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. Unaccompanied Minors
    Not for the faint of heart, the movie is unsettling and startlingly true to life. At least that’s how it seemed to me. To the minors I happened to be accompanying, it seemed to be reasonably good fun.
  2. Danielson: A Family Movie (or, Make a Joyful Noise Here)
    This being a film review, the relevant question is whether J L Aronson's documentary about Danielson is worth watching. The answer, for about two-thirds of it, is yes. Though ultimately, alas, the movie has a little too much Danielson in it.
  3. Miss Potter
    This much sweetness and light in a movie is all very well. But there's a reason that recipes for cake and cookies call for a pinch of salt. In Miss Potter, there is only a grain or two -- not enough to dilute the sugary overload. The film is the cinematic equivalent of a delicate English tea cake whose substance is buried under too many layers of icing.
  4. Code Name: The Cleaner
    Cedric the Entertainer's artless performance deadens what could have been a much funnier comedy.
  5. The Flying Scotsman
    A conventional underdog sports movie that should have been much more gripping.
  6. Alpha Dog
    The cretins rule in Alpha Dog, which has much the same entertainment value you get from watching monkeys fling scat at one another in a zoo or reading the latest issue of Star magazine. Of course a little of that nasty stuff may land on you, but such are the perils of voyeurism.
  7. Stomp the Yard
    A strange and at times strangely compelling mix of black fraternity recruitment video and inspirational tale about a hip-hop boy in a stepping world.
  8. Making Grace
    A small, intimate documentary that patiently observes the highs and lows of a 30-something couple who want to become parents. That the couple are lesbians is perhaps the most remarkable feature of an unremarkable film.
  9. Seraphim Falls
    Archetypes and symbols solemnly parade through Seraphim Falls, a handsome, old-fashioned western of few words and heavy meanings that unfolds with the sanctimonious grandeur of a biblical allegory.
  10. Because I Said So
    A mild exercise in deliberate mediocrity, with chuckles and heartwarming moments distributed as carefully as nuts in a factory-made brownie. The movie's lack of ambition is hardly surprising, but both Ms. Moore and Ms. Keaton, who can wring flustered comedy out of the mildest provocation, deserve better.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Messengers
    Like too many horror pictures, The Messengers becomes more boringly prosaic as it goes along, and there's an 11th-hour plot twist so dumb and poorly articulated that it destroys the movie. That's a shame, because shot for shot, the Pangs might be the most terrifying filmmakers alive.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Daddy's Little Girls
    As a director, Mr. Perry has his strong points, including a genuine interest in showing the resilience of African-American life and traditions (including church sermons and blues music, which are accorded equal significance here). But those aspects get lost in this turgid and ungainly film.
  13. Gray Matters
    Compared to Gray Matters, even a Nora Ephron bonbon has the weight of urban neo-realism.
  14. Black Snake Moan
    In spite of Amelia Vincent's toothsome cinematography and the down-home locations, the movie often has the lumbering, literal-minded rhythms of a second-rate stage play -- not a moan or a howl, but a slow, anxious groan.
  15. Maxed Out: Hard Times, Easy Credit and the Era of Predatory Lenders
    Although Maxed Out would like to be this year’s "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room," it doesn’t measure up. "Enron" was a stronger film because its focus was specific, the personalities under its microscope were outsize, and its story had a beginning, middle and end. Maxed Out, which has no narrator, gathers facts, opinions and impressions and tosses them into a blender. And its story is still unfinished.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Adam's Apples
    Smart-aleck comedy and spirituality aren't incompatible, but in Adam's Apples they cancel each other out.
  17. The Last Mimzy
    Despite leaden direction and a story crammed with pseudoscientific flotsam -- including palm reading, levitation, time travel and telepathy -- The Last Mimzy is a wholesome, eager entertainment that doesn't talk down.
  18. Reign Over Me
    Reign Over Me uses the rhythms and moods of comedy to explore, and also to contain, overpowering feelings of loss, anger and hurt. And like that earlier movie ("The Upside of Anger"), this one is maddeningly uneven.
  19. Cobra Verde
    Connoisseurs of craziness need wait no longer. Cobra Verde opens today in all its feral, baffling glory. Along with "Aguirre" and "Fitzcarraldo," Cobra Verde completes a trilogy of mayhem and megalomania in hot climates.
  20. The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair
    It is a depressing story, certainly, as well as moving, confusing and, at a fast 72 minutes, at once undercooked and overpadded.
  21. Firehouse Dog
    Working with four interchangeable Deweys, the filmmakers create a sufficient number of lively stunts to keep the kiddies amused, though the film's wittiest moment -- a canine parody of Dudley Moore's first glimpse of Bo Derek in "10" -- will be appreciated only by their parents. In trying to straddle both age groups, however, Firehouse Dog proves decidedly less nimble than its furry star.
  22. Black Book
    Black Book works only if you take it for the pulpiest of fiction, not a historical gloss, its stated claims to "true events" notwithstanding.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis
    Ms. Jordan lets a few subjects contradict the image of Mr. Smith as martyr, but the overall tone is worshipful verging on reductive. You come away impressed by Smith's charisma, versatility and integrity, while also wondering if a man so abrasively self-important could have made such playful art.
  24. Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters
    Strictly for cultists, and even they might find less than 90 bongless minutes hard to sit through.
  25. Lucky You
    Even though it is sometimes dull and generally thin, there is something winning about the movie's genial lack of ambition.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Dreaming Lhasa
    A fine example of how feature films can be used to deliver urgent political messages, but as drama, it doesn’t quite work.
  27. Snow Cake
    Like "I Am Sam," it is a film that tests your cynicism.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Civic Duty
    Initially promising, ultimately irritating psychological thriller.
  29. Georgia Rule
    It's an interesting, maddening mess -- not a terrible movie, and by no means a dull one.
  30. Brooklyn Rules
    However authentic and heartfelt this film's depiction of life on the meaner streets of the Northeast corridor may be, it doesn't begin to match "The Sopranos'" epic vision of violence, class struggle and upward mobility in a barbarous culture.
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