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. For Whom the Bell Tolls
    In spite of its almost interminable and physically exhausting length—it takes two hours and fifty minutes to cover less than four days in a group of people's lives—and in spite of some basic detruncations of the novel's two leading characters, it vibrates throughout with vitality and is topped off with a climax that's a whiz.
  2. Paper Spiders
    In absence of a bold visual style, the performers are tasked with providing the movie with its energy.
  3. Dark Passage
    Indeed, it is in the bizarre contacts of Mr. Bogart with shady characters such as those played by these well-directed actors that Dark Passage achieves tension and drive. Perhaps he should be given more time with them.
  4. The American President
    With great looks, a dandy supporting cast, a zinger-filled screenplay by Aaron Sorkin ("A Few Good Men") and Mr. Douglas twinkling merrily in the Oval Office, The American President is sunny enough to make the real Presidency pale by comparison.
  5. I Confess
    Even though moments in the picture do have some tension and power, and the whole thing is scrupulously acted by a tightly professional cast, the consequence is an entertainment that tends to drag, sag and generally grow dull. It is not the sort of entertaiment that one hopefully expects of "Hitch."
  6. Step Up To The Plate
    What resonates here are two men, two good men, whose lives have a paradoxically simple and complex bond beyond their profession. Step Up to the Plate asserts how family, in multifarious ways, can be the most deeply affecting of ensembles.
  7. Valentino: The Last Emperor
    Watching the movie is a little like gorging on chocolate and Champagne until that queasy moment arrives when you realize you’ve consumed far too much.
  8. A Somewhat Gentle Man
    Patiently directed by Hans Petter Moland, Ulrik's journey back to life slowly draws you in.
  9. Moscow, Belgium
    The movie's steady attention to detail lends it a texture rarely found in films about domestic life. Its eye and ear for the particular and for what is left unsaid in tense conversation is unerring.
  10. Casino Jack and the United States of Money
    A liability of Casino Jack is the relative absence of its subject.
  11. Bhutto
    If nothing else, the directors, Duane Baughman and Johnny O'Hara, deserve praise for devoting this kind of attention to a foreign leader and to the internal politics of another country (as opposed to how those politics affect the United States).
  12. Family Romance, LLC
    In many of Herzog’s nonfiction films, the director himself is a defining presence. One understands why he wanted to stay behind the camera and off the soundtrack here. This wrinkle in modern social life is best taken in without the mitigation of overt distancing.
  13. Afterglow
    Even after the film's last half-hour descends into a silly season, Mr. Rudolph writes and directs with obvious affection for his characters and with a deep knowledge of whatever makes them tick.
  14. Akira
    Violent as it is on the surface, Akira is tranquil at its core. The story's sanest characters plead for the wise use of mankind's frightening new powers, lending the whole film the feeling of a cautionary tale.
  15. Class Action Park
    Class Action Park loses its footing somewhat in the closing passages; Scott and Porges don’t seem to know quite how to wrap things up, and the film’s big tonal shift is a turning point that is all but impossible to come back from.
  16. Applause
    When an actress gives herself as wholly as Ms. Steen does here, a filmmaker should return the favor with a comparable level of craft and commitment, which is largely absent from this movie.
  17. August Evening
    A film of noble intentions that eventually wears out its welcome.
  18. Smash His Camera
    In Smash His Camera Mr. Galella emerges as a kindred soul for the curious documentarian and as a large, complicated personality in his own right, not entirely likable but admirable for his persistence and the quickness of his index finger.
  19. Babe: Pig in the City
    As directed once again by George Miller, Babe remains a cute little porker, but his fanciful new backdrops are less beguiling.
  20. Addiction Incorporated
    Straight-shooting, hard-hitting and fuming with contempt for the tobacco industry, Addiction Incorporated would be almost too exhausting to watch were it not for the folksy charm of its star witness.
  21. Braveheart
    One of the most spectacular entertainments in years.
  22. Pierrepoint
    In Pierrepoint:The Last Hangman Timothy Spall sinks his teeth into one of the juiciest roles of his career.
  23. Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me
    An honest portrait study of stardom and mental illness, the film offers a hopeful catharsis: How, when we reveal our hardest truths, we can heal together.
  24. Shoot the Moon
    At its best, Shoot the Moon is as spare and as sharp in its detail as fine prose and as continuously surprising.
  25. Fortune Favors Lady Nikuko
    Although she is buoyant and cheerful, Nikuko is cast as oafish and uncouth, and she is always ultimately the butt of the joke. It’s a puerile, mean-spirited tendency that altogether spoils the otherwise exquisite imagery.
