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. Bubble Boy
    When it clicks, the picture should shock you into laughter -- enough to make you wish it were better and applaud its efforts anyway.
  2. Cupid's Mistake
    At 70 minutes, Cupid's Mistake is short, but then, so is our time on this planet.
  3. Fighter
    In juxtaposing two extraordinary personal histories, it ponders in a refreshingly original way unanswerable questions about memory, imagination, history and that elusive thing we call truth.
  4. Lisa Picard Is Famous
    This hilarious fake documentary -- deserves a place beside the comedies of Christopher Guest in the hall of fame of semi-deadpan spoofs.
  5. Brooklyn Babylon
    The film dissolves into a series of diminishing anticlimaxes, ending on a note of portentous ambiguity. To the last, Mr. Levin maintains his uneasy balance of reportage and melodrama.
  6. Innocence
    Mostly mediocre melodrama, though the actors suffering over love's labors lost are quite fine.
  7. Blood: The Last Vampire
    Much more effective at evoking a paranoid mood than at telling a coherent story, and the jerky action sequences are among the film's weaker visual elements.
  8. American Outlaws
    May be simple, but it's also simple-minded; this is, after all, a movie determined to transform its Rebel soldier heroes into men of the people, making it as neglectful of politics as last summer's "Patriot," which evaded that nasty issue of slavery during the America Revolution.
  9. Captain Corelli's Mandolin
    As the movie methodically plods forward on a screenplay (by Shawn Slovo) consisting entirely of clichés and watered-down exposition, it becomes sadly apparent that its only reliable asset is the gorgeous view.
  10. Rat Race
    It lumbers from one scene to the next with the stop-and-start mistiming generally seen in the outtakes shown at the end of the "Cannonball Run" movies, which this picture resembles in spirit.
  11. Aberdeen
    Skarsgard and Headey deliver perfectly meshed lead performances in a small, beautifully acted film that will make you squirm.
  12. Hamlet
    Mr. Scott's is something that must be seen. It is, in a word, compelling.
  13. An American Rhapsody
    Ms. Gardos is not a particularly flavorful filmmaker, but she is an honest one.
  14. The Turandot Project
    The sheer scale of the production, and the size of the venue, make the film interesting to watch.
  15. All Over the Guy
    Some kind of equality has been achieved when it is impossible to distinguish heterosexual clichés from homosexual ones.
  16. American Pie 2
    The "American Pie" movies succeed where many other comedies aimed at the youth market falter: they manage to be both lewd and sweet, exploiting the natural prurience of young people while implicitly comforting their raging anxieties.
  17. Session 9
    The film, too artfully conceived to deliver many overt shocks, often feels long and aimless.
  18. The Others
    The icy reserve that sometimes stands in the way of Kidman's expressive gifts here becomes the foundation of her most emotionally layered performance to date.
  19. Osmosis Jones
    Often very smart about being silly.
  20. The Deep End
    Fastidious and smart, and Ms. Swinton's fixated intensity isn't ever remote; we're always aware of how deeply she's feeling. Her work is magnificent.
  21. Audition
    The picture is about victims -- but it's also a great, sick rush with a kicker on the level of "The Vanishing."
  22. The Blackout
    Like most of Mr. Ferrara's films, The Blackout takes place in a trance state -- events are fuzzy, line readings even fuzzier. There are mysterious ellipses in the plotline and lots of droning electric guitar work on the soundtrack.
  23. Original Sin
    Everything in this film is forgettable, right down to bongos pounding on the soundtrack to indicate a quickening of the pulse.
  24. Thomas in Love
    The film is full of ingenious details and effective character sketches (Thomas has a mother who would give Woody Allen the willies) that go a long way toward covering up its conventionalities.
  25. Under solen
    It has the melancholy mildew of both "Marty" and the 1940's weepie "The Enchanted Cottage."
  26. The Princess Diaries
    This is "Pretty Woman" for children.
  27. Rush Hour 2
    The action and humor are enough to make an hour and a half pass quickly and pleasantly.
  28. Apocalypse Now Redux
    In spite of its limited perspective on Vietnam, its churning, term-paperish exploration of Conrad and the near incoherence of its ending, (it) is a great movie. It grows richer and stranger with each viewing, and the restoration of scenes left in the cutting room two decades ago has only added to its sublimity.
