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. Promised Sky
    There is much to be said for [Sehiri's] unsensationalistic approach, and for its specificity of detail, even if splitting the narrative three ways means that each of these stories feels shortchanged.
  2. Act of Violence
    Technically "Act of Violence" touches all the bases in its circuit chase. But it is as though it were doing it on the strength of a long, foul ball.
  3. Edge of Darkness
    Edge of Darkness is reasonably well executed, but its competence reeks of fatigue. Another dead kid. Another angry dad. Another day at the office.
  4. Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief
    For all the earth shaking that goes on, “Percy Jackson” is agreeably tame and unthreatening.
  5. The Lovely Bones
    The filmmakers’ evident affection for the book expresses itself as a desperate scramble to include as much of it as possible, which leaves the movie feeling both overcrowded and thin.
  6. The Blind Side
    The film, not unsurprisingly for a holiday- (and football-) season release from a major Hollywood studio, plays this story straight down the middle, shedding nuance and complication in favor of maximum uplift.
  7. The Princess and the Frog
    It’s not easy being green. But to judge from how this hand-drawn movie addresses, or rather strenuously avoids, race, it is a lot more difficult to be black.
  8. Inglourious Basterds
    Mostly, though, there is Landa, whose unctuous charm, beautifully modulated by Mr. Waltz, gives this unwieldy, dragging movie a much-needed periodic jolt.
  9. Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel
    The earlier “Alvin” movie made more than $217 million just in the United States. It’s hard to imagine this somewhat confused sequel doing as well.
  10. Ninja Assassin
    This saga, set in Berlin, is more committed to its bloodletting than to any of its characters.
  11. 44 Inch Chest
    Think of 44 Inch Chest as a piece of chamber music and you can compensate for the thinness of its story and the lack of visual distinction.
  12. Zombieland
    A minor diversion dripping in splatter and groaning with self-amusement.
  13. The Invention of Lying
    While the movie is a conceptual pip filled with quotable laughs and gentle pokes at religious faith at its most literal, it also looks so shoddy that you yearn for the camerawork, lighting and polish of his shows.
  14. Paranormal Activity
    A crudely made, half-clever little frightener that has become something of a pop-culture sensation and most certainly the movie marketing story of the year.
  15. The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day
    Like its predecessor, All Saints Day will, if nothing else, be a cult item for Roman Catholic schoolboys; the next sequel, blatantly set up, should arrive no later than 2019.
  16. AVPR: Aliens vs Predator - Requiem
    It may not be classic sci-fi like the original “Alien,” which it has in its DNA, but it’s a perfectly respectable next step in the series.
  17. The Box
    Sincere and sinister and inevitably ambitious, a serious work that insists on its own seriousness even when it edges toward the preposterous.
  18. Love Happens
    The vital signs in Love Happens, a movie that feels likes a laboriously padded outline, are faint.
  19. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
    The man (Bay) just wears you out and wears you down, so much so that it’s easy to pretend that you’re not ingesting 2 hours and 30 minutes of warmongering along with all that dumb fun.
  20. Crash
    So what kind of a movie is Crash? A frustrating movie: full of heart and devoid of life; crudely manipulative when it tries hardest to be subtle; and profoundly complacent in spite of its intention to unsettle and disturb.
  21. Astro Boy
    And so he zips and zags, keeping aloft in a movie that can’t always do the same.
  22. The Devil's Rejects
    The Devil's Rejects is a trompe l'oeil experiment in deliberately retro filmmaking. It looks sensational, but there is a curious emptiness at its core.
  23. Blood Diamond
    While Mr. DiCaprio turns out to be an ideal fit for Blood Diamond, there's an insolvable disconnect between this serious story and the frivolous way it has been told. There is no reason to doubt the filmmakers' sincerity; only their filmmaking.
  24. Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant
    This movie incites curiosity tinged with confusion and irritation. It bristles with interesting ideas — about friendship and freakishness, honesty and anger — and intriguing characters, all of which may blossom in later episodes.
  25. The Brothers Bloom
    As much as you admire the stagecraft and the technical skills on display, when all is said and done, that's all it is: a fancy, not-quite-two-hour stunt.
  26. Revolutionary Road
    "Revolutionary Road" is the kind of great novel that Hollywood tends to botch, because much of it takes place inside the heads of its characters, and because the Wheelers aren't especially likeable and because pessimism without obvious redemption is a tough sell.
  27. AVP: Alien vs. Predator
    Between the Predators' dripping their glow-in-the-dark green blood and the Aliens' getting their rubber cement mucous all over everything, this is certainly a very sticky movie, though not, ultimately, a very frightening or commanding one.
  28. Oldboy
    Entertaining to watch - notwithstanding the scene in which Dae-su eats a live animal - which is a good thing, because there is not much to think about here, outside of the choreographed mayhem.
  29. Departures
    Overlong, predictable in its plotting and utterly banal in its blending of comic whimsy and melodramatic pathos.
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