The New York Times' Scores

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For 20,313 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: 9,401 out of 20313
  2. Mixed: 8,446 out of 20313
  3. Negative: 2,466 out of 20313
20313 movie reviews
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  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. Electric Shadows
    Plays as an enthralling but implausible Asian soap opera.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. End of the Spear
    Inspiring enough to make you wish that the filmmakers had reined in their sentimental excesses.
  10. 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.
  11. Following Sean
    What emerges is a liberal meditation on freedom and compromise, and a nostalgia trip graced by eloquent restraint.
  12. 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.
  13. 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.
  14. 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.
  15. Something New
    The film is good news nonetheless - it's a store-bought valentine with real heart.
  16. Cinema, Aspirinas e Urubus
    It is the sort of human-scale production that holds your attention with good acting, nice lighting and a screenplay that favors thought over action, thoughtful incident over full-blown episode.
  17. Battle in Heaven
    Working again with Diego Martínez Vignatti, the cinematographer for "Japón," the director doesn't just seize our attention; he commands it - forcing us into a world of terror and beauty.
  18. Tsotsi
    To his credit, Mr. Hood's meditation on truth and reconciliation doesn't traffic in the cheap thrills of art-house exploitation, like "City of God"; he wrings tears with sincerity, not cynicism.
  19. Unknown White Male
    Crammed with friendly, sympathetic talking heads and pretty images of a stunned-looking Mr. Bruce, then 35, relearning life (he remembers how to walk but forgot family and friends), the film comes up frustratingly short when it comes to the particulars.
  20. Forgiving Dr. Mengele
    For a film about death-camp survivors Forgiving Dr. Mengele is surprisingly uplifting and, at times, even lighthearted.
  21. The Fallen
    Directed by Ari Taub with a naturalistic style and a nonpartisan eye, The Fallen finds its humanity in the dailiness of a soldier's life, in the long stretches of nothing, where tensions swell and the killing of a deer can spark a mutiny.
  22. The Shaggy Dog
    Ms. Curtin is one of several examples of quirky casting that make this Shaggy Dog much more fun than it might have been.
  23. Shakespeare Behind Bars
    The filmmakers, Hank Rogerson and Jilann Spitzmiller, encourage us to marvel at the transformative power of art. In Shakespeare Behind Bars, the most restricted people in society find freedom in performance and release in words.
  24. Thank You for Smoking
    Glibly funny and eager to please.
  25. Don't Come Knocking
    Filled with haunting visual panoramas. One of the most resonant is a nighttime shot of the Elko skyline dominated by a glittering casino. Evoking a once and future gold rush, it says more about the Old West and the New West than all of Mr. Shepard's elliptical, stagy dialogue can muster. Such powerful images make Don't Come Knocking well worth contemplating.
  26. The Devil's Miner
    A brave, sincere film that leaves you wishing that more light had been shed on the darkness.
  27. The Big Question
    The overall effect, especially given the gorgeous setting and liquid-gold cinematography, is less a discussion of the divine than a commercial for it.
  28. Puzzlehead
    Puzzlehead reveals the selfishness of creation with style, originality and the understanding that even a tin man can have a heart.
  29. Mardi Gras: Made in China
    With any luck, this film will manage to open a few closed eyes (or minds).
  30. The Lady in Question Is Charles Busch
    Living proof that hard work and dedication can lead to professional and private gratification through the best and worst of times, Mr. Busch stands as solid source material for a film and for general inspiration.
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