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. Crazy/Beautiful
    It is an enormous improvement over the brainless, patronizing teenage romances that have slouched into (and quickly out of) theaters in recent years. But it could, if the filmmakers had trusted themselves and the actors a bit more, have lived up to its title.
  2. The Weather Underground
    This terrifically smart and solid piece of filmmaking lets the former Weathermen, now in their 50's and older, speak into the camera and reveal a bit of their personal histories as well as what the peace movement meant to them.
  3. S21: The Khmer Rouge Death Machine
    Mr. Rithy Panh makes telling use of a survivor whose ability to communicate lends itself to the subject. The tragedy is that Mr. Vann Nath's powers are used to illuminate these horrors.
  4. Alice et Martin
    Your attention is rewarded by a film of surprising depth and a few deep surprises.
  5. Startup.com
    Moves slowly and grimly toward the moment that for the audience is the most engrossing though filled with dread: when things begin to unravel and the participants are no longer aware of the cameras. That is when your shoulders tense and you lean toward the screen.
  6. Trembling Before G-d
    Director Sandi Simcha DuBowski latches on to a provocative subject and invests it with a compelling tenderness.
  7. Our Lady of the Assassins
    Couldn't have succeeded had it been cast with movie stars. Its authenticity derives not only from the streets on which it was filmed but also from its able Colombian cast.
  8. Get Shorty
    The author's sardonic voice has been lost in most films based on his fiction, but this one nicely captures that unruffled Leonard authority. And since Get Shorty is about Hollywood, it invites the sneaky self-mockery that gives this film its comic punch.
  9. Children Underground
    A singularly depressing film. In the face of such unrelieved, grinding poverty, hope fades.
  10. Step Into Liquid
    Like his father, Mr. Brown has the magical ability to take his public on a two-hour vacation. It's the next best thing to being there, and you don't need to worry about sand in your beer.
  11. Men in Black
    Dryly clever.
  12. L.A. Story
    Basically decent, intelligent and sweet. It's a fanciful romantic comedy whose wildest and craziest notion is that Los Angeles, for all of its eccentricities, is a great place to live.
  13. Lost in La Mancha
    After watching the fascinating and compelling new documentary Lost in La Mancha, you may forever wonder how it is that movies are made at all.
  14. Better Luck Tomorrow
    Mr. Lin makes the anxious grasping of these kids for some kind of emotional turf -- their own need to shatter the stereotypes that bind them -- the heart of Better Luck Tomorrow, a scenario that keeps the movie's blood racing.
  15. Groundhog Day
    That glimmer of recognition is what makes Groundhog Day a particularly witty and resonant comedy, even when its jokes are more apt to prompt gentle giggles than rolling in the aisles.
  16. Die, Mommie, Die!
    Makes a jolly absurdist stew out of its sources.
  17. Babe
    The movie maintains a refreshingly light touch in spinning a fable about individualism and conformity.
  18. The Dinner Game
    The Dinner Game, which Veber wrote and directed, is one of his better-constructed comedies of errors.
  19. The Fisher King
    What emerges, in the end, are a clever premise that has been allowed to go awry and several performances that are lively and unpredictable enough to transcend the confusion. Mr. Bridges, always a fine intuitive actor, has never displayed a greater range.
  20. Johnny Guitar (re-release)
    A goofy and remarkable film.
  21. The Wood
    Famuyiwa's dialogue is easygoing and witty, and the warmhearted comic performances mesh beautifully.
  22. Bukowski: Born into This
    Definitive and engrossing documentary.
  23. The Filth and the Fury
    Electrifying.
  24. The Isle
    A movie of extremes, and that goes for its aesthetics. As gory as the scenes of torture and self-mutilation may be, they are pitted against shimmering cinematography that lends the setting the ethereal beauty of an Asian landscape painting.
  25. LaLee's Kin: The Legacy of Cotton
    An exemplary work of cinéma vérité that allows its subjects to speak for themselves, traffics neither in pity nor in political grandstanding.
  26. The King Is Alive
    The cast, working in conditions that appear to have been only slightly less dire than those portrayed in the film, work together in a grim, convincing improvisatory rhythm.
  27. Code Unknown: Incomplete Tales of Several Journeys
    Haneke, who wrote and directed, is a skillful, minutely observant filmmaker who trusts his audience to be able to put two and two together. Unfortunately, he's often too cryptic, which leaves viewers still trying to make connections when they should already be reacting to the moral lessons implied by them.
  28. The Piano Teacher
    Has the feel of a clinical case study elevated into a subject of aesthetic and philosophical discourse.
  29. Ça commence aujourd'hui
    Strikes a difficult and necessary moral balance, refusing to succumb to hopelessness but also refusing to rule it out.
  30. Yossi & Jagger
    If the situation has all the ingredients of a shrill, tearful melodrama, the filmmaker, working from a taut screenplay by Avner Bernheimer that doesn't waste a word or a gesture, keeps the emotional lid firmly in place.
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