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. Trust the Man
    Ms. Moore is nicely lighted, but she too is poorly served by Mr. Freundlich's unfunny, unfocused screenplay, which basically stitches together a series of short scenes of four people whining in various combinations.
  2. 10th & Wolf
    The characters never transcend the clichés embedded in the culture since "The Godfather."
  3. Pusher III: I'm the Angel of Death
    The atmosphere is so thick, the talk so assured, the performances so disciplined and the fear so fearsome, that Mr. Refn’s final iteration of his pattern achieves the hard, bright light of an archetype from hell.
  4. King Leopold's Ghost
    Ms. Scott's outrage is palpable, but she has bitten off enough here for a 10-hour television series.
  5. Pusher II: With Blood On My Hands
    Where "Pusher" worked fresh texture and authenticity into a classic noir template, Pusher II reaches toward the mode of hyperrealist allegory perfected by the Dardenne brothers.
  6. Conversations with Other Women
    None of it is quite believable -- the film is too studied, too forward in its conceits to be entirely satisfying -- but Mr. Eckhart and Ms. Bonham Carter approach their roles with intelligence and conviction.
  7. Pulse
    The American version of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's "Pulse" mimics the plot fundamentals, but lacks any traces of Mr. Kurosawa’s creepy minimalism and conceptual rigor.
  8. Step Up
    The story is as old as Mickey Rooney but its appeal is eternal, and Step Up cleaves to the template with significantly more rigor than originality. For a director who is also a choreographer, Anne Fletcher is strangely reluctant to step out of line.
  9. Zoom
    Bleeds boredom from every frame.
  10. Half Nelson
    What makes Half Nelson both an unusual and an exceptional American film, particularly at a time when even films about Sept. 11 are professed to have no politics, is its insistence on political consciousness as a moral imperative.
  11. The Ordeal
    Calvaire is pompous, but not without talent or shivers.
  12. Hamilton
    To call Hamilton minimalist filmmaking is an understatement. Without plot or incident, and with only the flimsiest of characterizations, the movie operates primarily on the level of suggestion and insinuation.
  13. Poster Boy
    A polemic masquerading as a movie, Poster Boy unspools like a humorless lecture on right-wing homophobia.
  14. House of Sand
    At first House of Sand may seem like a stark tale of survival, but a surprisingly lush and colorful romance blossoms in its bleak and gorgeous desert setting.
  15. Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna
    For something so silly and so long, however, the film is surprisingly engaging, thanks largely to its very watchable actors; it's easy to see why they are international stars in the world of Hindi films.
  16. World Trade Center
    Mr. Stone has taken a public tragedy and turned it into something at once genuinely stirring and terribly sad. His film offers both a harrowing return to a singular, disastrous episode in the recent past and a refuge from the ugly, depressing realities of its aftermath.
  17. 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.
  18. 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.
  19. Satellite
    Satellite is not a profound film, but it touches a chord. It captures the wistful underside of the rampant materialism embraced by the young professional class.
  20. The Descent
    What follows is a sensationally entertaining escalation of frights, the kind that make you wiggle and squirm as you alternately laugh at your own gullibility and marvel at the filmmaker's cunning and craft.
  21. Barnyard
    Like too many animated films aimed at children, Barnyard embraces stereotypes that generally no longer cut it in adult films, and for good reason.
  22. The Night Listener
    The film has its creepy, suspenseful moments -- but it shrinks a rich, strange story to the dimensions of an anecdote.
  23. Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
    As a cultural artifact, Talladega Nights is both completely phony and, therefore, utterly authentic. Or, to put it differently: this movie is the real thing. It's finger lickin' good. It's eatin' good in the neighborhood. It's the King of Beers. It's Wonder Bread.
  24. The Bridesmaid
    Deceptively understated and finally ferocious.
  25. My Country, My Country
    Without comment but with unusual sensitivity, Ms. Poitras, exposes the emotional toll of occupation on Iraqis and American soldiers alike.
