in lyrical voiceover, long flashbacks and endless expository conversations between people speaking radically incompatible accents.
  34. 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.
  35. Jackass Number Two
    Debased, infantile and reckless in the extreme, this compendium of body bravado and malfunction makes for some of the most fearless, liberated and cathartic comedy in modern movies.
  36. Fearless
    Fearless sustains the tradition of ethically inflected Chinese action movies.
  37. Jesus Camp
    Jesus Camp doesn't pretend to be a comprehensive survey of the charismatic-evangelical phenomenon. It offers no history or sociology and only scattered statistics about its growth. It analyzes the political agenda only glancingly, centering on abortion but not on homosexuality or other items.
  38. American Hardcore
    A toned-down cinematic equivalent of the music: fast and loud, but not too loud. The movie scrambles to cover so much territory that there is room only for musical shards and slivers; few complete songs are heard, and no signature anthems stand out.
  39. The Science of Sleep
    So while The Science of Sleep may not, in the end, be terribly deep, it is undoubtedly -- and deeply -- refreshing.
  40. 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.
  41. American Blackout
    Though occasionally inflammatory -- one interviewee talks about being "slingshotted into slavery" -- American Blackout isn’t a conspiracy rant. It's a methodical compilation of questions and irregularities that deserves a wider audience.
  42. The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros
    Directed by Auraeus Solito from a screenplay by Michiko Yamamoto, Maximo has charmed film festival audiences from Sundance to Jerusalem with its refreshingly blasé handling of homosexuality, its amiable actors and its delicacy of milieu. Credit, above all, the talented Mr. Lopez, whose effortless charisma buoys the movie even when it goes heavy with contrivance.
  43. Train Man
    Though clearly aimed at teenagers, this unashamedly heartstruck movie is neither obsessed with sex nor driven to humiliate its characters. Compared to those of the average American teen movie, its ambitions are so innocent they’re almost childlike.
  44. They're Just My Friends
    Hands down the most excruciatingly inept film to creep its way into theaters in some time.
  45. The Decay of Fiction
    If there were more experimental films as entertaining as The Decay of Fiction, Pat O’Neill's luminous Hollywood ghost story, the notion of a thriving avant-garde cinema might not be so intimidating to the moviegoing public.
  46. Old Joy
    A triumph of modesty and of seriousness that also happens to be one of the finest American films of the year.
  47. 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.
  48. Home
    Home brilliantly illuminates the invisible damage inflicted by years of deprivation. When survival hinges on trusting no one but yourself, the kindness of strangers can seem too good to be true.
  49. The Black Dahlia
    Mr. De Palma can be a director of dazzling creative lunacy, but there's little craziness in this restrained, awkward film. With the diverting exception of Hilary Swank, who plays a slinky degenerate named Madeleine Linscott, the leads are disastrous.
  50. 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.
  51. 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.
  52. 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.
  53. 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.
  54. Confetti
    Content to go only a third of the way to the bottom of its characters, the movie gives each a few comic tics and leaves it at that.
  55. The Ground Truth
    Tries to do too much in too little time. It would be a stronger film if it devoted more detailed attention to the plight of the returning veteran. As it stands, it is a scattershot antiwar polemic that doesn't bolster its arguments with any historical perspective or statistical evidence. No one from the government or the military is trotted out to give an opposing view. This is not to say that The Ground Truth, on its own terms, isn't devastating.
  56. Haven
    From a producer of "Crash" comes Haven, an even phonier exercise in manufactured conflict, facile irony and preposterous contrivance.
  57. The U.S. vs. John Lennon
    One of the best-known cultural figures of the past half-century, leaves the movie with little to do but add its sometimes sanctimonious voice to the chorus of praise and admiration.
  58. Checking Out
    Stagy, stiff and marinated in egg cream.
  59. Keeping Mum
    It’s refreshing to see Dame Maggie in a lighter mode than usual. The role of a genteel psychopath is a piece of lemon tea cake she consumes in one delicate bite.
  60. Beer League
    Comes close to being that rare film that is perfectly bad -- i.e., that has not a shred of social, entertainment or even curiosity value. But it misses out on this dubious honor by having one tiny redeeming attribute: it answers the question "Whatever happened to Edgar Stiles?"
  61. Al Franken: God Spoke
    Even his fans may find themselves frustrated, since the film observes Mr. Franken closely without generating much insight into him.
  62. Hollywoodland
    Ben Affleck has packed on the pounds, slipped on some tights and given this exasperating film far more than it gives in return.
  63. The Protector
    The Protector supersizes the formula of "Ong Bak."
  64. Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers
    A febrile blend of facts, liberal outrage and emotional manipulation (like his colleague Michael Moore, Mr. Greenwald knows the visual power of a grieving mother), Iraq for Sale has an us-versus-them sensibility that’s extremely effective.
  65. The Covenant
    That's the one with a car that explodes and gets put back together by magic, right? Yeah, that’s pretty much the coolest part.
  66. I Trust You to Kill Me
    Inconsequential documentary.
