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. Father of Invention
    The screenplay, by Mr. Cooper and Jonathan D. Krane, is so sketchy that it feels like a hastily executed first draft.
  2. The Thing
    This debut feature from Matthijs van Heijningen is as stiff as the Antarctic tundra. Where the earlier film pulsed with precisely calibrated paranoia and distinctly drawn characters, this inarticulate replay unfolds as mechanistically as a video game.
  3. The Big Year
    Like birding itself, The Big Year rewards patience. It respects both the integrity and the eccentricity of the avian obsession, and it communicates something of the fascinating abundance and weirdness of the animals themselves.
  4. Footloose
    Somehow Footloose never finds its rhythm. The maudlin scenes drag on, and the livelier moments pass by too quickly. It only works when it settles down and lets the characters (and the audience) hang out and have a little fun.
  5. The Skin I Live In
    There are several genres nimbly folded into The Skin I Live In, which might also be described as an existential mystery, a melodramatic thriller, a medical horror film or just a polymorphous extravaganza. In other words, it's an Almodóvar movie with all the attendant gifts that implies: lapidary technique, calculated perversity, intelligent wit.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    To Be Heard
    Check your cynicism at the ticket booth. To Be Heard is one of the best documentaries of the year.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Sons of Tennessee Williams
    As the film cuts back and forth between the present day and a historical survey of gay culture, its tone wavers between dutifully somber and irrepressibly funny.
  8. Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone
    Today Mr. Fisher and Mr. Moore are all who remain of the original lineup, enduring a punishing touring schedule in 500-seat clubs. But the group's influence - attested to by members of No Doubt, the Peppers and Jane's Addiction, among many others - is indisputable.
  9. Blackthorn
    The movie plods along self-consciously, and when the big twist occurs (you'll most likely see it coming), it complicates the plot, but not Butch, who remains a paragon. That's the problem with Blackthorn: it goes all mushy when contemplating its grizzled, out-of-time hero.
  10. 1911
    What should be rousing stuff - a republic is born! the chains of feudalism thrown off! - remains a kind of lavishly illustrated history lesson. Even the irrepressible Mr. Chan (this is his 100th film) seems subdued.
  11. The Way
    The beauty of the movie, in fact, is that Mr. Estevez does not make explicit what any of them find, beyond friendship. He lets these four fine actors convey that true personal transformations are not announced with fanfare, but happen internally.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Nine Muses
    At once austere and conceptually overwrought, The Nine Muses is both too much and not enough.
  13. The Woman on the 6th Floor
    Lighter than a meringue and as insubstantial, the French boulevard comedy The Women on the 6th Floor was designed for the gentle laughter it easily earns.
  14. The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence)
    In place of novelty we have dank interiors (shades of "Saw") and black-and-white photography (à la "Eraserhead"). Still missing is that lingering subtext, leaving only a lurid, splattery wallow in grime, blood and excrement.
  15. Dirty Girl
    Deep down, though, this movie by the first-time writer-director Abe Sylvia is desperate for approval. Starting out with a blast of profanity and sexual brazenness, it lands in a zone of earnest, sloppy weepiness.
  16. Real Steel
    An underdog drama with clanging metal-on-metal action, Real Steel feels scientifically programmed to claw at your heart while its battling robots, which have a semblance of human personality, drum up your adrenaline. That said, I'm not sure that the movie itself has more than a semblance of a heart.
  17. The Ides of March
    Somehow, the film is missing both adrenaline and gravity, notwithstanding some frantic early moments and a late swerve toward tragedy. It makes its points carefully and unimpeachably but does not bring much in the way of insight or risk.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Courageous
    For now, though, Mr. Kendrick will have to settle for being a good enough filmmaker, content to preach to the choir.
  19. Dream House
    This crackpot thriller from the usually competent Jim Sheridan leaves only one mystery unsolved: what on earth was he thinking?
  20. Surrogate Valentine
    But the story never asserts itself in any dramatic or comedic or even home-movie fashion. It turns on whether the dopey actor can coax the quiet musician out of his shell (not much) and if the quiet musician can connect with his high school crush (I'll say no more, as that's the only suspense).
  21. American Teacher
    American Teacher doesn't come close to doing what it sets out to do, but it does end up as a heartfelt, bittersweet portrait of several teachers.
  22. Bunraku
    Everything feels secondhand in Guy Moshe's Bunraku, a potpourri of genres that ends up a morass of clichés.
  23. Tucker & Dale vs Evil
    The impalement is a nice touch. The death by wood chipper, pretty sweet. But the best bit of comedy in the ridiculously gory Tucker and Dale vs. Evil eviscerates the field of psychology with no bloodshed at all.
  24. Benda Bilili!
    Benda Bilili! is brutally real, a document of willpower that shows not only the magic of transcendence - which may be fleeting - but also the transformation of aspiring to it, every struggling step of the way.
  25. Sarah Palin: You Betcha!
    It feels warmed over, devoid of urgency and, in spite of Mr. Broomfield's on-camera displays of doggedness, lacking in curiosity.
  26. My Joy
    The world of My Joy is grim, though the experience of watching it and piecing together its fragmented story strands is anything but. It's suspenseful, mysterious, at times bitterly funny, consistently moving and filled with images of a Russia haunted both by ghosts and the living dead.
  27. Margaret
    To watch the long, painful last hour of this movie is to watch all of his good ideas and smart impulses collapse into a heap of half-written, awkwardly acted, increasingly frantic scenes.
  28. What's Your Number?
    If nothing else the ramshackle, scatterbrained rom-com What's Your Number? confirms the arrival, heralded by "Bridesmaids," of a new subgenre, the smutty chick flick, into the Hollywood mainstream.
  29. Take Shelter
    It is a quiet, relentless exploration of the latent (and not so latent) terrors that bedevil contemporary American life, a horror movie that will trouble your sleep not with visions of monsters but with a more familiar dread.
  30. 50/50
    A feel-good and slightly bad comedy-drama about a young man's fight against cancer, aims to put a tear in your eye and a sob in your throat, if not for long.
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