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. Modigliani
    The best and maybe the only use to be made of the catastrophic screen biography Modigliani is to serve as a textbook outline of how not to film the life of a legendary artist.
  2. The Perfect Man
    The range of Ms. Locklear's lobotomized acting runs from mild irritation to mild melancholy, expressed without expression.
  3. Dear Wendy
    The story is laughably incoherent, which would be less bothersome if the movie were not also so unremittingly pretentious.
  4. Perception
    As the jaundiced, disjointed, drug-infested story heads toward its dismal conclusion, its reputable actors vainly struggle to infuse the goings-on with a deadpan psychotic zaniness. But even when viewed sideways, Perception is not funny; it's hardly anything at all.
  5. Freedomland
    An early candidate for worst film of the year is Freedomland, an inept, lethally dull drama.
  6. Basic Instinct 2
    A disaster of the highest or perhaps lowest order.
  7. Silent Hill
    From first frame to last, not a second of the film has a grip on reality. Structured around a series of blackouts and gross-outs, it is one long free fall through icky surrealism and underlighted nightmares. It takes us to the sort of world where hell is round the corner, secret doors abound and faux-blond policewomen outfit themselves in skin-tight leather.
  8. The Celestine Prophecy
    This delectable fusion of New Age babble and luridly bad filmmaking may not "open" you up, to borrow one of the film's favorite verbs, but it might leave your jaw slack and your belly sore from laughter.
  9. The Covenant
    That's the one with a car that explodes and gets put back together by magic, right? Yeah, that’s pretty much the coolest part.
  10. Sun Kissed
    When a movie aspires to be gay pornography but can't even manage that, well, you know you've got a bad movie.
  11. Smokin' Aces
    A Viagra suppository for compulsive action fetishists and a movie that may not only be dumb in itself, but also the cause of dumbness in others.
  12. Hannibal Rising
    Silly, slack and unforgivably tedious, Thomas Harris's screenplay is padded with interminable flashbacks and a bombastic score that telegraphs every emotion Hannibal represses. And there are a lot of them.
  13. Memory
    Memory is an inane, sluggish mess.
  14. License to Wed
    The only thing that kept me watching License to Wed until the end (apart from being paid to do so) was the faith, perhaps misplaced, that I will not see a worse movie this year.
  15. I Know Who Killed Me
    Pretentious and inane.
  16. What Happens in Vegas
    Because its director, Tom Vaughan, brings nothing of interest to the movie, including filmmaking, there isn't anything to say other than to note its insulting ugliness and ineptitude.
  17. Postal
    Infantile, irreverent and boorish to the max, Postal explodes with bad attitude and lousy filmmaking.
  18. Take
    Subjective or not, the movie is a bore and an eyesore.
  19. Hell Ride
    It's depressingly self-conscious and turgid, and a cast that includes Dennis Hopper, David Carradine, Michael Madsen and Eric Balfour can't drag Hell Ride out of the mire.
  20. The Women
    A witless, straining mess.
  21. Nights in Rodanthe
    It's no wonder the faithful continue to forsake the movies, given junky embarrassments like Nights in Rodanthe.
  22. Saw V
    Skips back and forth in time, trying to piece together who did what, when and why. The only question really worth asking here: Who cares?
  23. House of the Sleeping Beauties
    Not even the august presence of Maximilian Schell can dispel the odor of fusty smut that clings to House of the Sleeping Beauties, a clammy meditation on sex, death and the endless fascination of unclothed innocence.
  24. Obsessed
    The movie’s most disturbing aspect, of which the filmmakers could not have been unaware, is the physical resemblance between Mr. Elba and Ms. Larter to O. J. and Nicole Brown Simpson. It lends Obsessed a distasteful taint of exploitation.
  25. Paris 36
    So shameless in its pandering, sentimental vision of Frenchness as to constitute something of a national embarrassment.
  26. Observe and Report
    If you thought Abu Ghraib was a laugh riot then you might love Observe and Report, a potentially brilliant conceptual comedy that fizzles because its writer and director, Jody Hill, doesn't have the guts to go with his spleen.
  27. Ghosts of Girlfriends Past
    A junky-looking romantic comedy that’s neither remotely romantic nor passably comic.
  28. To Save a Life
    The film would be a mere nuisance if not for its shameless exploitation of school shootings to advance its agenda.
  29. The Art of War
    Ludicrous, impenetrable and headache-inducing.
  30. The Girl
    Has the dreary one-track banality of a feature-length version of an episode of "Red Shoe Diaries," Showtime's series for people who like soft core but are too lazy to leave the house.
  31. The In Crowd
    The only people who could be surprised at this movie will be those who wandered into the wrong multiplex theater by mistake.