  29. Greenfingers
    The film is as synthetic as a rubber rose, but it is all but indistinguishable from the organically grown, bred-in-Britain article.
  30. The Monkey's Mask
    Instead of suspense, there is confusion; instead of intrigue, a lot of inexplicable confrontation among characters whose significance is not so much enigmatic as obscure.
  31. Tokyo Eyes
    The portrayals by the fetching Ms. Yoshikawa and Mr. Takeda are consistently absorbing, and Mr. Limosin's plotting, though essentially gimmicky and manipulative, packs mystery and tension.
  32. Planet of the Apes
    When Mr. Burton's "Planet" fixes on being entertaining...it succeeds. But the picture states its social points so bluntly that it becomes slow-witted and condescending; it treats the audience as pets.
  33. Bread and Tulips
    Soldini's amiable new comedy suggests that an older, better Italy of imagination, rationality and civility survives on the fringes of a modern nation obsessed, like most others, with consumerism, empty prosperity and easy pleasure.
  34. He liu
    Whether or not The River is, as some critics have claimed, Mr. Tsai's masterpiece, it is an excellent introduction to his oblique narrative style, his favored themes and his careful, lyrical visual sensibility.
  35. Wet Hot American Summer
    In essence, it's a ragged collection of bits and sketches cobbled into about a dozen plots, most of which call upon the cast to do a lot of tongue and neck-spraining French kissing.
  36. Cure
    The final scene is a piece of cunning visual wit that makes you realize how artful and sneaky Cure, has been beneath its clinical, deadpan surface.
  37. Jackpot
    The movie is smart in small ways, yet an underachiever in big ones -- but it will probably play very well on television. On the big screen, it's distended and diffuse.
  38. Reykjavík
    Feels as though it is not about much, but it is so well acted that the lassitude becomes a part of the atmosphere.
  39. America's Sweethearts
    Like a bottle of lukewarm Champagne -- an expensive one, judging by the label -- America's Sweethearts opens with a promising burst of effervescence and quickly goes flat.
  40. Brother
    Mr. Kitano directed, edited and wrote Brother -- and his style of close-to-the-vest brutality travels extremely well.
  41. Hedwig and the Angry Inch
    Clever, funny, wildly innovative film.
  42. Ghost World
    It's surely the best depiction of teenage eccentricity since "Rushmore," and its incisive satire of the boredom and conformity that rule our thrill-seeking, individualistic land, and also its question-mark ending, reminded me of "The Graduate."
  43. Jurassic Park III
    All it wants to do is scare a smile onto your face, and it often succeeds. After all, how can a movie that offers Michael Jeter as a mercenary not be fun?
  44. Downtown 81
    It's as a documentary that Downtown 81 is most successful, particularly at those moments when the somewhat unfocused filmmaking allows us to look past the foreground characters and catch glimpses of a vanished cityscape.
  45. Waiting
    Doesn't have many fresh ideas to contribute to the genre, though it is reasonably good-natured and delivers a handful of solid laughs.
  46. Made
    Though Mr. Favreau probably had to co-star in Made to make his exposé of the loser's mushy pink underbelly of "Swingers" register, he might have come up with a better picture if he had stayed behind the camera. But he's willing to take chances, and he'll learn from this movie.
  47. Legally Blonde
    The character as written is incoherent, but Ms. Witherspoon has the reflexes to make Elle both appealing and ridiculous. It's funny -- in that slightly queasy, un-P.C. Doris Day kind of way.
  48. Bully
    It's instructive to compare Bully with Jean-Pierre Ameris's "Bad Company," which tackles similar themes and manages to be explicit without stooping to cheap salaciousness. It's a genuinely disturbing film. Bully, in contrast, is merely disgusting.
  49. The Score
    I don't know how much The Score cost, but it's pretty close to worthless.
  50. Adanggaman
    The narrative motion is tricky; first it canters, then shifts into a heady, quick gallop. What's most fascinating about Adanggaman are the scenes that feel like anecdotal rest stops but that are actually building into a nuanced and engrossing whole.
