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. The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3
    Even at a distance from each other (Washington/Travolta), they conduct a tag-team master class in old-style movie star technique, barreling through every cliché and nugget of corn the script has to offer with verve and conviction. Even when you don't really believe them, they're always a lot of fun to watch.
  2. Year One
    A thoroughly, sometimes gaggingly broad and sly conceptual laugh-in.
  3. Easy Virtue
    In its cold-eyed assessment of the English aristocracy Easy Virtue has none of the lurking Anglophilia found in Merchant-Ivory movies.
  4. Tetro
    As with "Youth Without Youth," this new movie feels like a transitional work but also an inspired one, the creation of a director who, having recently turned 70, has set off on a new adventure that requires more from his audiences than some might be willing to give. Which is itself a sign of vigorous artistic renewal.
  5. Afghan Star
    The movie uses the talent show Afghan Star as a prism through which to examine the fragmented tribal culture of Afghanistan as reflected in the backgrounds of four finalists (two of them women) and the public responses to their performances.
  6. It Might Get Loud
    For rock geeks of any age or taste, the lore in this documentary will be catnip.
  7. Good Hair
    Spirited, probing and frequently hilarious, it coasts on the fearless charm of its front man and the eye-opening candor of its interviewees, most of them women.
  8. The House of the Devil
    Mr. West shows a real gift for the genre, particularly in his ability to generate dread with pinpricks rather than bludgeoning shocks, something even veterans twice his age have difficulty achieving. After years of vivisectionist splatter, here is a horror movie with real shivers.
  9. Green Zone
    When Mr. Greengrass made "United 93," his 2006 reconstruction of one of the Sept. 11 hijackings, some people fretted that it was too soon. My own response to Green Zone is almost exactly the opposite: it's about time.
  10. How to Train Your Dragon
    The reason it deserves to be seen in a theater with special glasses on, rather than slapped on the DVD player when the children are acting up -- lies in those airborne sequences.
  11. Invincible
    If Invincible is soft at the center, its visual grandeur and mostly full-blooded performances make it gripping, for this eminent German director has pulled off the tricky feat of elevating a true story into a larger-than-life allegory.
  12. Duck, You Sucker
    The resultant mix of dreaminess, violence and politics is a bit unwieldy, but it sticks to your ribs. You'll savor pieces of Duck, You Sucker in your head much later: the mark of a work by a true voluptuary, the overspill in whose craft comes as much from enthusiasm as arrogance.
  13. Trolösa
    This attenuated two-and-a-half-hour reflection on marriage, adultery, parenthood and the casualties of sexual warfare unfolds like a brooding autobiographical epilogue to Mr. Bergman's much stormier 1973 masterpiece, "Scenes From a Marriage."
  14. How to Draw a Bunny
    An intriguing and entertaining introduction to Johnson through his varied art; the mystery surrounding his death, which may have been his final performance piece, and the reminiscences of contemporaries.
  15. The Hard Word
    Amusingly gamy, an anecdotal crime film that's an antidote to the pile of overly slick robbery pictures of the past few years.
  16. Taboo
    Illustrates the underlying fear that when energies that should be directed toward warfare are diverted into passion, unity is impossible.
  17. Master of the Flying Guillotine (re-release)
    Just know that you'll owe Master of the Flying Guillotine for the pleasure you'll get from viewing a venerable example of the kung fu genre.
  18. Anywhere But Here
    Wang once again works splendidly with actresses, and boy, does he have a lot to work with this time.
  19. Murderous Maids
    Ms. Testud's performance, which earned her a César, the French Oscar, for most promising actress, is the source of the movie's lingering, troubling power.
  20. The Cider House Rules
    The author's fantastical world of wonders and the director's tender-hearted compassion mesh into what is easily the finest film realization of an Irving novel.
  21. Cool and Crazy
    Consistently offbeat and entertaining; at such moments, it is also quite moving.
  22. Divine Intervention
    It is impossible not to marvel at Mr. Suleiman's knack for turning rage and hopelessness into burlesque.
  23. K-19: The Widowmaker
    (Director Bigelow) piles up one nerve-racking crisis after another, interspersed with moments of ethereal, almost otherworldly beauty.
  24. The Mystic Masseur
    A subtle, humorous, illuminating study of politics, power and social mobility.
  25. Tully
    The movie's unhurried rhythm eventually works a quiet spell, and after a while you find yourself settling back, adjusting to the film's bucolic metabolism and appreciating its eye and ear for detail.
  26. The Slaughter Rule
    A bleak, lyrical meditation on the frontier spirit and American machismo and its torments.
  27. Suddenly
    When Suddenly finds its soul in the last half-hour, the title begins to make a lovely sort of sense.
  28. Big Night
    The film is loaded with brotherly affection and with warm, funny and poignant evocations of a gentler time.[20 September 1996, p.C12]
  29. Pollock
    May be the first movie about a painter to transcend the gushy clichés found in movies that try to unravel the mysteries of artistic creation.
