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. Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron
    As it stands, "Spirit" provides neither the profound human touch of the great Disney animation of the past, nor the dazzling, high-tech fun of present-day digital cartooning.
  2. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers
    In this film, suspense and psychological horror have given way to superhuman strength and resilience...The one effectively handled scene is the last, which promises a sequel with a feminist twist.
  3. R2PC: Road to Park City
    The intentionally self-conscious style of R2PC is a little hard to take sometimes because the movie is trying too hard to be funny.
  4. 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.
  5. The Middle of the World
    Wants to be both a realistic family drama and a mythical odyssey but lacks the substance to be much more than a vignette.
  6. Good Boy!
    As children's film premises go, this is a cute one, but the execution is a failure.
  7. Teaching Mrs. Tingle
    Newly benign and noticeably clumsier than the hits (Williamson) has written.
  8. Love Forbidden
    A model French psychological drama in which very little action occurs but feelings and intuitions are documented with precision and discretion.
  9. Wonder Boys
    With so much going for it, how could the movie be such a dud?
  10. Where the Heart Is
    No-Good Men, Foolish Choices and Birth on the Floor of a Wal-Mart.
  11. Bull Durham
    Dialogue that strains to be colorful, indiscriminately piled-on pop songs, plot developments that aren't followed through on, and minor aspects of motivation that are never known.
  12. Hey, Happy!
    The film feels too formulaic and too familiar to produce the transgressive thrills of early underground work.
  13. The Santa Clause 2
    Captures the true spirit of the holiday. It's mildly sentimental, unabashedly consumerist (with anything-but-subliminal advertisements for McDonald's hamburgers and Nestlé candy tucked inside), studiously inoffensive and completely disposable.
  14. Enigma
    The mystery of Enigma is how a rich historical subject, combined with so much first-rate talent -- a highly capable (if not always exciting) director, a fine English cast, a script by Tom Stoppard -- could have yielded such a flat, plodding picture.
  15. The Grey Zone
    Certainly an honorable film. But honorable is not always watchable.
  16. 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.
  17. Lake Placid
    Trouble is, while not trading quips, the characters actually go through the motions of being scared of the croc, menaced by the croc and so on. And since even the gator horror satire is old hat (remember ''Alligator?''), there's no remaining way to make this interesting.
  18. Beetlejuice
    Elaborate as this sounds, there really isn't much plot here, only a parade of arbitrary visual tricks to hold the film together.
  19. Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde
    A movie for people who somehow managed to miss the point of the first picture.
  20. Committed
    Comedy, like marriage, takes more work than this.
  21. 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.
  22. Very Annie Mary
    As it lurches between mush and farce, Very Annie Mary churns up a few genuinely funny bits.
  23. Club Dread
    Mr. Chandrasekhar's direction is casual to the point of carelessness, but he does give the movie a friendly, convivial atmosphere that contradicts and sometimes overcomes its frequently cruel humor. In short, this is another film that looks as if it was more fun to make than it is to sit through.
  24. 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.
  25. 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.
  26. S.W.A.T.
    Mostly standard-issue muddle.
  27. Office Space
    It has the loose-jointed feel of a bunch of sketches packed together into a narrative that doesn't gather much momentum. Its conspiratorial eager beavers are so undeveloped that they could hardly even be called types. You don't care for a second what happens to them.
  28. Swing
    A sweet, sincere labor of love that just isn't very good.
  29. Love the Hard Way
    Loses tension (and ultimately credibility) as it wanders through three possible endings before grinding to a halt.
  30. Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles
    Nostalgia and comedy are run through a food processor until they become a flavorless paste.
  31. Ayurveda: Art of Being
    As a believer preaching to an audience of believers, he (Nalin) feels no need to offer proofs or anything even approaching a rational argument.
  32. For Love of the Game
    Sometimes even a talented lineup produces unexceptional results.
  33. Life as a House
    Doesn't trust the audience enough to keep from laying on the schmaltz.
  34. At First Sight
    The pace is so plodding and the dialogue so unwaveringly banal … that the film can't rise to the extraordinary sensations it means to capture.
  35. The Intended
    The performances are so skillful that the actors almost carry it off. But as the shocks come thicker and faster, the credibility of The Intended, wears away.
  36. The Rules of Attraction
    The harder the movie tries to shock, the shriller it rings.
  37. Mission to Mars
    There doesn't seem to be an original moment in the entire movie, and the score is so repetitive that it could have been downloaded directly from EnnioMorricone.com.
