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. Nearly every time Mr. Jordan, working from a script by Mr. Ellis and Nicholas Jarecki, tries for similar effects, he goes badly awry, so that you snicker when the movie is trying to be poignant and groan when it aims to make a joke.
  2. The movie’s most disturbing aspect, of which the filmmakers could not have been unaware, is the physical resemblance between Mr. Elba and Ms. Larter to O. J. and Nicole Brown Simpson. It lends Obsessed a distasteful taint of exploitation.
  3. Not everything that happens in Fighting entirely makes sense -- it’s a fable, after all, and a fable doesn't necessarily have to -- but it breathes with a rough, exuberant realism that you rarely see in movies of its kind.
  4. As operatic cinema, it ranks alongside the best of Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola.
  5. The film is imperfect, periodically if unsurprisingly sentimental, overly tidy and often very moving.
  6. The gentle, upbeat documentary Throw Down Your Heart chronicles the African pilgrimage of the American banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck in search of the origins of his chosen instrument.
  7. Mr. Toback's film, partly because it restricts itself to Mr. Tyson's point of view, offers a rare and vivid study in the complexity of a single suffering, raging soul. It is not an entirely trustworthy movie, but it does feel profoundly honest.
  8. The film dithers along with Leonardo, whose self-involved tedium -- and the movie's -- is occasionally interrupted by fantasy sequences.
  9. This is nature defanged and declawed for kiddie consumption, so the emphasis is on awwww-filled moments.
  10. The problem is that while the children are lovely because they are children, there is nothing inherently interesting about them or their lives.
  11. A superficially clever, self-important and finally incoherent thriller.
  12. The director, Burr Steers, whose other credits include “Igby Goes Down” and stints directing TV shows, keeps people and things moving fast enough so that you don’t have time to worry about the details, like the inanity of the story.
  13. The movie's staunchly liberal point of view extends to the 2000 presidential election, which is shown unfolding in the background. Al Gore's concession speech is used to suggest that the systemic racism in Melody is a symptom of a broader climate of injustice.
  14. Boorish, bigoted and borderline pornographic.
  15. The premise of Every Little Step is no less inspired for seeming so simple and obvious, and it pays tribute to the durability and continued relevance of “A Chorus Line,” which first opened in New York in 1975, before many of the performers in the movie were born.
  16. What balances the movie is Mr. Caine's exceptional portrayal of old age as the accumulation of a lifetime's experience. In his performance the child, the youthful rogue and the forgetful codger all live at once.
  17. A wrenching, richly layered feminist allegory as well as a geopolitical one.
  18. The plot of Sleep Dealer is a bit thin, and the performances are earnest and dutiful. But there is sufficient ingenuity in the film’s main ideas to hold your attention, and the political implications of the allegorical story are at once obvious and subtle.
  19. Mr. Reiner and Mr. Kudlow may not quite merit full-metal glory, but they don't deserve oblivion either, and Anvil! The Story of Anvil makes both a case and a place for their band.
  20. May or may not appeal to fans of the Japanese fantasy franchise it is based on, but aficionados of apocalyptic teenybopper kung fu extravaganzas are in for a real treat.
  21. It's just as awesome as the tv show only bigger and prettier.
  22. A clumsy and confused adaptation of Michael Chabon's 1988 novel.
  23. If you thought Abu Ghraib was a laugh riot then you might love Observe and Report, a potentially brilliant conceptual comedy that fizzles because its writer and director, Jody Hill, doesn't have the guts to go with his spleen.
  24. Despite such floundering, Lymelife keeps you hooked, mostly through Mr. Hutton, Mr. Baldwin and Kieran Culkin as Scott's older brother, Jimmy.
  25. Somehow the story of a young man's coming of age never gets old, at least when it is told with the kind of sweetness and intelligence Adventureland displays.
  26. It is both sad and hopeful, but the film's sorrow and its optimism arise from its rarest and most thrilling quality, which is its deep and humane honesty.
  27. A charmingly sentimental but ultimately pointless hommage to the sci-fi classics of yesteryear, Alien Trespass proves only that while styles and technology have moved on, the affection for corn is everlasting.
  28. The movie imprisons its talented cast (including Alia Shawkat as Danny’s overlooked soul mate and Brandon Hardesty as his worldly best friend) in roles that leave little room for anything but caricature.
  29. Shapes a standard prison-break drama into a metaphysical study of freedom and reparation.
  30. Inoffensive if uninspired.

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