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. A Chorus Line
    A Chorus Line is less a movie than an expensive souvenir program.
  2. Somewhere in Time
    The screenplay is priceless (funny) and it's Mr. Reeve who sets the film's tone. Unfortunately, his unshadowed good looks, granite profile, bright naivete and eagerness to please - the qualities that made him such an ideal Superman - look absurd here.
  3. Step Up 3-D
    The dancers may be skilled, but their work has no meaning in terms of the story -- it's pure spectacle, and numbingly repetitive spectacle at that.
  4. Knight and Day
    A loud, seemingly interminable, and altogether incoherent entry in the preposterous and proliferating “action-comedy” genre.
  5. Man of the Century
    Amusing one-joke film.
  6. Beloved/Friend
    Like its title, it's a clumsy contraption.
  7. Escape to Life: The Erika and Klaus Mann Story
    The re- enactments, however fascinating they may be as history, are too crude to serve the work especially well.
  8. Besotted
    Like a soft drink that's been sitting open too long: it's too much syrup and not enough fizz.
  9. Fear of Fiction
    A washout.
  10. White Hotel
    Could serve as a textbook example of what to avoid in nonfiction filmmaking.
  11. The Woman Chaser
    Strives desperately for a zaniness that is largely absent from the screenplay and from comic performances that are too blank and unfocused to register as parody.
  12. The Bulls' Night Out
    The movie doesn't turn out to be as benignly right-wing as it initially suggests, though the plot turns can be spotted a mile away.
  13. The End of the Road
    So disorganized that it seems to be pulling its conclusions out of its pockets, along with scraps of paper, matches, lint and half-forgotten junk.
  14. Last Party 2000
    Starts to seem less like a political documentary than a one-sided "Battle of the Network Stars," with the younger generation clearly winning the charisma challenge.
  15. Trouble Every Day
    Ultimately seems naïve. In developing the comparison of sex and cannibalism, it never goes beyond the standard Draculian symbol of blood to include other bodily substances.
  16. One
    The film's spareness and lack of words seem affected and ultimately unrealistic. At such moments, its refusal to put things into words and its crushing sense of gloom turn self-defeating.
  17. Wake
    Instantly forgettable film.
  18. A Thousand Peace Clouds Encircle the Sky
    A bleak, static mood piece about adolescent emptiness. There's little dialogue, and what there is offers the scantest information about Gerardo, who, as played by Mr. Ortuño, conveys an impenetrable blank-faced melancholy.
  19. Confessions of a Burning Man
    Too lazy and too loosely structured to accomplish much besides conveying some vivid physical impressions. There is no narrator, and the structure that exists is clouded by the new-age mumbo-jumbo of eight principal commentators.
  20. Planet Earth: Dreams
    Isn't very successful at evoking the dream state, but does a good job of inducing it.
  21. Boricua's Bond
    Suffers from a fatal lack of modulation. It paints a picture of inner-city life as an endless sequence of beatings and shouting matches, and in its glum cartoonishness insults the people whose strivings it means to honor.
  22. Nola
    A movie that pits a substantial actor like Mary McDonnell, playing a New York madam, against a bogus story that crossbreeds noirish affectations and romantic comedy into an unpalatable mush that suggests strawberry ice cream slathered with beer.
  23. Proteus
    Tricked up with an elaborate flashback structure, subtitled dialogue in three languages and as many gratuitous aesthetic touches as the traffic will bear, Proteus emerges as a heavy, pretentious and derivative film.
  24. September Tapes
    Maybe Mr. Johnston, who has directed television commercials and music videos, intended this to be a guessing game. But the method robs the real encounters of their power and, even more important, trivializes the subject.
  25. 10 on Ten
    A tediously didactic, often condescendingly reductive 10-part lesson on cinema.
  26. A Man's Gotta Do
    Really, it's all as funny as a hernia.
  27. The Keeper: The Legend of Omar Khayyam
    That "The Keeper" was made by a novice is evident in the visible seams between the present-day narrative and the flashbacks; the whole thing plays like a loopy amalgam of stilted costume picture and after-school special.
  28. The Oil Factor: Behind the War on Terror
    Most of this is old news. And the filmmakers never make a coherent case, at least not to the layperson. As a result, the film, which runs about 90 minutes, seems painfully long.
