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. The Thorn in the Heart
    You might think that the small-scale, straightforward style and intimate connections of The Thorn in the Heart would result in something more emotionally resonant than we’re accustomed to from Mr. Gondry, but you’d be disappointed.
  2. Why Did I Get Married Too?
    Mr. Perry himself plays Terry, the most reserved and mature of the group. At the risk of being condescending, it has to be said that if he had put on his dress and wig and shown up as Madea the movie might have been funnier.
  3. La mission
    The distinguished cinematographer Hiro Narita (“Never Cry Wolf”) captures the hard San Francisco light and the burnished glow of the beautifully painted cars. Unfortunately, this care is lavished on an overwrought, predictable story of an angry ethnic father.
  4. Letters to God
    Mr. Johnson and Ms. Lively are both pretty good, and with a more nuanced approach could have made this a powerful film.
  5. The Cartel
    Purports to be a documentary about the American public school system. In reality, however, it’s a bludgeoning rant against a single state — New Jersey — which it presents as a closed loop of Mercedes-owning administrators, obstructive teachers’ unions and corrupt school boards.
  6. Ramchand Pakistani
    For all the trials its characters endure, you might almost describe Ramchand Pakistani as a happy movie: too happy to be entirely believed.
  7. Mercy
    Had John Cassavetes directed “Love Story,” it might have turned out looking and sounding something like Mercy, a portrait of a sub-Mailer-like literary pugilist and the woman (named Mercy) who wins his heart. Odd as that juxtaposition may seem, it’s not a bad mix.
  8. Iron Man 2
    You’re left wanting more, but not quite the “more” Iron Man 2 works so hard to supply.
  9. Letters to Juliet
    Letters to Juliet represents an interesting paradox: it is a movie that is very nearly perfect without being especially good.
  10. Road, Movie
    Rambles along amiably and predictably enough, stopping now and again to glory in the “magic of cinema.” But the film falters at dramatic moments.
  11. Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll
    Its flashes of style are sometimes lively but more often seem, like the slavish period décor, to be desperate attempts to overcome the built-in inertia of the genre.
  12. Casino Jack and the United States of Money
    A liability of Casino Jack is the relative absence of its subject.
  13. OSS 117 - Lost in Rio
    Mr. Dujardin, a skilled comedian, deftly embodies the spy's combination of cluelessness and condescension, but it's an act that eventually wears thin.
  14. The Living Wake
    Audiences will be either captivated or irritated, depending on their tolerance for high-concept whimsy and high-energy theatrics. By the end of the wake itself, they may be wishing Binew’s illness were running ahead of schedule.
  15. Metropia
    Technically innovative but narratively moribund, Metropia is all stasis and shadows. Perhaps Mr. Saleh could have listened to a lighter voice.
  16. John Rabe
    John Rabe, has its visceral moments. But it is also burdened by manipulative clichés of a screenplay in which exposition outweighs character development. Inspired by Rabe’s diaries, from which short excerpts are read, it tells the story almost exclusively from a Western point of view.
  17. Perrier's Bounty
    A poor man’s “In Bruges” that frantically chases itself in circles.
  18. Princess Kaiulani
    Over all, though, Princess Kaiulani plays like an old-fashioned, stiff but plushly upholstered costume drama, swaddled in gauzy cinematography and swelling strings.
  19. The Sorcerer's Apprentice
    While Mr. Molina and Mr. Cage supply a measure of well-compensated eccentricity, their labors ultimately serve to emphasize the grinding mediocrity of the enterprise.
  20. The Juche Idea
    The Juche Idea is meant to be a comedy, one that cuts two ways: mocking the strictures placed on moviemakers in both Communist and capitalist systems. Viewers who don’t share the radical-nostalgist sensibility of Mr. Finn, who teaches at Emerson College in Boston, may find the humor both too rarefied and too obvious.
  21. Picasso and Braque Go to the Movies
    What holds the film together, more or less, is the steady stream of mostly slapstick clips from early cinema.
  22. Raajneeti
    Raajneeti, with its large cast of characters and wealth of subplots, is often a mess, but an interesting one.
  23. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Undead
    A toothless satire whose targets include vampire mania, low-rent theater, indie romantic comedies, Scorsese, Shakespeare and “Law & Order,” it plays like a Web series expanded to feature length, or an adaptation of one of the Naked Angels’ staged serial soap operas.
  24. Burzynski
    Clogged with court transcripts, medical records and repetitive (if moving) patient testimony, Burzynski tickles the mind only at the cost of trampling the eyes.
  25. Convention
    Some of this is awfully pedestrian, but there are moments of both high comedy and high drama.
  26. Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky
    Never regains that initial blast of energy and the final scenes wobble toward a wishy-washy ending.
  27. Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole
    Legend of the Guardians may be a hoot, but for all its pyrotechnics, it fails to soar.
  28. Never Let Me Go
    Alas, what's missing is the spark of life, the jolt of the unexpected - something beyond tears - to puncture the falseness of a film world, which, by its insistence on its own beauty, obscures the tragedy that the three characters, by their nature, cannot express.
  29. Jack Goes Boating
    As is so often the case in modest, aimless little movies like this one, it is the acting that saves Jack Goes Boating from triviality or worse.
  30. 8: The Mormon Proposition
    The highly emotional documentary is narrated by Dustin Lance Black, the screenwriter for “Milk,” who, like Mr. Cowan, is gay and grew up in a Mormon household.
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