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. Finding Amanda
    If the title "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" didn’' already belong to Hunter S. Thompson, it would perfectly fit Peter Tolan's viciously funny satire, Finding Amanda.
  2. Year of the Fish
    Packs more sadness than the familiar fairy tale but offers its own fantastical delights. Ye Xian's party dress, made of teardrops, suits her -- and her story -- perfectly.
  3. Obscene
    A warm, entertaining compendium of counterculture voices and literary landmarks.
  4. The Matador
    Barbaric, elegant, primitive, erotic, revolting, thrilling: the movie, like bullfighting itself, is all of these.
  5. Otto; or, Up with Dead People
    One of the more disciplined entries in the LaBruce oeuvre, Otto is sexy and silly in just the right proportions, a cult item with a real heart.
  6. The Black Balloon
    Ms. Collette’s Maggie is the film's prime mover. This wonderful Australian actress, who hasn't a shred of vanity, virtually disappears into the complicated characters she plays, and Maggie is one of the strongest.
  7. Scott Walker: 30 Century Man
    In a movie that avoids examining Mr. Walker’s personal history, there are hints of a man struggling with chronic depression and problems with alcohol, but they are only hints. No major personal relationships are mentioned or even alluded to. The music speaks for itself.
  8. Luck by Chance
    It is Mr. Akhtar whose understated performance holds together this far-ranging, cameo-filled film.
  9. Brothers at War
    Well shot but generically scored, Brothers at War has its share of potent moments, most of them with Mr. Rademacher’s family in the States.
  10. Lymelife
    Despite such floundering, Lymelife keeps you hooked, mostly through Mr. Hutton, Mr. Baldwin and Kieran Culkin as Scott's older brother, Jimmy.
  11. The Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story
    Comprehensive, fulfilling film.
  12. Under Our Skin
    Scary enough to make the faint of heart decide never to venture into the woods or to lie on the grass again without protective covering.
  13. Flame and Citron
    What Flame & Citron has are decent men taking down Nazis (always a crowd pleaser) and some appealing actors — notably Mr. Lindhardt, Mr. Mikkelsen and Christian Berkel as the head of the Copenhagen Gestapo.
  14. Gotta Dance
    The dancers are prone to feel-good sound bites, but Ms. Berinstein also takes the time to draw out their back stories, making for a sweet group portrait of ordinary folks who found a late splash of fame.
  15. Art & Copy
    The world may be going “Mad Men,” but Doug Pray’s documentary Art & Copy,”which is being released just five days after the season premiere of that acclaimed television series, presents a very different picture of the advertising industry.
  16. My One and Only
    A good-natured screwball road film.
  17. American Casino
    The lesson of this story: if enough money is involved, greed trumps morality.
  18. The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
    On the spectrum from heroic patriot to craven traitor, this detailed, clearly told and persuasive film, directed by Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith, is firmly on the side of heroic.
  19. The Providence Effect
    More an infomercial than a movie, Rollin Binzer’s awed documentary is, at best, a well-earned tribute to one man’s unwavering vision and unrelenting hard work.
  20. Paradise
    Essentially a series of home movies, but home movies of a very high order.
  21. In Search of Beethoven
    The best thing about In Search of Beethoven, Phil Grabsky’s biography of the composer, is the company he brings along on the hunt.
  22. After the Storm
    Directed by Hilla Medalia with exactly the right balance of musical theater and personal drama, After the Storm presents a touching affirmation of the healing power of right-brain stimulation.
  23. Where Is Where?
    Anyone looking for some idiosyncratic, visually stimulating entertainment this week could do worse than Where Is Where?, an intriguing narrative experiment by the Finnish artist and filmmaker Eija-Liisa Ahtila.
  24. The Heretics
    Gives a joyful sense of what it was like to be a feminist in the 1970s, a time when “everything seemed possible.”
  25. Rembrandt's J'Accuse...!
    Generally absorbing if sometimes fog-inducing.
  26. The Way We Get By
    Unfailingly modest and profoundly humane, The Way We Get By profiles three people over 70 whose lives have been changed by a simple act of service.
  27. That Evening Sun
    Hal Holbrook strips the stereotype of the grumpy old man of sentimental shtick and cutesy old-codger mannerisms.
  28. The Missing Person
    Sluggish, stylized and frequently washed in a bilious green tint, The Missing Person is yet oddly irresistible.
  29. Home
    Home is, as with so many family stories, also something of a disaster movie: the walls shudder and crack, and eventually so do the people inside them.
