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. Love
    Love is a mournful thriller about the myth of assimilation and the way nurture - or, more precisely, the lack of it - fashions identity and character. Elegantly directed by Vladan Nikolic using multiple viewpoints and an elliptical, nonlinear narrative, the movie presents a New World disrupted by old grievances and a neglected community living by its own rules.
  2. C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America
    Like Mr. Lee's hit-and-miss effort ("Bamboozled"), Mr. Willmott's alternative history takes its inspiration and its rage from an America that has come both a long way and not nearly far enough. But while the filmmaker's anger is palpable it's not very inspired.
  3. Desert Wind
    Though it generates its share of unintentional giggles, Desert Wind does manage to take us to a seldom-visited place: the hidden corners of the straight male mind.
  4. Curious George
    With top-drawer voice talent including Joan Plowright and Dick Van Dyke, original songs by Jack Johnson, and old-fashioned two-dimensional animation that echoes the simple colors and shapes of the books, Curious George is an unexpected delight.
  5. Final Destination 3
    The third installment lacks the novelty of the first, the panache of the second and the twisted sense of humor that gives the series its participatory sense of fun.
  6. Firewall
    Manages to entertain mildly only because it traffics in all the familiar action-movie clichés, giving moviegoers ample opportunity to test their action-movie I.Q.
  7. The Pink Panther
    Mr. Levy's cold, streamlined direction gives the movie the feel of a mechanical contraption manipulated by remote control with a nervous finger on the fast-forward button. Many of the jokes barely have time to register before we're on to the next stunt.
  8. The Ister
    The Ister asks you not to think, but to think hard. Your reward, given in proportion to your level of attention, commitment and participation, is to see the simplest things in a new light, possessed of vast new dimensions.
  9. London
    A misfired attempt at provocation and the exploration of philosophical thought, London is little more than an immature display of male bonding on speed.
  10. Neil Young: Heart of Gold
    At one point, during one of his occasional verbal rambles, he (Young) says half-jokingly, half-defensively that he's got some love songs left in him. This film, which is at once a valentine from one artist to another and a valentine from a musician to his audience, is surely proof that he does.
  11. Through the Fire
    Behind the cheering and popping flashbulbs of Through the Fire lurks another, much darker movie, one that questions the relationship between sneaker manufacturers and financially deprived kids with exceptional talent.
  12. The Fallen Idol (re-release)
    Beautifully shot by the French cinematographer Georges Périnal (whose credits include Cocteau's "Blood of a Poet"), the film soon evolves from a claustrophobic domestic affair into a mordantly discomfiting look at the betrayal of innocence.
  13. Cinema, Aspirinas e Urubus
    It is the sort of human-scale production that holds your attention with good acting, nice lighting and a screenplay that favors thought over action, thoughtful incident over full-blown episode.
  14. A Good Woman
    When put into the mouths of American actors with no feel for Wilde's high-toned repartee, they simply hang in the air and die.
  15. When a Stranger Calls
    Jake Wade Wall's screenplay does deserve a word of praise. It has managed to incorporate the advent of cellphones, the *69 command and caller ID, which could have easily made the entire story impossible.
  16. Something New
    The film is good news nonetheless - it's a store-bought valentine with real heart.
  17. Tamara
    A low-budget horror film with even lower ambitions, Tamara is a movie of few innovations but one genuine, if unintentional, surprise.
  18. The Tenants
    The message about race relations in America conveyed by The Tenants, a small, serious, but choppy and psychologically cauterized screen adaptation of Bernard Malamud's 1971 novel, is dire.
  19. Cowboy del Amor
    Directed by Michèle Ohayon with a light touch and an attentive ear for the regressive attitudes beneath the humor, Cowboy del Amor follows the fortunes of Rick, an easygoing truck driver who thinks most American women are "too hard to please."
  20. The Tollbooth
    Written and directed with overwhelming earnestness by Debra Kirschner, The Tollbooth can't overcome Sarabeth's self-involved narration and insipid personality.
  21. Who Gets to Call It Art?
    This glib, largely uninformative and poorly organized précis of the post-World War II art scene, with its emphasis on New York in the 1960's and the curator Henry Geldzahler, succeeds neither as history nor as art history.
  22. Bubble
    Easier to admire than love, Bubble is a fascinating exercise that seems calculated to repel most audiences, which probably suits Mr. Soderbergh just fine.
  23. Annapolis
    Annapolis has enough material for an exciting trailer. But that's all the movie really is: a trailer tricked out with protracted boxing sequences and an undernourished romantic subplot that culminates in a single tepid kiss.
  24. Big Momma's House 2
    Inconsequential sequel for the undemanding moviegoer.
