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. The Battle of Shaker Heights
    May lead to a new axiom: success has many fathers, but failure has "Project Greenlight."
  2. Marci X
    This is the kind of comedy in which the characters are construction-paper cutouts whose abrupt changes of heart are dictated entirely by the preposterous plot and not by psychological or social reality.
  3. Dog Days
    The believability comes from the casting: he has found a group of actors and nonprofessionals who interact spectacularly well.
  4. Thirteen
    Ms. Wood's performance bounces with mood swings from anxiety to exhilaration in a movie with moments so realistically painted that your eyes will sting from the fumes.
  5. Catching Out
    The scruffy, outspoken train-hoppers in Sarah George's exhilarating documentary, Catching Out, are a sure sign that the pioneer spirit still flickers in pockets of TV-wired America.
  6. Uptown Girls
    Fatally true to the hypocritical values of its niche market. While pretending to teach a lesson in compassion, it wallows in the perks of privilege.
  7. Passionada
    As Passionada ambles toward a formulaic fairy-tale ending, it exudes such giddy self-assurance that you wish you could believe in it.
  8. Johnny Guitar (re-release)
    A goofy and remarkable film.
  9. Freddy vs. Jason
    This dumb, only intermittently (though sometimes even intentionally) funny sequel presumes that since almost everything else from the 1980's has come back, why not the cynosures of the "Nightmare on Elm Street" and "Friday the 13th" movies?
  10. American Splendor
    There's as much at stake in the hilarious, moody and cantankerous film adaptation of "Splendor" as there was in this summer's other movies of comic-book antiheroes like "The Hulk" and "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen."
  11. Shaolin Soccer
    So unabashed in its cheesiness that it could be spread on crackers; it may spike your cholesterol levels
  12. Open Range
    Mr. Costner's relentless, root-canal humorlessness turns what might have been an enjoyable B-picture throwback into a ponderous drag.
  13. Grind
    Buried somewhere under the gross-out jokes and the wet-lipped ogling at an endless parade of jiggling bikini-clad flesh in Grind is the kernel of a cheerful little movie about the world of competitive skateboarding.
  14. OT: Our Town
    At the end, when they have created a vibrant new theater program for their school, their sense of triumph is infectious. " 'Our Town' Is Ghetto!" one of them exults. Thornton Wilder, wherever he is, would understand and take it as a compliment.
  15. Le divorce
    A thin and unsatisfying concoction that somehow manages to make one of the richest and most durable sources of culture-clash comedy into an occasion for dullness.
  16. The Princess Blade
    Not quite good enough to jump out of the pack of Asian swordplay movies but is too well crafted to sink into utter anonymity.
  17. Step Into Liquid
    Like his father, Mr. Brown has the magical ability to take his public on a two-hour vacation. It's the next best thing to being there, and you don't need to worry about sand in your beer.
  18. S.W.A.T.
    Mostly standard-issue muddle.
  19. Seaside
    While she (Lopes-Curval) portrays the brittleness of their lives with lovely splashes of generosity, the lack of condescension doesn't change the fact that there's not much drama to be found in those very limitations; her characters don't do much beyond getting on one another's nerves.
  20. Freaky Friday
    Since her character wears no historical costumes and suffers from no debilitating ailment, it is likely that Ms. Curtis will be overlooked when Oscar season rolls around. This is a shame, since it is unlikely that any other actress this year will match the loose, energetic wit she brings to this delightful movie.
  21. Zero Day
    What gives the movie its power is that even the most innocuous scenes in the boys' lives are shadowed by dread.
  22. Boys Life 4: Four Play
    While previous editions have had six or seven short films, Boys Life 4: Four Play requires only four titles for its 87-minute running time, a sign of how much more substantial and ambitious work in the field has become.
  23. And Now... Ladies and Gentlemen...
    Though the director's jet-set fantasy world of rugged jewel thieves and sailboat races, triste cabaret singers and sybaritic pleasures may feel dated and more than a little decadent, it is a nice enough place to visit.
  24. The Secret Lives of Dentists
    Intensely appealing.
  25. The Magdalene Sisters
    The Magdalene Sisters would be too painful to watch if it didn't have a silver lining. Suffice it to say that it is possible to fly over this religious cuckoo's nest and remain free. All it takes is courage and the timely kindness of strangers.
  26. American Wedding
    You'll see better film on ponds.
  27. Gigli
    Buried in the slow, talky, inanities that the two stars exchange are some potentially interesting ideas about female sexual self-assertion and male surrender, but neither the actors nor the filmmakers have any notion about how to explore them.
  28. Bugs!
    Vivid and visually stunning.
  29. Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life
    Emerges as just one more formulaic action film as the title character bounces around the globe in a deadly treasure hunt.
  30. Mondays in the Sun
    This slow, episodic film is held together by the galvanic presence of Javier Bardem.
  31. Buffalo Soldiers
    Sloppy when it should be incisive, indulgent when it should be astringent, and ultimately unsure of what it is mocking and in what spirit.
  32. Hotel
    Though finally overwhelmed by a preening lassitude, Hotel is never less than fascinating.
  33. Seabiscuit
    Somehow we are never quite swept into the boisterous, democratic world of which Seabiscuit, in Ms. Hillenbrand's account, was the plucky, galloping embodiment.
  34. Lucía, Lucía
    Ms. Roth's radiance and understanding of Lucía's emotional life gives this film a touch of necessary psychological accessibility.
  35. Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over
    An enjoyable, noisy romp.
  36. Camp
    A crude but irresistibly effervescent movie cut from the same sequined cloth as "Fame," Camp couldn't be better timed to ride the coattails of "Chicago" to cult popularity.
  37. Masked and Anonymous
    An unholy, incoherent mess.
  38. Cuban Rafters
    It remains a documentary at heart, full of astonishing glimpses of human resiliency that have nothing to do with artfulness and everything to do with patience, persistence and sympathy.
  39. This Thing of Ours
    For all of his personal familiarity with the material, Mr. Provenzano has turned out a movie that largely owes its tone and style to other movies.
  40. Johnny English
    Unlike most movies of this kind, which run out of steam and ideas as they go along, Johnny English gains momentum, nudging you along from a few stray giggles to helpless, giddy laughter.
  41. The Embalmer
    The screenplay evokes this psychosexual power struggle with perfect accuracy and finely tuned performances.
  42. The Sea Is Watching
    Fortunately, Mr. Kumai, who himself has shown no aversion to baroque melodrama, leans here toward a plain and direct style that is tasteful and intelligent, a boon, given the predictability of the story. He understands the difference between pitiable and pitiful.
  43. Dirty Pretty Things
    This film has a conquering spirit. The dankness is replaced by an optimistic blast of sunlight at the end, a contrast to the earlier lighting dimmed with human misery. Mr. Frears blasts away the blight, though he doesn't have to work to restore Okwe's dignity. It shines through from the start.
  44. The Anarchist Cookbook
    Strains for a jazzy, Oliver Stone-ish look, but at its heart it is a placid and conventional moral tale about the dangers of wandering too far off the pathway.
  45. Bad Boys II
    The best moments come when Mr. Smith and Mr. Lawrence are permitted to pause from their action-hero duties and run their funny, unpredictable mouths.
  46. September 11
    Most impressive, and the only segment that dares to criticize the terrorists directly, is Mr. Imamura's contribution, the last part of the film.
  47. Garage Days
    The end may be a bit of a letdown, but much of Garage Days is choice cuts indeed.
  48. An Injury to One
    Revels in directorial assertiveness, including an omniscient narrator and an intrusive use of slick, magazine-style graphics to identify characters and spell out slogans.
  49. A Housekeeper
    Fits squarely into a Gallic tradition of wistful, worldly-wise comedies that reflect on the weakness of the flesh.
  50. Km. 0 - Kilometer Zero
    Unfolds, skipping blithely from comic to melodramatic vignettes and back again, it follows the classical structure of a Shakespearean forest comedy, sorting out the mismatched couples and finding appropriate mates (or at least appropriate friendships) for everyone involved.
  51. Northfork
    There is nothing quite like this movie, and I'm not altogether sure there is much more to it than its lovely peculiarity. But at a moment when so many films strive to be obvious and interchangeable as possible, it is gratifying to find one that is puzzling, subtle and handmade.
  52. The Cuckoo
    There are subtitles to reduce everything to simple English declarative sentences. This gives the viewer a decidedly unfair advantage over the characters: we can understand what they cannot and are invited to laugh at their mutual incomprehension.
  53. I Capture the Castle
    The evident affection that the filmmakers bear toward Smith's novel, and toward the odd, spirited people who inhabit it, gives the film a modest, hardworking appeal.
  54. The Holy Land
    A barbed reflection on the great divide between secular and ultra-Orthodox Judaism in Israeli culture. But its digressive screenplay lacks focus and momentum and is too oblique to connect many of the dots between its characters and their behavior.
  55. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
    Has the sweat stains of wasted energy; it's dreary, yet frantic.
  56. Madame Satã
    It is a voluptuous, hot-blooded portrait of a social outcast, a black, homosexual criminal who in acting out his gaudiest Hollywood dreams, transcendently reinvented himself.
  57. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
    The dazzling, high-flying silliness is quite an achievement. The movie is better than it deserves to be, given its origins: a ride at Disneyland and Disney World.
  58. Tattoo
    A grim, disquieting mood piece.
  59. Confusion of Genders
    Quickly turns into an earnest talkfest (spiced with flashes of nudity and sexually explicit dialogue) that feels stiffly programmatic and ultimately false.
  60. La Commune (Paris, 1871)
    In these risk-averse times, it is a pleasure to see a film that fails by attempting too much. Frustrating and demanding as it may be, La Commune (Paris, 1871) is essential viewing for anyone interested in taking an exploratory step outside the Hollywood norms.
  61. Gasoline
    Tautly acted, fairly sexy and atmospheric. Its vision of Stella and Lenni as defiant, doomed outsiders desperately racing toward an elusive paradise on a treacherous highway may be bleak, but it's also intensely and proudly romantic.
  62. Swimming Pool
    Simultaneously a thoroughly mannered, mischievously artificial confection and an acute piece of psychological realism. Whose psychology, and which reality, remains ambiguous even after the tart, delicious final twist.
  63. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
    For all the hype and the inevitable box office bonanza, Terminator 3 is essentially a B movie, content to be loud, dumb and obvious.
  64. Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas
    To invoke the name of another underwhelming new film, Sinbad is legally bland.
  65. Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde
    A movie for people who somehow managed to miss the point of the first picture.
  66. Friday Night
    As much as the story, based on a novel by Emmanuèle Bernheim, has the irresistible earmarks of the kind of high-toned bodice-ripper at which the French excel, its cinematic realization is oddly gawky and tepid.
  67. On_Line
    Acted with enough zest by its cast to give these not especially endearing people a poignant human dimension.
  68. Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle
    A sequel whose sugar-rush absurdity almost defeats the forces of logic, taste and conventional narrative. It is a defect that might undermine a lesser movie but that in this case proves to be as cheerfully, enjoyably humid as the first blast of summer light and heat.
  69. 28 Days Later...
    Mr. Boyle has hardly lost his sly, provocative perversity or his ear for the rhythms of unchecked violence, but he does seem to be maturing. It's as if, in contemplating the annihilation of the human race, he has discovered his inner humanist.
  70. War and Peace
    Mr. Patwardhan has located so much information and found so many willing interview subjects that his War and Peace has a riveting intelligence all its own and earns its epic title.
  71. Human Weapon
    A gripping and important documentary.
  72. My Terrorist
    The movie's disparate voices coalesce here as an emotionally charged microcosm of the conflict.
  73. Francis Ford Coppola Presents: The Legend of Suriyothai
    The movie keeps you at a distance; it is visually sweeping, and the history is fascinating, but the drama is rarely stirring.
  74. Alex & Emma
    There's so little chemistry between Mr. Wilson and Ms. Hudson that you begin to look back on what now seems like the halcyon time of "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days."
  75. Hulk
    The movie is bulky and inarticulate, leaving behind a trail of wreckage and incoherence.
  76. From Justin to Kelly
    They play cotton candy effigies of themselves named Kelly and Justin, and the best that can be said is that they don't embarrass themselves.
  77. Manito
    Though a dramatic (even melodramatic) narrative eventually takes shape, what you remember is the succession of moods and observations through which it emerges.
  78. The Hard Word
    Amusingly gamy, an anecdotal crime film that's an antidote to the pile of overly slick robbery pictures of the past few years.
  79. Pistol Opera
    Insanely likable but suffers from anemia.
  80. The Nazi Officer's Wife
    Packed with revelations and withheld information that comes to life; it is like an old movie castle full of false fireplaces and trap doors.
  81. Jet Lag
    A peppy romantic trifle from France that rises above the mundane on the strength of its beautifully detailed lead performances.
  82. The Heart of Me
    The end product suggests tepid, bottom-drawer Merchant-Ivory in which the emotions rarely catch fire.
  83. Hollywood Homicide
    He (Ford) slips into the role as if it were a pair of well-worn loafers, the left inherited from Peter Falk, the right from Clint Eastwood, and then proceeds, with wry nonchalance, to tap-dance, shuffle and pirouette through his loosest, wittiest performance in years.
  84. Rugrats Go Wild
    There is little here to hold the attention of anyone older than 9. For families in search of entertainment, it may be time to find Nemo again.
  85. Tycoon: A New Russian
    For all its energy and fine acting, Tycoon has a frustrating lack of narrative coherence.
  86. Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd
    While "Dumb and Dumber" possessed a bracing, genuine vulgarity, this new film is more often merely disgusting as it piles up jokes involving various bodily discharges and the unpleasant things that can be done with them.
  87. Love the Hard Way
    Loses tension (and ultimately credibility) as it wanders through three possible endings before grinding to a halt.
  88. The Eye
    Rarely has the basic nature of visual perception seemed so frightening.
  89. 2 Fast 2 Furious
    Unfortunately, all of these supremely expressive vehicles come equipped with drivers, principally a pair of crash-test dummies played by Paul Walker and Tyrese, whose low-gear dialogue makes the whine of engines sound like the highest poetry.
  90. Whale Rider
    Wickedly absorbing.
  91. Garmento
    Although Garmento exhibits a flailing comic energy, its eagerness to condemn everything about Seventh Avenue, along with its sub-par acting and a choppy narrative style that finally runs amok, lends it a tone of hysterical finger-pointing.
  92. The Weather Underground
    This terrifically smart and solid piece of filmmaking lets the former Weathermen, now in their 50's and older, speak into the camera and reveal a bit of their personal histories as well as what the peace movement meant to them.
  93. Controlled Chaos
    As a movie, Controlled Chaos is often bumpy, naïve and erratically acted.
  94. The Three Marias
    Its emotional climate is too extreme to invite identification, and its characters are too single-minded in their revenge to evoke pity, terror or even much interest.
  95. The Era of Vampires
    Murky, third-rate martial-arts film.
  96. Together
    Together may not be overtly political, but its vision of contemporary Beijing, where brazen, fashion-crazed gold diggers like Lili bait their hooks to snare arrogant, slippery wheeler-dealers who end up playing her for a sucker, has bite.
  97. The Italian Job
    Feels a like smooth, exciting whoosh down a ski slope.
  98. Wrong Turn
    Lazy would-be horror film.
  99. Capturing the Friedmans
    Mr. Jarecki finds a way to show that denial and hope often grow from the same vine. Lives are built around the way they're harvested -- and this talented director has a feel for the soil.
  100. Finding Nemo
    The humor bubbling through Finding Nemo is so fresh, sure of itself and devoid of the cutesy, saccharine condescension that drips through so many family comedies that you have to wonder what it is about the Pixar technology that inspires the creators to be so endlessly inventive.
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