  32. Beautiful
    Teeters from a noisy sitcom (only one step removed from "The Beverly Hillbillies") to brickbat satire until it collapses in a pool of redemptive mush.
  33. Sunset Strip
    A youth comedy so relentlessly sordid and depressing that it's likely to send its audience straight into the arms of the nearest psycho-pharmacologist.
  34. Beautiful Creatures
    Beneath its studiedly ugly surface, this bargain-basement answer to "Thelma and Louise" is as loathsome as any mindless, blood-drenched Hollywood action-adventure yarn.
  35. Ice from the Sun
    It is the kind of film that only a certain breed of cinematic cultist could tolerate. Its grade-school-level acting, for instance, is so rudimentary that it makes the cast of "The Blair Witch Project" (which Ice From the Sun seems to be consciously parodying at times) appear Stanislavskian.
  36. The Watcher
    By the end of The Watcher you'll need your own prescription.
  37. Whispers: An Elephant's Tale
    Brilliant film of nature has been warped into something jarringly unnatural.
  38. Empire
    Serves a reheated notion on a creaky TV tray.
  39. The Next Best Thing
    The moment the movie loses its lighthearted spirit is the moment it loses touch with reality
  40. 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."
  41. Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever
    The film isn't even as good as the second-rate game it is based on, which is nothing but a shootout.
  42. Pokémon 4: The Movie
    When it comes to entertainment, children deserve better than Pokémon 4Ever.
  43. Held Up
    By the end, even the irrepressible Mr. Foxx seems tired and defeated, and we can only hope he perks up in time for his next movie.
  44. 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.
  45. Josie and the Pussycats
    Few people other than future airline passengers should be subjected to such misery.
  46. The Amati Girls
    Although the concept seems promising enough, it is undone by disastrous casting decisions and an utter lack of ensemble unity.
  47. Summer Catch
    A mound of standard-issue parent-child conflicts and enough self-help cliches to drive Polonius to the aquavit barrel at Elsinore.
  48. Deuces Wild
    A film that desperately wants to be a music video circa 1983.
  49. Sex with Strangers
    It's the element of condescension, as the filmmakers look down on their working-class subjects from their lofty perch, that finally makes Sex With Strangers so distasteful.
  50. Wing Commander: Space Will Never Be the Same
    The film is painfully boring and funny in the wrong places.
  51. The Mod Squad
    Torturously boring.
  52. Down to You
    Extremely good-looking people tend to be shallow, self-involved and not very bright. Let's call this statement what it is: a form of prejudice, a stereotype. It is, sadly, a stereotype that Down to You does everything in its power to promote.
  53. The Legend of Bagger Vance
    Not only is it excruciatingly boring -- but its central premises are so banal and dubious as to border on offensiveness.
  54. Boat Trip
    If Boat Trip were screened on a cruise ship, most of the passengers would be dog-paddling back to shore.
  55. Someone Like You...
    Chandler's script has, by my count, exactly one sort-of-funny line and not a single scene whose comic possibilities are successfully exploited.
  56. Extreme Ops
    Ops is too brain-dead to play the incognito war criminal segment for comedy, although when Will is seen thumbing through the pages of a newspaper called USA Daily, the picture has inadvertently tumbled down a Mad magazine wormhole.
  57. Screwed
    A confusedly misconceived hybrid of interracial buddy comedy and imitation Marx Brothers farce.
  58. 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.
  59. Valentine
    It feels like both a joke and a turkey.
  60. Dungeons & Dragons
    Take this as a warning: it's not much fun.
  61. Phantoms
    The movie's computer animation is so cut-rate and its direction (by Joe Chappelle) so slack that the attacks are virtually terror-free.
  62. 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.
  63. The Scorpion King
    As this chaotic barrage of muscle flexing, swordplay, fireballs, crude digital effects and comic-book quips hurls itself off the screen, it's like having several garbage cans clogged with stale pizza, lukewarm cola, soggy French fries and greasy, ketchup-stained napkins emptied over your head.
  64. Shadow Hours
    Tedious descent into cinema hell.
    • 20 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Whatever It Takes
    A thinly veiled "Cyrano," with the prom in mind.
  66. The Adventures of Pluto Nash
    Strands one of the most gifted casts assembled in some time. Sadly, though many of the actors throw off a spark or two when they first appear, they can't generate enough heat in this cold vacuum of a comedy to start a reaction.
  67. The Sculptress
    So poorly written, badly acted and ineptly directed that it denies you even the modest pleasure of making fun of it.
  68. Snow Dogs
    Snow Dogs is, even by the standards of a tradition that includes "Son of Flubber" and "The Shaggy D.A.," remarkably inept.
    • 23 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Ready to Rumble
    Not a satire of the idiocy of professional wrestling, but a long, self-satisfied wallow in it.