  67. SherryBaby
    What distinguishes the film from its many peers is the quality of Ms. Collyer’s writing -- which rarely reaches for obvious, melodramatic beats -- and the precision of Ms. Gyllenhaal’s performance. She treats the character neither as a case study nor as an opportunity to show off her range, but rather as a completely ordinary and therefore arrestingly complicated person.
  68. Le petit lieutenant
    Le Petit Lieutenant embraces the spectrum of human drama and comedy, and like a lot of French films it is keenly involved with the everyday pulse of work.
  69. Man Push Cart
    Filmed in less than three weeks, Man Push Cart is an exemplary work of independent filmmaking carried out on a shoestring. Mr. Razvi’s convincing performance is a muted portrait of desolation bordering on despair.
  70. Red Doors
    This agreeable, lightweight movie, written and directed by Georgia Lee, turns the malaises of a suburban family into bittersweet farce that teeters between cheeky humor and surface pathos.
  71. Rolling Family
    Rolling Family is not a movie of ideas but an emotional and tactile experience of economy-class travel. In surveying a large swath of the Argentine landscape, it could be a companion piece to "The Motorcycle Diaries."
  72. Vajra Sky Over Tibet
    Limited almost exclusively to tourist attractions, this documentary glimpse at the sights and sounds of occupied Tibet amounts to a rhetorically inflated vacation video.
  73. Saint of 9/11
    The movie's steadily elegiac tone precludes it from creating a more lively, idiosyncratic portrait of a man who, by many accounts, was a wonderful raconteur whose gift of gab was complemented by a rollicking sense of humor.
  74. Crank
    For a movie premised on unrelenting action, Crank proves fatally turgid.
  75. 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.
  76. The Wicker Man
    A movie like this can survive an absurd premise but not incompetent execution. And Mr. LaBute, never much of an artist with the camera, proves almost comically inept as a horror-movie technician...It's neither haunting nor amusing; just boring.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lassie
    Lassie balances cruelty and tenderness, pathos and humor without ever losing sight of its youngest audience member.
  78. 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.
  79. Mutual Appreciation
    It's the sort of unassuming discovery that could get lost in a crowd or suffer from too much big love, and while it won't save or change your life, it may make your heart swell. Its aim is modest and true.
  80. Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles
    A little uncanny (has it been digitally manipulated?) and a whole lot clichéd, the tableau speaks of melancholy graced by a pale sliver of hope. You'd roll your eyes if they weren't so dazzled.
  81. This Film Is Not Yet Rated
    Feisty, intellectually engaging.
  82. Bubot Niyar
    A modest film, less interested in advocacy or analysis than in sympathy.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A Cantor's Tale
    The movie is most engaging when following Mr. Mendelson around his old neighborhood, Borough Park, which, we learn, is simply teeming with bakers whose singing is on a par with their knishes.
  84. Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film
    The movie is an entirely absorbing, occasionally revelatory portrait of a brilliant talent driven to greatness by an inner chorus of demons and angels.
  85. Beerfest
    The five comedians known collectively as Broken Lizard have created a frat-house staple for the ages.
  86. Idlewild
    The joint doesn't jump in the musical Idlewild; it just twitches and stumbles. As much a missed opportunity as a terrible tease.
  87. How to Eat Fried Worms
    Nicely directed, the film version proves refreshingly free of the customary blights that affect most modern children's movies, notably adult condescension. But, man, is it mean.
  88. Invincible
    Invincible counters its predictably inspirational trajectory with close attention to historical detail and blue-collar hardship.
  89. The Quiet
    Neither ambitious enough to take seriously nor sleazy enough to enjoy, The Quiet flirts with the trappings of exploitation cinema without going all the way.
  90. Queens
    The most remarkable thing about Queens, a silly but generous Spanish farce from the writer and director Manuel Gómez Pereira, is its unadulterated worship of middle-aged women.
  91. Surviving Eden
    Although the early scenes hold out some promise...the movie quickly runs out of ideas.
  92. Fratricide
    Every so often, Mr. Arslan cuts to Kurdistan, where a group of women wander the barren landscape, a Greek chorus gone astray in a film gone amiss.
  93. LOL
    Authentic in texture if narrow in scope, LOL is a movie about the way we live -- or rather about the way white, urban, heterosexual circuit boys are failing to live.
  94. Princesas
    A maudlin melodrama about prostitutes in Madrid, Princesas is not, alas, the new film by Pedro Almodóvar, but a dilution of his manner by the writer-director Fernando León de Aranoa.
  95. When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts
    Although seeds of hope are woven into this tapestry of rage, sorrow and disbelief, the inability of government at almost every level to act quickly and decisively leaves you aghast at what amounts to a collective failure of will.
  96. Snakes on a Plane
    What they give us is the chance to win, not with righteous morality, but with an old-fashioned swagger that says, much like the film itself, Hey, we may be stupid, but we rock.
  97. 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.
  98. The Illusionist
    This entertaining movie is content to be something a bit more modest: a pungent period folk tale that teases you until the very end.
  99. Material Girls
    The real-life sisters Hilary and Haylie Duff star in this incompetent spin on the poor-little-rich-girl story.
  100. Factotum
    Like the film itself, Mr. Dillon’s performance works through understatement.
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