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. Bruce Almighty
    Even more than Jerry Lewis, Robin Williams or Pee-wee Herman, Mr. Carrey, now 41 (pretty old for an overgrown kid), sustains a maniacal energy that explodes off the screen in blinding electrical zaps. Those jolts don't always feel pleasant.
  2. After Midnight
    Diverting and often charming, but it never really holds together.
  3. Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine
    This deflating documentary gives up its quest for answers too easily.
  4. Conspiracy of Silence
    Deery's modest drama is one big, obvious argument against the vow of celibacy for Roman Catholic priests, but it has heart.
  5. September 11
    Most impressive, and the only segment that dares to criticize the terrorists directly, is Mr. Imamura's contribution, the last part of the film.
  6. Being Julia
    Being Julia may not make much psychological or dramatic sense, but Ms. Bening, pretending to be Julia (who is always pretending to be herself), is sensational.
  7. Touching the Void
    This is compelling stuff, but there is something deeply distracting in the use of recreated material.
  8. The Last Samurai
    Most watchable during the majestic brutality of the battle sequences. This is not only because of the handsome staging, but also because the keywords sacrifice and honor are evoked with verve and simplicity, more so than in the "exchange of idea" chats between Algren and Katsumoto, which sound like statements being read into the Congressional Record by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
  9. Scary Movie
    If you're amused by jokes involving male genitals, female pubic hair, flatulence and dismemberment, it should be a big hit.
  10. Danny Deckchair
    A pleasantly sappy fable of new beginnings that suggests a Frank Capra film sweetened with an extra layer of sugar glaze.
  11. Saw
    Does a better-than-average job of conveying the panic and helplessness of men terrorized by a sadist in a degrading environment, but it is still not especially scary.
  12. Thunderbirds
    A standard, gadget-crazed exercise in whiz-bang adventure with its tongue lodged deep inside its cheek.
  13. The Young Black Stallion
    Joins the small pool of films that have dared to use Imax to tell a story.
  14. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
    The closest sensory approximation of an acid trip ever achieved by a mainstream movie and the latest example of Mr. Gilliam's visual bravura.
  15. Never Been Kissed
    So hopelessly cartoonish and wrongheaded in its details that there's not even a semblance of reality.
  16. Rush Hour
    At regular intervals the film stops short for similiarly nifty Chan choreography, letting the star flip, swivel, scamper up walls and hurl large objects with his feet.
  17. Sleepy Hollow
    Turns the tale of the Headless Horseman into the pre-tabloid story of a rampaging serial killer.
  18. Seeing Other People
    There is enough discomfort on display to reinforce the cynical adage that sex is God's joke.
  19. Bottle Rocket
    A mildly facetious tone limits Anderson's film to the lightweight, but the collective enthusiasm behind this debut effort still comes through. What's best about Bottle Rocket is not the laid-back pranks that inflate its story to feature length but the offbeat elan with which that story is told.
  20. Girl with a Pearl Earring
    An auspicious feature-directing debut by Mr. Webber in so many ways -- a groaning board of temptations for the eye and ear -- that you may almost forgive the film its lack of drama and the perfunctory attempts at characterization. Viewing this film has been likened to watching paint dry; actually it is more like watching a painting dry.
  21. Easy
    Ms. Weinstock does accomplish something quite tricky, though. She does an impressive job of capturing the brave messiness of single life, or at least of 20-something dating, and her sex scenes have a rare feel of authenticity.
  22. Ned Kelly
    The storytelling is choppy and abrupt, and the filmmakers rely heavily on voice-over narration to announce themes that are never brought to dramatic life on screen. Mr. Ledger, his heartthrob charisma camouflaged behind a heavy beard, gives a stiff, hesitant performance.
  23. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
    Yet for all the film's hard work at capturing Savannah's spirit, there is seldom enough context to make these characters seem anything but adorably whimsical to excess.
  24. As Good as It Gets
    Wicked, but it works.
  25. Absolute Power
    Eastwood directs a sensible-looking genre film with smooth expertise, but its plot is quietly berserk.
  26. The Lost World: Jurassic Park
    Where the original film was a cut-and-dried Pop-Art-flavored allegory pitting scientific hubris against the unpredictable, ungovernable forces of nature, the sequel is an all-stops-pulled, edge-of-your-seat adventure film whose messages are not so neatly packaged.