  70. Get Carter
    So minimally plotted that not only does it lack subtext or context, but it also may be the world's first movie without even a text.
  71. Half Baked
    Not very funny, intellignet or grippingly plotted, it is likely to appeal only to those who think that anything to do with marijuana - smoking, sharing, stealing or selling - constitutes the Everest of rip-roaring hilarity. [17 Jan 1998]
    • The New York Times
    • 15 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Wirey Spindell
    To say that this movie is true to life is only to say that it's banal, boring and confusing.
  73. The Other Side of Heaven
    What sets this syrupy swatch of kitsch apart from other films peddling a dogmatic religious agenda is the serious money that obviously went into it.
  74. Slackers
    So lazy and slipshod it confuses the mere flashing of kinky soft-core imagery with naughty fun.
  75. Drowning Mona
    A dreary crash of malapropisms and slapstick maimings wrapped very loosely around a murder mystery.
  76. Coyote Ugly
    Looks like a big-budget version of a Miller's Genuine Draft commercial.
  77. Phantom
    Both grueling and dull. Imagine (if possible) a Pasolini film without passion or politics, or an Almodóvar movie without beauty or humor, and you have some idea of the glum, numb experience of watching O Fantasma.
  78. The Postman
    Every truly awful movie epic has a point of no return, a moment when the accumulated bad lines and bogus sentimentality become so cloying that the best defense against a mounting queasiness is an awed amusement. The Postman, offers a new opportunity for levity every few minutes after its first hour.
  79. Bait
    Why Mr. Foxx, who was so impressive in "Any Given Sunday," chose to make a movie so boring and idiotic that it barely meets minimal standards of lowest- common-denominator entertainment.
  80. American Wedding
    You'll see better film on ponds.
  81. Dragonfly
    As the movie dragged on, I thought I heard a mysterious voice, and felt myself powerfully drawn toward the light -- the light of the exit sign. I have returned from the beyond to warn you: this movie is 90 minutes long, and life is too short.
  82. She Hate Me
    Spike Lee carries his political exasperation beyond outrage into chaos. The carelessness with which he hurls his feelings about hot-button topics onto the screen is the filmmaking equivalent of last-ditch marketing: grab everything in sight, roll it up into a big messy mud ball, and hurl it against the wall, hoping that something sticks.
  83. The Avengers
    It's a film to gall fans of the old television series and perplex anyone else.
  84. New Best Friend
    A preposterous, prurient whodunit.
  85. Pokémon: The Movie 2000
    As good as cut-rate animation that seems to consist of screen savers can be.
  86. 'R Xmas
    Once Ice-T sticks his mug in the window of the couple's BMW and begins haranguing the wife in bad stage dialogue, all credibility flies out the window.
  87. National Security
    Lacks the wit to do anything new and instead recycles tired jokes and attitudes.
  88. Pokémon Heroes
    Plays more like a catalog than a movie... a tedious, unimaginative affair.
  89. The Sweetest Thing
    After about 20 minutes of "Thing," a concussion begins to look enormously appealing.
  90. Hollow Man
    Endure the long, slow, unraveling of this movie, which can't even muster the intelligence to be pretentious or the bravado to be amusingly bad.
  91. Glitter
    Mostly dross, an unintentionally hilarious compendium of time-tested cinematic clichés that illustrates the chasm between hopeful imitation and successful duplication.
  92. Kangaroo Jack
    What better to do with such a quiet, majestic landscape than to liven it up with the noise and vulgarity of lowest-common-denominator American pop culture?
  93. What Planet Are You From?
    Wants to be sweet and dark at the same time, but it is as distant as a planet's satellite.
  94. Vegas Vacation
    Throughout this lame film, directed by Stephen Kessler and written by Elisa Bell, situations are developed -- complicated directions to a hotel room, Clark clinging to the face of Hoover Dam, Ellen the object of Mr. Newton's seductive charm -- and left to wither without a payoff.
  95. Formula 51
    A witless, gruesome barrage of jokey violence and lame trans-Atlantic humor, kept moving by the pointless, derivative kineticism of Mr. Yu's hyperactive cuts and splices.
  96. Dreamcatcher
    As five or six bad movies squished together, it almost seems like a bargain.
  97. FeardotCom
    It is painful to watch an actor as skillful as Mr. Dorff reduced to delivering flat repetitive dialogue that would make any actor look foolish.
  98. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me
    It's not the worst movie ever made; it just seems to be. Its 134 minutes induce a state of simulated brain death, an effect as easily attained in half the time by staring at the blinking lights on a Christmas tree.
  99. Hudson Hawk
    A colossally sour and ill-conceived misfire.
  100. The Replacements
    A desperate, broad comedy.
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