  30. The Jaundiced Eye
    A passionate, angry piece of advocacy, but it is equally, and in consequence, a brave and necessary act of truth-telling.
  31. Scottsboro: An American Tragedy
    The filmmakers know how potent the material is, and they don't hammer away at the obvious.
  32. Pop & Me
    For a film devoted to celebrating intimacy and the breaking down of emotional barriers, Pop and Me is oddly withholding of information about the travelers.
  33. The Cup
    A very funny movie, alive with a sense of absurdity and human foible.
  34. Pola X
    Pola X has enough fireworks to keep you in your seat. When it's over, you'll know you've had an experience.
  35. Before Night Falls
    Like a deathbed dream it leapfrogs through Arenas's life, reconstructing crucial moments as a succession of bright, feverish illuminations.
  36. Little Voice
    Horrocks's phenomenal mimicry of musical grande dames...makes a splendid centerpiece for the otherwise more ordinary film built around it.
  37. Swingers
    Suspicious and hilariously self-absorbed, Favreau's every bit as comfortable in California as Charles Grodin's "Heartbreak Kid" was in Miami.
  38. I Remember Me
    An intrepid sleuth, Ms. Snyder seems to have left no stone unturned in her search for answers.
  39. Pauline and Paulette
    Rather than assaulting you with self-congratulatory tears, it leaves you with a bittersweet glow of wisdom and an appreciation of the small triumphs and difficult labors of love.
  40. A Good Baby
    The characters' faces reveal more about them than any words that come out of their mouths.
  41. Devils on the Doorstep
    In its dry and forceful way, it delivers the same message as Jiri Menzel's "Closely Watched Trains" and Danis Tanovic's "No Man's Land." While acknowledging that war is hell, it goes further to suggest it is ludicrous.
  42. Bugs!
    Vivid and visually stunning.
  43. Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams
    The movie is a gaudy, noisy thrill ride -- hyperactive, slightly out of control and full of kinetic, mischievous charm.
  44. Sound and Fury
    Powerful, insightful, important and emotionally wrenching.
  45. Piglet's Big Movie
    In the knockabout world of animated movies, Piglet's Big Movie is an oasis of gentleness and wit.
  46. The Cherry Orchard
    What makes this Cherry Orchard different from almost every other interpretation (and makes it essential viewing for lovers of Chekhov) is Ms. Rampling's extraordinarily rich portrait of Ranevskaya.
  47. Comedian
    Instead of prying into his soul, the filmmakers investigate his working conditions and offer a sort of backstage ethnographic study of the professional stand-up culture.
  48. The Little Vampire
    Not often does a family film come along that is literate, clever, mischievous and just plain fun.
  49. Red Satin
    The movie rides on Ms. Abbass's serenely confident performance. As Lilia metamorphoses from a shy housebound widow into a woman calmly rejoicing in her body and her sexuality, Ms. Abbass marks her character's every blush and hesitation in the process of letting go with a winning delicacy and sweetness.
  50. The Cockettes
    Revisits the San Francisco of the late 1960's and early 70's, a time and place so encrusted with legend and cliché that you might wonder if there is anything left to say. It turns out there is quite a lot -- which the filmmakers have brought triumphantly to life.
  51. Dark Days
    Dark Days illustrates even the worst nightmare can have descending levels of horror.
  52. Santitos
    Disarmingly endearing.
  53. Earth
    A powerful and disturbing reminder of how a civilization can suddenly crack under certain pressures.
  54. La Nouvelle Ève
    But most of the movie's notes are appallingly right.
  55. The Opportunists
    This is one of the best-photographed pictures of the year, but not ostentatiously so; the look is organic to the less-than-glamorous badlands of Sunnyside, Queens.
  56. Sugar Town
    Warmly funny ...wise little comedy.
  57. Lakeboat
    Mr. Mantegna, who as an actor is one of the leading interpreters of Mr. Mamet's work, gives generous room to the movie's first-rate ensemble.
  58. The Well
    With a neck-snapping jolt, turns into the scariest exercise in cinematic sleight of hand since "The Blair Witch Project."
  59. 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.
  60. My Wife Is an Actress
    A terrifically deft picture about the thick line that separates movie glamour from the real world, and the thin line between common sense and paranoia.
  61. I Am Trying to Break Your Heart
    A photographer for magazines like Vanity Fair and GQ, as well as a veteran director of commercials, Mr. Jones brings a trained eye to this, his first documentary. The low gray skies of Chicago prove once again to be a boon to photography, and the city has seldom looked better than it does here, in its chilly, minimalist beauty.
  62. Autumn Tale
    As sublimely warming an experience as the autumn sun that shines benevolently on the vineyard owned by the film's central character.
  63. Mansfield Park
    Ms. Rozema has made a film whose satiric bite is sharper than that of the usual high-toned romantic costume drama.
  64. Benjamin Smoke
    The film has a richer, more various visual texture than most documentaries, combining still photographs, black-and-white video and Super-8 film, sometimes with wild sound or none at all.