  27. Man on the Moon
    What is missing here, though it might have been the first thing expected from an ostensible film biography, is an answer to the simplest question: Who was Andy Kaufman, and how did he get that way?
  28. Cowboy Bebop the Movie: Knockin' on Heaven's Door
    Notable chiefly for its eye-catching urban backgrounds and an eclectic score that ranges from jazz and country to classical and choral.
  29. Imaginary Heroes
    Piles too many small disasters on top of the initial tragedy, including a drunken car accident, a drug bust and a cancer scare. It also swerves unsteadily into farce.
  30. The Machinist
    May be an expertly manipulated exercise in psychological horror, but that's all it is. Don't look for the kind of metaphoric weight you'd find in a movie by David Lynch or David Fincher.
  31. Primer
    At a certain point, Mr. Carruth's fondness for complexity and indirection crosses the line between ambiguity and opacity, but I hasten to add that my bafflement is colored by admiration.
  32. Friday After Next
    The trouble with movies like those in the "Friday" series is that their success can lead to a need to inflate their importance, inviting pretentious descriptions like "folkloric" when "Friday" is much closer to chitlin circuit comedy.
  33. Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
    Nobody eviscerates the scary depths of male narcissism with such ferocity, and it is a huge relief to find Mr. Stiller flexing his oiled, low-comedy triceps with such vengeful glee.
  34. Shall We Dance
    An old- fashioned feel-good fantasy that piles on the euphoria.
  35. NASCAR: The IMAX Experience
    Those seeking a serious sociological examination of the role of stock car racing in late capitalist America will probably want to search elsewhere, but audiences looking for a kick will find one -- almost literally -- in Mr. Wincer's work.
  36. The Assassination of Richard Nixon
    That The Assassination of Richard Nixon is as well directed, acted and shot as it is makes Mr. Mueller's inability to invest his film with significance all the more disappointing.
  37. MVP: Most Valuable Primate
    For juvenile filmgoers and families in search of a more-than-twice-told tale with uplifting messages about the rewards of perseverance, the virtues of animals and acceptance of the handicapped, MVP will do.
  38. Anastasia
    A deeply silly movie, but it is sumptuous to look at, and it never stands still. Its creators, Don Bluth and Gary Goldman, have given the story a lilting rhythm and glittering surface of the most extravagant jewel-encrusted fairy tale.
  39. Freddy Got Fingered
    The movie's comic heart consists of a series of indescribably loopy, elaborately conceived happenings that are at once rigorous and chaotic, idiotic and brilliant.
  40. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
    By the end, instead of feeling stirred to a high pitch of anxiety and excitement, you may feel battered and worn down. But not, in the end, too terribly disappointed.
  41. The Last Waltz
    There is a dazzling array of talent on display here, and the film surely has its memorable moments. But it articulates so little of the end-of-an-era feeling it hints at—and some of Mr. Scorsese's accomplishments have been so stunning—that it's impossible to view The Last Waltz as anything but an also-ran.
  42. Mousehunt
    As the family film least insulting to its audience's intelligence this season, Mouse Hunt has its share of grown-up appeal along with mouse mischief guaranteed to have children giggling.
  43. Pearl Harbor
    Works best as a bang-and- boom action picture, a loud symphony of bombardment and explosion juiced up with frantic editing and shiny computer-generated imagery.
  44. Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War
    Far more ambivalent and ambiguous film than Mr. Spielberg's. Both North and South are portrayed as brutal, abusive regimes that use their citizens as so much cannon fodder.
  45. Veer-Zaara
    If Veer-Zaara were an American television movie, it would be embraced as fabulously trashy.
  46. A Very Long Engagement
    Only when Jodie Foster materializes midstory, delivering a beautiful, pocket-size performance as the mistress of one of the condemned men, does the film spring to life.
  47. Young Adam
    The narrative scheme, the brooding period atmosphere, the understated score (by David Byrne) and the precision of the acting also make the story seem more interesting than it is.
  48. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
    More amusing than annoying. It is not as maniacally uninhibited as "Old School" or as dementedly lovable as "Elf," but its cheerful dumbness is hard to resist.
  49. Open Water
    The sharks are scary, and the ocean is vast and indifferent, but the most effective parts of Open Water, which is ultimately too modest to be very memorable, evoke a deeper terror, one that can chill even those viewers who would never dream of putting on a wet suit and jumping off a boat.
  50. Wimbledon
    Although Wimbledon is a much more conventional film, it still has cleverer-than-average dialogue and sharply drawn subsidiary characters.
