The New York Times' Scores

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For 20,335 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: 9,412 out of 20335
  2. Mixed: 8,455 out of 20335
  3. Negative: 2,468 out of 20335
20335 movie reviews
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  1. The Cloud of Unknowing
    It takes skill to drain a perfectly good story like that of all intrigue and momentum, but Richard Sylvarnes, a photographer who directed the movie, manages to pull it off.
  2. The Child I Never Was
    The film is airless and mirthless, but it's hardly worthless; in fact in many ways it's more purposeful than the snuff-film scenes of an average "CSI" episode.
  3. Arna's Children
    Has the makings of a great documentary, but a subject as complex as this demands greater rigor, deeper intelligence and a sense of dialectics.
  4. Freestyle: The Art of Rhyme
    The skills on display in Freestyle are too varied and idiosyncratic for one movie to contain, but this one at least offers a heady, rousing education in an art form that is too often misunderstood.
  5. Alila
    The movie...tries to juggle too many characters at once (its title means "story plot" in Hebrew), and in several cases their connections aren't adequately explained.
  6. Muhammad: The Last Prophet
    In its way, a triumph of globalization, a polished, Western-style entertainment about a distinctly non-Western subject. Its message, like the Abyssinian king's, is finally one of reconciliation: we're not as different as we seem.
  7. Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land
    This one-sided account brings some lesser-known offenses to light and advances a scenario that is bold and detailed. But it is hardly dispassionate.
  8. Daybreak
    If Daybreak weren't so powerfully acted, its accumulating anguish would be too much to bear. As it is, all three couples, especially Knut and Mona, verge on caricature.
  9. Crazy Legs Conti: Zen and the Art of Competitive Eating
    A slight, amusing documentary.
  10. Sheriff
    Sheriff may have a point to make about the impact of family, roots and religion on the changing face of rural America, but the film, while admirably restrained and competently made, is too polite to clarify that.
  11. Santa Santita
    Magdalena relies on the magical-realism aspects of religious devotion, even though it began as a story more firmly, and admirably, rooted in a gritty reality.
  12. After the Apocalypse
    Despite its spasms of brutality and a swerve into the macabre, After the Apocalypse is, by comparison with more recent films of this type (the "Mad Max" series), gentle at heart and terribly sincere.
  13. Eros
    Lovely though it is to look at, it does not reveal very much. Sampling the works of three prominent directors in one sitting may be what gives anthology films like this one their appeal, but the experience is often more frustrating than fulfilling.
  14. Winning Girls Through Psychic Mind Control
    Dan Harnden's screenplay keeps things relatively interesting, despite the very thin plot.
  15. Up for Grabs
    Mr. Wranovics sometimes goes too far in setting up cute situations for filming witnesses' comments.
  16. Doing Time, Doing Vipassana
    As inspiring as it is, Doing Time, Doing Vipassana is too sweet for its own good; it plays like a spiritual infomercial.
  17. Return to the Land of Wonders
    An on-the-fly diary of events and impressions that offers insight into the challenges of extracting democracy from chaos.
  18. Yau doh lung fu bong
    Throwdown milks its emotion from a soap-opera score and the appealingly decadent performances of Mr. Koo and Ms. Ying.
  19. Yat luk che
    Like Giuseppe Tornatore's "Cinema Paradiso," Just One Look is a tribute to the formative power of cinema, a coming-of-age film that nimbly interweaves the adolescent hero's struggles with clips from the movies that shape his romanticized notions of life.
  20. Young Rebels
    Though it could do with fewer talking-head interviews and more extended clips from these impassioned live performances, Young Rebels is essential viewing for anyone interested in rap music, free speech issues or the youth culture of contemporary Cuba.
  21. Hotel de Love
    Hotel de Love, the directing and screenwriting debut of Craig Rosenberg, is like a Valentine's Day box of heart-shaped chocolates that all have the same too-sweet cherry fillings.
  22. Mind Game
    A sometimes enthralling, sometimes exhausting tour de force.
  23. Usher
    But if Usher is stilted, it is also quite touching, and if Mr. Harrington's acting is less than natural, it's completely in line with the standards of the genre. Vincent Price was no Olivier either.
  24. Chain
    For all its bleakness, the movie, filmed in nearly a dozen states and in half a dozen countries, is not without a certain beauty. There is comfort to be found in blandness and homogeneity.
  25. Life, Translated
    Stuffed with plummy English accents and the most inauthentic classroom scenes since those of "Billy Madison," Life, Translated has a childlike innocence that seems targeted toward a preteenage audience.
  26. Derailroaded
    Larry (Wild Man) Fischer, the psychotic songwriter and performer (found to be both paranoid-schizophrenic and bipolar) is sympathetically profiled in Josh Rubin's documentary.
  27. Exist
    Properly speaking, Exist is not a protest film but a protest video - the grass-roots medium of choice - and Ms. Bell makes good use of the technology. Mock interviews reinforce a strong documentary impulse, while digital blurs and layering further distance the material from status quo moviemaking.
  28. Moonlight
    Though rife with topics and images American audiences may find offensive, Moonlight addresses them fearlessly and with some artistry.
  29. The Grace Lee Project
    Although The Grace Lee Project is ostensibly about a name, it's really about cultural assimilation and a stereotype of virtue and subservience that has deep roots on both sides of the Pacific. As oppressive as her name may be, Ms. Lee also knows full well that there are worse fates than being a 16-year-old Harvard freshman.
  30. I Am Taraneh, I Am Fifteen Years Old
    Neither approves of nor condemns the choices made by its headstrong protagonist; rather, it quietly observes her transformation from naïve schoolgirl to wary but proud single mother.
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