  30. Le jour avant le lendemain
    Frustratingly sketchy partly because it is not finally a survival tale but a mystical evocation of the power of Inuit mythology, and how the passing down of ancient wisdom can sustain the human spirit in the direst circumstances. But the unanswered questions still nag.
  31. Garbage Dreams
    Garbage Dreams records the tremblings of a culture at a crossroads.
  32. The Paranoids
    Just like its main character, this smart, slyly witty movie with few laughs undersells itself.
  33. Videocracy
    Given the stakes, it’s hard not to wish that Mr. Gandini had been more ambitious: at 85 minutes, Videocracy can only scratch the surface. Even so, after watching it, you realize that even a cursory look at Mr. Berlusconi is crucial to understanding an age in which celebrity is now the coin of the realm.
  34. October Country
    October Country feels at once personal and objective, a fascinating hybrid of two important tendencies in the modern documentary.
  35. American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein
    Because it is a film, American Radical can only begin to sketch the complicated historical and political debates that engage Mr. Finkelstein and his detractors, but it allows both sides to make their cases.
  36. Lourdes
    One of the pleasures of this intelligent, rigorously thoughtful, somewhat sly film is that it takes place in the space between the inexplicable (no explanation is possible) and the unexplained (enlightenment might be around the corner).
  37. Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Suess
    Only ends up skimming the surface. But even the skimming is largely interesting and thought-provoking, and of course very bleak.
  38. Severe Clear
    At its most provocative, Severe Clear pungently evokes a heroic Marine Corps mystique.
  39. Children of Invention
    A modestly scaled, quietly effective independent movie about a struggling single mother and her two children.
  40. City Island
    Softened by some sweet, low-key moments between Vince and a fellow acting student (a very good Emily Mortimer) and by Mr. Garcia’s embodiment of disappointed middle age.
  41. Godspeed
    A weird, wordy but oddly compelling thriller.
  42. Breaking Upwards
    Like many relationships, Breaking Upwards starts in bed and ends on the street. The journey in between, however, feels as new as anything a tiny budget and a boatload of talent could produce.
  43. It Came from Kuchar
    A valuable and intelligent introduction and tribute to their anarchic, uncompromising and absolutely peculiar genius.
  44. The City of Your Final Destination
    Besides Ms. Linney’s excellent performance and Mr. Hopkins’s good one, the best things about the movie are its sensuous cinematography by Javier Aguirresarobe (“Talk to Her,” “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”) and a gorgeous soundtrack.
  45. From Selma to Soweto
    Even at the level of average-to-mediocre television, though, “Have You Heard” tells an amazing story. If you don’t know it, or you want reminding, the clumsy storytelling can be endured.
  46. World on a Wire (1973)
    World on a Wire, while too slow and diffuse to count as a lost masterpiece, is valuable in expanding our sense of what Fassbinder could do and is also a source of much visual and intellectual pleasure in its own right.
  47. Nobody's Perfect
    Rare enough to make NoBody’s Perfect an exemplar of fresh-air filmmaking that addresses the devastating legacy of the drug thalidomide with acidic wit and grumpy honesty.
  48. Kenny Chesney: Summer in 3D
    His fans will undoubtedly be satisfied: the film packs 23 songs into less than 100 minutes and spotlights the full Chesney, with his tight jeans, faded tank top, worn cowboy hat.
  49. Behind the Burly Q
    A charming, uncritical, often entertaining jumble, the documentary was written and directed by Leslie Zemeckis.
  50. Breath Made Visible: Anna Halprin
    Packed with illuminating interviews and lyrical movement, Breath Made Visible portrays a woman with angels in her feet and innovation in her blood. Long may she rock.
  51. Please Give
    Few American filmmakers create female characters as realistically funny, attractively imperfect and flat-out annoying as does Ms. Holofcener, whose features include “Friends With Money” and “Lovely & Amazing.”
  52. A Nightmare on Elm Street
    A Nightmare on Elm Street puts more emphasis on bizarre special effects, which aren't at all bad.
  53. The Infidel
    The director, Josh Appignanesi, has a nice sense of comic timing, slipping in some of the best jokes when you least expect them.
  54. The Oath
    It has staying power. In place of large revelations, you’ll find yourself remembering scenes like the one in which Abu Jandal sits absorbed by a news report of a bombing in Kabul, until his son requests a change of channel. It’s time for “Tom and Jerry.”
