The New York Times' Scores

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For 20,278 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: 9,380 out of 20278
  2. Mixed: 8,434 out of 20278
  3. Negative: 2,464 out of 20278
20278 movie reviews
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  1. Everything Put Together
    A finely acted expressionistic critique of the suburban baby culture and its joys, fears and fetishes.
  2. Monsters, Inc.
    There hasn't been a film in years to use creative energy as efficiently as Monsters, Inc.
  3. Amélie
    There is no denying that Amélie is, to paraphrase its title, fabulous.
  4. The One
    So narratively garbled and its screenplay so underwritten that you have to strain to piece together the story.
  5. Punks
    The movie's warmth, and Mr. Gilliam's sober, likable performance sustain it through its ragged stretches and amateurish lapses.
  6. Mysterious Object at Noon
    Mr. Weerasethakul's film is like a piece of chamber music slowly, deftly expanding into a full symphonic movement; to watch it is to enter a fugue state that has the music and rhythms of another culture.
  7. The Man Who Wasn't There
    The Coens have used the noir idiom to fashion a haunting, beautifully made movie that refers to nothing outside itself and that disperses like a vapor as soon as it's over.
  8. The Town Is Quiet
    You are left with an overall impression of a movie so full of life that it is almost bursting at the seams.
  9. History Lessons
    Unfortunately the clips themselves are so battered, grainy and sordid that they are more depressing than inspiring.
  10. Mysteries of Egypt
    Young viewers seduced by the trashy flash of "The Mummy" and "The Mummy Returns" will be able to glimpse a vanished reality richer, stranger and bigger than all of the special effects in Hollywood.
  11. Kill by Inches
    Should soon join Mr. Greenaway's last few efforts in obscurity.
  12. On the Line
    Once you've accepted the notion that On the Line gives product placement in movies a blatant new prominence, the film turns out to be a soothing cinematic snack of milk and cookies.
  13. K-PAX
    It's hard to watch these two actors plow through the nonsense of K- Pax without feeling that a terrific opportunity has been squandered.
  14. Life as a House
    Doesn't trust the audience enough to keep from laying on the schmaltz.
  15. Better Than Sex
    Imagine "Last Tango in Paris" remade as a wan, low-budget romantic comedy.
  16. Thirteen Ghosts
    All it has in common with the original is a few dumb fun scares. In the new version, what we're left with after the scares is just plain dumb.
  17. Ginger Snaps
    Because the characters are so well established -- Ms. Perkins is particularly good as the shy, resentful Brigitte -- the film can have fun with its own premises without turning into an empty camp exercise.
  18. Ouch
    "Ouch!" is also what you might exclaim as you pinch yourself to stay awake through the film's slow, labored contrivances.
  19. Donnie Darko
    It's this compulsion to solder melancholy to weightlessness that constantly trips up the movie; Mr. Kelly doesn't have the assurance to pull off such a difficult feat.
  20. Bones
    In exalting the very worst of humanity, Bones displays a special glee and an unusual density of scary imagery.
  21. Trembling Before G-d
    Director Sandi Simcha DuBowski latches on to a provocative subject and invests it with a compelling tenderness.
  22. A Chronicle of Corpses
    Mr. McElhinney has created a movie that is not without the flaws endemic in low-budget productions but still projects an amazing degree of stylistic assurance and originality.
  23. Cool and Crazy
    Consistently offbeat and entertaining; at such moments, it is also quite moving.
  24. Dog Run
    Too fuzzy-headed to rise above the pack.
  25. Dancing at the Blue Iguana
    An ensemble piece developed from an improvisational workshop, the movie exudes a haunted melancholy that recalls such early Alan Rudolph films as "Choose Me" and "Welcome to L.A," and it includes several flashy performances.
  26. One Week
    Holds together in spite of its flaws.
