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. Passion Play
    You might reasonably assume that any movie starring Mr. Rourke and Mr. Murray would have to have something to recommend it. But aside from a haunting musical interlude, in which Mr. Rourke, with pathetic ineptitude, mimes playing a trumpet, Passion Play is barely palatable.
  2. Octubre
    With a visual style and a deadpan humor that owes an obvious debt to the Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki ("Drifting Clouds"), they hold their shots long enough for you to scan details, look deep into faces and think on how little (or much) it takes to be happy. Here a painted Jesus hovers on a chipped wall, but it's an unholy family of three that finds heaven on earth.
  3. Jumping the Broom
    Instead of being a wild mixture of tones, it has very little tone at all, and moments of dramatic or comic intensity erupt awkwardly and then fizzle out.
  4. Harvest
    During this meticulously written and exquisitely acted film, you come to sense the bonds and the wounds binding three generations of Monopolis, who definitely love one another, but with reservations.
  5. The Beaver
    Nasty, brutish and as cuddly as a crusty old sock fished out of a sewer, the beaver or the beav, as I like to think of him, owns the film.
  6. Something Borrowed
    The most dispiriting thing about Something Borrowed is that with a little more art, craft and wit it could have been a lot better, maybe even good.
  7. Thor
    The absolute and unbroken mediocrity of Thor is evidence of its success. This movie is not distinctively bad, it is axiomatically bad. And THAT is depressing. A howling turkey is at least something to laugh at, and maybe even something to see. But Thor is an example of the programmed triumph of commercial calculation over imagination.
  8. Red White & Blue
    Red White & Blue proves the director a bona fide storyteller with more tools in his arsenal than shock and awe.
  9. Hoodwinked Too! Hood VS. Evil
    While it seems there's no getting away from this marketing aesthetic, the resemblance at times to a video game is far, far too acute.
  10. We Go Way Back
    More successful at conjuring atmosphere than at plot, We Go Way Back is nicely acted but frustratingly slight.
  11. Prom
    There are new tweeners every year. To them, the characters and plot devices in this perfectly competent film might well seem fresh.
  12. That's What I Am
    Mr. Harris's depiction of a saintly, soft-spoken, bow-tie-wearing middle-school teacher lends the movie a moral weight it probably couldn't have summoned had another actor played the role.
  13. Earthwork
    Imagine spending an afternoon watching a bunch of vagrants putter around on an abandoned city lot, and you've pretty much nailed the viewing experience of Earthwork, a painfully dull account of a year in the life of the Kansas crop artist Stan Herd.
  14. Exporting Raymond
    It has the structure and some of the pleasures of a well-made sitcom or docu-reality show, despite the nervous-looking, unhappy guy at its center; it could have been called "Nobody Understands Phil."
    • 28 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Atlas Shrugged: Part I
    The resulting film, directed by Paul Johansson, feels rushed, amateurish and clumsy. It's not just the ideologies that feel oddly out of step with the present day, but the clothes, hairstyles and interiors.
  16. Sympathy for Delicious
    These characters may serve an obscure metaphorical agenda, but they make no psychological sense. And as the movie contemplates the rewards and perils of giving and receiving, it winds itself into stomach-turning knots.
  17. The Robber
    The Robber may have less on its mind than its sheen of seriousness would suggest, but the view is gorgeous.
  18. Lebanon, Pa.
    If Lebanon, Pa. is a tidy little indie with steady acting, it is too politically self-aware to transcend its well-mannered sense of fairness. But the performances by Ms. Kitson and Ms. Hurt give it spritzes of energy.
  19. 13 Assassins
    A stirring, unexpectedly moving story of love and blood.
  20. Fast Five
    In a free-for-all like this, where the laws of gravity and dictates of narrative logic are left to eat dust, it doesn't matter when anything takes place or why.
  21. Cave of Forgotten Dreams
    The 3-D is sometimes less than transporting, and the chanting voices in the composer Ernst Reijseger's new-agey score tended to remind me of my last spa massage. Yet what a small price to pay for such time traveling!
  22. The Arbor
    Like a Ken Loach drama stripped to bare bones, The Arbor springs to life in the bright bitterness of Dunbar's prose, showcased in alfresco performances of contentious scenes from the play.
  23. Madea's Big Happy Family
    This time the suds outweigh the humor, and to its credit Mr. Perry's script doesn't duck tragic consequences.
  24. What on Earth?
    It's the film's geometrists who enthrall most, revealing that many of the shapes - one of which famously made the cover of a 1990 Led Zeppelin album - hold entirely new answers to Euclidean problems.
  25. When Harry Tries to Marry
    Producing smarm at the high level of When Harry Met Sally requires special talent, and when you fall short all you're left with is garden-variety smarm.
  26. Stake Land
    This unusually taut sophomore feature from Jim Mickle is more abnormal than most in that its creatures are capable not only of evolving but also of embracing religious fanaticism.
  27. Dumbstruck
    The writer and director, Mark Goffman, sticks to a no-frills style that makes the film feel longer than its 1 hour 24 minutes.
  28. Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen
    It's generally fun to watch Mr. Yen move and not much fun to watch him act, and Legend of the Fist is no exception.
  29. The Bang Bang Club
    Why, then, do we care not one bit when Pulitzers are won and bullets unsuccessfully dodged? The answer lies partly in Mr. Silver's refusal to elucidate the racial politics or engage with the world outside the film's incoherently chaotic bubble.
  30. Beautiful Darling
    Beautiful Darling, James Rasin's touching documentary biography of Candy Darling, the transsexual Andy Warhol "superstar," is a sad, lyrical reflection on the foolish worship of movie stars.
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