  26. Crazy, Stupid, Love
    The movie, true to its own PG-13 rating, opts for mildness, modesty and chastened optimism. At the same time, though, it seems to know that a crueler, more cynical rendering of its story - a "Bitter, Hopeless, Love" - lurks between the lines.
  27. Deepwater Horizon
    The film itself is as much a feat of engineering as a work of art, an efficient machine for delivering intricate data and blunt emotions.
  28. Death Metal Angola
    The concert itself was a bold, life-affirming project, but with a couple of additional extended music sequences, Mr. Xido’s film might have been more powerful and way more hardcore.
  29. Limbo
    If this oddly structured film feels like two short stories stuck together, there is enough solid glue joining them that they resonate off one another deeply.
  30. Lamb
    Slow-moving and inarguably nutty, Lamb nevertheless wields its atavistic power with the straightest of faces, helped in no small measure by an Oscar-worthy cast of farm animals.
  31. Fighting with My Family
    Like its amiable, irresistible ménage, Fighting With My Family softens its rougher edges with humor. It’s often broadly funny but never mean or patronizing; it takes the Knights, their eccentricities and quixotic aspirations seriously, but not enough to squelch the fun.
  32. Mr. Jones
    More than anything, Mr. Jones is an argument for witnessing and remembrance.
  33. End of Watch
    A muscular, maddening exploitation movie embellished with art-house style and anchored by solid performances.
  34. Floyd Norman: An Animated Life
    The humble Mr. Norman is always ready with a laugh, and it’s tough not to smile yourself when he reaches for a pencil and starts drawing. When that happens, it’s redundant to say he’s special. Anyone can see it.
  35. Manhunt
    It’s undeniable that Manhunt delivers first-rate cinematic technique while skimping on substantial emotional investment. It’s still a great deal of fun.
  36. Three Months
    The contrast between Caleb and Estha remains the movie’s greatest asset. Their relationship grants room for the audience to witness and appreciate their differences, not just culturally, but as fully drawn individuals.
  37. William Shatner: You Can Call Me Bill
    "You Can Call Me Bill" is fundamentally a case of an actor presenting himself as he wants to be seen.
  38. Apocalypto
    Neither Mr. Gibson’s fans nor his detractors are likely to accuse him of excessive subtlety, and the effectiveness of Apocalypto is inseparable from its crudity. But the blunt characterizations and the emphatic emotional cues are also evidence of the director’s skill.
  39. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
    Line by line, the dialogue isn't all that quotable, but there is consistently funny life on the screen. The film's comic timing is nearly flawless.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sputnik Mania
    The movie lets parallels between that time and the post-9/11 era emerge organically, in the manner of a fable that subtly illuminates your own life.
  41. Potiche
    You suspect, before long, that there is no strong reason for this production to exist, but it is reasonably good fun all the same.
  42. Girls Can't Swim
    Ultimately lacks the epic dimension of "Y Tu Mamá También," but its vision of that awkward age when sex threatens to overwhelm everything else is acute enough to make everyone who has been there squirm with recognition.
  43. Alice et Martin
    Your attention is rewarded by a film of surprising depth and a few deep surprises.
  44. Burnt Money
    The passions of "Plata Quemada" are as bold as the images.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Creature from the Black Lagoon
    It's a fishing expedition that is necessary only if a viewer has lost all of his comic books.
  46. Hour of the Gun
    The wonder is that John Sturges, a top director, has made such an obvious, slow film with this cast, and that Mr. Garner should be such a nobody as the legendary Mr. Earp.
  47. Smile
    A relentlessly somber, precision-tooled picture whose frights only reinforce the wit of its premise, Smile turns our most recognizable sign of pleasure into a terrifying rictus of pain.
  48. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
    The elaborate ruses of Borat Subsequent Moviefilm left me neither entertained nor enraged, but simply resigned.
  49. Chopper
    Mr. Bana's Chopper is so scarily convincing that he makes you feel the eruptive force of each mood swing and the way his character's paranoia, egomania and conscience- stricken apologies are part of a volatile emotional cycle.
  50. The Adventures of Tintin
    Like the screen Tintin, the movie proves less than inviting because it's been so wildly overworked: there is hardly a moment of downtime, a chance to catch your breath or contemplate the tension between the animated Expressionism and the photo-realist flourishes.
  51. The Conjuring
    The dread gathers and surges while the blood scarcely trickles in The Conjuring, a fantastically effective haunted-house movie.
  52. Bopha!
    Bopha! is so firmly grounded in physical reality (it was shot in Zimbabwe), in the looks and passions of its characters, even in its music, that its deliberate progress from one obligatory scene to the next still carries surprising emotional weight.
  53. The Meddler
    Affable, earnest and humanly scaled, The Meddler is the kind of entertainment that the studios used to supply by the boatload and that now tends to show up on the small screen.