  27. Focus
    The movie's surreal style, with its film-noir camerawork and ominous lighting, turns the story into a fable about fear and nonconformism, and Mr. Macy's and Ms. Dern's carefully shaded caricatures match the mood.
  28. Riding in Cars with Boys
    As the movie jumps back and forth in time, it displays an impressive cut-and-paste agility, skillfully interweaving humor and drama without tipping over into farce or soap opera.
  29. Intimacy
    If Intimacy does anything well, it portrays desperation, in many different forms.
  30. The Last Castle
    The movie is exuberant, strapping and obvious -- a problem drama suffering from a steroid overdose.
  31. From Hell
    So beautifully realized as a mood piece that it takes a while for a slight disappointment to register.
  32. Burnt Money
    The passions of "Plata Quemada" are as bold as the images.
  33. Waking Life
    So verbally dexterous and visually innovative that you can't absorb it unless you have all your wits about you. And even then, you may want to see it again to enjoy its subtle humor and warm humanity.
  34. My Voyage to Italy
    Extraordinary labor of love.
  35. White Hotel
    Could serve as a textbook example of what to avoid in nonfiction filmmaking.
  36. Berlin Babylon
    Babylon is about architecture as a balm, and this is a particularly good time for such a film.
  37. The Operator
    If The Operator, which is Mr. Dichter's directorial debut, has a clever concept, it clasps it much too fiercely to its chest.
  38. Ha-Chaverim Shel Yana
    No more than a sentimental little comedy.
  39. My First Mister
    Leelee Sobieski and Albert Brooks, especially Mr. Brooks, deliver outstanding performances in the first feature film to be directed by Ms. Lahti.
  40. Iron Monkey
    Saving the big number for the climax, like any good musical director, Mr. Yuen finishes up with a spectacular variation on the traditional kung fu pole fight.
  41. Corky Romano
    As Corky, Mr. Kattan never finds an appealing perspective on his character. Sweetness is not this gifted comedian's strong suit, and in its place Mr. Kattan offers a desperate eagerness to please, a far less charming quality.
  42. Bandits
    Guilty of behaving like a petty thievery corporation; it steals from so many other sources that we're forced to realize that it has little of its own to offer. As such, it can't help but fail to meet expectations, given the talents involved.
  43. Mulholland Dr.
    By surrendering any semblance of rationality to create a post-Freudian, pulp-fiction fever dream of a movie, Mr. Lynch ends up shooting the moon with Mulholland Drive.
  44. Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop
    By and large Mr. Hoch's portrayals are as harsh and authentic as a police photograph, but an occasional touch of sentimentality creeps in.
  45. Sobibór, 14 Octobre 1943, 16 heures
    The feelings that this simple, deeply intelligent movie produces -- of horror, admiration, hope and grief -- are as hard to name as they are to dispel.
  46. Werckmeister Harmonies
    Mysterious, poetic and allusive, The Werckmeister Harmonies beckons filmgoers who complain of the vapidity of Hollywood movie making and yearn for a film to ponder and debate.
  47. Fat Girl
    Much more than a perfectly realized vignette about seduction. It is the latest and most powerful dispatch yet from Ms. Breillat, France's most impassioned correspondent covering the war between the sexes.
  48. Grateful Dawg
    Quite simply a treat for the ear.
  49. The Strange Case of Señor Computer
    Mr. Sawyer eventually overreaches, striving for tragedy with a grim, cautionary ending that seems meant to evoke "Frankenstein." But the film's offhand, homemade quality sustains a quirky appeal.
  50. Joy Ride
    Much more effectively terrifying than the usual overplotted, underwritten Hollywood thriller.
  51. The Debut
    Sometimes amateurishly acted by the appealing younger cast but is nonetheless a neat blend of well-drawn major characters and drama, music, dance, romance and humor that generates considerable charm and achieves a heartwarming resolution of its generational conflict.
  52. Serendipity
    The cinematic equivalent of a plate made of spun sugar.