  38. 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.
  39. The Transporter
    American audiences will probably find it familiar and insufficiently cathartic.
  40. Son of the Bride
    May be as exhaustive a study of one man's midlife crisis as has ever been brought to the screen. But as the movie lopes along, exhaustive becomes exhausting.
  41. Carlos Castaneda: Enigma of a Sorcerer
    It becomes hard to tell just what Castaneda was advocating, apart from the liberal use of psychedelic drugs.
  42. How I Killed My Father
    A kind of murder mystery, but eventually the only victim is the audience's interest -- the picture is uncompromising and inauspicious.
  43. Let's Get Frank
    Has no interest in exploring Mr. Frank's family background or love life. This frustrating lack of context leaves you wanting a lot more in the way of texture.
  44. Johnson Family Vacation
    Feels more like a grueling road trip in search of a family comedy.
  45. 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.
  46. He Loves Me... He Loves Me Not
    Like "The Sixth Sense," He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not reaches for a crowning final twist, but in this case it falls flat.
  47. Wasabi
    Culinary purists have observed that much of what passes for the spicy Japanese condiment wasabi at American restaurants is an ersatz concoction of horseradish and green food coloring. The French-language action comedy Wasabi is just as artificial, pumped with horseradish to give it heat in lieu of actual spice.
  48. Left Luggage
    So intent on pushing its virtuous agenda that its characters often sound like mouthpieces parroting predigested attitudes.
  49. Mambo italiano
    As Angelo, Mr. Kirby has a boyish charm, which is probably the best that can be said for this film as well.
  50. The City of Lost Souls
    (Miike's) work is fun to look at but emotionally unengaging, perhaps because he can't summon enough belief in his pulp-fiction characters to make them come alive.
  51. Poolhall Junkies
    The proliferating subplots require many big emotional confrontations, so the movie seems to reach its climax 20 minutes in, and then every 15 minutes or so thereafter. This is fairly exhausting.
  52. Starship Troopers
    Pretty actors, grisly critters, brains sucked out of skulls, buckets of green slime and a plot that is half beach blanket bingo, half Iwo Jima.
  53. Barbershop 2: Back in Business
    Given the stature and the presence that the entrepreneurial rappers-turned-film-moguls Ice Cube and Queen Latifah possess, the fizzle of their scenes is doubly disappointing.
  54. The Other Sister
    What redeems the film…are its three outstanding performances.
  55. Miss Congeniality
    Supporting performances add comic spark to a movie that otherwise seems happily, deliberately second-rate.
  56. Desperado
    Like "The Quick and the Dead," Desperado wavers uneasily between myth making and parody, so that too many scenes drag on long after they've lost their punch.
  57. Jeepers Creepers
    Works up a reasonably delicious tingle.
  58. A Dog of Flanders
    Difficult to swallow.
  59. The Ninth Gate
    About as scary as a sock-puppet re-enactment of "The Blair Witch Project," and not nearly as funny.
  60. Steal This Movie
    Likable but muddled screen biography.
  61. Nicotina
    While it demonstrates some formal ingenuity, it is for the most part a tasteless and derivative stew of overdone jokes, chronological tricks and labored shock effects.
  62. 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?
  63. Kaena: The Prophecy
    Has no local cultural history behind it. Its secondhand imagery and ideas seem to have barely involved its makers; it definitely does not involve its audience.
  64. Chasing Liberty
    The lack of narrative sophistication allows an Ecstasy-like disposition to set in; "Liberty" becomes goo-goo eyed over itself. It lacks the discipline to define Anna sufficiently; rather, it portrays her as either a lovable naïf or a spoiled narcissist in desperate need of a lesson.
  65. Night at the Golden Eagle
    The visual intensity and the relentless degradation visited on the characters begins to feel prurient and dishonest.
  66. Laws of Attraction
    Laws of Attraction, like the somewhat better "Intolerable Cruelty," seems desperately unsure of itself at crucial moments.
  67. Maryam
    There's not much here; some of the shots feel so static that you wonder if they're being rehearsed before your eyes.
  68. Irreversible
    Though Mr. Noé; displays prodigious filmmaking technique, his punk-operatic meditation on life, love, anger and -- most important -- guilt is superficially inventive, but singularly adolescent.
  69. Close Your Eyes
    With such plodding dialogue, there's little the actors can do to surmount the falsity, although Ms. Shaw, in her brief appearances, almost succeeds.