  51. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
    The lip movements of the animated figures are slightly slow, so you feel as if you're watching a badly dubbed Japanese creature feature from the 1960's. The dialogue is almost as stilted, and after a while you drift into that half-dream state that inert movies can create.
  52. Off the Hook
    Poverty, capable of stunting lives, can also blight films. A case in point is the earnest and heartfelt but undernourished and plodding Off the Hook.
  53. Everybody's Famous!
    With its likable blue-collar characters and its unpretentious exuberance, Everybody's Famous is reminiscent of recent British comedies like "Brassed Off" and "The Full Monty."
  54. Kiss of the Dragon
    Mr. Li will come out of Kiss of the Dragon smelling like a rose; the combat couldn't be better. But next time around, he should leave the script to more capable hands.
  55. The Vertical Ray of the Sun
    An oblique, vaguely sorrowful study in domestic emotion, structured around the small eruptions of feeling -- tenderness, anger, and joy -- that punctuate the slow serenity of daily life.
  56. Lost and Delirious
    It works in so many ways except for the script, which sounds laughable. And sadly, when Lost and Delirious trips over its own two feet, it is laughable. It needs to follow Paulie's advice and rage more.
  57. Jump Tomorrow
    The sweetness at the core of the raggedy low-budget romantic comedy Jump Tomorrow is hard to resist.
  58. Cats & Dogs
    Only a sourpuss could fail to be amused by this movie's sight gags and action sequences or to be charmed by its lighthearted good humor.
  59. Scary Movie 2
    This crude comedy delivers on the "No Shame, No Mercy" threats from the original. Unfortunately, it all adds up to "No Good."
  60. The Closet
    Veber's giddy social comedy The Closet finds more delicious, chortling fun in the spectacle of obsequious hypocrisy than any movie I've seen in ages.
  61. Pandaemonium
    Literate and handsome.
  62. The Crimson Rivers
    The full explanation for the movie's graphically depicted horrors is preposterous even by the almost-anything- goes standards of the action-thriller conspiracy genre.
  63. Pootie Tang
    Pootie Tang may be raw and slovenly -- hey, it often is raw and slovenly -- but it succeeds as a laugh getter because of the spot-on satirical notes. You might say that the movie walks it like it talks it; I'm not sure what Pootie would say.
  64. Crazy/Beautiful
    It is an enormous improvement over the brainless, patronizing teenage romances that have slouched into (and quickly out of) theaters in recent years. But it could, if the filmmakers had trusted themselves and the actors a bit more, have lived up to its title.
  65. Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural (re-release)
    The film falls far short of its goals, but it is a classic of sorts. It belongs in that Blockbuster on Mount Olympus, where pristine new copies of "I Changed My Sex," "Dracula's Dog," "Blackenstein" and "Battlefield Earth" play constantly.
  66. A.I. Artificial Intelligence
    (Spielberg) tells the story slowly and films it with lucid, mesmerizing objectivity, creating a mood as layered, dissonant and strange as John Williams's unusually restrained. modernist score.
  67. Come Undone
    Ultimately, Come Undone isn't a movie about homosexuality, depression or family dynamics. For a gay coming-out story, its sexual politics are extremely muted.
  68. Lumumba
    Mr. Peck's gambit works, and the result is a great film and a great performance.
  69. Baby Boy
    Jody's story is told with so much heart -- and his character is acted with such a winning combination of playfulness, vulnerability and sexual dynamism by Mr. Gibson -- that you can forgive the occasionally incoherent storytelling, the overwrought moments and the haphazard, unconvincing excursions into dream and fantasy.
  70. Jin Roh: The Wolf Brigade
    Something to behold; it's just not much to watch, despite admirable ambition and a few tense, well-thought-out sequences.
  71. The Princess and the Warrior
    Deeply whimsical beneath its poker face, The Princess and the Warrior has the structure of an elaborate mind-teasing puzzle.
  72. Dr. Dolittle 2
    Mr. Murphy is not given much to do in this sloppy, good-hearted sequel, so he graciously allows himself to be upstaged by all manner of animatronic, celebrity-voiced talking animals.
  73. LaLee's Kin: The Legacy of Cotton
    An exemplary work of cinéma vérité that allows its subjects to speak for themselves, traffics neither in pity nor in political grandstanding.
