A.O. Scott

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The New York Times
For 2,141 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 50% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 48% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 0.1 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

A.O. Scott's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 65
Highest review score: 100 Crime + Punishment
Lowest review score: 0 Blended
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,187 out of 2141
  2. Mixed: 735 out of 2141
  3. Negative: 219 out of 2141
2141 movie reviews
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    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 A.O. Scott
    The Secret of the Grain
    An entire family chronicle, along with four decades of French social and economic history, is recapitulated as a lavish, hectic dinner, complete with music and belly dancing. It will leave you stunned and sated, having savored an intimate and sumptuous epic of elation and defeat, jealousy and tenderness, life and death, grain and fish.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 100 A.O. Scott
    Inside Out
    Inside Out is an absolute delight — funny and charming, fast-moving and full of surprises. It is also a defense of sorrow, an argument for the necessity of melancholy dressed in the bright colors of entertainment.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 A.O. Scott
    Beyond the Hills
    Even as Mr. Mungiu maintains a detached, objective point of view, allowing the details of the story to speak for themselves, he also allows you to glimpse the complex and volatile inner lives of his characters.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 A.O. Scott
    Aquarius
    Aquarius is a marvelous and surprising act of portraiture, a long, unhurried encounter with a single, complicated person. And that is enough to make it a captivating film, an experience well worth seeking out. But there is also, as I’ve suggested, more going on than the everyday experiences of a modern matriarch.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 A.O. Scott
    Rams
    Despite its affection for the quirks of its characters and their milieu, the film is most memorable for its gravity, for the almost tragic nobility it finds in sad and silly circumstances.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 A.O. Scott
    Lost in Translation
    Here he (Murray) supplies the kind of performance that seems so fully realized and effortless that it can easily be mistaken for not acting at all.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 A.O. Scott
    This Is Not a Film
    How did Mr. Panahi do this? I'm at a bit of a loss to explain, to tell you the truth, since my job is to review movies, and this, obviously, is something different: a masterpiece in a form that does not yet exist.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 A.O. Scott
    A Fantastic Woman
    Psychologically astute and socially aware as the film is, it is also infused with mystery and melodrama, with bright colors and emotional shadows.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 A.O. Scott
    In a World...
    Ms. Bell, who plays Carol with a perfect blend of diffidence, goofiness and charm, has written and directed an insightful comedy that is much more complex and ambitious than it sometimes seems.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 A.O. Scott
    Love Is Strange
    By the time the movie is over, you feel as if the people in it were friends you know well enough to tire of, and to miss terribly when they go away.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 A.O. Scott
    Phantom Thread
    On first viewing, the captivating strangeness of the mood and the elegant threading of the plot are likely to hold your attention, but later you can go back to savor the lustrous colors, the fine-grained performances and the romantic mystery that holds the whole thing together.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 A.O. Scott
    Inside Job
    Inside Job, a sleek, briskly paced film whose title suggests a heist movie, is the story of a crime without punishment, of an outrage that has so far largely escaped legal sanction and societal stigma.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 100 A.O. Scott
    Augustine
    Everything depends on the subtlety of the direction and the charisma of the performances. Augustine is intellectually satisfying partly because it communicates its ideas at the level of feeling, through the uncanny power of Soko’s face and body.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 A.O. Scott
    Frances Ha
    With its swift, jaunty rhythms and sharp, off-kilter jokes, Frances Ha is frequently delightful. Ms. Gerwig and Mr. Baumbach are nonetheless defiant partisans in the revolt against the tyranny of likability in popular culture.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 A.O. Scott
    Milk
    Harvey Milk was an intriguing, inspiring figure. Milk is a marvel.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 A.O. Scott
    Children of Tokyo
    That it is more -- a small masterpiece, perfect in design and execution -- almost goes without saying, but the film’s profundity and its charm go hand in hand.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 100 A.O. Scott
    A Woman in Berlin
    That the film manages to be understated, calm and intelligent in spite of its wrenching subject matter is perhaps its most impressive accomplishment. In avoiding sensationalism, it feels very close to the truth.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 A.O. Scott
    Palm Springs
    Pain is a necessary ingredient in any successful comedy. The trick, which Barbakow and Siara seem to have mastered on their very first try, is to find the misery of the right kind and intensity, to imply tears that match the laughter.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 A.O. Scott
    Cutie and the Boxer
    Mr. Heinzerling is an artist too. The window he has opened onto the lives of his subjects is a powerful and beautiful visual artifact in its own right.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 A.O. Scott
    Fire at Sea
    Fire at Sea occupies your consciousness like a nightmare, and yet somehow you don’t want it to end.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 100 A.O. Scott
    Elle
    It’s a psychological thriller, a strangely dry-eyed melodrama, a kinky sex farce and, perhaps most provocatively, a savage comedy of bourgeois manners. Mostly, though — inarguably, I would say — it is a platform for the astonishing, almost terrifying talent of Isabelle Huppert.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 A.O. Scott
    Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun?
    The movie, a scorching and rigorous essay on memory and accountability, is neither a profession of guilt nor a performance of virtue. Though his inquiry is intensely, at times painfully personal, Mr. Wilkerson is above all concerned with unpacking the mechanisms of racial domination.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 A.O. Scott
    The Master
    It is a movie about the lure and folly of greatness that comes as close as anything I've seen recently to being a great movie. There will be skeptics, but the cult is already forming. Count me in.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 A.O. Scott
    The Damned United
    The rare sports movie that deals with -- indeed positively relishes -- humiliation and disappointment.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 100 A.O. Scott
    Duplicity
    Superior entertainment, the most elegantly pleasurable movie of its kind to come around in a very long time.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 100 A.O. Scott
    Before Midnight
    Before Midnight is a wonderful paradox: a movie passionately committed to the ideal of imperfection that is itself very close to perfect.
    • 98 Metascore
    • 100 A.O. Scott
    Pépé le Moko (re-release)
    One of the most purely enjoyable films ever made.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 100 A.O. Scott
    Annette
    Annette masters its own paradoxes. It’s a highly cerebral, formally complex film about unbridled emotion.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 100 A.O. Scott
    Like Someone in Love
    Every shot — everything you see, and everything you don’t — imparts a disturbing and thrilling sense of discovery.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 A.O. Scott
    Lost Illusions
    Giannoli illuminates the dank frenzy of the 19th-century attention economy with an eye on our own post-truth era. Lost Illusions is sensational. Nobody paid me to say that. Well, actually, The New York Times did, but you should believe me anyway.
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