  70. Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones
    It is not really much of a movie at all, if by movie you mean a work of visual storytelling about the dramatic actions of a group of interesting characters.
  71. Come te nessuno mai
    Aiming for lighthearted, bittersweet charm, But Forever in My Mind slips into predictability and condescension.
  72. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
    Has the sweat stains of wasted energy; it's dreary, yet frantic.
  73. Bootmen
    Too much soap opera colors its love story, and the industrial- strength dancing by booted men that is its centerpiece falls short of exhilaration.
  74. World Traveler
    Neither the screenplay nor the film's visual vocabulary begins to evoke a charged spiritual tension between the protagonist and the world.
  75. State and Main
    A surprisingly unpolished piece of work that plays as though it were written for the stage and only slightly modified for the screen.
  76. Message in a Bottle
    Garret is played by Kevin Costner, who should avoid all future roles that call for overalls and goggles and who this time crosses the line from teasingly laconic to stodgy.
  77. Particles of Truth
    Tense and tiresome.
  78. The Jimmy Show
    The kind of movie that is a must to avoid on a bad day. Even on a good one, it could send you into a funk.
  79. The Big Kahuna
    If the movie looked any cheaper, you might think you were paying more to get into the theater than was spent on making the film.
  80. Head in the Clouds
    This pulpy, sex-drenched wartime epic seems frivolous, quaint and foolishly prurient.
  81. 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.
  82. The Cookout
    Wants to be an outdoor, barbecue-grilled "Barbershop" but lacks the pungency and honesty of its prototype.
  83. Fools Rush In
    The film never gets past the unlikelihood that its characters have much chance of living happily ever after. Or of finding real heat or humor along the way.
  84. 8MM
    Schumacher almost invariably breathes more life into his material than he has here. It's a lot easier to tick off the forced, farfetched touches in Eight Millimeter than to count the ones that ring true.
  85. 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.
  86. Next Friday
    Most of the principal female characters are either sexually voracious, sexually promiscuous, pregnant out of wedlock or angrily bent on revenge.
  87. Superstar
    A comedy with several good laughs but no convincing cohesion.
  88. Hidalgo
    The much too long, primitively plotted family action adventure Hidalgo, directed by Joe Johnston, has a handful of well-handled sequences but, given the young audience the film is intended for, the picture may be like having to finish an entire pot of broccoli to get a couple of jelly beans for dessert.
  89. My Best Friend's Wedding
    Obtuse, prettily decorative comedy. Characters burst gaily into song when, as often happens, they don't have anything better to do.
  90. Very Bad Things
    Humorous slashings and car accidents constitute similar high points in a film that is glaringly short on ''Scream''-style self-mockery to match its dopey mayhem.
  91. Orgazmo
    Faced an insoluble problem: how do you make a boundary-shattering gross-out farce about the porn business that isn't itself pornographic? Having the actors wear silly costumes embellished with sex toys just won't do the trick.
  92. Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed
    Looks like a Saturday morning cartoon (the characters all wear color-coded costumes) and unfortunately feels like one, too, with its thin characterizations, largely arbitrary action and feeble jokes.
  93. The Time Machine
    This uninviting and pallid version, starring Guy Pearce, is intent on grinding all the sharp edges off the original story, in effect making the movie childproof, so no one can get hurt touching it.
  94. Fish Without a Bicycle
    Isn't totally without humor or insight.
  95. Twisted
    Laborious and nonsensical psychological thriller, a mediocre piece of studio hackwork unredeemed by a first-rate director.
  96. Pay It Forward
    It's so enamored of its own upbeat view of human nature that it expects you to overlook its stick-figure characters, its creaky plot machinery and its remorseless assault on your tear ducts.
  97. 28 Days
    Begins with such a flurry of promise that it comes as a sharp disappointment when this drug-rehab comedy skids out of control.
  98. The Final Cut
    The core of the movie is a satirical political thriller that juxtaposes dual points of view that could be described in cinematic terms as "It's a Wonderful Life" versus "Chinatown." The digressions should have been pared away.
  99. A Dirty Shame
    I object to A Dirty Shame not because it is offensive - to do so would be another way of congratulating Mr. Waters for his bogus daring - but because it is boring. Beyond offering a catalog of interesting practices and lampooning their dedicated practitioners, the movie has very little to say about sex.
  100. The Thirteenth Floor
    Repackaged as cyberthriller, the old time-travel adventure returns in this stylish but overplotted and ultimately illogical combination of science fiction, mystery and romance.
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