  51. Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle
    The chemistry between the two is as old as Abbott and Costello. Harold is the sensible worried one, and Kumar zany and reckless. The movie's funniest moments, set at Princeton University, caricature and then demolish the image of Asian-Americans as nerdy, sexless bookworms incapable of fun.
  52. Bubble Boy
    When it clicks, the picture should shock you into laughter -- enough to make you wish it were better and applaud its efforts anyway.
  53. Closer
    Unlike most movie love stories, Closer does have the virtue of unpredictability. The problem is that, while parts are provocative and forceful, the film as a whole collapses into a welter of misplaced intensity.
  54. I, Robot
    Lacks both the intellectual rigor and the soulful sublimity of "A.I.," but it nonetheless allows some genuine ideas and emotions to pop up amid the noise and clutter.
  55. Troy
    For what it is -- a big, expensive, occasionally campy action movie full of well-known actors speaking in well-rounded accents -- Troy is not bad. It has the blocky, earnest integrity of a classic comic book, and it labors to respect the strangeness and grandeur of its classical sources.
  56. A Tale of Two Sisters
    In a subversion of the usual horror-movie rhythm, the central secret is revealed about halfway through.
  57. The Aviator
    Visually sumptuous if disappointingly hollow account of Hughes's early life.
  58. Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
    Mr. Silberling has made a movie that's far rougher in texture and tone than Mr. Handler's books, but while he doesn't have the author's sense of whimsy (or irony) he manages to construct a pleasantly watchable entertainment in all the spaces in the story not laid siege to by Mr. Carrey.
  59. Napoleon Dynamite
    The performances, even those by trained actors like Mr. Ramirez and Ms. Majorino, have the hesitant, blinking opacity that some directors look for in nonprofessional casts. Their awkwardness is charming, and part of the point of the movie, but it also makes for some dull stretches and thwarts your ability to regard the characters with sympathy rather than mere curiosity.
  60. Meet the Fockers
    Ms. Streisand hasn't been called on to deliver an immortal or even interesting performance, but she is a pip to watch.
  61. Volcano
    In Volcano, the thrills are so well wrought that they eventually lose their novelty and become numbing.
  62. Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead
    Mr. Garcia gives one of his sleeker dreamboat performances.
  63. Mimic
    Ghoulish interest is a prerequisite for watching Mira Sorvino (as a bold and athletic entomologist) act against performers who have mandibles, or for appreciating the care with which nymph, juvenile and adult insect villains have been devised.
  64. Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey
    Amusing but sloppy and overcomplicated.
  65. Crash
    The Crash characters sleepwalk through this story in a state of futuristic numbness, seeking extreme forms of sensation because familiar feelings have long since failed them. It's a chilling, ghastly possibility that manages to exert a grim fascination.
  66. Dante's Peak
    The special effects are suitably catastrophic, though they aren't much more clever than the computer tricks that turn up in beer commercials these days.
  67. A Life Less Ordinary
    Mr. Boyle's brand of heaven-sent love story comes with a strange and whimsical mean streak. Tender thoughts and ha-ha shootings don't automatically mix.
  68. Night Falls on Manhattan
    But Night Falls on Manhattan is also oddly listless. It doesn't often live up to the doomy eloquence of its title.
  69. Paradise Road
    In trying to keep track of everybody while providing enough melodrama to sustain an atmosphere of controlled terror, Paradise Road stumbles all over itself and never really finds its center.
  70. Welcome to Sarajevo
    Yet this film, for all its apparent immediacy, winds up less affecting than a more poetic or roundabout approach might be.
  71. The Nutty Professor
    Mr. Murphy proves himself a surprisingly strong actor here, playing Sherman with sweetness and poignancy, not to mention loads of funny weight-related humor.
  72. Die Hard: With a Vengeance
    The movie turns two hours of bombings, subway crashes, car chases and helicopter pursuits into the ultimate roller-coaster ride.
  73. Jumanji
    Eschewing warm, cuddly imagery just as Mr. Van Allsburg's book does, the film affects a strange, artificial style that has the invasive weirdness of "Gremlins" but none of the charm.
  74. Basquiat
    But the film's central figure remains a cipher, the subject of a colorful scrapbook rather than a revealing portrait.
  75. Michael
    The movie is so busy applying cute touches to everything and everybody that it forgets to devote enough attention to the souls Michael has come down to save.