  53. Training Day
    Mr. Washington's dry-ice grandeur -- the predator's reflexes contrasting with a pensive mouth -- deserves regard, and his powerhouse virtuosity will almost guarantee him an Oscar nomination.
  54. Max Keeble's Big Move
    This clunky juvenile comedy lurches among multiple story lines without fully realizing the comic potential of any.
  55. Chop Suey
    Though undoubtedly a vanity project -- the music clearances alone must have cost much more than the film could ever hope to gross -- it functions pleasantly enough as an exercise in free association.
  56. La Ciénaga
    As La Ciénaga perspires from the screen, it creates a vision of social malaise that feels paradoxically familiar and new.
  57. Va Savoir (Who Knows?)
    It's undeniably a trifle, but rarely is something like this done with such skill and, well, savoir-faire.
  58. Won't Anybody Listen
    Mr. Kelemer captures the sad textures of the Rogala brothers' lives with an appropriate balance of sympathy and detachment.
  59. Dinner Rush
    Serves up its scattershot plots as if they were lined up on a menu, moving from appetizer to entree: there are more intrigues here than in the court of the Medicis.
  60. Born Romantic
    In its own modest, genial terms, the picture succeeds: it never wants to be more than charming and sweet, and it invites us to imagine London as a cozy, happy small town where coincidental encounters are everyday occurrences.
  61. Hearts in Atlantis
    Mush, delivered with a trembling, quasi-biblical solemnity, is what emanates from Anthony Hopkins most of the time in Hearts in Atlantis, a nostalgic fiasco so shameless it makes movies like "Simon Birch" and "Frequency" seem as austere as the work of Robert Bresson.
  62. Zoolander
    Often unspeakably funny.
  63. Don't Say a Word
    Confuses an empty and derivative stylistic bravura with formal cleverness, and a sterile, mechanistic sensationalism with emotional intensity.
  64. Diamond Men
    Eddie Miller (Robert Forster), the stolid protagonist of Diamond Men, a small, finely acted slice of American life, is the sort of character the movies normally shun like the plague for lack of glamour.
  65. The Season of Men
    The movie isn't entirely despairing. Near the end, it suggests that contemporary Tunisian women with enough fighting spirit can achieve a measure of autonomy, although the personal cost may be bitter. And the movie's sun-drenched views of life on the southern Tunisian island of Jerba are beautiful.
  66. Liam
    Walks the delicate boundary between politically inflected realism and costumed sentimentality.
  67. Vampire Hunter D
    Handsome, well-executed film that nonetheless feels a bit long at 111 minutes. Those who are already anime fans will certainly find it stimulating; but this may not be the one to convert the uninitiated.
  68. The Endurance
    The tale, in any case, is so gripping, so full of improbable turns and agonizing reversals that it bears repeating, and Mr. Butler and Ms. Alexander tell it straightforwardly and well.
  69. Go Tigers!
    Never disrespectful. It leaves you liking and even admiring the people of Massillon for their spunk and their passionate commitment to carrying on a hallowed tradition.
  70. Glitter
    Mostly dross, an unintentionally hilarious compendium of time-tested cinematic clichés that illustrates the chasm between hopeful imitation and successful duplication.
  71. God, Sex & Apple Pie
    There's not much for the viewer to do during God, Sex & Apple Pie except check off the obligatory plot points -- taking comfort in the thought that as each cliché appears, the film is one step closer to the blessed relief of its closing credits.
  72. Rocky Road
    The whole business has a breathless, determined, student-film quality that makes it especially hard to watch. Mr. Cunningham and his cast are clearly trying to do something they feel is important, and there is no pleasure in watching them do it so ineptly.
  73. Children Underground
    A singularly depressing film. In the face of such unrelieved, grinding poverty, hope fades.
  74. China: The Panda Adventure
    Just as the vast, square Imax screen magnifies panda-haunches and steep, jungle-clad gorges, its relentless scale also enlarges a half-baked, mediocre little adventure story into something almost grotesquely bad.