  74. The Fast and the Furious
    Neither fast nor furious, this film belongs in the section of the supermarket where blah-white labels and big block lettering denote brandless cigarettes, vodka, crushed pineapple and, in this case, action picture.
  75. Chain Camera
    Filtered through tears, laughter and affection, the results -- are touching and fascinating though, by their nature unilluminated by dispassionate analysis.
  76. Saudate for the Future
    Despite its sociological tidbits and flashes of musical vitality, Saudade do Futuro never goes anywhere.
  77. A Huey P. Newton Story
    The production doesn't resolve the paradoxes in Newton's life, but it does give viewers some idea of what it might have been like to be inside his head.
  78. Life and Debt
    Offers the clearest analysis of globalization and its negative effects that I've ever seen on a movie or television screen.
  79. The Adventures of Felix
    Makes its points gently; the picture presents its socially conscious messages as if they were written in the sand, on the beaches where Felix would probably prefer to frolic.
  80. Down from the Mountain
    If you have any affection at all for traditional American music, the movie itself -- is pretty close to heaven.
  81. Auggie Rose
    A minor-key diversion, might play relatively well on television, where you're listening with one ear while keeping the other cocked to the phone.
  82. Dirty Cop No Donut
    This stomach-turning exercise in gratuitous sadism -- wears a nasty smirk on its face right down to its end title comment, "Gotcha."
  83. Songcatcher
    Songcatcher is a sweet, lyrical ode to rural America in the early 1900's.
  84. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
    Sitting through the lavish and dumb action spectacular Lara Croft: Tomb Raider is about as much fun as watching someone else play a video game.
  85. Russian Doll
    Blends the least of Woody Allen with a plot complication out of "Love, American Style," stuck together with sitcom glue.
  86. Sexy Beast
    He's (Kingsley) pure violence, a sociopath who radiates menace even while sitting perfectly still mouthing pleasantries.
  87. Let It Snow
    Let It Snow is cheery, and it gets by on the energy of the actors, who may be as taken by the movie's guilelessness as audiences could be. The film's naïveté makes up for its rampant predictability.
  88. Atlantis: The Lost Empire
    A monumental treat as well as a crafty assemblage of mythologies.
  89. Evolution
    The movie itself evolves in reverse, starting life as a moderately clever grab bag of high-concept noodling and half-witty badinage before descending into the primordial ooze of explosions and elaborate lower- intestinal gags.
  90. Bride of the Wind
    For all the talk of artistic and amorous passion, the film is trapped in snobbish inertia; its idea of period drama amounts to a kind of highbrow name- dropping.
  91. Dead or Alive
    A soulless compilation of thrills.
  92. The Anniversary Party
    Despite its shortcomings, this smart, caustic movie is easily the most incisive and realistic comedy of manners to emerge from Hollywood in quite a while, and that's saying a lot.
  93. Swordfish
    Turns into a meticulously choreographed bang-by-the-numbers action fantasy that I would accuse of peddling evil if the film weren't so dumb and incoherent.
  94. Divided We Fall
    The filmmakers explore not only the banality of evil, but also the banality of goodness, and the ridiculousness, as well as the tragedy, of their collision.
  95. La grande strada azzurra
    A political movie that, partly through the powerful lead performance of its star, the relatively young Yves Montand, transcends its own politics.
  96. A Love Divided
    Although the film is well acted from top to bottom, its dramatic spark plug is Mr. Doyle's terrifying portrayal of Father Stafford.
  97. Big Eden
    The movie is as flat and plain as a television program, and most of the supporting characters (including Louise Fletcher as a kindly schoolmarm) seem equally two-dimensional, as if they had wandered in from the set of "The Andy Griffith Show."
  98. Rape Me
    Ms. Depentes and Ms. Thi -- push such chic amoralism to its logical conclusion, composing a numbing alternation of pornographic scenarios and brutal killings. The result is like something you'd see momentarily unscrambled on a hotel television set, but with better music and a little more of a story line.
  99. The Animal
    Transcendently dumb but very funny comedy.
  100. A Real Young Girl
    Crude, unpolished, yet curiously dreamy.
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