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. The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill
    In Ms. Irving's affectionate film, Mr. Bittner is more of a sage than a deadbeat.
  2. Pooh's Heffalump Movie
    Adorable.
  3. Downfall
    It is fascinating without being especially illuminating, and it holds your attention for its very long running time without delivering much dramatic or emotional satisfaction in the end.
  4. Dear Frankie
    "Miramax porn." The term refers to manipulative tearjerkers like Dear Frankie whose sensitive performances, along with a light dusting of grit, allow them to be marketed as art films. This one is clever enough to fool a lot of people.
  5. Intimate Stories
    Almost every frame of this modest gem of a movie, directed by Carlos Sorin from a screenplay by Pablo Solarz, conveys the emptiness of the environment in which three interwoven vignettes unfold.
  6. Walk on Water
    Though it is marred by an implausible climax and a cloying conclusion, this movie's quiet intelligence sneaks up on you, marking the director as a talent to watch.
  7. The Boys & Girl from County Clare
    Appealing if obvious little fable.
  8. Off the Map
    With a director, screenwriter and star who have deep roots in the theater, Off the Map is more than anything an actor's film.
  9. Melinda and Melinda
    As he (Allen) interweaves two versions of the Melinda story, one meant to be bathed in pathos, the other sprinkled with whimsy, it becomes apparent that his notions of comedy and tragedy do not quite correspond either to scholarly dogma or to everyday usage.
  10. Fifty-Fifty
    Ms. Omarova has a painter's eye for composition and a novelist's sense of character.
  11. Beauty Shop
    Beauty Shop extends the popular "Barbershop" franchise to Atlanta and provides a sassy feminine counterpart to its cozy men's-club vibe.
  12. Sin City
    Sin City has been made with such scrupulous care and obvious love for its genre influences that it's a shame the movie is kind of a bore.
  13. Control
    A tour de force of grime, fluorescence and destinationless velocity, is more concerned with atmosphere than meaning.
  14. Sahara
    As Sahara careens between swashbuckling silliness and semi-serious comment, it builds up reserves of energy and good will that pay off when it bursts into its final sprint, a rootin'-tootin' 21-gun finale as satisfying as it is preposterous.
  15. Kung Fu Hustle
    For all its punches, kicks, whacks and thumps, the movie does not have much impact, and for all its affectionate nostalgia, it produces a strange kind of amnesia. It knocks the sense right out of your head, and its own as well.
  16. Winter Solstice
    The boys, particularly Mr. Webber as Pete, are astonishingly good, and Ms. Monaghan, who looks like a slightly more tomboyish Liv Tyler, makes a deep impression in a minor role. Mr. LaPaglia, of the television series "Without a Trace," brings a tender gravity to the shell-shocked Jim.
  17. ...And They Lived Happily Ever After
    Nobody does adultery in movies with more style and zest than the French, especially when the mode is frivolous. And anyone who watches Happily Ever After can identify with the grass-is-always-greener daydreams that haunt its characters.
  18. Torremolinos 73
    Such a joyous celebration of sex and filmmaking that viewers will forgive its director for taking time out to enjoy a little of both.
  19. The Tunnel
    The film convincingly portrays the devastating, life-altering hardships and restrictions that the residents of the divided Berlin endured.
  20. Unleashed
    The infinitely silly, unconscionably entertaining action film Unleashed earns most of its juice from the martial-arts star Jet Li.
  21. Mad Hot Ballroom
    Ms. Agrelo and Ms. Sewell deserve praise for discovering and illuminating this delightful corner of an educational system that is often portrayed in the grimmest terms, but their execution falls a bit short.
  22. Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire
    A respectful portrait of General Dallaire, now retired, who comes across as a thoughtful, resolute but profoundly shaken man, more philosopher than warrior.
  23. Second Best
    Sloppy but smart-enough-to-make-you-squirm comedy.
  24. 2009: Lost Memories
    The result is an impressive, if too long, first feature that is likely to raise Japanese hackles and Korean spirits in roughly equal proportion.
  25. 6ixtynin9
    Rejoices in a plot as tricky as its spelling.
  26. Bomb the System
    Bomb the System, which rides on a subtle hip-hop soundtrack, might be described as soulful pulp; cult recognition awaits it.