  65. Quitting
    With Quitting, he (Zhang) has removed sentimentality from the theme and presented it with unflinching honesty, a quality he shares with his fearless cast.
  66. Tattoo
    A grim, disquieting mood piece.
  67. La Commune (Paris, 1871)
    In these risk-averse times, it is a pleasure to see a film that fails by attempting too much. Frustrating and demanding as it may be, La Commune (Paris, 1871) is essential viewing for anyone interested in taking an exploratory step outside the Hollywood norms.
  68. The Muse
    A delectable comic performance by Sharon Stone.
  69. Rhythm 'n' Bayous: A Road Map to Louisiana Music
    Documents of a flourishing below-the-radar culture, often involving older musicians who won't be around much longer, they are archival records as well as entertainments.
  70. The Low Down
    What distinguishes The Low Down from movies like "The Brothers McMullen" and "My Life's in Turnaround" is its ragged edge of authenticity, its refusal to plot its characters' lives on the graph of romantic comedy convention.
  71. 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.
  72. Pandaemonium
    Literate and handsome.
  73. 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.
  74. Chutney Popcorn
    Because Chutney Popcorn knows its characters deeply enough to let them determine events, it rises above formula. It is also unusually well acted.
  75. Happenstance
    Perhaps it's all a bit too much, and perhaps it doesn't add up, but the loose ends give the picture a jaunty, improvised feeling that, while it leads to some confusion, is ultimately part of its whimsical charm.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Otomo
    A bleak and powerful work, one we probably need more than ever these days.
  77. Me & Isaac Newton
    Despite its ultimate lack of intellectual substance, Me and Isaac Newton is still inspiring. All seven of its subjects are fascinating, and most are extremely likable. Mr. Apted has done them all a huge favor.
  78. The Son's Room
    The movie's rejection of even a tinge of melodrama lends it a special integrity.
  79. Shot in the Heart
    The director, Agnieszka Holland, and the screenwriter, Frank Pugliese, have created a scenario that unflinchingly captures the feverish and desperate intensity of Mikal's quest.
  80. Sade
    In its quiet, literate way, the film is almost as subversive as its central character.
  81. CQ
    May not make the splash it should; films about moviemaking rarely do. And that would be a shame, because the contrasts the director sets in motion and keeps playing against each other make an entertaining wrestling match.
  82. Elling
    Elling believes so fervently in humanity that it feels almost anachronistic, and it is too cute by half. But arriving at a particularly dark moment in history, it offers flickering reminders of the ties that bind us.
  83. Theeviravaathi: The Terrorist
    Sivan has accomplished something extraordinary: he has given political extremism a human face.
  84. Boiler Room
    Reflects the sensibility of the generation it holds up to critical scrutiny, and it's a cunningly ambiguous act of self-portraiture.
  85. La bûche
    It unfolds with the verve and clarity of a piece of music, carefully composed and passionately played.
  86. Lucie Aubrac
    Stirringly romantic...a gripping period thriller that clicks along without resorting to hyped-up shock effects or gimmicky suspense.
  87. 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.
  88. Spring Forward
    Two very fine actors, Ned Beatty and Liev Schreiber, engaged in an intense contest to see who can give the more understated performance.
  89. The Big Carnival
    Ace in the Hole is an acquired taste -- and an unforgettable one.
  90. Laurel Canyon
    Reconfirms the filmmaker's talent as an acutely observant chronicler of upscale bohemian subcultures.
  91. Est - Ouest
    Wargnier's sumptuous, moving new film, captures both the hope of the returning Russians and their brutal betrayal.
  92. Stuart Little 2
    What sets the "Stuart Little" franchise above most of the competition is its emphasis on sharply drawn character and its profusion of witty remarks (mostly from the mouth of Snowbell) that are cutting enough to amuse grown-ups without sailing over children's heads.
  93. Amores Perros
    A film in which nothing is what it seems, this is the kind of genre touch that Mr. González Iñárritu expands into something far more haunting.
  94. Brotherhood of the Wolf
    The picture has a daring attention-span deficit and an epic silliness that can be awesomely entertaining.
  95. 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.
  96. Chaos
    There is not a decent (or even half-decent) male character to be found in Chaos, a gripping feminist fable with a savage comic edge.
  97. Merci Pour Le Chocolat
    Mr. Chabrol's droll assault on petit-bourgeois security feels like a satire of "Ordinary People" directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
  98. Power Trip
    A skillful assemblage of newsreel clips, cartoons ridiculing the American interlopers, television commercials and interviews with power officials and ordinary Georgians. It gives new and darker meaning to that comfy adage "We're all connected."
  99. Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.
    Morris, instead of evoking the solemnity that surrounds most films that touch on the Holocaust, has directed Mr. Death as the blackest of comedies.
  100. Dr T and the Women
    The movie's sexual politics are as contrived as its plot, which veers off into one of the surprise endings of which Mr. Altman is so fond.
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