  54. 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.
  55. What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael
    A numbing torrent of largely unidentified film clips and poorly labeled commentary, Rob Garver’s overstuffed tribute to the life and work of America’s best-known — and most written about — film critic is at times barely coherent.
  56. Ask Dr. Ruth
    A movie that feels more like an encomium than a thoughtful probe of a brilliantly mutinous mind.
  57. The Kindergarten Teacher
    The Kindergarten Teacher — the film as well as the character — yearns for different values, for intensity, beauty and meaning. Its sobering lesson is that the search for those things is most likely to end in madness, confusion and violence.
  58. A Place at the Table
    Though the directors, Kristi Jacobson and Lori Silverbush, smartly choose examples from among the working poor — reframing obesity as chronic malnourishment in areas where it’s easier to find a burger than a banana — they’re reluctant to get down in the political dirt.
  59. Tiger Stripes
    Occasionally the movie feels like it’s lost its direction, stuffing a little too much into its story and deflating the ferocity of its central metaphor. But there’s a great sense of humor in Tiger Stripes, particularly in Zairizal’s impish performance, and the swing between fear and hilarity make for an engrossing ride.
  60. Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence
    Innocenc doesn't just reveal a wealth of visual enchantments; it restates the case that there can and should be more to feature-length animations than cheap jokes, bathos and pandering.
  61. Song of Granite
    Mr. Collins doesn’t shed light on what makes his subject tick, and the arty shards never cohere.
  62. They Call It Myanmar: Lifting the Curtain
    Robert H. Lieberman, a novelist, filmmaker and professor at Cornell University, took three years to shoot documentary footage surreptitiously during assignments for the United States Embassy and a nongovernment organization. The result is eye-opening and insightful.
  63. Some Came Running
    It is all very complex and confused. Indeed, it is so oddly garbled that John Patrick and Arthur Sheekman, who did the script, have to go for a melodramatic shooting to bring it all to a tolerable end.
  64. Learn to Swim
    Learn to Swim is lovely to behold, but the sullen artist at the center feels too often like he’s drowning in melancholia and might take us down with him.
  65. $9.99
    Though $9.99 manages to be quirky and enigmatic, it is in the end too self-conscious, too satisfied in its eccentricity, to achieve the full mysteriousness toward which it seems to aspire. It is odd, curious, intermittently intriguing but ultimately more interesting for its artifice than for its art.
  66. Unclenching the Fists
    Ada’s psychological tumult is captured in intimate close-ups and fluttering camera movements, while the absence of a score complements the film’s uneasy mood of pent-up rage and stifling despair.
  67. Here
    Here, to its detriment, never builds its ideas into a cohesive vision. The screenplay by Mr. King and Dani Valent too often wanders off into poetic vagueness. But visually, Here, filmed by Lol Crowley, is still a stunner. Flawed as it is, I admire it immensely.
  68. Sembene!
    Mr. Sembène was an inspiration; as a film, Sembène! is something less than that, petering out as it goes on, but at least offering a fair-minded tribute to a master.
  69. What You Gonna Do When the World's on Fire?
    The movie unfolds impressionistically. To call it a portrait of collective resilience is accurate, but that description shortchanges its richness on both human and historical scales.
  70. Minyan
    The film allows its societies to speak through gestures, whether it is the passing of personal possessions after a death or the brush of bodies behind a bar, and its portrait of both Jewishness and queerness is richer for it.
  71. Paul Goodman Changed My Life
    I suspect that he would have approved of Mr. Lee's film, and not only because it approves so unreservedly of him. Paul Goodman Changed My Life may not have that effect on every viewer, but it has a passionate, almost prophetic sense of the impact that a writer and thinker can have on his times and the future.
  72. The Homesman
    The Homesman is both a captivating western and a meticulous, devastating feminist critique of the genre.
  73. And Then We Danced
    The cast perform with conviction, and the whole movie is attractively, solidly put together. But its dramatic components, fraught as they are, are tepidly delivered.
  74. Everything Went Fine
    Understated almost to a fault, the film pitches its tone somewhere among the looming sorrow, gentle comedy and bureaucratic tedium that death, especially when planned, can entail. If the result is bracingly unsentimental, it’s also a touch inert — a little too poised to compel emotionally.
  75. Henry Fool
    This film aspires to be a meditation on (among other things) art, trust, loyalty, politics and popular culture. With utter simplicity, and with unexpectedly intense storytelling, it achieves all that and more.
