The New York Times' Scores

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For 20,324 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: 9,408 out of 20324
  2. Mixed: 8,449 out of 20324
  3. Negative: 2,467 out of 20324
20324 movie reviews
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  1. The Embalmer
    The screenplay evokes this psychosexual power struggle with perfect accuracy and finely tuned performances.
  2. The Sea Is Watching
    Fortunately, Mr. Kumai, who himself has shown no aversion to baroque melodrama, leans here toward a plain and direct style that is tasteful and intelligent, a boon, given the predictability of the story. He understands the difference between pitiable and pitiful.
  3. Dirty Pretty Things
    This film has a conquering spirit. The dankness is replaced by an optimistic blast of sunlight at the end, a contrast to the earlier lighting dimmed with human misery. Mr. Frears blasts away the blight, though he doesn't have to work to restore Okwe's dignity. It shines through from the start.
  4. The Anarchist Cookbook
    Strains for a jazzy, Oliver Stone-ish look, but at its heart it is a placid and conventional moral tale about the dangers of wandering too far off the pathway.
  5. Bad Boys II
    The best moments come when Mr. Smith and Mr. Lawrence are permitted to pause from their action-hero duties and run their funny, unpredictable mouths.
  6. September 11
    Most impressive, and the only segment that dares to criticize the terrorists directly, is Mr. Imamura's contribution, the last part of the film.
  7. Garage Days
    The end may be a bit of a letdown, but much of Garage Days is choice cuts indeed.
  8. An Injury to One
    Revels in directorial assertiveness, including an omniscient narrator and an intrusive use of slick, magazine-style graphics to identify characters and spell out slogans.
  9. A Housekeeper
    Fits squarely into a Gallic tradition of wistful, worldly-wise comedies that reflect on the weakness of the flesh.
  10. Km. 0 - Kilometer Zero
    Unfolds, skipping blithely from comic to melodramatic vignettes and back again, it follows the classical structure of a Shakespearean forest comedy, sorting out the mismatched couples and finding appropriate mates (or at least appropriate friendships) for everyone involved.
  11. Northfork
    There is nothing quite like this movie, and I'm not altogether sure there is much more to it than its lovely peculiarity. But at a moment when so many films strive to be obvious and interchangeable as possible, it is gratifying to find one that is puzzling, subtle and handmade.
  12. The Cuckoo
    There are subtitles to reduce everything to simple English declarative sentences. This gives the viewer a decidedly unfair advantage over the characters: we can understand what they cannot and are invited to laugh at their mutual incomprehension.
  13. I Capture the Castle
    The evident affection that the filmmakers bear toward Smith's novel, and toward the odd, spirited people who inhabit it, gives the film a modest, hardworking appeal.
  14. The Holy Land
    A barbed reflection on the great divide between secular and ultra-Orthodox Judaism in Israeli culture. But its digressive screenplay lacks focus and momentum and is too oblique to connect many of the dots between its characters and their behavior.
  15. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
    Has the sweat stains of wasted energy; it's dreary, yet frantic.
  16. Madame Satã
    It is a voluptuous, hot-blooded portrait of a social outcast, a black, homosexual criminal who in acting out his gaudiest Hollywood dreams, transcendently reinvented himself.
  17. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
    The dazzling, high-flying silliness is quite an achievement. The movie is better than it deserves to be, given its origins: a ride at Disneyland and Disney World.
  18. Tattoo
    A grim, disquieting mood piece.
  19. Confusion of Genders
    Quickly turns into an earnest talkfest (spiced with flashes of nudity and sexually explicit dialogue) that feels stiffly programmatic and ultimately false.
  20. La Commune (Paris, 1871)
    In these risk-averse times, it is a pleasure to see a film that fails by attempting too much. Frustrating and demanding as it may be, La Commune (Paris, 1871) is essential viewing for anyone interested in taking an exploratory step outside the Hollywood norms.
  21. Gasoline
    Tautly acted, fairly sexy and atmospheric. Its vision of Stella and Lenni as defiant, doomed outsiders desperately racing toward an elusive paradise on a treacherous highway may be bleak, but it's also intensely and proudly romantic.
  22. Swimming Pool
    Simultaneously a thoroughly mannered, mischievously artificial confection and an acute piece of psychological realism. Whose psychology, and which reality, remains ambiguous even after the tart, delicious final twist.
  23. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
    For all the hype and the inevitable box office bonanza, Terminator 3 is essentially a B movie, content to be loud, dumb and obvious.
  24. Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas
    To invoke the name of another underwhelming new film, Sinbad is legally bland.
  25. Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde
    A movie for people who somehow managed to miss the point of the first picture.
  26. Friday Night
    As much as the story, based on a novel by Emmanuèle Bernheim, has the irresistible earmarks of the kind of high-toned bodice-ripper at which the French excel, its cinematic realization is oddly gawky and tepid.
  27. On_Line
    Acted with enough zest by its cast to give these not especially endearing people a poignant human dimension.
  28. Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle
    A sequel whose sugar-rush absurdity almost defeats the forces of logic, taste and conventional narrative. It is a defect that might undermine a lesser movie but that in this case proves to be as cheerfully, enjoyably humid as the first blast of summer light and heat.
  29. 28 Days Later...
    Mr. Boyle has hardly lost his sly, provocative perversity or his ear for the rhythms of unchecked violence, but he does seem to be maturing. It's as if, in contemplating the annihilation of the human race, he has discovered his inner humanist.
  30. War and Peace
    Mr. Patwardhan has located so much information and found so many willing interview subjects that his War and Peace has a riveting intelligence all its own and earns its epic title.
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