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. Dragon Wars: D-War
    It is such a breathless, delirious stew, it’s impossible not to be entertained, provided -- this is crucial -- you have a sense of humor.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Mr. Woodcock
    It’s “The Great Santini” remade as a sitcom.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Halloween (2007)
    The new Halloween has sympathy for the Devil, but not enough.
  4. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
    Mr. Pitt is himself a supernova luminary, of course, and part of the attraction of this film is how his celebrity feeds into that of his character, adding shadings to what is, finally, an overconceptualized if under-intellectualized endeavor.
  5. The Man of My Life
    The Man of My Life is a sumptuously illustrated but shallow fable of the grass-is-greener conflict between freedom and commitment.
  6. Feel the Noise
    It’s the subtexts -- about minority kinship and Hispanic self-actualization -- that resound. If only its fable (and leading man) didn’t keep getting in the way.
  7. My Kid Could Paint That
    Mr. Bar-Lev has made an excellent documentary, but it would have been better if he had not made it at all.
  8. The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising
    Feels passé and lacks a charismatic lead. Too bad Daniel Radcliffe is an only child.
  9. Rendition
    A well-meaning, honorable movie. Which is not to say that it is a very good one.
  10. Jimmy Carter Man from Plains
    Man From Plains isn’t about engagement; it’s about disengagement from Mr. Carter’s critics and his more provocative beliefs. It’s also about legacy building.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Music Within
    A bad movie with a good heart.
  12. Elizabeth: The Golden Age
    It’s intentionally playful and an inadvertent giggle, an overripe melodrama that’s by turns a bodice-ripper, a cloak-and-dagger thriller and a serious-minded historical drama with dubious contemporary overtones.
  13. Lars and the Real Girl
    It’s part comedy, part tragedy and 100 percent pure calculation, designed to wring fat tears and coax big laughs and leave us drying our damp, smiling faces as we savor the touching vision of American magnanimity. It holds a flattering mirror up to us that erases every distortion.
  14. We Own the Night
    The problem with We Own the Night is that it mistakes sentiment for profundity, and takes its ideas about character and fate more seriously than it takes its characters and their particular fates. “I feel light as a feather,” Bobby says in a crucial scene, at which point the movie starts to sink like a stone.
  15. Fred Claus
    Neither here nor there, the film is “Elf” without the goofy jokes, Will Ferrell or heart, “Bad Santa” without the smut, Billy Bob Thornton or spleen.
  16. Lions for Lambs
    It tells us everything most of us know already, including the fact that politicians lie, journalists fail and youth flounders. Mostly it tells us that Mr. Redford feels really bad about the state of things. Welcome to the club.
  17. Saw IV
    Saw IV is bloody proof that Jigsaw may be dead, but his well of corporeal abuses has yet to run dry.
  18. Slipstream
    For an actor like Mr. Hopkins, disappearing into another character, especially a historical figure, must be a far more unsettling deconstruction of reality than for the casual moviegoer observing the transformation. That is a notion Slipstream might have explored more fruitfully, had it focused its wandering attention span, kept its camera steadier and figured out what it wanted to say.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    King Corn
    Mr. Cheney and Mr. Ellis are so pleasantly nondescript that they make no particular impression. As a result, all the time spent on autobiographical detail and personal banter hampers the film’s urgency, and plays like an awkward attempt to justify a format that the filmmakers are too self-effacing to exploit.
  20. Beowulf
    The 3-D is necessary to the film only in so far as it keeps your eyes engaged when your mind starts to wander. Stripped of much of the original poem’s language, its cadences, deep history and context, this film version of Beowulf doesn’t offer much beyond 3-D oohs and ahs, sword clanging and a nicely conceived dragon, which probably explains why Mr. Zemeckis and his collaborators have tried to sex it up with Ms. Jolie, among other comic-book flourishes.
  21. The Mist
    Until the director Frank Darabont decides that he’s saying something important instead of making a nifty horror movie, The Mist isn’t half bad.
  22. Teeth
    Teenage horror-movie spoof, John Waters parody, No Nukes protest movie, twisted sex-education film, quasi-feminist fable, outrageous stunt: Mitchell Lichtenstein’s clever, crude comedy, Teeth, is all these and more.
  23. Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium
    If the concept is ingenious, its execution is erratic.
  24. Elegy
    The problem with Elegy has nothing to do with faithfulness and everything to do with interpretation. The film is an overly polite take on a spiky, claustrophobic, insistently impolite novel.
  25. The Golden Compass
    Has many of the virtues of a faithful screen adaptation and many of the predictable flaws.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Revolver
    By turns clever, impassioned, incoherent and silly.
  27. The Walker
    By the end of The Walker a movie that begins as a dazzling round of charades has deteriorated into a plodding game of Clue.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Look
    An unsettling, rudely funny but not entirely credible feature.
  29. The Bucket List
    Fails its stars in fundamental ways. Mr. Nicholson has played wealthy rogues before (most recently in “Something’s Gotta Give”), but this particular bon vivant is unsalvageably repellent.
  30. The Killing of John Lennon
    Shot in a quasi-documentary style at the actual locations where the events took place, including the sidewalk outside the Dakota, the movie is extremely uncomfortable to watch.
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