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. Reel Injun
    Absorbing and amusing for as long as it looks back at those Hollywood westerns, recounting their sins against American Indians.
  2. The Nature of Existence
    His film is no more profound than its forerunners, but it’s quicker, funnier and less pretentious.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. [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.
  7. Countdown to Zero
    Paying to see Countdown to Zero is like tipping a fortuneteller to predict the manner of your death.
  8. 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.
  9. 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.
  10. 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.
  11. 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.
  12. 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.
  13. 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.
  14. 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.
  15. 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.
  16. Salt of This Sea
    A sad and engrossing look at a haunted landscape.
  17. 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.
  18. Lottery Ticket
    The prevailing presence in this crowd-pleaser is Ice Cube, whose evolution from hip-hop threat to screen paterfamilias is now complete.
  19. Centurion
    The real message: Life's ultimate pleasure lies in extreme fighting - to the death.
  20. 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.
  21. 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.
  22. 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.
  23. 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.
  24. Lovely, Still
    It's beautifully played and will hit home with anyone who has had to struggle with the most difficult aspects of aging.
  25. 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.
  26. 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.
  27. Monsters
    Monsters effortlessly compels. The ending may be pure sci-fi schmaltz, but it's schmaltz that this viewer, at least, could believe in.
  28. 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.
  29. 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.
  30. The Debt
    As The Debt grows more complex and suspenseful, it also becomes more literal, losing some of its dramatic intensity.
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