  75. Haiku Tunnel
    Can a feature-length movie be built on minutiae like jammed copying machines, unsent business letters and orientation programs for new employees? This innocuous wisp of a film, as weighty as a scrap of fax paper caught in an updraft, suggests that the answer is no.
  76. The Glass House
    The Glass House is hardly insane, just absurd, and the only damage it does is to itself.
  77. Hard Ball
    Its uplifting message about teamwork and caring wouldn't hurt a fly. You might even say, the movie is good for you.
  78. Kill Me Later
    The screenplay never begins to finds a workable balance between wit and adventure. And the performances in several smaller roles are so mechanical that they lend Kill Me Later the tone of a vanity production.
  79. A Trial in Prague
    Shows the human face of both communism and its victims, and shows how hard it is to tell the two apart.
  80. Tell Me Something
    It doles out information so arbitrarily that you are robbed of the twin pleasures of figuring out clues and figuring out you've been fooled.
  81. Bounce: Behind the Velvet Rope
    The picture is obsessed with strength and the use of physical force, though its attitudes are often slippery.
  82. Two Can Play That Game
    A likable, featherweight romantic comedy that hardly asks to be taken seriously, but its very triviality is, in some ways, quite significant.
  83. A Matter of Taste
    This deliciously nasty French deconstruction of male pecking orders, directed by Bernard Rapp, should send a pleasant shiver down the spine of anyone who has ever obsessed about wanting to please a devious and manipulative boss.
  84. The Musketeer
    Dramatically as well as visually, The Musketeer conflicts with itself by trying to blend grand old- school costume drama and MTV- style rhythm and attitude into the same movie. The juxtapositions are often preposterous.
  85. L.I.E.
    At its best, L.I.E. offers a rich, dark, bitter slice of contemporary life. But the film's arty embellishments undermine its bleak vision, making it, in the end, a little too easy to take.
  86. Soul Survivors
    There is an explanation for everything, but it is a long time coming and not worth the wait.
  87. Our Lady of the Assassins
    Couldn't have succeeded had it been cast with movie stars. Its authenticity derives not only from the streets on which it was filmed but also from its able Colombian cast.
  88. Rock Star
    Represents the usual victory of simplistic screenwriting conventions over the rich, gamy ambiguities of the subject. But while its slide into perfunctory storytelling dilutes the raw, silly spectacle of sex and noise, the movie still has enough wit and insight to make it worth watching.
  89. The Iron Ladies
    As flimsy and manipulative as the shallowest Hollywood fantasy.
  90. Vengo
    Seems held back by vestiges of an old-fashioned format that Mr. Gatlif has long since outgrown.
  91. The American Astronaut
    Soars as much as it crashes.
  92. Djomeh
    An investigation, at once lucid and enigmatic, of exile, loneliness and the fragile possibility of friendship.
  93. O
    In trying to make "Othello" more lifelike and bring it down to a younger audience -- in effect, to make it more democratic -- the adaptation has rendered the material artless.
  94. Jeepers Creepers
    Works up a reasonably delicious tingle.
  95. Tortilla Soup
    As predictable as a fast-food restaurant. The actors' exuberance goes a long way, but not far enough.
  96. Maybe Baby
    A juggling act between high soap opera and low comedy, Maybe Baby manages to keep its pins in the air until very near the end.
  97. Summer Catch
    A mound of standard-issue parent-child conflicts and enough self-help cliches to drive Polonius to the aquavit barrel at Elsinore.
  98. Together
    One of the most pleasant foreign films of the year, a funny, graceful and immensely good-natured work.
  99. Ghosts of Mars
    Like a zombie picture directed by one of the undead.
  100. The Curse of the Jade Scorpion
    A loose- jointed, not especially memorable comic caper with some lovely moments of humorous invention, many patches of clumsy writing and a few game performances.
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