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. Cassandra's Dream
    Woody Allen’s latest excursion to the dark side of human nature, is good enough that you may wonder why he doesn’t just stop making comedies once and for all.
  2. Cloverfield
    Like too many big-studio productions, Cloverfield works as a showcase for impressively realistic-looking special effects, a realism that fails to extend to the scurrying humans whose fates are meant to invoke pity and fear but instead inspire yawns and contempt. Rarely have I rooted for a monster with such enthusiasm.
  3. Mad Money
    In the breezy, amoral heist comedy Mad Money, “Fun With Dick and Jane” meets “9 to 5” on the way to recession.
  4. 27 Dresses
    As the director, Anne Fletcher, methodically cuts back and forth between two weddings, she makes the reasonably insightful, moderately funny point that modern American weddings, however they may strain for individuality and specialness, are all pretty much alike. The problem is that much the same could be said about modern American romantic comedies.
  5. Taxi to the Dark Side
    If recent American history is ever going to be discussed with the necessary clarity and ethical rigor, this film will be essential.
  6. Day Zero
    Its view of the near future may be vaguely plausible and its performances persuasive, but its formulaic construction, internal inconsistencies and fuzzy ending undermine its integrity. It has nothing to say about the big issues -- manhood, war and friendship -- that hasn’t been explored with more depth and honesty in a hundred other movies.
  7. Still Life
    A modern master of postmodern discontent, Jia Zhang-ke is among the most strikingly gifted filmmakers working today whom you have probably never heard of.
  8. First Sunday
    First Sunday sometimes feels more like a script read-through than like an actual movie, but its warmth is likely to carry you through the stretches of cliché and tedium.
  9. In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale
    An awkward “Lord of the Rings” knockoff, it features both elaborate battles and bumbling humor, though it’s never quite clear when you should be laughing.
  10. The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: A VeggieTales Movie
    It’s a boilerplate plot like one you might find in any morning cartoon.
  11. The Business of Being Born
    A passionate ground-level examination of home childbirth.
  12. Woman on the Beach
    Wry and tender and delicately melancholic, Woman on the Beach shows a newly confident filmmaker again working near the top of his form after the disappointing “Tale of Cinema” (2005), even if the new film unfolds straightforwardly, with none of the narrative ellipses and puzzle-box complications, the flashbacks and parallel story lines of his earlier work.
  13. One Missed Call
    A poker-faced puzzle whose biggest shock is the absence of Sarah Michelle Gellar.
  14. The Killing of John Lennon
    Shot in a quasi-documentary style at the actual locations where the events took place, including the sidewalk outside the Dakota, the movie is extremely uncomfortable to watch.
  15. Honeydripper
    Honeydripper is agreeable, well-intentioned and very, very slow. Sadly, it illustrates the difference between an archetype and a stereotype. When the first falls flat, it turns into the other and becomes a cliché.
  16. The Orphanage
    The Orphanage, a diverting, overwrought ghost story from Spain, relies on basic and durable horror movie techniques.
  17. There Will Be Blood
    The film is above all a consummate work of art, one that transcends the historically fraught context of its making, and its pleasures are unapologetically aesthetic. It reveals, excites, disturbs, provokes, but the window it opens is to human consciousness itself.
  18. AVPR: Aliens vs Predator - Requiem
    It may not be classic sci-fi like the original “Alien,” which it has in its DNA, but it’s a perfectly respectable next step in the series.
  19. Persepolis
    Persepolis, austere as it may look, is full of warmth and surprise, alive with humor and a fierce independence of spirit.
  20. The Bucket List
    Fails its stars in fundamental ways. Mr. Nicholson has played wealthy rogues before (most recently in “Something’s Gotta Give”), but this particular bon vivant is unsalvageably repellent.
  21. The Great Debaters
    The wonder is that The Great Debaters transcends its own simplifying and manipulative ploys; it radiates nobility of spirit.
  22. The Water Horse
    Ffamily-friendly escapist fare that should enthrall, without insult, fantasy-minded viewers of any age.
  23. P.S. I Love You
    The film is not a beautiful object or a memorable cultural one, and yet it charms, however awkwardly. Ms. Swank’s ardent sincerity and naked emotionalism dovetail nicely with Mr. LaGravenese’s melodramatic excesses.
  24. Charlie Wilson's War
    More of a hoot than any picture dealing with the bloody, protracted fight between the Soviet Army and the Afghan mujahedeen has any right to be.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    National Treasure: Book of Secrets
    Like its predecessor, “National Treasure,” this sequel amounts to a bunch of crossword puzzle answers stitched together with explosions, chases and displays of intuitive reasoning that the “Twin Peaks” F.B.I. agent Dale Cooper would reject as too right-brained.
  26. Steep
    An undeniably impressive visual spectacle that follows the sport of extreme skiing.
  27. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
    Something close to a masterpiece, a work of extreme -- I am tempted to say evil -- genius.
  28. Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
    The film is more funny ha-ha than LOL; it’s a smarty-pants satire that mocks and embraces almost every cliché in the biography playbook.
  29. Flakes
    A business course on cutthroat capitalism disguised as a slacker comedy: That’s the kindest way to describe Michael Lehmann’s Flakes.
  30. Alvin and the Chipmunks
    Despite its shout-outs to the holiday season, this is essentially airplane fodder, not a perennial. Don’t hold your breath waiting for the sequel.
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