I read The New York Times online every day. I don’t agree with your assessment at all. Sounds visceral & not based on fact.
Unless the New York Times wrote an article exposing my fraudulent movie review claims, I'm not sure what your newspaper subscription has to do with how I feel towards the vast majority of printed reviews. I don't like them. They bore me. And I think they are all too often extremely lazy in their construction.
Now for those who read them to determine what movie is their safest bet to go out and see, I'm sure they serve their purpose of identifying generic pros and cons. If you want to call this a success on their part, fine, because it probably is considering what the basic goal of a movie review has become. They try and reflect back the general likes and dislikes of the average film goer. They let you know if the film is serious. Or silly. Or well acted. Or has strong dialogue. Or great special effects. Or if the camerawork is acceptable. This is what movie criticism has basically become in nearly all publications, and while I get this is what most people probably want, I don't. And I call it an embarrassment, mainly because I know how much better it could be. I come across examples of how much better all the time, on movie forums like this.
My biggest problems, personally, are that critics rarely provide any insight into film beyond the most surface of pleasantries. They take no clear stance on what art is, or how it should function. They show virtually no knowledge of the mediums history, and frequently show a hesitation in endorsing any film that really takes chances with what we expect a film to be. This is the kind of stuff I'm looking for, and sorry, outside of the occassional exceptions (which are maybe the ones you are reading and that you are happy with) it just isn't there. And I find it annoying. And embarrassing. And while calling them idiots is probably harsh (I'm sure they are good at other things), in the context of talking about film in any kind of depth, they are colossal failures in my book.
Does this make my opinion visceral? Of course. But I hardly see that as a problem. Maybe if more critics could inject a similar viscerality in articulating their experience with the movies they write about, I wouldn't be such a nuisance about this topic.