  55. Babies
    But Babies just might restore your faith in our perplexing, peculiar and stubbornly lovable species.
  56. Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo
    The diverting Beetle Queen, like “Lost in Translation” or Takashi Murakami’s art, says less about Japan than it does about America’s continuing fascination with modern Japanese culture.
  57. After the Cup: Sons of Sakhnin United
    Never forgetting the rush of the game, the directors regularly serve up fleet footage of the team’s highs and lows, allowing the rhythms of the field to set the film’s volatile beat.
  58. Kites
    The result is a lovers-on-the-lam blast of pure pulp escapism, so devoted to diversion that you probably won’t even notice the corn.
  59. Looking for Eric
    Mr. Loach’s touch is a bit lighter here. “Sweet Sixteen” is a coming-of-age story shot through the lens of social tragedy, while “The Wind That Shakes the Barley” is an epic of historical disaster. Looking for Eric is, by comparison, gentle and sweet and often very funny.
  60. The Last Exorcism
    An unusually restrained and genuinely eerie little movie perched at the intersection of faith, folklore and female puberty.
  61. Agora
    A bit of a puzzle. This is a good thing, since most movies plop down in easily recognizable categories and stay there, troubling neither their own intellectual inertia nor that of the audience.
  62. Cropsey
    Its straggling, true-crime narrative, leaping hither and yon like a dog chasing butterflies, is not what holds the film together; the real glue is the emergence of a parallel between location and suspect, between literal dumping ground and figurative. This is so effective that there was no need for the directors to conduct a handheld, "Blair Witch"-y foray into the nighttime woods -- their film is creepy enough in broad daylight.
  63. Whiz Kids
    Tom Shepard's quietly observant documentary tracks its stressed-out subjects through an array of personal and scholarly challenges.
  64. Double Take
    Although it is composed mainly of archival footage and touches on a great many actual events, Double Take, as you may already have gathered, is not quite a documentary. It is, instead, a meditation on a series of loosely related themes drawn together, somewhat tenuously, by the familiar yet elusive sensibility that Hitchcock brought to Hollywood and then to American television.
  65. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
    And yet something vital here works. There are, come to think of it, a lot of little things.
  66. Gangster's Paradise: Jerusalema
    Between Mr. Ziman's music-video skills and his close approximation of the kinetic style of Michael Mann (a scene from Mr. Mann's "Heat" has a key role in the plot), it's easy to overlook the formulas and just enjoy the ride.
  67. Reel Injun
    Absorbing and amusing for as long as it looks back at those Hollywood westerns, recounting their sins against American Indians.
  68. The Nature of Existence
    His film is no more profound than its forerunners, but it’s quicker, funnier and less pretentious.
  69. The Girl Who Played with Fire
    Ms. Rapace, tiny and agile, her steely rage showing now and then the tiniest crack of vulnerability, belongs to another dimension altogether. She makes this movie good enough, but also makes you wish it were much better.
  70. Mama Africa
    What links these three stories besides their African settings is the calm, majestic presence of Queen Latifah, who introduces each one. The rapper, singer, actress and television personality towers over the movie, a stern but benign fortress of maternal common sense and wisdom.
  71. Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel
    As for the man who invented it all, he remains a mystery in the film, living out his days in sybaritic bliss.
  72. [Rec] 2
    Enjoy it; according to the spectacularly nauseating final moments, a cure for this virus seems unlikely, but “[REC] 3” (a k a “[REC] Apocalypse”) is a virtual certainty.
  73. Countdown to Zero
    Paying to see Countdown to Zero is like tipping a fortuneteller to predict the manner of your death.
  74. Farewell
    When it comes to actual historical details, Farewell crams too many notions into expositional blips of dialogue. And the scenes of conferences in the corridors of power, whether in Moscow, Paris or Washington, are strained and abrupt.
  75. Mugabe and the White African
    The courses of colonialism and racial strife were radically different in America and Australia than they were in Africa. That doesn't make Mr. Freeth's cause any less just, but it does mean that Mugabe and the White African needs to be approached with care.
  76. Slingshot
    Portrayed entirely without sentiment, everyone here is equally abject, from the crushed victim of a human stampede to the starving baby playing in its own feces. The mood of scrambling desperation can be exhausting, but the filmmaking is never less than exhilarating.
