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. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
    There is a plot, but no real intrigue, mystery or suspense, and no inkling of anything at stake beyond a childish and belligerent idea of fun.
  2. The Adventures of Tintin
    Like the screen Tintin, the movie proves less than inviting because it's been so wildly overworked: there is hardly a moment of downtime, a chance to catch your breath or contemplate the tension between the animated Expressionism and the photo-realist flourishes.
  3. Take Me Home Tonight
    What keeps the movie, directed by Michael Dowse, on a more or less even keel is its steady pacing and emotional kinship to John Hughes comedies like "Sixteen Candles" and "The Breakfast Club."
  4. Red Riding Hood
    My, what sharp teeth Ms. Hardwicke doesn't have: working from David Leslie Johnson's screenplay she takes on the story's grown-up themes of sex and death directly but weakly.
  5. Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2: Rodrick Rules
    About the most you can say for it is that it's inoffensive.
  6. Cars 2
    It is not entirely without charm or wit. Directed by John Lasseter (with Brad Lewis credited as co-director) from a script by Ben Queen, Cars 2 lavishes scrupulous imaginative attention on its cosmopolitan settings.
  7. The Sitter
    Some of it, though, is absurdly comic, like the shot of a guy on a Segway that exists for no reason other than that someone here thought the movie could use a small laugh right then. It did. It could use more.
  8. Conan the Barbarian
    Mr. Momoa has some awfully big biceps to fill. He rises to that task with a pumped physique made for ogling. Thankfully, he also shows glints of self-awareness that can make hypermasculine blowouts like these more watchable and were largely missing from Mr. Schwarzenegger's wide-eyed turn in the first "Conan the Barbarian" (1982).
  9. Colombiana
    The overall effect is distancing; there are some early comic moments that have you laughing along with the movie, but eventually the clashing tones and preposterousness just have you laughing.
  10. Drive
    The virtuosity on display is also the director's, of course, and that, for better and for worse, is pretty much the point of Drive, the coolest movie around and therefore the latest proof that cool is never cool enough.
  11. The Ides of March
    Somehow, the film is missing both adrenaline and gravity, notwithstanding some frantic early moments and a late swerve toward tragedy. It makes its points carefully and unimpeachably but does not bring much in the way of insight or risk.
  12. Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked
    No swear words here; just harmless fun.
  13. Footloose
    Somehow Footloose never finds its rhythm. The maudlin scenes drag on, and the livelier moments pass by too quickly. It only works when it settles down and lets the characters (and the audience) hang out and have a little fun.
  14. Happy Feet Two
    An amiable sequel with not much on its mind other than funny and creaky jokes, and waves of understated beauty.
  15. Journey 2: The Mysterious Island
    This kind of movie is all about the special effects. They start out great - cool helicopter crash, very convincing giant lizard - but grow more amateurish as the film goes along, with a flight sequence on giant bees proving particularly clunky.
  16. Straw Dogs
    Mr. Lurie's movie does not quite succeed on its own, though it is pulpy and brutal and at times grotesquely comical. The story does not cohere, and the performances are uneven. But as a piece of film criticism - as a conversation with, and interpretation of, an earlier film - it is intriguing.
  17. The Cabin in the Woods
    Novelty and genre traditionalism often fight to a draw. Too much overt cleverness has a way of spoiling dumb, reliable thrills. And despite the evident ingenuity and strenuous labor that went into it, The Cabin in the Woods does not quite work.
  18. Red State
    For all its boisterous profanity and splattery violence, the film is more of a weary sigh than a sputtering volley of indignation.
  19. Real Steel
    An underdog drama with clanging metal-on-metal action, Real Steel feels scientifically programmed to claw at your heart while its battling robots, which have a semblance of human personality, drum up your adrenaline. That said, I'm not sure that the movie itself has more than a semblance of a heart.
  20. Anonymous
    Anonymous is a vulgar prank on the English literary tradition, a travesty of British history and a brutal insult to the human imagination. Apart from that, it's not bad.
  21. Texas Killing Fields
    Ms. Mann (Michael's daughter) does stage a bracing car chase, and Mr. Morgan makes an impression despite a story that's sometimes hard to follow.
  22. Butter
    Well acted and sporadically amusing - especially when Olivia Wilde's profanity-spewing stripper is around - Butter alternates between looking down its nose at Midwestern passions and cooing over smugly liberal values.
  23. Jeff Who Lives at Home
    The ending is also a test of the audience's openness to the kind of fantasy mocked, at the outset, by everyone in Jeff's life, including the filmmakers. They want to make us believe in something, though it's also possible that they are only fooling.
  24. This Means War
    Perfectly acceptable watched on the back of an airline seat or at home while you're doing housework.
  25. Tower Heist
    Tower Heist could and should have been much more. Mr. Ratner goes for the safe bet and the easy score.
  26. Wanderlust
    For every few jokes that hit in this story about a recession-battered New York couple finding themselves on a Georgia commune, one sputters and dies.
  27. 50/50
    A feel-good and slightly bad comedy-drama about a young man's fight against cancer, aims to put a tear in your eye and a sob in your throat, if not for long.
  28. My Week with Marilyn
    Ms. Williams tries her best, and sometimes that's almost enough.
  29. Ceremony
    In its mixture of the quirky and the downbeat, Ceremony aspires to be a hybrid of Noah Baumbach's "Margot at the Wedding" and Wes Anderson's "Rushmore" but falls far short.
  30. Life of Pi
    The movie invites you to believe in all kinds of marvelous things, but it also may cause you to doubt what you see with your own eyes - or even to wonder if, in the end, you have seen anything at all.
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