  27. The Ninth Day
    Succeeds in illuminating an almost unimaginably dark story.
  28. Cinderella Man
    Lightly stained a nicotine brown and topped by two male actors who could steal a movie from a basket of mewling kittens and an army of rosy-cheeked orphans, the film is as calculating and glossy a hard-luck tale as any cooked up on the old M-G-M lot.
  29. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
    Of these four plots, the story of Carmen's blended family is by far the most consistently engaging, largely because of the vibrant presence of Ms. Ferrera.
  30. Rock School
    Alternately hilarious and alarming documentary.
  31. Caterina va in città
    Its rich, wide-angle view of Italian politics and society stays with you. The details may vary from nation to nation in the industrialized West, but the big picture is pretty much the same everywhere.
  32. The Story of an African Farm
    Meets its main requirements: it adapts a classic novel in gleaming cinematic form, and it ridicules the foibles of ruthless adults.
  33. Paternal Instinct
    Warm and fuzzy documentary.
  34. Café Lumière
    Café Lumière stands in relation to "Tokyo Story" as a faint, diminished echo. It is nonetheless a fascinating curiosity, a chance to witness one major filmmaker paying tribute to another in the form of a rigorously minor film.
  35. J.S.A.: Joint Security Area
    This warm, sorrowful film plays like a downbeat variation on an old World War II picture from Hollywood.
  36. Wheel of Time
    The movie might as well have been called "An Immersion in Tibetan Buddhism." With minimal explanation, it puts you right in the center.
  37. The Great Water
    What makes the film worth watching are the extraordinary performances by the more than 250 children cast as orphans.
  38. Herbie Fully Loaded
    A perfectly silly movie for a silly season that in recent years has forgotten how to be this silly. Directed by Angela Robinson, this latest installment in the movie-television franchise about a tiny car named Herbie with a will of its own and the temperament of a rambunctious 7-year-old knows exactly what it is and what it isn't.
  39. Rize
    Indeed, the movie sometimes has trouble living up to the richness of its subject, or keeping up with the dances' rapid spread and evolution.
  40. Lila Says
    Ms. Giocante's intoxicating mixture of gamine innocence and womanly knowingness is almost too much for the movie - Lila is surely too much for Chimo - but her charisma, and Mr. Doueiri's insouciant, heart-on-the-sleeve style give it a mood that is at once breathlessly romantic and cannily down to earth.
  41. The Last Mogul
    More history lesson than dirt-digging expedition, and makes illuminating viewing for anyone curious about how the movies get made - information that is sometimes more interesting than the movies themselves.
  42. War of the Worlds
    Acting is not really the point of this movie, which seems to arise above all from Mr. Spielberg's desire to reaffirm that he is, along with everything else, a master of pure action filmmaking.
  43. The World
    Loosely constructed, The World drifts along pleasantly for much of its two-and-a-half-hour running time. Mr. Jia has a terrific eye and an almost sculptural sense of film space (especially in close quarters), and he brings texture and density to even the most nondescript rooms.
  44. The Beautiful Country
    It is hard not to admire the independence and ambition of The Beautiful Country, even if the film does fall short of its epic intentions.
  45. On the Outs
    Certainly not the first film to show how a crushing urban environment can make a sensible-sounding antidrug slogan like "just say no" seem like so much nonsense, but it's one of the strongest.
  46. The Reception
    It's an intimate chamber piece, dialogue-heavy and at times claustrophobic, but the four central characters are so deftly sketched, and their shifting alliances so intricately choreographed, that the film never feels talky or staged. The actors are consistently excellent.
  47. The Island
    Glossy, witty eye candy with some moderately chewy stuff in the middle. This lavish, exhaustingly kinetic film is smarter than you might expect, and at the same time dumber than it could be. It's an impressive product: a triumph of cloning that almost convinces you that it possesses a soul.
  48. 9 Songs
    9 Songs, for all its failed ambitions and its tinge of sexism, is lovely to watch.
  49. Monumental: David Brower's Fight for Wild America
    It's an honorable introduction to an important figure.