  77. The Color Purple
    Some parts of it are rapturous and stirring, others hugely improbable, and the film moves unpredictably from one mode to another. From another director, this might be fatally confusing, but Mr. Spielberg's showmanship is still with him. Although the combination of his sensibilities and Miss Walker's amounts to a colossal mismatch, Mr. Spielberg's ''Color Purple'' manages to have momentum, warmth and staying power all the same.
  78. Cairo Time
    The time does pass agreeably enough, and if Cairo Time does not amount to much, it does evoke a wistful state of feeling and a complicated city with enough skill and sensitivity that you wish it had dared more.
  79. Middle Men
    Originally intended as a cable television series, Middle Men bears some telltale scars of hasty, clumsy truncation. Still, there is a raffish vigor that makes the movie watchable despite all-over-the-map storytelling and a fuzzy, superficial grasp of the salient themes.
  80. The Disappearance of Alice Creed
    The Disappearance of Alice Creed will keep your attention, but you may walk away thinking you've seen something like it before: "Sleuth," with more sex and violence.
  81. Peepli Live
    The writer-director Anusha Rizvi, making her feature debut, shoots her story efficiently and with visual panache, but after a compelling setup her script runs out of juice.
  82. Salt of This Sea
    A sad and engrossing look at a haunted landscape.
  83. La Soga (The Butcher's Son)
    La Soga moves with a crazed energy that denies moral nuance. But the banal narrative (based on events in Mr. Perez's life) is elbowed aside by Josh Crook's eccentric direction and images that the cinematographer, Zeus Morand, brands with near-poetic intensity.
  84. Lottery Ticket
    The prevailing presence in this crowd-pleaser is Ice Cube, whose evolution from hip-hop threat to screen paterfamilias is now complete.
  85. Centurion
    The real message: Life's ultimate pleasure lies in extreme fighting - to the death.
  86. Machete
    For all its political button pushing, Machete is too preposterous to qualify as satire. The only viewers it is likely to upset are the same kind of people who once claimed that the purple Tinky Winky in "Teletubbies" promoted a gay agenda.
  87. Easy A
    Easy A isn't nearly as good a movie as "Clueless," Ms. Heckerling's contemporary pastiche of the Jane Austen novel "Emma." But the one-liner-loaded screenplay has the same insouciant charm.
  88. The Parking Lot Movie
    A quirky documentary about, yes, a parking lot, is probably not unlike working at such a lot: there are long stretches when not much happens, but every once in a while there's a burst of activity that is kind of enthralling.
  89. Change of Plans (Le code a changé)
    Diverting, hectic entertainment, which refuses to take anything too seriously, staking out a middle ground between melodrama and farce.
  90. Lovely, Still
    It's beautifully played and will hit home with anyone who has had to struggle with the most difficult aspects of aging.
  91. The Town
    A solid, minor entry in the annals of Boston crime drama. Not as florid as "The Departed" or as sadly soulful as "The Friends of Eddie Coyle" - or even as sticky and gamy as "Gone Baby Gone," Mr. Affleck's previous film.
  92. Vision: From the Life of Hildegard Von Bingen
    Vision offers a hard-headed view of 12th-century religiosity in which church politics and money conflict with the characters' asceticism. It portrays Hildegard as a passionate humanitarian and a lover of nature.
  93. Monsters
    Monsters effortlessly compels. The ending may be pure sci-fi schmaltz, but it's schmaltz that this viewer, at least, could believe in.
  94. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I
    The movie, in other words, belongs solidly to Mr. Radcliffe, Mr. Grint and Ms. Watson, who have grown into nimble actors, capable of nuances of feeling that would do their elders proud.
  95. Tangled
    Tangled is the 50th animated feature from Disney, and its look and spirit convey a modified, updated but nonetheless sincere and unmistakable quality of old-fashioned Disneyness.
  96. The Debt
    As The Debt grows more complex and suspenseful, it also becomes more literal, losing some of its dramatic intensity.
  97. Neshoba
    This film is a document of hope, progress and idealism but also a reminder that the deep springs of bigotry and violence that fed a long, vicious campaign of domestic terrorism have not dried up.
  98. A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop
    The director Zhang Yimou honors the unlikely affinity between himself and Joel and Ethan Coen with a remake of their movie "Blood Simple."
  99. Prince of Broadway
    The movie is sharp, charismatic and so light on its feet we never know which way it will turn.
  100. Make-Out with Violence
    Filled with clear, bright images and moments of skewed genius, this delicate debut effortlessly evokes those languid summer doldrums, when even a rotting girlfriend is better than no girlfriend at all.
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