  29. Into the Fire
    Even if it ends on a hopeful note, this is a feel-bad movie that leaves a bitter aftertaste.
  30. Loudmouth Soup
    For all its experimental intentions, Loudmouth Soup feels familiar: a claustrophobic Hollywood satire that's short on kinesis and long on conversation.
  31. Trapped by the Mormons
    This kind of thing might tickle a drunk, way off Broadway audience, but on screen it merely shows the futility of following in the faux-silent footsteps of the director Guy Maddin.
  32. The Tollbooth
    Written and directed with overwhelming earnestness by Debra Kirschner, The Tollbooth can't overcome Sarabeth's self-involved narration and insipid personality.
  33. Beyond Honor
    Amateur acting, a wobbly script and a hard-to-swallow finale round out the film, which will, sadly, invoke ridicule in place of shock and anguish.
  34. In Her Line of Fire
    In Her Line of Fire -- produced to be shown on the gay cable network Here! -- flaunts its Sapphic subplot (all five minutes of it) like a pesky contractual obligation, and otherwise plays like straight-to-video gun pornography from the heyday of Chuck Norris.
  35. Autumn
    As they scheme to secure a mysterious silver briefcase, secrets are revealed, agendas come to light and not a single plausible line of dialogue is uttered.
  36. Guernsey
    Of all the modes of modern alienation, there is none so persistent and arbitrary as finding oneself trapped in a glacially paced European art film.
  37. The Magic Gloves
    A limp urban comedy not nearly as whimsical as its title.
  38. Arthur and the Invisibles
    The computer-generated world is visually rich, but short on the droll humor that makes good children's films bearable for adults.
  39. From Other Worlds
    A limp sci-fi comedy with fewer laughs than a meeting of Abductees Anonymous.
  40. Duck
    The quirky characters they meet aren't quirky enough, and the political points Ms. Bettauer sprinkles into her script thud awkwardly.
  41. Downtown: A Street Tale
    Rehashing characters and plots from the "Law & Order" playbook, the director, Rafal Zielinski, supplements his material with religious iconography and more gauzy close-ups than a Barbra Streisand marathon.
  42. Captivity
    The movie has been thoroughly eclipsed by "Captivity" the marketing.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Shoemaker
    A triptych of short films set on and immediately after 9/11, A Broken Sole is based on a stage production by its screenwriter and co-producer, Susan Charlotte. One hopes the material played onstage, because it dies on screen.
  44. Tony N' Tina's Wedding
    The film version is now being granted a limited release. Exactly how limited will depend on your tolerance for tasteless behavior, extravagant overacting and a decibel level to rival the unveiling of Oprah’s Favorite Things.
  45. The Favor
    A dreary, interminable drama written and directed by Eva Aridjis, is exactly one-third of a good movie. That third is Frank Wood's beautifully modulated and modest central performance.
  46. Full Grown Men
    This candy-colored movie, whose soft hues match the colored cereal loops that Alby devours at his mother's house, is a post-Freudian fable that wants to be a kind of anti-"Wizard of Oz" for a culture inundated with toys and toons.
  47. Red Roses and Petrol
    All in all, this is a movie best enjoyed with a snoot full and a morbid disposition.
  48. Memorial Day
    Moves from clever mock documentary to groan-inducing conceptualism. Mr. Fox may well have put his finger on certain shared impulses between these repellent bacchanalia, but his manner of drawing them out is heavy-handed.
  49. The Caller
    Turns into an impenetrable essay on guilt, memory and the fear of death that even Mr. Langella's gravity cannot salvage.
  50. An American Affair
    Were it a farce instead of an earnest, paranoid thriller with pretensions to historicity, An American Affair might not seem so offensively exploitative. The fact that it is quite well acted, especially by Ms. Mol, who has the air of a sophisticated 1960s party animal down pat, only compounds the insult.
  51. The Skeptic
    The Skeptic turns into a cut-and-dried Freudian melodrama that gives repressed memory a supernatural dimension. I'll take a bunch of teenagers terrorized by chain-saw-wielding zombies any day.
  52. Do Knot Disturb
    Vulgar, noisy and excessive, Do Knot Disturb is a Bollywood sex farce with almost no sex, and comedy pitched so low you’re more likely to groan than giggle.
  53. Looking for Palladin
    A semicoherent, overacted mélange of travelogue, farce and suds.
