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. Final Destination 2
    Has a ghoulish wit. It's not as cheekily knowing as the "Scream" movies or as trashily Grand Guignol as the "Evil Dead" franchise, but like those pictures it recognizes the close relationship between fright and laughter, and dispenses both with a free, unpretentious hand.
  2. The Recruit
    Like Christopher Walken or Marlon Brando, Mr. Pacino frequently uses his gifts to make mediocre movies more interesting. Everything else in The Recruit may be tiresomely predictable, but he, at least, is not.
  3. Chaos
    There is not a decent (or even half-decent) male character to be found in Chaos, a gripping feminist fable with a savage comic edge.
  4. Darkness Falls
    About as scary as a ride on a minor roller coaster, it unrolls its amplified butcher-block shock effects within the first five minutes.
  5. Blind Spot. Hitler's Secretary
    The access the filmmakers gained to Junge is remarkable, and it compensates for a lack of cinematic flair; it's concrete, cold and hard, with Junge speaking about being a few feet away from arguably the worst tyrant of the 20th century.
  6. Amen.
    In the end Amen is neither as moving nor as illuminating as it should be. It suffers especially when compared -- as is inevitable, given the closeness of their release dates -- with "The Pianist," Roman Polanski's movie about a Polish Jew during the Nazi occupation.
  7. In the Mirror of Maya Deren
    Rather than a feminist martyr, her film presents an artist with a rich body of work, one who still fascinates and continues to cast a wide influence.
  8. En kærlighedshistorie
    A disturbing, somewhat repellent portrait of a depressed middle-class woman's struggle to live comfortably in the world.
  9. Divine Intervention
    It is impossible not to marvel at Mr. Suleiman's knack for turning rage and hopelessness into burlesque.
  10. P.S. Your Cat Is Dead!
    Mr. Guttenberg's direction of "Cat," is competent and unadorned, bringing out whatever qualities the text possesses -- mainly good-naturedness.
  11. A Guy Thing
    Most of the meager charms of the chaotic romantic farce A Guy Thing spring from the deft comic contortions of Hollywood's ultimate nerdy sidekick, Jason Lee.
  12. National Security
    Lacks the wit to do anything new and instead recycles tired jokes and attitudes.
  13. Kangaroo Jack
    What better to do with such a quiet, majestic landscape than to liven it up with the noise and vulgarity of lowest-common-denominator American pop culture?
  14. City of God
    As the movie's frenetic visual rhythms and mood swings synchronize with the zany, adrenaline-fueled impulsiveness of its lost youth on the rampage, you may find yourself getting lost in this teeming netherworld.
  15. Crimson Gold
    The occasional obviousness of the film's themes is more than balanced by the subtlety of its methods and by the stolid, irreducible individuality of its protagonist, Hussein.
  16. Close, Closed, Closure
    The freer and more sophisticated approach of "Divine Intervention" makes these traditional-minded documentaries look somewhat stodgy and old-fashioned by comparison, but both have a value as reportage that Mr. Suleiman's film does not pretend to have.
  17. WXIII: Patlabor the Movie 3
    With its many unsolved mysteries, WXIII joins a long list of film-noir projects that end up stranded in the maze of their own invention.
  18. The Son
    To call The Son a masterpiece would be to insult its modesty. Like the homely, useful boxes Olivier teaches his prodigals to build, it is sturdy, durable and, in its downcast, unobtrusive way, miraculous.
  19. Le Cercle Rouge (1970)
    Offers the kind of experience that makes you glad movies exist.
  20. Just Married
    Anyway, you will be glad that they have found each other, and eager to wish them a long and happy life together -- somewhere else, as 95 minutes in their company is plenty.
  21. The Slaughter Rule
    A bleak, lyrical meditation on the frontier spirit and American machismo and its torments.
  22. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
    A good piece of work more often than not, and this is one of the few times an actor turned director has chosen to subvert the feel-good genre for his maiden voyage.
  23. Love Liza
    The movie is so small and emotionally constricted that it gives Hoffman too little room to explore his range.
  24. Sonny
    Emotionally incoherent.
  25. Nicholas Nickleby
    The director has produced a colorful, affecting collage of Dickensian moods and motifs, a movie that elicits an overwhelming desire to plunge into 900 pages of 19th-century prose.
  26. Max
    A historical fantasy connecting fact and wild supposition into a provocative work of fiction that poses ticklish questions about art and society.
  27. The Hours
    Ms. Kidman, in a performance of astounding bravery, evokes the savage inner war waged by a brilliant mind against a system of faulty wiring that transmits a searing, crazy static into her brain.
  28. The Pianist
    Polanski, who was a Jewish child in Krakow when the Germans arrived in September 1939, presents Szpilman's story with bleak, acid humor and with a ruthless objectivity that encompasses both cynicism and compassion.
  29. Chicago
    Who would have expected Ms. Zellweger --- and Miramax -- to come through in a musical? And it's one of the few Christmas entertainments to run under two hours. Who couldn't love that?
  30. In Shifting Sands: The Truth About Unscom and the Disarming of Iraq
    Surprisingly dry and dispassionate.
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