  76. Used Cars
    A foul-mouthed, bumpercrunching farce that is often funnier in theory than in fact but, even so, is a movie that has more laughs in it than any film of the summer except "Airplane!" It wipes out "The Blues Brothers," "Caddyshack," "Up the Academy," "Where the Buffalo Roam" and just about every other recent comedy aimed, I assume, at an otherwise television-hooked public.
  77. We Need to Talk About Kevin
    Ms. Ramsay, with ruthless ingenuity, creates a deeper dread and a more acute feeling of anticipation by allowing us to think we know what is coming and then shocking us with the extent of our ignorance.
  78. Something Wicked This Way Comes
    Something Wicked This Way Comes, the Walt Disney production of Ray Bradbury's 1962 novel, begins on such an overworked Norman Rockwell note that there seems little chance that anything exciting or unexpected will happen. So it's a happy surprise when the film...turns into a lively, entertaining tale combining boyishness and grown-up horror in equal measure.
  79. Thunderbolts*
    The only sure thing is that Pugh deepens the material, investing Yelena with real feeling and a lightly detached ironic sensibility that’s reminiscent of Downey’s Stark. Pugh is the best thing to happen to Marvel in a while.
  80. Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man
    Combines pieces of an extended interview with this Canadian singer-songwriter, poet and author, now 71, with a tribute concert organized by Hal Willner at the Sydney Opera House in January 2005.
  81. Watermark
    Always arresting and sometimes troubling, Watermark — aside from the odd comment here and there — neither lectures nor argues.
  82. Out Stealing Horses
    The overall integrity of the effort is impressive.
  83. Early Man
    The genius of Early Man is that it cannot possibly be spoiled. The animation is foolproof in its combination of ingenuity and obviousness, and the script obliterates the difference between a laugher and a groaner.
  84. The East
    It may be asking too much of The East — which is, after all, a twisty, breathless genre film — to wish that it would frame the contradictions of contemporary capitalism more rigorously. The movie is aware that they exist, and wishes that they could be resolved more or less happily, which is hard to argue with, though also hard to believe.
  85. In a Violent Nature
    Claiming inspiration (in the film’s press notes) from Terrence Malick and others, Nash has attempted an ambitious blend of art house and slaughterhouse whose rug-pulling ending will polarize, even as its moody logic prevails.
  86. Batman Returns
    Mr. Burton's new Batman Returns is as sprightly as its predecessor was sluggish, and it succeeds in banishing much of the dourness and tedium that made the first film such an ordeal.
  87. Monster House
    Unpretentious, smartly written and a lot of fun.
  88. Black Mass
    Mr. Cooper’s direction is skillful, if overly reliant on borrowed Scorseseisms (especially when it comes to music), and the cast is first-rate, but the film is a muddle of secondhand attitudes and half-baked ideas. It feels more like a costume party than a costume drama.
  89. The Wave
    The filmmakers (the script is by John Kare Raake and Harald Rosenlow Eeg) cook up the sort of unpleasantness that turns the better disaster pictures, like this one, into nail-biters.
  90. The Edukators
    A slyly effective thriller and of a deft comedy of romantic confusion. Whatever its shortcomings as a consideration of globalization and its discontents, The Edukators succeeds brilliantly in telling the story of a man who falls in love with his best buddy's girlfriend and doesn't know what to do about it.
  91. There's No One Like You
    Krrish is overlong, schmaltzy, wholly derivative and sprinkled with underwhelming song-and-dance numbers. Coming from anywhere else, these elements might be considered glaring flaws. In Bollywood they are not only expected, but often, as in this film, they also appear as virtues.
  92. Off and Running
    The role played by her camera in exacerbating Avery’s natural, adolescent self-absorption continues to nag; in the end, I was less concerned for the wildly indulged Avery -- whose own narration reveals a charismatic and extremely fortunate young woman -- than for the hearts breaking around her.
  93. Mule Skinner Blues
    It might be tempting to regard Mr. Andrew and his collaborators as oddballs, but Mr. Earnhart's quizzical, charming movie allows us to see them, finally, as artists.
  94. Family Fundamentals
    An earnest study in despair.
  95. 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.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (re-release)
    Throughout, there's a skillful balance between the vulnerability of New Yorkers and the drastic, provocative sense of comedy that thrives all over our sidewalks.
  97. Babí léto
    Mr. Brodsky's final screen performance in one of his richest roles finds overlapping layers of humor and pathos.
  98. Slums of Beverly Hills
    Ms. Jenkins, who makes her writing and directing debut with wit and confidence, keeps the small surprises frequent and the coming-of-age perspective sharp.
  99. Shaolin Soccer
    So unabashed in its cheesiness that it could be spread on crackers; it may spike your cholesterol levels
  100. Noi the Albino
    After a while the movie spins its wheels, unable to find much emotional traction in the icy bleakness.
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