  25. Nanny McPhee
    In the endearing but somewhat scatterbrained British film Nanny McPhee, Emma Thompson creates an indelible character reminiscent of Mary Poppins as conceived by the author P. L. Travers and the illustrator Mary Shepard.
  26. Dai si gin
    It's a slam-dunk of an opener in a film filled with terrifically choreographed action and very little on its mind.
  27. Imagine Me & You
    Enervating trifle.
  28. Little Jerusalem
    For the first full hour, as we're guided inside privacies of culture and consciousness, Ms. Albou sustains her rich and gently intoxicating mode of storytelling, a feat all the more admirable in light of the overly schematic script.
  29. Manderlay
    To warm to Manderlay, the chilly second installment of Lars von Trier's not-yet-finished three-part Brechtian allegory examining United States history, you must be willing to tolerate the derision and moral arrogance of a snide European intellectual thumbing his nose at American barbarism.
  30. Roving Mars
    If many of the scenes are fake, however, the thrill of the project is not, and what we do see of the surface - hyperclear photographs on the scale of 100-by-180 feet - is out of this world.
  31. Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story
    This is not just a movie-within-a-movie, but a movie-within-a-movie-within-a-movie, something that sounds unbearably arch but that is swift, funny and surprisingly unpretentious.
  32. The Spirit of the Beehive
    The Spirit of the Beehive, like "Cinema Paradiso," also takes place at the particular intersection of reality and fantasy defined by youthful moviegoing.
  33. Go for Zucker
    It's the rare German movie calling itself a comedy that is actually funny, even if only in bits and pieces.
  34. Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World
    Front-loaded with inspired gags, and the first half-hour is both sneakily and explosively funny, raising expectations that are never quite met.
  35. Why We Fight
    Mr. Jarecki forcefully, if not with wholesale persuasiveness, argues that our business is specifically war.
  36. End of the Spear
    Inspiring enough to make you wish that the filmmakers had reined in their sentimental excesses.
  37. Underworld: Evolution
    The fascist undercurrents of this battle remain unexplored. Maybe one day, Hollywood will figure out that pouring acting-challenged starlets into black neoprene and sticking them in front of a blue screen do not a movie make. We can but hope.
  38. Pizza
    The tone is half mocking, half forthright and completely boring.
  39. How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (and Enjoy It)
    The film chronicles an astonishing career...Mr. Van Peebles is that rarest of modern creatures: a free man.
  40. Blossoms of Fire
    It's easy to be seduced by this film's warmhearted, if slightly utopian, vision.
  41. Perception
    As the jaundiced, disjointed, drug-infested story heads toward its dismal conclusion, its reputable actors vainly struggle to infuse the goings-on with a deadpan psychotic zaniness. But even when viewed sideways, Perception is not funny; it's hardly anything at all.
  42. The Real Dirt on Farmer John
    Offers one man's extraordinary life as a gateway to a larger history of tragedy and transition. It's an unflinching account of what farming takes -- and, more important, what it gives back.
  43. 24 Hours on Craigslist
    In essence, this is a string of intermittently interesting, occasionally funny, periodically wacky if rarely disturbing, sometimes touching though fairly boring and poorly shot human-interest stories.
  44. The Fall of Fujimori
    A cautionary essay on the risks to democracy posed by the fight against terrorism.
  45. Glory Road
    Glory Road is satisfying less for its virtuosity than for its sincerity, and also because it will acquaint audiences with a remarkable episode that had ramifications far beyond the basketball court.
  46. Last Holiday
    As witless as it is formulaic.
  47. Tristan and Isolde
    Just as there is something undeniably pleasant about an entertainment like Tristan & Isolde that delivers exactly what it promises, no less, no more.
  48. April's Shower
    Yet despite the absurdities and predictable outcome, April's Shower is enjoyable, primarily for its refreshingly volatile approach to sexual orientation.
  49. That Man: Peter Berlin
    One of the enduring icons of gay male eroticism, the phenomenon known as Peter Berlin is explored, explained, ogled and interviewed in the superb documentary That Man: Peter Berlin.
  50. When the Sea Rises
    And as you watch her (Moreau) sink into this semiautobiographical role (she was herself a touring performer in the 1980's), the character emerges as a deep, multilayered woman: kind, gentle and happily partaking of life's simple pleasures much of the time, but when necessary, as tough as her stage character through whom she relishes expressing her residual anger at life's hardships and disappointments.
  51. Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Impassioned Eye
    The documentary, which subscribes to the Great Man school of reverential portraiture, is not a biography but an interview (in French, simultaneously translated into English) conceived as a master class on art appreciation, with guest commentators augmenting Cartier-Bresson's own sparsely chosen words.