  26. Quinceañera
    As smart and warmhearted an exploration of an upwardly mobile immigrant culture as American independent cinema has produced.
  27. Boynton Beach Club
    Smoothly balancing comedy and pathos, it infuses the fantasy with enough credibility to make you care about these people and wish them merrily on their way.
  28. Jailbait
    A stagy, only mildly compelling prison drama that ends up feeling like purgatory to all involved.
  29. Shock to the System
    A sly, refreshingly grown-up gay entertainment, though rather less satisfying as a thriller.
  30. Vacationland
    A generic coming-of-age movie whose arrival on the scene suggests that the audience for gay indie clunkers is inexhaustible.
  31. Miami Vice
    Mixing pop savvy with startling formal ambition, Mr. Mann transforms what is essentially a long, fairly predictable cop-show episode into a dazzling (and sometimes daft) Wagnerian spectacle.
  32. Scoop
    Mr. Allen's invocation of the "Thin Man" films in an interview makes sense, even if he’s no William Powell and Ms. Johansson is certainly no Myrna Loy. Scoop was made by someone who understands that what makes the "Thin Man" series enduring isn't whodunit and why, but the way Nick and Nora look at each other as they sip their martinis, Asta nipping at their heels.
  33. 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.
  34. 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,
  35. 13 Tzameti
    With its icy cynicism and desolate settings, the film evokes the work of the young Roman Polanski in his sadistic trickster mode.
  36. America: Freedom to Fascism
    The mess we're in never looked so messy.
  37. Another Gay Movie
    A rude, rollicking and exceedingly raunchy attempt to turn "American Pie" into "American Quiche."
  38. Brothers of the Head
    A fake documentary that barely lets on that its fiction, this devilishly clever film tells the story of conjoined twins who create a minor sensation in Britain on the eve of punk rock.
  39. 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.
  40. Little Miss Sunshine
    Tucked in between all the hurt and the jokes, the character development and the across-the-board terrific performances is a surprisingly sharp look at contemporary America.
  41. Darshan: The Embrace
    Filling our heads with pretty pictures and not much else, Darshan: The Embrace is likely to leave audiences enchanted but unenlightened.
  42. Been Rich All My Life
    An admiring portrait of the Silver Belles, a troupe of veteran Harlem tap dancers between the ages of 84 and 96, is a valuable historical document and a useful how-to movie about making the most of old age.
  43. Shadowboxer
    A gaudy thriller saturated in sex and violence, is an extravagance that leaves you with your mouth hanging open - partly in admiration of its audacity and partly in disbelief at its preposterousness.
  44. Clerks II
    What makes Clerks II both winning and (somewhat unexpectedly) moving is its fidelity to the original "Clerks" ethic of hanging out, talking trash and refusing all worldly ambition.
  45. Lady in the Water
    One of the more watchable films of the summer. A folly, true, but watchable.
  46. Monster House
    Unpretentious, smartly written and a lot of fun.
  47. 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.
  48. Azumi
    The director, Ryuhei Kitamura, whose earlier films include the cult film "Versus," brings nothing new to the samurai-swordsman game other than some styling shorts for the whelps and a miniskirt for Azumi.
  49. Fan-Fan the Tulip
    The production is handsome, solid and bursting with Gallic atmosphere. Christian-Jaque gets a bouquet for his effort, even though it's just this side of being complete. (Review of Original Release)
  50. Mad Cowgirl
    A demented jag of blasphemy, multicultural weirdness, splatter-movie tropes and inchoate meat metaphors, Mad Cowgirl is an underground movie with little sense of grounding; the point is an aggressive pointlessness.
  51. Little Man
    Somewhere within all the crude slapstick and crass stereotypes, Little Man operates as a vulgar burlesque on the crisis of African-American manhood, particularly the relationships, or lack thereof, between fathers and sons.
  52. You, Me and Dupree
    A limp attempt to wed a romantic comedy to a buddy comedy, largely because the filmmakers see women as visitors from another planet, which is more or less what they now are in Hollywood.