  50. Sky High
    This zippy Disney adventure-comedy, crammed with special effects, asks that age-old rhetorical question, "Is there life after high school?," and answers it with a cheerful "Not really."
  51. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
    Dai Sijie's tender, touching adaptation of his own novel of the same title.
  52. El Crimen Perfecto (The Perfect Crime)
    Mr. Toledo's performance as the shallow and cowardly, yet strangely sympathetic Rafael is a wonder of comic timing, while Ms. Cervera is unforgettable as Lourdes, the ugly duckling who becomes not a swan, but a monster.
  53. Wall
    The French filmmaker Simone Bitton takes a measured look at the barrier in her documentary Wall, a film that considers hard-core political realities alongside agonizing personal truths.
  54. We Jam Econo: The Story of the Minutemen
    The spiky documentary in their honor keeps alive the echoes of their slapdash, Smithsonian-worthy sound.
  55. Keane
    Mr. Kerrigan isn't just playing with our sympathies; he's also playing with our assumptions. That keeps the tension going.
  56. Kamikaze Girls
    The yummy Japanese confection Kamikaze Girls deserves both a better title and an audience to go with it.
  57. Occupation: Dreamland
    Occupation: Dreamland presents a compelling study of composure and decency in the midst of overwhelming pointlessness.
  58. The Greatest Game Ever Played
    The mixture of old-fashioned themes with newfangled techniques makes The Greatest Game Ever Played a canny piece of feel-good entertainment.
  59. Serenity
    Scene for scene, Serenity is more engaging and certainly better written and acted than any of Mr. Lucas's recent screen entertainments.
  60. The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio
    Gently, affectionately and with wit, this lovely movie gives the 1950's its due, but not for a moment does it go overboard and make you want to go back there.
  61. In Her Shoes
    The joy of this unassuming, generous film is that it never sells out its characters' desires or ours.
  62. The Aggressives
    In the film's briskly paced 72 minutes, any open-minded viewer will discover something about identity and about the comfort these women have obviously found in learning to be their unusual, unfettered selves.
  63. Before the Fall
    If Before the Fall feels a tad overdetermined, it also feels emotionally honest. Calmly and carefully, Mr. Gansel makes large points with small scenes.
  64. Domino
    A lollapalooza of delectable cheap thrills.
  65. Land of Plenty
    Land of Plenty, is like a clumsy, well-meaning intervention in a family quarrel. Mr. Wenders may not have the power to heal the rifts his movie acknowledges - and his account of them may not always be persuasive - but there is nonetheless something touching about his heartfelt concern.
  66. Loggerheads
    If it isn't easy being any of the troubled people wandering through the film, Loggerheads makes it easy not only to believe in them, but to care about them as well.
  67. Ushpizin
    Stylistically Ushpizin belongs to a classic tradition of raucous Yiddish comedy that is easy to enjoy if taken lightly. At the same time, it sustains a double vision of ultra-Orthodox life.
  68. Three of Hearts: A Postmodern Family
    A significant development turns Susan Kaplan's documentary into a thought-provoking story.
  69. Rooms for Tourists
    Mr. Bogliano, just 19 at the start of production, has made a promising debut that consistently hits the right creepy points while exhibiting impressive gory effects created with extremely limited resources.
  70. Protocols of Zion
    Makes it case expertly and powerfully, but it does not propose a solution. The cumulative effect of the film's message is enormous sadness that hate is so strong and so resistant to reason.
  71. New York Doll
    Greg Whiteley's small, tender documentary portrait New York Doll looks at life after rock 'n' roll as experienced by Arthur (Killer) Kane, the original bassist for the legendary glam-punk band the New York Dolls.
  72. Three... Extremes
    Though Three ... Extremes may seem tame to jaded fans of what has been termed New Asian Horror, it serves as a fine introduction to the genre for those who are curious but squeamish.
  73. Gay Sex in the 70s
    Within that narrow framework, the film is quite successful, using archival photographs, clips from pornographic films and television commercials, and interviews to evoke the period between June 1969, when the Stonewall riots brought homosexuality out of the shadows, to June 1981, when the AIDS epidemic began.
  74. Zathura: A Space Adventure
    In the enchanted limbo between waking and sleeping, Zathura feels both real and unreal, like a dream you could shake off at any moment.