  52. Beyond the Rocks
    The faces of the stars glow with life, which makes you all the more grateful that this, their only film together, has come back.
  53. Film Geek
    Film Geek has a likable premise, an unusual setting in downtown Portland, Ore., and a pleasantly homemade indie feel. Unfortunately, Scotty Pelk, as written by James Westby and played by Mr. Malkasian, is actually so irritating, so genuinely hard to take, that like the rest of the characters in this semiautobiographical movie, we soon find ourselves itching to get away from him.
  54. Following Sean
    What emerges is a liberal meditation on freedom and compromise, and a nostalgia trip graced by eloquent restraint.
  55. State of Fear
    Pamela Yates's harrowing documentary chronicles 20 years of terror, brutality and repression.
  56. Fateless
    It represents something stranger and, to those of us with only a secondhand or thirdhand knowledge of that history, more disturbing: a survivor's conviction that there were aspects of the experience itself that can only be described as beautiful.
  57. Hostel
    Hostel is motivated by an adolescent urge to shock. And while it's true that no civilized person will remain unscathed by the film's relentless bigotry - this is one of the most misogynistic films ever made - Mr. Roth's gory spectacles are too calculated to deliver the transgressive jolts they so obviously seek.
  58. Grandma's Boy
    It cheerfully invites the audience to descend to their level, where no joke is too silly or raunchy, and a plot is just a way of passing time between game levels and bong hits.
  59. Kill the Poor
    There's potential here for an incendiary riff on gentrification and its discontents, but the result is only lukewarm. While the ensemble is as pungent as its assorted clichés will permit, the cruddy video photography and haphazard organization of plot blunt the wry thrust of the material.
  60. I Am Taraneh, I Am Fifteen Years Old
    Neither approves of nor condemns the choices made by its headstrong protagonist; rather, it quietly observes her transformation from naïve schoolgirl to wary but proud single mother.
  61. El carro
    A huge hit at home, El Carro here plays for mild laughs and gentle pathos, though it arrives a little lost in translation.
  62. Stryker
    The mostly unprofessional cast does a lot of shouting and swearing, and Mr. Henry's face has a haunting impassivity, but the film does not offer much in the way of social insight or credible emotion.
  63. Tau man ji D
    A slick but silly affair unlikely to appeal to anyone over the age of 15.
  64. The Promise
    The Promise occupies a curious landscape somewhere between opera and cartoon.
  65. Match Point
    The gloom of random, meaningless existence has rarely been so much fun, and Mr. Allen's bite has never been so sharp, or so deep. A movie this good is no laughing matter.
  66. Ich hiess Sabina Spielrein
    However fascinating the source material, there's something less than cinematic about 90 minutes of watching people read letters in front of windows.
  67. Wolf Creek
    The vogue for retro-horror, particularly the stripped-down shivers of 1970's slasher flicks, continues apace in this nasty little piece of work from Australia.
  68. Casanova
    In any case, what is on screen is a delightful respite from awards-season seriousness - a feather film, you might say, that actually tickles.
  69. Rumor Has It...
    I suppose Rumor Has It could be worse, though at the moment I'm at a loss to say just how.
  70. The New World
    If the affair seems strangely ethereal, as if it were taking place in another dimension, in a lovelier, more enchanted realm, it is because Mr. Malick is fashioning a countermythology in The New World, one to replace, or at least challenge, a mythology already in place.
  71. The Matador
    Because The Matador sustains a tone of screwball insouciance and keeps its trump card hidden up its sleeve, it must be counted as a well-made comic thriller. That doesn't mean it has any depth, credibility or artistic value beyond its capacity to divert.
  72. Munich
    More than anything, Munich is a slammin' entertainment filled with dazzling set pieces and geometric camerawork.
  73. Caché (Hidden)
    While this film can seem politically simplistic, it is nonetheless psychologically astute, and more complicated than it at first appears.
  74. The Ringer
    At the sweet heart of this silly film is a determination to upend the clichés and assumptions applied to the population we condescendingly label "special."
  75. The Intruder
    The best way to enjoy The Intruder is to surrender to its poetry without demanding cut-and-dried explanations.
  76. Cheaper by the Dozen 2
    This messy blend of silly slapstick and oversentimentality probably won't please children, teenagers or adults.
  77. Fun with Dick and Jane
    Mr. Carrey is such an attention hog that most actresses have a hard time holding on to their corner of the screen when he's onboard, especially in broader comedies. But Ms. Leoni never cedes her ground. Both performers exude such acute neediness - there's a touch of Jerry Lewis and Lucille Ball in their mutual frenzy - that not to love them even a little would seem cruel.
  78. The White Countess
    With its tentative pace, fussy, pieced-together structure and stuffy emotional climate, The White Countess never develops any narrative stamina.
