The New York Times' Scores

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For 20,313 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: 9,401 out of 20313
  2. Mixed: 8,446 out of 20313
  3. Negative: 2,466 out of 20313
20313 movie reviews
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  1. Afterschool
    In truth there isn’t much story here, or much insight either; the kind of alienated teenagers wandering through this film exist in movies far out of proportion to their number in real life.
  2. Araya
    Whatever visual poetry the film possesses is overwhelmed by the thuddingly bad and nearly ceaseless narration, written by Ms. Benacerraf and Pierre Seghers.
  3. The Little Traitor
    A muddled morality tale more interested in coming of age than getting of wisdom.
  4. The War on Kids
    Offering neither balance nor solutions (a segment on the overuse of medications like Ritalin is especially powerful, but especially in need of counterargument), The War on Kids questions what kind of citizens we are producing.
  5. Paa
    It’s stunt acting and frequently more creepy than moving, but it also gives Paa it’s weird I’m-my-own-grandpa charge.
  6. Phyllis and Harold
    The problem with these my-family-was-messed-up-and-I need-to-share projects is that they require an audience of complete strangers to give a damn. And while we sometimes do, it’s usually because the material is inherently compelling (“Tarnation”) or the filmmaking uncovers truths beyond the template of family therapy (“51 Birch Street”). Sadly, Phyllis and Harold fulfills neither requirement.
  7. The Last New Yorker
    The Last New Yorker would like to think of itself as a comic fairy tale, but Lenny’s pride and self-delusion are too pathetic to be amusing.
  8. Shutterbug
    Intermittently beautiful but frustratingly leaden, Shutterbug labors ineffectually to promote authenticity over artifice. A heavily stylized paean to undoctored images, the movie never quite clicks as a succession of moving ones.
  9. The Sun Behind the Clouds: Tibet's Struggle for Freedom
    The filmmakers, chronicling the Dalai Lama’s somewhat muddled attempts to respond to the protesters’ calls while not antagonizing China, do a fair amount of muddling themselves. They lurch awkwardly between reverence for the Dalai Lama and hints that he has become, politically, irrelevant or an obstacle.
  10. The Perfect Game
    So overwhelmed by its own based-on-actual-events tale that it can’t find the tone to tell it effectively.
  11. Pornography
    Puzzles more than it pleases.
  12. The Good, the Bad, the Weird
    The ever reliable, rubber-faced Song Kang-ho plays Tae-goo, the train robber, and gives the film what little comic spark it has.
  13. The Good Heart
    No amount of splenetic ranting by Brian Cox, a wonderful actor, when given the right role, can salvage The Good Heart from terminal mawkishness.
  14. Harry Brown
    Mr. Caine is one of the few reasons to sit through Harry Brown, an exercise in art-house exploitation directed by Daniel Barber and tarted up with self-importance and a generally striking visual design.
  15. The Trotsky
    The Trotsky runs 20 minutes too long and several rungs above the head of its target audience. And though Mr. Baruchel can be very funny in small doses -- a slacker sidekick in “Knocked Up,” a gung-ho kid in “Tropic Thunder” -- here he swiftly becomes insufferable, a neurotic nudnik in funeral director attire and John Turturro hairdo.
  16. Multiple Sarcasms
    Woody Allen proved long ago that the self-pitying introvert is a fit subject for a movie, but only if the film has a strong enough sense of humor to make us laugh at ourselves. But Brooks Branch, who directed Multiple Sarcasms and wrote the screenplay with Linda Morris, was either too lazy to come up with the absurdist aphorisms that might give Multiple Sarcasms a lift, or he labored under the delusion that Gabriel’s metaphysical malaise is such a fresh idea that it deserves microscopic inspection.
  17. The Expendables
    Might more aptly be described as Bad Kurosawa, Bad Peckinpah or Bad Leone. Which might be a way of saying that it's better-than-average Stallone. I can't quite say that it's not bad: it is bad! But not entirely in a bad way.
  18. Trash Humpers
    Idolized in some quarters and reviled in others, Mr. Korine, now 37, may be a bit long in the tooth for the enfant terrible act.
  19. Finding Bliss
    Except for the usual double entendres in which titles of mainstream Hollywood hits are twisted into salacious puns, Finding Bliss (Bliss is the name of the company's resident star) isn't especially funny. Nor is it sexy, despite flashes of nudity and fleeting glimpses of Grind's works in progress.
  20. Stolen
    Plays like a middling episode of “Law & Order: SVU,” drawn out an extra half-hour and embellished with pretentious literary and cinematic flourishes.
  21. Audrey the Trainwreck
    Frank V. Ross wrote and directed this slice of Midwestern mumblecore in a style -- overlapping dialogue, off-center compositions, a jumpy, disconnected narrative -- that suggests Robert Altman without any of Altman's instincts for character and poetry.
  22. The Concert
    The harder this desperately obsequious circus of a movie tries to entertain, the more it falls short.
  23. The Dry Land
    Sincere performances elevate an underdeveloped script and awkward filmmaking in The Dry Land, a coming-home drama as inexpressive as its traumatized lead.
  24. The Sicilian Girl
    Belonging more in the realm of tragic melodrama than true crime, The Sicilian Girl is hobbled by sluggish direction (by Marco Amenta, who previously addressed Atria's story in his 1997 documentary, "One Girl Against the Mafia: Diary of a Sicilian Rebel"), and a revulsion to nuance.
  25. Flipped
    That Flipped isn't insufferably cute is a measure of its integrity. But it still strains to view the world through the eyes of children without a filter of grown-up cynicism. It is plodding and awkwardly paced.
  26. The People I've Slept With
    A raunchy romantic comedy that, like its heroine, rarely has both feet on the ground.
  27. Vampires Suck
    This pointless parody dumps us in the fictional town of Sporks, Wash., a location lousy with vampires and werewolves.
  28. Saw 3D
    Be aware: if you see the film in a theater equipped with RealD 3D and Dolby sound, you'll come away with a pretty good idea of what it would feel like to have flying body parts hit you in the face.
  29. The Winning Season
    Gets lost in a fog of indecision and compromise.
  30. Legendary
    The schmaltzy sports movie Legendary is a kind of contemporary answer to the old Charles Atlas ad in which a 97-pound weakling develops muscles and triumphantly punches out the bully at the beach.
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