The New York Times' Scores

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For 20,324 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: 9,408 out of 20324
  2. Mixed: 8,449 out of 20324
  3. Negative: 2,467 out of 20324
20324 movie reviews
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  1. Pitch Black
    Shrewdly taps into the lurking primal terrors of anyone who ever had to sleep with a night light.
  2. The Scandal
    Given that Untold Scandal is, like its predecessor, an epic story of spreading displeasure, the director's ability to keep it from feeling petty is a major feat.
  3. Casino
    Of all the bravura visual effects in Martin Scorsese's dazzingly stylish Casino, it's a glimpse of ordinary people that delivers the greatest jolt.
  4. Bring It On
    It is Ms. Dunst who carries the movie and unifies its disparate elements. She's a terrific comic actress.
  5. Shrek 2
    Certainly Shrek 2 offers rambunctious fun, but there is also something dishonest about its blending of mockery and sentimentality. It lacks both the courage to be truly ugly and the heart to be genuinely beautiful.
  6. The Terminal
    Rarely have I been so acutely aware of a movie's softness and sentimentality, and rarely have I minded less. Some of the credit surely goes to Mr. Hanks...His performance is so easy and amiable that its nuances emerge only in retrospect.
  7. Behind Enemy Lines
    As intense an immersion in military ambience as a Hollywood movie could hope to provide in just over 90 minutes.
  8. The Others
    The icy reserve that sometimes stands in the way of Kidman's expressive gifts here becomes the foundation of her most emotionally layered performance to date.
  9. Dolls
    With some staggeringly beautiful photography of cherry blossoms and scarlet autumn leaves, Dolls is so enthralled with its own cinematography that it can't bear to edit itself, and during the autumn and winter segments of the bound beggars' journey, it almost reaches a standstill.
  10. Fahrenheit 9/11
    While Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 will be properly debated on the basis of its factual claims and cinematic techniques, it should first of all be appreciated as a high-spirited and unruly exercise in democratic self-expression.
  11. Saints and Soldiers
    Thanks to an impressive cast of largely unknown actors, this small-scale, meticulously researched film tells its story with quiet conviction.
  12. American Pimp
    What we are left with is a mildly entertaining "man on the street" gloss, seasoned with fragments from blaxploitation movies and music by Isaac Hayes, Marvin Gaye and others.
  13. The Keys to the House
    The kind of quietly unassuming tear-jerker that works its way into your heart despite the occasional cries of protest emanating from your head.
  14. Così ridevano
    The movie is powerfully acted. Mr. Lo Verso's passionate, fiery-eyed Giovanni is an incandescent star turn by an actor with world class charisma.
  15. The Merchant of Venice
    Btter-than-average screen Shakespeare: intelligent without being showily clever, and motivated more by genuine fascination with the play's language and ideas than by a desire to cannibalize its author's cultural prestige.
  16. Meet the Parents
    This is a high-concept comedy, and none of the jokes are forced, which makes Meet the Parents a singular achievement.
  17. Hero
    Filled with meticulous set pieces, including a showdown between Snow and Moon set among swirls of golden-yellow leaves, Hero is easy on the eyes, but it's too segmented to gather much momentum and too art-directed to convey much urgency.
  18. Ella Enchanted
    The messages blend seamlessly into the fantasy and comedy in what is surely one of the best films for older children in quite some time.
  19. Infernal Affairs
    The sophistication of the stylized minimalism here in Infernal Affairs is dazzling.
  20. Kill Bill: Vol. 1
    Mr. Tarantino is an irrepressible showoff, recklessly flaunting his formal skills as a choreographer of high-concept violence, but he is also an unabashed cinephile, and the sincerity of his enthusiasm gives this messy, uneven spectacle an odd, feverish integrity.
  21. The Lizzie McGuire Movie
    The picture unfolds as a light romantic comedy that adults will probably find familiar but tolerable, while their age-appropriate offspring will be transported to new heights of cinematic enchantment.
  22. Baadasssss!
    Mario Van Peebles, of course, inhabits a very different world from that of his father: a world that his father, in some small way, helped to create. It is his awareness of this paradox, of the progressive import of his father's film and of the repressive import of his father's personality, that informs this modest but interesting work.
  23. Camp
    A crude but irresistibly effervescent movie cut from the same sequined cloth as "Fame," Camp couldn't be better timed to ride the coattails of "Chicago" to cult popularity.
  24. Coffee and Cigarettes
    The implication that beauty and meaning can be found in odd places at unlikely, idle moments resonates through this lovely film.
  25. Elf
    A charming, silly family Christmas movie more likely to spread real joy than migraine, indigestion and sugar shock. The movie succeeds because it at once restrains its sticky, gooey good cheer and wildly overdoes it.
  26. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
    The ultimate touch of ghoulish humor is when we see the bomb actually going off, dropped on some point in Russia, and a jazzy sound track comes in with a cheerful melodic rendition of "We'll Meet Again Some Sunny Day." Somehow, to me, it isn't funny. It is malefic and sick.
  27. In Good Company
    In Good Company lacks both the emotional sting and the bright pop-culture snap of "About a Boy," as well as Mr. Hornby's carefully cultivated irony, but it makes for an agreeable solo directing debut.
  28. Mean Girls
    The director, Mark Waters, working with a smart casting team, has assembled a superb group of players. Scene by scene you can't help being impressed by Mean Girls; it's like a group of sketches linked by a theme, with some playing much better than others.
  29. Osmosis Jones
    Often very smart about being silly.
  30. Ray
    While not a great movie, is a very good movie about greatness, in which celebrating the achievement of one major artist becomes the occasion for the emergence of another.
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