  79. The Family Stone
    The women make The Family Stone, especially Ms. Parker, whose nimble performance is reason alone to see the film: not since Philippe Petit has anyone walked a tightrope with such finesse - and in high heels, no less.
  80. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
    In a film filled with plaintively expressive faces, characters say as much when they don't talk as when they speak Mr. Arriaga's dialogue, which sometimes sounds like hardscrabble poetry, sometimes sounds real as dirt and is, rather surprisingly, often darkly funny.
  81. Electric Shadows
    Plays as an enthralling but implausible Asian soap opera.
  82. The Producers
    Ms. Thurman is the one bit of genuine radiance in this aggressively and pointlessly shiny, noisy spectacle.
  83. Hoodwinked!
    Less sassy than shrill, more crass than clever, the maiden cartoon from the Weinstein Company turns the Little Red Riding Hood legend into a sub- "Shrek" bummer that appears to have been manufactured for the pleasure of tone-deaf kids with a thing for sarcasm, extreme sports, and Andy Dick.
  84. Trapped by the Mormons
    This kind of thing might tickle a drunk, way off Broadway audience, but on screen it merely shows the futility of following in the faux-silent footsteps of the director Guy Maddin.
  85. King Kong
    The rapport between Ms. Watts and Mr. Serkis is extraordinary, even though it is mediated by fur, latex, optical illusions and complicated effects. Mr. Serkis, who also played Gollum in the "Lord of the Rings" movies, is redefining screen acting for the digital age, while Ms. Watts incarnates the glamour and emotional directness of classical Hollywood.
  86. Happy Here and Now
    Like some other contemporary films that try to stitch together a small army of characters into a community of sorts, Happy Here and Now feels like a symptom in search of a cure.
  87. The Grace Lee Project
    Although The Grace Lee Project is ostensibly about a name, it's really about cultural assimilation and a stereotype of virtue and subservience that has deep roots on both sides of the Pacific. As oppressive as her name may be, Ms. Lee also knows full well that there are worse fates than being a 16-year-old Harvard freshman.
  88. Brokeback Mountain
    Mr. Ledger magically and mysteriously disappears beneath the skin of his lean, sinewy character. It is a great screen performance, as good as the best of Marlon Brando and Sean Penn.
  89. Memoirs of a Geisha
    Mr. Marshall can't rescue the film from its embarrassing screenplay or its awkward Chinese-Japanese-Hollywood culture klatch, but Memoirs of a Geisha is one of those bad Hollywood films that by virtue of their production values nonetheless afford a few dividends, in this case, fabulous clothes and three eminently watchable female leads.
  90. Mrs Henderson Presents
    Watching this reasonably funny, professionally assembled calculation is a little like snuggling up in front of the television with a mug of hot cocoa and a warm blanket. Those who prefer their drinks and recreation spiked would do well to look elsewhere.
  91. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
    The next two hours might not have quite delivered on that initial promise of wonder - we grown-ups, being heavy, are not so easily swept away by visual tricks - except when I looked away from the screen at the faces of breathless and wide-eyed children, my own among them, for whom the whole experience was new, strange, disturbing and delightful.
  92. Marebito (The Stranger from Afar)
    In casting about for new sources of fear, Marebito achieves its own level of mediocrity.
  93. The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear
    It is startling that a three-hour film dealing largely with the history of the Middle East should find no time to mention either the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the role of oil in the region. And it is more than a little unsatisfying to see the complex history of American conservatism reduced to the dreams and schemes of a handful of intellectuals.
  94. Moonlight
    Though rife with topics and images American audiences may find offensive, Moonlight addresses them fearlessly and with some artistry.
  95. Isn't This a Time! A Tribute Concert for Harold Leventhal
    Watching the aging, but still spirited, singers come together to express their gratitude for the man who started their careers is often genuinely touching.
  96. Days of Santiago
    Mr. Sibille breaks no sweat under the scrutiny, giving a quiet, concentrated performance that lends heft to less than revelatory material.
  97. The World's Fastest Indian
    This is a film that wears a smile button on its sleeve along with its happy heart. It believes that most people are absolutely wonderful, and it is well enough made so that a dusting of that dogged optimism is bound to rub off on you.
  98. Æon Flux
    It's a movie best appreciated for the costumes, the sets and Ms. Theron's haughty athleticism.
  99. Transamerica
    Transamerica itself does not always live up to its star, but it is touching and sometimes funny, despite its overall air of indie earnestness.
  100. First Descent
    The Alaskan runs are often spectacular, resembling nothing so much as a controlled plummet down an avalanche. All of which is worth the price of admission if "stoked" is a regular part of your vocabulary.
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