  53. Changing Times
    In Changing Times, Mr. Téchiné, the great French director, is near the peak of his form. Weaving a half dozen subplots, he creates a set of variations on the theme of divided sensibilities tugging one another into states of perpetual unrest and possible happiness.
  54. Mini's First Time
    Delectably vulgar for 20 minutes or so, almost too bad to be true, but because it lacks the demented conviction of real camp, the glint of madness that keeps a bauble like "Valley of the Dolls" afloat, it soon loses its cheap-thrills appeal.
  55. The Oh in Ohio
    A feel-good movie about feeling good, The Oh in Ohio thrums with happy vibes and amiable performances.
  56. Time to Leave
    Time to Leave subordinates narrative to mood. Since the end of the story is never in doubt, the only surprises lie in the particulars of Romain’s behavior and the nuances of sorrow, determination and doubt that pass over Mr. Poupaud’s face.
  57. Edmond
    Mr. Macy, a master at playing sticks of human dynamite in mild-mannered camouflage, gives the nerviest screen performance of his career.
  58. Gabrielle
    Together with his extraordinary performers, Mr. Chéreau breathes life into characters who long ago set a course for death.
  59. Overlord [re-release]
    Like its hero, who is brave without a trace of bravado, Overlord is unusually quiet and thoughtful. The scale and ambition of combat movies has usually been epic, but this one is disarmingly lyrical and subjective.
  60. The Groomsmen
    The biggest hole in a movie that falls sadly short of being another "Diner" or "Trees Lounge" is Mr. Burns's failure to make his alter-ego character anything other than the best-looking and most affluent member of the pack, standing there and discreetly gloating.
  61. Two Sons of Francisco
    Similar stories in the United States tend to be turned into made-for-television mush. This one is manipulative in its own way, but it casts a sweet spell nonetheless.
  62. The Color of Olives
    Using only natural light, Ms. Rivas and Mr. Sarhandi frame everything with an artistry that belies the difficulty of their working conditions, creating a film as unhurried and dignified as the Amer family itself.
  63. 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.
  64. A Scanner Darkly
    Rotoscoping makes certain sense for a film about cognitive dissonance and alternative realities, though both the vocal and gestural performances by Mr. Reeves, Mr. Harrelson and, in particular, the wonderful Mr. Downey make me wish that we were watching them in live action.
  65. 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.
  66. 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.
  67. Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos
    This is a movie so unabashedly in love with its subject that even audiences who don't know Giorgio Chinaglia from Georgie Best will leave the theater grinning.
  68. Heading South
    A beautifully written, seamlessly directed film with award-worthy performances by Ms. Rampling and Ms. Young.
  69. Guernsey
    Of all the modes of modern alienation, there is none so persistent and arbitrary as finding oneself trapped in a glacially paced European art film.
  70. Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela
    A fascinating glimpse not just of the early campaigns of the African National Congress, but also of the way childhood memories can obscure larger truths.
  71. Urbanscapes
    As indicated by the title, this documentary tends toward the general, abstract and vague, though some detail and much charm are achieved by the choice of commentators.
  72. The Devil Wears Prada
    Miranda is played by Meryl Streep, an actress who carries nuance in her every pore, and who endows even her lighthearted comic roles with a rich implication of inner life. With her silver hair and pale skin, her whispery diction as perfect as her posture, Ms. Streep's Miranda inspires both terror and a measure of awe.
  73. The Blood of My Brother
    Though Mr. Berends strays too often, he does so down some compelling paths. His material is intimate and hair-raising, granting us rare access to scenes inside mosques, at a Shiite militia rally and in homes under fire.
  74. The Great Yokai War
    Narrative coherence is perhaps not among the film's virtues, but its loopy, cluttered story is part of the fun. And a clearer, simpler plot might have required the sacrifice of some delightful grace notes and visual marvels, like the elastic-necked geisha or the one-eyed ambulatory umbrella.