  54. Women in Trouble
    The amateurish production values might be pardonable if the clichés -- the hard-core porn star with the soft heart, the therapist who needs to heal herself -- inside the poorly lighted, badly shot images weren’t so absurd and often insulting.
  55. The Strip
    As depressing as the résumés of its 9-to-5 characters, The Strip sweats to wring laughs from overworked themes and underwhelming performances.
  56. The Killing Jar
    A cheapie hostage drama with a lot more swagger than substance, The Killing Jar strains to wring tension from a tired premise and an airless script.
  57. The Last Song
    A movie that is as stuffed with bogus feeling and overwrought incident as a fast-food burrito.
  58. The Greatest
    Not even the skillful performances of its stars, Susan Sarandon and Pierce Brosnan, playing the boy’s parents, can cover up the mysterious gaps in continuity of a screenplay whose thudding dialogue spells out every emotion while refusing to clarify many crucial plot details.
  59. After.Life
    Icky, nasty, calculatingly odd and a little funny, though more often strained and inadvertently absurd, After.Life changes its mood and apparent intentions from scene to scene, sometimes minute to minute.
  60. When You're Strange
    Muddled, pretentious assemblage of film clips of the band shot between 1966 and 1971.
  61. The Misfortunates
    They drink at the pub, they drink at home. They drink until they pass out and then, after they have had a good vomit, they drink again. If that sounds too disgusting to watch, it almost is.
  62. Paper Man
    Written and directed by the husband-wife team of Kieran and Michele Mulroney, Paper Man is so unsure of itself that its symbolic edifice feels like a desperately erected defense system.
  63. Predators
    As its momentum accelerates, and its special effects transform it into a pulpy cartoon, Predators loses its judgment and turns into a frantic, clichéd chase film. This chaotic stew of fire, blood, mud and explosives is so devoid of terror and suspense that any metaphorical analysis is rendered moot.
  64. Buried
    In the movie's cheapest, most exploitative gesture - just as it is about to run out of tricks - a snake slithers into the pine box in which Paul awakens bound and gagged, not knowing where he is. With that gimmick, the movie sacrifices its last shred of integrity.
  65. Love Ranch
    In Ms. Mirren's first film to be directed by her husband, Taylor Hackford, since "White Nights" in 1985, her formidable dramatic resources can't camouflage flat writing that eventually veers into gloppy sentimentality. At times even Ms. Mirren, who adopts a regionless American accent, seems uncomfortable.
  66. Halloween II (2009)
    Halloween II is full of in jokes and references but nearly devoid of wit.
  67. Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore
    Mostly, though, "Kitty Galore" is a grind, as well as proof that "What up, dog?" isn't any funnier when a pigeon says it to a dog.
  68. Who Killed Nancy?
    An unruly mash-up of terrific anecdotes and terrible teeth, grainy film and garish memories, Who Killed Nancy? cares less about investigating a death than about vindicating an accused killer.
  69. The Wildest Dream
    You may not believe it's possible to bore people to death with a film about risking your life, but The Wildest Dream comes shockingly close.
  70. Twelve
    This 95-minute movie is so overstuffed with characters, it would take a whole television season to sort them out and give them any depth. And even then, these people have so little on their minds that 13 hours might not do the trick.
  71. Mao's Last Dancer
    The final image - a freeze frame of a pas de deux staged to resemble a triumphal Communist poster - perfectly captures the film's overall effect: it's strenuously brainless.
  72. Student Bodies
    Student Bodies just slowly topples over as you watch it, like a stand-up comedian in the act of failing.
  73. Spring Fever
    The indoor scenes are so dark that you can barely make out the outlines of the bodies, much less distinguish who is who. Because almost half the film is this dim, it makes for a frustrating viewing experience. The jerky cinematography compounds the irritation.
  74. Little Fockers
    Apparently, because all the good jokes were used up in the first two "Fockers" movies, the wisenheimers behind the latest installment in this unnecessary trilogy decided to bring in some spew, opening a sick toddler's mouth like a fire hydrant and letting it rip.
  75. The Virginity Hit
    Unfortunately, the things that can be funny and even liberating in a movie like "American Pie" end up looking coarse and slightly depressing in the scripted pseudoreality of The Virginity Hit.
  76. Resident Evil: Afterlife
    This witless installment features the usual ultra-slow-motion mayhem and helpful freeze-frames to allow us to admire the extra dimension. Fans will not be happy, however, to learn that Ms. Jovovich is more decently clothed this time around.