  75. Bee Season
    A serious film filled with both great and awkward ideas and made as much from the heart as the head.
  76. Christmas in the Clouds
    A wisp of a movie so bursting with good cheer that even its sole meanie is given a personality makeover before the end credits.
  77. Cape of Good Hope
    Satisfying and memorable film.
  78. Good Morning, Night
    At times Good Morning, Night feels as claustrophobic as the apartment itself, and you may feel that the director is handling his volatile material with a bit too much delicacy. But the movie's atmosphere is a curious mixture of obliqueness and intensity.
  79. La sierra
    Posing proudly with their rifles or musing matter-of-factly about their own deaths, the boys are tragic enough. But it's the girls who break your heart, stoic and wise beyond their years.
  80. Breakfast on Pluto
    In a year overcrowded with wonderful performances by lead actors, Mr. Murphy's immensely appealing turn ranks among the strongest.
  81. Gilles' Wife
    Has an appealing surface beauty, largely due to the talented cinematographer Virginie Saint Martin, and an equally shallow mystery.
  82. The Syrian Bride
    The film uses the situation to evoke a sense of the absurd, sometimes with dry, deadpan humor.
  83. Private
    An emotionally and politically loaded allegory.
  84. Rent
    Often dramatically jumbled and musically muddled - but every time the film seemed ready to tip into awfulness, the sneer on my lips was trumped by the lump in my throat.
  85. Down to the Bone
    The kind of movie most independent films strive in vain to be: a small, beautifully faceted gem.
  86. The Boys of Baraka
    The Boys of Baraka is so rich that you wish there were more of it.
  87. Transamerica
    Transamerica itself does not always live up to its star, but it is touching and sometimes funny, despite its overall air of indie earnestness.
  88. Be Here to Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt
    Here, as in so many other documentaries about troubled musicians, the word genius is casually tossed around. But does every unstable, self-destructive artist defiantly living on the edge qualify for that description? In Van Zandt's case, maybe yes.
  89. The Descent
    What follows is a sensationally entertaining escalation of frights, the kind that make you wiggle and squirm as you alternately laugh at your own gullibility and marvel at the filmmaker's cunning and craft.
  90. The World's Fastest Indian
    This is a film that wears a smile button on its sleeve along with its happy heart. It believes that most people are absolutely wonderful, and it is well enough made so that a dusting of that dogged optimism is bound to rub off on you.
  91. Electric Shadows
    Plays as an enthralling but implausible Asian soap opera.
  92. Casanova
    In any case, what is on screen is a delightful respite from awards-season seriousness - a feather film, you might say, that actually tickles.
  93. When the Sea Rises
    And as you watch her (Moreau) sink into this semiautobiographical role (she was herself a touring performer in the 1980's), the character emerges as a deep, multilayered woman: kind, gentle and happily partaking of life's simple pleasures much of the time, but when necessary, as tough as her stage character through whom she relishes expressing her residual anger at life's hardships and disappointments.
  94. Beyond the Rocks
    The faces of the stars glow with life, which makes you all the more grateful that this, their only film together, has come back.
  95. End of the Spear
    Inspiring enough to make you wish that the filmmakers had reined in their sentimental excesses.
  96. How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (and Enjoy It)
    The film chronicles an astonishing career...Mr. Van Peebles is that rarest of modern creatures: a free man.
  97. Following Sean
    What emerges is a liberal meditation on freedom and compromise, and a nostalgia trip graced by eloquent restraint.
  98. Nanny McPhee
    In the endearing but somewhat scatterbrained British film Nanny McPhee, Emma Thompson creates an indelible character reminiscent of Mary Poppins as conceived by the author P. L. Travers and the illustrator Mary Shepard.
  99. Manderlay
    To warm to Manderlay, the chilly second installment of Lars von Trier's not-yet-finished three-part Brechtian allegory examining United States history, you must be willing to tolerate the derision and moral arrogance of a snide European intellectual thumbing his nose at American barbarism.
  100. Roving Mars
    If many of the scenes are fake, however, the thrill of the project is not, and what we do see of the surface - hyperclear photographs on the scale of 100-by-180 feet - is out of this world.
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