The New York Times' Scores

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:
20335 movie reviews
  1. As is often the case with movies of this type, the real stars are the special-effects team, which does some admirably disgusting work.
  2. Well-researched and generally evenhanded in its delivery of information (Ted Danson provides the narration), the movie more than makes its points without needing to resort to a montage of adorable fish being bashed on the head.
  3. Scary enough to make the faint of heart decide never to venture into the woods or to lie on the grass again without protective covering.
  4. The film's ideas are interesting, but don't feel entirely worked out, and Mr. Rockwell's intriguingly strange performance (or performances) is left suspended, without the context that would give Sam's plight its full emotional and philosophical impact. The smallness of this movie is decidedly a virtue, but also, in the end, something of a limitation.
  5. Time and again the movie stops short before it really gets started, as with the debates over the big business of organic food.
  6. Even at a distance from each other (Washington/Travolta), they conduct a tag-team master class in old-style movie star technique, barreling through every cliché and nugget of corn the script has to offer with verve and conviction. Even when you don't really believe them, they're always a lot of fun to watch.
  7. The movie jolts you with the realization that the AIDS epidemic and the public debate about such issues have retreated so far under the news radar as to be half-forgotten.
  8. Perhaps because the music is so good, with its purity of tone and dazzling rhythmic precision, the flaws of the surrounding movie become all the more obvious.
  9. As with "Youth Without Youth," this new movie feels like a transitional work but also an inspired one, the creation of a director who, having recently turned 70, has set off on a new adventure that requires more from his audiences than some might be willing to give. Which is itself a sign of vigorous artistic renewal.
  10. But true to its title, The Hangover goes down smoothly enough and then kicks you in the head later on, when you start to examine the sources of your laughter.
  11. The mystery of Séraphine de Senlis -- who died in a mental hospital in 1942 and whose work survives in some of the world’s leading museums -- is left intact at the end of Séraphine. Rather than trying to explain Séraphine, the film accepts her.
  12. Does it sound as if I hate this movie? Don't be silly. But don't be fooled. This movie does not like you.
  13. The only marginally interesting, if unsurprising, thing about the pricey movie spinoff of the junky children's television show Land of the Lost is that a lot of money has been spent on yet another cultural throwaway.
  14. Not likely to spur much tourism to Greece. The sights, though impressive, are not photographed interestingly, and the citizens of the host country are less than welcoming.
  15. A nasty exploitation flick tarted up with art-house actors and psychobabble.
  16. It isn't saying much, but at least her (Carey) work here is more substantial than in the catastrophic "Glitter."
  17. The actors in 24 City bring their own existential realities to their short, touching performances. In the end, the deep emotions they stir up -- the actress Lv Liping delivers a harrowing story about a lost child -- constitute another kind of monument to the workers of Factory 420.
  18. Interviews with artists whom they collected testify to their sharp eye and good spirits, while the Vogels themselves, sitting in their same old apartment, overflowing as ever, make for charming company.
  19. The beauty of the landscape and the monk’s sweetness, humility and good humor evoke a plane of existence, at once elevated and austere, that is humbling to contemplate. That said, Unmistaken Child offers no scholarly perspective on Tibetan Buddhism and leaves fundamental questions unanswered.
  20. Up
    Passages of glorious imagination are invariably matched by stock characters and banal story choices.
  21. Drag Me to Hell has a tonic playfulness that’s unabashedly retro, an indulgent return to Mr. Raimi’s goofy, gooey roots.
  22. Overlong, predictable in its plotting and utterly banal in its blending of comic whimsy and melodramatic pathos.
  23. A small Canadian horror film that makes the most of its minuscule budget.
  24. Even when Mr. Coogan can't make his scenes work, his prickly presence keeps you watching, as does the eerie scenes of winter that Mr. Glatzer captures with the camera.
  25. Though not without its charms -- the scenes in Mumbai are comically chaotic -- Offshore might have raised more chuckles when it was made, in 2006, than in the economic chill of 2009. And not only in Michigan.
  26. What is most impressive is the care with which Mr. Chung manages this risky undertaking. He seems to have made this film above all by listening and looking.
  27. Pressure Cooker belongs to the honorable if overpopulated genre of inspirational films (both documentaries and features) dedicated to the proposition that one committed, passionate teacher can make all the difference in the lives of disadvantaged students.
  28. When the turmoil of the last 12 months has receded and the 10th-anniversary deluxe collectors edition comes around, this strange, numb cinematic experience may seem fresh, shocking and poignant rather than merely and depressingly true.
  29. O'Horten is about frustration, patience, kindness and the wildness that lurks in even the calmest hearts. What's odd about that?
  30. In its cold-eyed assessment of the English aristocracy Easy Virtue has none of the lurking Anglophilia found in Merchant-Ivory movies.

Top Trailers