  77. Last Day of Summer
    Mr. Yudin keeps dragging things back to the restaurant and bathroom humor. He sabotages his own story, as well as the creditable work being done by Mr. Qualls and Ms. Reed.
  78. Skyline
    Some obvious comparables for Skyline are "Independence Day" and Steven Spielberg's "War of the Worlds," but there is nothing here that even approaches the comic-book verve of the first or the churning dread of the second.
  79. Inhale
    Inhale is a creepy medical thriller in the tradition of "Coma" that amps up the tension and suspense by slicing up time.
  80. How Do You Know
    An airless, sometimes distressingly mirthless comedy.
  81. Speed-Dating
    A tired mash-up of every men-behaving-badly sitcom ever to grace a third-tier television network, Speed-Dating tries to coax laughs from characters so dated even Eddie Murphy would balk.
  82. The Nutcracker
    The talented Ms. Fanning gives a capable performance, and Mr. Konchalovsky and his camera and special-effects crews put a few arresting images on screen, including some frightening metal rat-dogs. But even there they fall short of obvious models like Jean-Pierre Jeunet's "City of Lost Children," and the 3-D treatment adds nothing.
  83. Jolene
    Jolene's skin may smell like warm milk to Brad, but to the rest of us it has curdled long before she leaves his bed.
  84. Shake Hands with the Devil
    Filmed in Rwanda, Shake Hands With the Devil is certainly panoramic. But the best that can be said of the film is that it is an honorable dud.
  85. Sanctum
    The director Alister Grierson, not grasping that bad dialogue is sometimes best delivered quietly, encourages his actors to shout and thrash about, and so they do, like fish out of water and performers out of their depth.
  86. The Magician
    Spectacularly uninteresting...this dreary Antipodean curiosity is a yob-filled slog of hard-man posturing, all of it bathed in an oppressive testosterone funk. And I haven’t even mentioned the hairy buttocks.
  87. The Red Chapel
    The product - sloppy even by guerrilla filmmaking standards - has no revelations to offer that are worth the slog of watching it.
  88. Americatown
    This bizarre sort-of satire featuring insane characters doing incomprehensible things might be forgivable if it were even mildly amusing. It's not.
  89. Season of the Witch
    The entire film seems to be happening on the other side of a dirty window - good news for the dreadful computer-generated effects, if not for our eyes.
  90. Repo Chick
    Comic mishap, whose satire already feels out of date.
  91. Battle: Los Angeles
    As it lurches from Act II to Act III, Battle: Loss Angeles reveals itself to be a lousy movie.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Atlas Shrugged: Part I
    The resulting film, directed by Paul Johansson, feels rushed, amateurish and clumsy. It's not just the ideologies that feel oddly out of step with the present day, but the clothes, hairstyles and interiors.
  93. Apollo 18
    A drab combination of science-fiction horror film and conspiracy thriller, accomplishes something the world wasn't really crying out for: it recreates the tedium of watching the later Apollo missions.
  94. Certifiably Jonathan
    Teeming with smart American humorists - and a passel of Arquettes - all unconditionally admiring. What's astonishing, then, is that not one of them stepped in to dissuade their friend from participating in such an embarrassingly awful project.
  95. Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son
    About the only honestly funny thing in the movie is Faizon Love's uncredited performance in the Joe E. Brown role, as the school maintenance man who's immediately smitten with Big Momma.
  96. Immigration Tango
    It's not outlandish enough to work as slapstick, not intelligent enough to make a comment on the fickleness of immigration policy.
  97. Green Lantern
    Green Lantern is bad. This despite Mr. Reynolds's dazzling dentistry, hard-body physique and earnest efforts.
  98. 6 Souls
    The filmmakers’ aversion to coherent narrative and genuinely suspenseful visuals (not to mention a penchant for having Ms. Moore receive terrible news via cellphone) keep the movie’s mystery stew from hitting the spot.
  99. One for the Money
    An attempt to inaugurate a new movie franchise, something that might appeal to women and mystery fans. This is a perfectly sound ambition, but the movie, directed by Julie Anne Robinson from a script by Stacy Sherman, Karen Ray and Liz Brixius, is so weary and uninspired that it feels more like an exhausted end than an energetic beginning.
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