Time's Scores

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For 2,984 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 53% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 45% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.2 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 67
Highest review score: 100 Paterson
Lowest review score: 0 Life Itself
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,815 out of 2984
  2. Mixed: 939 out of 2984
  3. Negative: 230 out of 2984
2984 movie reviews
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  1. Che
    In the end, the Cuban newspaper was nearly right: it's not the Castro character but the whole of this grand, doomed experiment that lacks "charisma and depth."
  2. The Reader
    Faithful both to the novel's plot and to its higher aspirations. This is not an entirely good thing. On the other hand -- and somewhat surprisingly -- it is not an entirely bad thing.
  3. Frost/Nixon
    For closeup conflict and emotional kick, the Frost/Nixon movie tops the play. But neither can match the tension and weird poignancy of the original interviews -- reality TV of the highest, queasiest order.
  4. Milk
    Three decades ago, Milk and his ilk were able to enlist President Jimmy Carter and future President Ronald Reagan in the gay fight against Prop. 6. But this fall, Barack Obama was all but mute on Prop. 8. Some community organizers, like the President-elect, are more cautious than others. It's a shame Harvey Milk wasn't around to recruit him.
  5. Twilight
    So Twilight isn't a masterpiece -- no matter. It rekindles the warmth of great Hollywood romances, where foreplay was the climax and a kiss was never just a kiss.
  6. Australia
    There is some elemental human desire -- lately largely denied at the cinema -- to see pretty people in handsome landscapes assuaging our need for epic romance. On that level, Australia delivers with real panache.
  7. Quantum of Solace
    Kurylenko, a lovely Russian-Ukrainian hybrid who is oddly duskied up to look vaguely Latina, is a whiz at raising Quantum's temperature and gradually luring Bond out of his stolid shell.
  8. A Christmas Tale
    It seemed to me as I left the theater that A Christmas Tale was a little too jumpy for its own good, with too many characters and plot points hastily interwoven. But I've come think that it is faithful to its essential purpose, which is to disprove the Tolstoyan dictum that unhappy families are each miserable in their own ways.
  9. Slumdog Millionaire
    Despite its elements of brutality, this is a buoyant hymn to life, and a movie to celebrate.
  10. JCVD
    Van Damme has been known as a martial-arts legend, movie star and pain in the ass. But never an actor -- until now.
  11. Zack and Miri Make a Porno
    Romantic comedies often make do on flimsy premises, but this one is thinner than Kate Moss and nuttier than an Almond Joy.
  12. What Just Happened
    The picture promises to be a gossipy, biting tale about the travails of a middle-aged Hollywood player who doesn't always have the magic touch -- or, perhaps more accurately, finds he has it less and less. But the picture is more self-congratulatory than it is vicious, or even illuminating, and it dawdles when it needs to crack along at a clip.
  13. Changeling
    In its purposeful accumulation of depravities, both individual and institutional, the director's non-style has an honorable payoff that's rare in modern Hollywood cinema: the story's weight could come close to burying you in despair.
  14. Synecdoche, New York
    No film with an ambition this large, and achievement this impressive, can be anything but exhilarating, a vital affirmation of the creative process.
  15. W.
    The movie is an X-ray of an invisible man -- by the film's end, the W. still stands for Who?
  16. Max Payne
    At least in a video game the player decides who needs to be killed, and what trail to take in the labyrinth. The Max Payne moviegoers are passive hostages on a long ride they've taken so many times before.
  17. The Secret Life of Bees
    The Secret Life of Bees may not be a "To Kill a Mockingbird" on page or screen, but Fanning is the center of its soul and intelligence. It's Hollywood's job to find strong parts for this precocious genius as she matures into womanhood.
  18. Body of Lies
    In all, Body of Lies is a mixed bag of treats and trials, but it should be seen by audiences, and emulated and improved upon by other top directors.
  19. Happy-Go-Lucky
    The results are unique in the contemporary cinema -- behavioral honesty and intensity raised to a flash point. If this be comedy, it is so only in the nominal sense that no one dies at the end of the picture.
  20. RocknRolla
    The main problem is that Ritchie keeps playing the same old song. It's a swell tune, and we don't mind hearing it every few years, but we'd welcome another subject in a transposed key. Even the Material Girl tries out fresh material.
  21. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
    Though this Nick and Norah have a lot more angst, they're just as worth watching, admiring and cuddling up to.
  22. Rachel Getting Married
    The result is a mess. Kym, in Hathaway's unsympathetic performance, is an annoyingly sour observer of the proceedings, a time bomb everyone hopes will not explode before the marriage is completed.
  23. Appaloosa
    It's good to spend time with a movie that takes its time. Granted, Harris doesn't advance the genre; instead he burrows into it, finds a home there, as one might retreat to musty library stacks, where old pleasures and treasures await.
  24. The Duchess
    The players are uniformly good, but a special word must be said for Fiennes, whose portrayal of physical awkwardness and painful taciturnity never begs either for laughs or for sympathy.
  25. Burn After Reading
    Either the Coens failed, or I didn't figure out what they're attempting. I must be like Harry or Osborne, pretending to a sophistication I lack. Burn After Reading is a movie about stupidity that left me feeling stupid.
  26. The Women
    One of the worst movies I've ever seen.
  27. Righteous Kill
    Instead of the meeting of maestros at the top of their form, Righteous Kill has the feeling of Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds facing off for the first time in an exhibition game. It's like Old Timers' Day at the Motion Picture Home.
  28. I Served the King of England
    May not be a totally riveting movie, but it is, in its gently insinuating way, a curiously rewarding one.
  29. Death Race
    Though the picture doesn't deserve to appear on any critic's 10-best list, it observes the minimum standards of modern action films, which is to say it looks smarter, talks sassier and moves faster than almost anything else on the market.
  30. Hamlet 2
    Hamlet 2 is as needy as its hero -- because it wants not to be probing or profound or even witty but, above all else, to be loved.
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