  75. There's No One Like You
    Krrish is overlong, schmaltzy, wholly derivative and sprinkled with underwhelming song-and-dance numbers. Coming from anywhere else, these elements might be considered glaring flaws. In Bollywood they are not only expected, but often, as in this film, they also appear as virtues.
  76. 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.
  77. The Motel
    Michael Kang's small, perfectly observed portrait of Ernest Chin (Jeffrey Chyau), a Chinese-American boy who lives and works in a dingy downscale motel operated by his mother, captures the glum desperation of inhabiting the biological limbo of early adolescence.
  78. Strangers with Candy
    Devotees of the series, admirers of Ms. Sedaris and fake-news junkies who can never get enough of Mr. Colbert will find reasons to see it and to convince themselves that it is funnier and more satisfying than it really is. Count me in.
  79. Who Killed the Electric Car?
    A murder mystery, a call to arms and an effective inducement to rage, Who Killed the Electric Car? is the latest and one of the more successful additions to the growing ranks of issue-oriented documentaries.
  80. Room
    Room is an existential horror film, a parable of the war against terror being waged in Julia's psyche.
  81. Rank
    As thorough an examination of the sport as you could hope to squeeze into 90 taut, well-organized minutes.
  82. Wassup Rockers
    However you respond to Wassup Rockers, it is completely alive, unlike any number of teenage Hollywood movies with their stale formulas and second-hand puerility. And that's mostly to the good.
  83. Click
    Following the lead tendered by the credited screenwriters, Steve Koren and Mark O'Keefe, the director Frank Coraci struggles to push the character toward the kind of age-appropriate complexity lost on Mr. Sandler, forgetting that his star only works when, as all those ponderous bosoms suggest, he's un-weaned.
  84. 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.
  85. Say Uncle
    Say Uncle may be trying to address gay persecution and social paranoia, but it mostly comes off as a study of arrested development. The movie's most laudable gamble is its refusal to make either Maggie or Paul sympathetic, but the moral subtleties are obscured by a one-dimensional script and a protagonist as self-centered and lacking in expression as a fetus.
  86. Two Drifters
    Neither sentimental nor cruel, yet touching and trenchant, the movie sustains a profound ambivalence right up to the final shot.
  87. The Hidden Blade
    Though less powerful than Mr. Yamada's "Twilight Samurai" (2002), The Hidden Blade is an affecting portrait of the impact of profound change on people with limited options.
  88. The Road to Guantanamo
    While far from a great movie, nonetheless effectively dramatizes a position that has been argued, by principled commentators on the left and the right, for several years now: that the abuse of prisoners, innocent or not, is not only repugnant in its own right.
  89. The Great New Wonderful
    It is hard to feel much warmth toward people whose most salient feature is their disconnection from reality.
  90. The Forsaken Land
    Mr. Jayasundara studied film in France and has probably watched his share of classic European art cinema. Although his influences may originate closer to home (in interviews he has name dropped the venerated Sri Lankan auteur Lester James Peries), his use of landscape to convey states of mind suggests that he has more than a passing acquaintance with the work of Michelangelo Antonioni.
  91. The Garden of Earthly Delights
    Affected but elegant, this digital video riff on "Death in Venice" was orchestrated by Lech Majewski, the Polish writer, painter and director of films, plays and operas. His musicality is evident in the fresh and lively flow of images, though his tin ear for dialogue and staleness of theme enervates the composition.
  92. Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man
    Combines pieces of an extended interview with this Canadian singer-songwriter, poet and author, now 71, with a tribute concert organized by Hal Willner at the Sydney Opera House in January 2005.
  93. 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.
  94. 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.
  95. 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.
  96. Nacho Libre
    Endearingly ridiculous.
  97. Land of the Blind
    Mr. Edwards, who wrote and directed Land of the Blind (it's his debut film), might counter that the movie is a Brechtian comedy that's not supposed to make literal sense: the big picture is what matters. But the big picture is a mess.
  98. 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.
  99. Lower City
    The movie turns out to be a predictable and somewhat sentimental lower-depths love triangle, but Ms. Braga almost makes it work.
  100. 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.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »