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 In-Laws
    It's as if the director, Andrew Fleming, and the screenwriters, Nat Mauldin and Ed Solomon, set out to make a movie that would be mediocre in every respect. If so, they have completely succeeded.
  2. That's My Face
    This is fundamentally a recruiting film whose intent is to interest other African-Americans in exploring their spiritual traditions. It displays no real curiosity about its subject except to insist that it is the true path to enlightenment. Mr. Harris's stylistic gifts are quite evident; his reportorial instincts are a bit more muffled.
  3. Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns)
    Gigantic has the informal tone and structure of an illustrated scrapbook with excerpts from concert and television performances interwoven with lighthearted testimonials by friends, supporters, collaborators and admirers and augmented by witty animated segments.
  4. Grazia's Island
    Not since "Y Tu Mamá También" has a movie so palpably captured the down-to-earth, flesh-and-blood reality of high-spirited people living their lives without self-consciousness.
  5. Bruce Almighty
    Even more than Jerry Lewis, Robin Williams or Pee-wee Herman, Mr. Carrey, now 41 (pretty old for an overgrown kid), sustains a maniacal energy that explodes off the screen in blinding electrical zaps. Those jolts don't always feel pleasant.
  6. Ichi the Killer
    The direction occasionally rises to the level of marginal competence, but for most of the film it is hard to tell who is chasing who or why.
  7. Beyond Vanilla
    It's hard not to chuckle, and hard, too, not to marvel at the many varieties of human experience.
  8. Everybody Says I'm Fine!
    Very little of consequence can be said of the film, other than that it is quieter and more realistic than the Bollywood spectacles that are India's best-known movies.
  9. The Sea
    The film's flamboyant portrayals of characters you love to hate have a malicious comic edge. If ever there were a movie to gladden the hearts of misanthropes, this is it.
  10. Friends and Family
    Quickly collapses into an overloaded, slow-moving series of predictable jokes and forced situations.
  11. Cinemania
    It is left for Mr. Heidbreder to offer the fanciest rationalization for their addiction. Asked whether the movies are a substitute for life, he rejects the suggestion that their behavior is pathological and declares that film itself "is a form of living."
  12. L'Auberge Espagnole
    Presents an appealing and persuasive picture of European integration, in which national differences, which once sparked military and political conflict, are preserved because they make life sexier and more interesting.
  13. Secret Lives: Hidden Children and Their Rescuers During WWII
    Ms. Slesin sums up the complicated feelings of Secret Lives with one well-chosen phrase: what these people are suffering from, she says, is the "trauma of gratitude." Her film is as complex and moving as that formulation.
  14. Pokémon Heroes
    Plays more like a catalog than a movie... a tedious, unimaginative affair.
  15. A Woman Is a Woman
    It is the work of a master -- of more than one, for that matter. Mr. Godard, who once called it "my first real film," was showing the obsession with, and mastery of, cinematic technique that would make him one of the culture heroes of the 1960's.
  16. Sweet Sixteen
    Sweet Sixteen shows that he's (Loach) as capable of anger as his protagonist and just as eager to draw attention to an unchanging problem: the blight of generational poverty.
  17. The Matrix Reloaded
    Relax, the staging of the action sequences is as viciously elegant as you've been primed to expect, though there is a dispiriting more-of-the-same aspect to the picture.
  18. Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary
    For all its eccentricities and technical quirks, Dracula is a compelling expressionistic work.
  19. Attitude
    Typical Nilsson mix of the audacious and the cringe-inducing.
  20. Washington Heights
    For all its untidiness, Washington Heights teems with life, and its star, Mr. Perez, has charisma to burn. The movie vividly depicts the interdependence and solidarity of people in working-class urban neighborhoods where residents really need one another.
  21. Only the Strong Survive
    In its zeal to bring recognition to an underappreciated genre, it has an agenda similar to that of last year's revelatory documentary "Standing in the Shadows of Motown."
  22. The Trip
    With its implausible coincidences, inelegant plot twists and minimally characterized characters, The Trip doesn't have much going for it apart from its basic sincerity and decency, which are evident.
  23. Man on the Train
    Mr. Leconte gives this meeting of opposites in Claude Klotz's script a lovely, sportive élan, instead of making it register as lumpy, obvious polemics.
  24. Daddy Day Care
    You can't get more high-concept, or less plotted, than this, and Daddy Day Care is proof.
  25. The Shape of Things
    Unfortunately, these actors are subject to Mr. LaBute's usual dramatic method, which is to cobble together a preposterous moral outrage and then wave it in front of our faces, asking us to believe that it is a window, or even a mirror.
  26. Down with Love
    Works hard to earn it and is, for the most part, intelligent and amusing, even if it never achieves the full-tilt zany desperation of Delbert Mann's "Lover Come Back," the best of the real Hudson-Day movies.
  27. Reno: Rebel Without a Pause
    Flailing and pummeling the air, with body language that's part prizefighter, part baggy-pants clown, Reno is famous for her bluntness.
  28. Charlotte Sometimes
    A tiny film that reflects a large talent.
  29. X2: X-Men United
    Mr. Singer and his collaborators grasp that comic books, for all their obligatory fights and explosions, are at bottom about their brave, troubled, impossibly muscled characters.
  30. The Dancer Upstairs
    Echoes its director's own deportment as a performer, alternating silky smoothness with burlap coarseness. Though Mr. Malkovich stays entirely behind the scenes, he creates a languorous but gripping story of people fighting to stay a step ahead of hopelessness.
  31. Owning Mahowny
    Whatever minor entertainment there is to be gleaned from Mahowny -- set in the early 1980's, mostly in Toronto -- comes in bits and pieces.
  32. Blue Car
    Mr. Strathairn's complex, exquisitely nuanced portrayal of a man who goes over the line allows his character to be both hero and villain, sometimes at once.
  33. The Lizzie McGuire Movie
    The picture unfolds as a light romantic comedy that adults will probably find familiar but tolerable, while their age-appropriate offspring will be transported to new heights of cinematic enchantment.
  34. New Suit
    What's oddly appealing about this film is the sweetness that the director, François Velle, manages to extract from Craig Sherman's rather bitter screenplay.
  35. Spellbound
    Enough drama, humor and unfiltered nail-biting suspense to put all the thrill-mongering screenwriters in Hollywood to shame.
  36. Marooned in Iraq
    If Mr. Ghobadi's dominant theme is the devastation of the Kurds, his subdominant tone is one of strength, resistance and fertility.
  37. Returning Mickey Stern
    A sweet, well-intended picture, but like its title character, it is not quite good enough for the big leagues.
  38. The Real Cancun
    All its 89 minutes of fast cuts, swooping overhead shots, sun, surf, song, sunburn and sex cannot obscure the extent of its shallowness.
  39. House of Fools
    Only adds to the sense that Mr. Konchalovsky has lost his artistic moorings. He has certainly lost his common sense.
  40. City of Ghosts
    Richly atmospheric and suspenseful.
  41. A Decade Under the Influence
    Has the undiscriminating temperament of a fan, blithely placing Mr. Coppola's magnificently made "Godfather" on the same plane as Mr. Hopper's slapped-together, and today all but unwatchable, "Easy Rider."
  42. Manic
    The camera work is so self-conscious and so intrusive that it consistently overrides our interest in the characters and their individual dramas.
  43. Confidence
    If Confidence was made by people who have seen too many movies, it seems to be aimed at people who have seen too few. It offers up stale lessons in vocabulary and technique, all of them easily gleaned on a trip to the video store, as if they were choice bits of inside knowledge.
  44. Identity
    Reasonably well-executed thriller. It suffers not from awkwardness or silliness, which would make it more fun, but rather from its air-brushed, expensive pretentiousness.
  45. It Runs in the Family
    Jesse Wigutow's screenplay is one of those marvels of economy, idiomatic facility and well-chosen detail that knows exactly when to cut away from a scene without grinding it into your face.
  46. People I Know
    Would like to think of itself as a film on the edge, a contemporary descendant of "Sweet Smell of Success." But as it dawdles along, it fails to find contemporary corollaries to the super-charged language and caffeine-fueled pace of that grimy 1957 masterpiece.
  47. Mr. and Mrs. Iyer
    Not a subtle film; and, most curiously -- to put it mildly -- for a sermon on tolerance, it resorts to history's eternal scapegoat.
  48. Jersey Guy
    Monotonously paced and too long, Jersey Guy also suffers in its early scenes from attempts at humor that probably read better on the page than they play on the screen.
  49. Onmyoji: The Yin Yang Master
    Has the sense of gritty, practical politics of a Japanese samurai epic combined with the high-flying stunt work and magical special effects of a Hong Kong romp. Ultimately this film by Yojiro Takita is satisfying on neither level, but not for lack of trying.
  50. Medea
    No admirer of Mr. von Trier's work should miss this compelling rarity.
  51. Winged Migration
    It may sound facetious, but Winged Migration provides such an intense vicarious experience of being a flapping airborne creature with the wind in its ears that you leave the theater feeling like an honorary member of another species.
  52. Holes
    One of the few recent movies I have seen that plunged me into that rare, giddy state of pleasurable confusion, of not knowing what would happen next, which I associate with the reading and moviegoing experiences of my own childhood. But there is no reason that children should have a monopoly on this primal, wonderful experience.
  53. Lilya 4-Ever
    The most remarkable achievement of the film is its presentation of Lilya's story as both an archetypal case study and a personal drama whose spunky central character you come to care about so deeply that you want to cry out a warning at each step toward her ruination.
  54. Malibu's Most Wanted
    Any movie that lumps Mr. O'Neal, Ms. Derek and Snoop Dogg (as the voice of a gangsta-rap answer to Stuart Little) under the same title can't be all bad.
  55. Venus and Mars
    Lopes along amiably enough, offering a few smiles and the standard bromides about the importance of being yourself and pursuing your dreams. It's tolerable but forgettable.
  56. Samehada otoko to momojiri onna
    The emotional impact of Shark Skin Man is negligible.
  57. Love and Diane
    What lifts the film above many other high-minded documentaries dealing with poverty and the welfare cycle is this filmmaker's astounding empathy for both Diane and Love.
  58. A Mighty Wind
    Mr. Guest and Mr. Levy's jokes are sometimes so subtle as to seem imperceptible, until you realize that they are everywhere, from the broadest gestures to the tiniest details of dress and décor.
  59. Bulletproof Monk
    Too much seriousness can be fatal to a picture like this one, since it impedes the efficient delivery of dumb laughter and easy thrills.
  60. Chasing Papi
    A nonstop underscore of Latin pop, as well as several arbitrarily interpolated dream sequences and animated passages don't do nearly enough to make up for the film's unfocused frenzy and lack of genuine comic invention.
  61. Ali Zoua: Prince of the Streets
    An overdose of morbid sentimentality.
  62. Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Bee
    In an era whose culture was defined by what the literary critic Richard Poirier called the performing self, Mr. Ali's persona was one of the greatest performances of all.
  63. The Young Unknowns
    Held back throughout by the self-conscious, overly explicit dialogue and the judgmental, moralistic undertone that throbs throughout.
  64. XX/XY
    A sour portrait of Gen X yuppies who settle for adult lives that appear at once soulless and overprivileged.
  65. Better Luck Tomorrow
    Mr. Lin makes the anxious grasping of these kids for some kind of emotional turf -- their own need to shatter the stereotypes that bind them -- the heart of Better Luck Tomorrow, a scenario that keeps the movie's blood racing.
  66. Ghosts of the Abyss
    Whether he's working in nonfiction or science fiction, Mr. Cameron remains an artist of great instinctive power. In Ghosts of the Abyss, he uses every means of probing that modern science has put at his disposal -- electronic, mechanical, sonic -- only to find that the tragic reality of the Titanic, its myths and its meanings, remain tantalizingly beyond his reach.
  67. Anger Management
    Undercooked, although it feels enough like a comedy for you to swallow it if you have to.
  68. House of 1000 Corpses
    As much as film buffs might enjoy recognizing references to "Motel Hell" and other drive-in classics, Mr. Zombie's encyclopedic approach to the genre results in a crowded, frenzied film in which no single idea is developed to a satisfying payoff.
  69. Marion Bridge
    Remarkable for its seamless ensemble performances.
  70. DysFunktional Family
    There is a blueprint here for what should be the next wave of comedy-concert movies, but the filmmaking team has only used part of it.
  71. The Man Without a Past
    Like the great films of the 1930's and early 40's, it is at once artful and unpretentious, sophisticated and completely accessible, sure of its own authority and generous toward characters and audience alike -- a movie whose intended public is the human race.
  72. Phone Booth
    Bogus on every level, right down to its half-hearted trick ending.
  73. Manna from Heaven
    A product neither of Hollywood nor the New York-Sundance indie axis, Manna From Heaven is a true outsider film, and while it would be easy to fault its lack of technical polish, somewhat discursive script and uneven performances, it is also refreshingly sincere, gentle and good-natured.
  74. Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion [re-release]
    Although Mr. Petri quite consciously makes movies about ideas, he has, in his "Investigation," made a movie in which the ideas, and the man who seethes with them, have the shock and impact of the most fundamental kind of melodrama.
  75. What a Girl Wants
    Minnelli's comedy had its serious underpinnings: by the end of the film, a girl had become a woman. By the end of Ms. Gordon's film, the girl is still a girl, but a girl with much cooler stuff, including a stately home, a butler and a cute British boyfriend.
  76. Levity
    The actors, too, bring more realism -- more gravity, if you will -- to the film than its wobbly premise deserves.
  77. A Man Apart
    A series of gun battles follow, none staged with quite enough verve or imagination to break through the pervasive torpor.
  78. Cowboy Bebop the Movie: Knockin' on Heaven's Door
    Notable chiefly for its eye-catching urban backgrounds and an eclectic score that ranges from jazz and country to classical and choral.
  79. Cet amour-là
    Ms. Moreau, still an imperious presence at age 75, makes no effort to look or sound like Duras -- this is one sacred monster stepping in for another.
  80. Fellini: I'm a Born Liar
    Mr. Pettigrew's affection for Fellini and his films animates this documentary and limits its appeal.
  81. The Good Thief
    The ultimate caper, a work of brazen ebullience.
  82. Stevie
    Because Stevie has none of the glamour of "Hoop Dreams," with its portrait of gifted teenage athletes struggling for glory, it is not nearly as likable a film; but in its earnest, plodding way it is every bit as deep.
  83. Assassination Tango
    If Mr. Duvall's finely textured performance is a testament to the power of good screen acting to lift a film above the mundane, the movie's many irritating tics demonstrate that he is much more at home in front of the camera than behind it.
  84. The Core
    The cast of The Core deserve Oscar nominations just for being able to speak most of the lines without succumbing to the chortles.
  85. Head of State
    The very confusion that has made him (Rock) so unpredictable and funny onstage makes this on-screen exploration of contemporary racial mythologies curiously tentative and unfocused.
  86. Raising Victor Vargas
    Delicate and altogether satisfying romantic comedy.
  87. Basic
    You might be tempted to say, "Huh?" Or, if you're in the theater, to leave. But wait -- there's less.
  88. Unknown Pleasures
    Perhaps the world doesn't need another picture on disaffected youth, but Pleasures is about more than alienation.
  89. Piglet's Big Movie
    In the knockabout world of animated movies, Piglet's Big Movie is an oasis of gentleness and wit.
  90. Chuen jik sat sau
    Perhaps the directors are under the delusion that the dodging and leaping can make up for an ending that leaves the cast members of "Killer" adrift and nearly scratching their heads in puzzlement.
  91. Down and Out with the Dolls
    The results suggest a slightly more ribald version of "Josie and the Pussycats."
  92. Boat Trip
    If Boat Trip were screened on a cruise ship, most of the passengers would be dog-paddling back to shore.
  93. Gaudi Afternoon
    What should be a soufflé of gender-bending mischief is more like a bowl of oatmeal.
  94. View from the Top
    Ms. Paltrow is not the only star in the film who tries gamely to churn this cinematic glass of diluted skim milk into something resembling butter.
  95. One Swallow Brought Spring
    A quiet, slow-moving tale, very much in tune with the gradual rhythms of traditional agricultural life.
  96. Dreamcatcher
    As five or six bad movies squished together, it almost seems like a bargain.
  97. Decasia
    Nothing more -- and nothing less -- than a collage of decaying, decomposing nitrate film stock...The unexpected thing is that its dying, in this shower of black-and-white psychedelia, is quite beautiful.
  98. Japan
    Luckily Mr. Reygadas has talent to match his ambitions; or, rather, gifts that undercut them sufficiently to give his film a prickly, haunting poignancy.
  99. Zhantai
    An intellectually engaging movie. But Mr. Jia's careful objectivity and regard for material detail are not matched by narrative rigor.
  100. Willard
    The worst flaw of Willard is a clunky tone-deaf screenplay based on Gilbert Ralston's original and updated by the director. Barely a line flies by that doesn't land with a wooden thud.
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