  76. Home for the Holidays
    Ms. Foster and the screenwriter, W. D. Richter, have given this film some peculiar mood swings, so that it starts out zanily and winds down to a wistful note.
  77. Batman Forever
    As for the actual movie, it's the empty-calorie equivalent of a Happy Meal (another Batman tie-in), so clearly a product that the question of its cinematic merit is strictly an afterthought.
  78. Marvin's Room
    This film often fumbles, but it finally tugs at the heartstrings all the same.
  79. Fallen Angels
    Fallen Angels certainly abounds in visual pizazz, clever in jokes and trendy pop references, but such things can carry a movie only so far.
  80. Return to Paradise
    The film's cool, sober texture and its clever characters are often more interesting than the larger plot.
  81. Romeo + Juliet
    Mr. Luhrmann's frenetic hodgepodge actually amounts to a witty and sometimes successful experiment, an attempt to reinvent "Romeo and Juliet" in the hyperkinetic vocabulary of post-modern kitsch. This is headache Shakespeare, but there's method to its madness.
  82. This Boy's Life
    The film recreates Toby and Caroline's aimlessness, but without appearing to understand it enough to make it as moving and important as it ought to be.
  83. American Me
    But Mr. Olmos's direction, from a screenplay by Floyd Mutrux and Desmond Nakano, is dark, slow and solemn, so much so that it diverts energy from the film's fundamental frankness. Violent as it is, American Me is seldom dramatic enough to bring its material to life.
  84. Grumpier Old Men
    Grounding the zaniness is the chemistry between its two likable stars. Beneath their crusty eccentricities, Max and John are teen-agers at heart, a Wayne and Garth for the "Modern Maturity" set. As Max, his leathery face beaming with pleasure, might put it: "Holy moley, is this a dumb movie!" But it is also fun.
  85. Mary Reilly
    A gloomy film with a story whose outcome... is an especially foregone conclusion.
  86. Jude
    With Christopher Eccleston as Jude and Kate Winslet of ''Sense and Sensibility'' as his great love, Sue Bridehead, and with convincing evocations of 19th-century England from locations in Edinburgh and the north of England, Jude remains a handsome if gravely flawed film.
  87. Grand Canyon
    [Grand Canyon] eventually pulls its punches, taking an unconvincingly beatific look at the problems and dangers that have been so persuasively outlined in what has come before. But until it hits that false note, Mr. Kasdan's film is at least as fascinating as it is amorphous.
  88. I Love You to Death
    More problematical is the tone of the film, which attempts to be both compassionate and goofy, though the events are funny only if they are seen as farcical.
  89. Green Card
    That understated style at times makes Green Card seem too stiff and vacuous, as if Mr. Weir were inspired by the surface of a Jane Austen work and left out the wicked social observations. But the film is magnificently redeemed by Mr. Depardieu.
  90. Ragtime
    The movie is sorrowful, funny and beautiful. It is also, finally, very unsatisfactory.
  91. Higher Learning
    Higher Learning culminates in facile violence instead of the assurance that this film maker, in trying to explain forces that oppress his characters, has really done his homework.
  92. Married to the Mob
    Married to the Mob works best as a wildly overdecorated screwball farce.
  93. Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!
    Mr. Almodovar's comic invention runs out too soon, leaving the audience to giggle weakly in anticipation of the big laughs and disorienting shocks that never arrive.
  94. Jefferson in Paris
    Overshadowed by its own ambition and not-quite-ironic pageantry, Jefferson in Paris doesn't quite come to life.
  95. Jack
    Within the limits and cliches of utterly predictable material, Mr. Coppola is still finally able to make this one from the heart.
  96. Rumble Fish
    The stunning black-and-white cinematography in Francis Coppola's Rumble Fish functions rather like a cold compress, subduing a film that is otherwise all feverish extremes.
  97. M. Butterfly
    M. Butterfly as idiosyncratic as Mr. Cronenberg's work always is, is sometimes too flat and ambiguous for its own good.
  98. The Fly
    A film that tries to be too many things at once - funny but not campy, sad and scary, a horror story and a human tragedy
  99. Scanners
    Unfortunately the plot thickens so rapidly and so lumpily that one very soon loses interest in spite of the quite stunning and gory special effects.
  100. Poetic Justice
    Although its aspirations are high, the film works only fitfully when Mr. Singleton exercises his gift for vernacular speech, for finding the comic undertow in otherwise tragic situations, and even for parody.
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