New York Magazine (Vulture)'s Scores

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For 3,961 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 47% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 51% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 0.7 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 64
Highest review score: 100 Hell or High Water
Lowest review score: 0 Daddy's Home 2
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2,220 out of 3961
  2. Mixed: 1,378 out of 3961
  3. Negative: 363 out of 3961
3961 movie reviews
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  1. The Oldest Person in the World
    For a movie so filled with death, The Oldest Person in the World is surprisingly, almost confrontationally life-affirming. That sounds cheap, but Green comes by the sentiment honestly.
  2. Rush
    Rush satisfies our lust for both grand character combat and deadly gearhead spectacle.
  3. Bully
    Bully is repetitive and not especially artful, but children who allow themselves to see the world through the eyes of the film's victims will never be the same.
  4. The Half of It
    In most good rom-coms you fall in love with the characters; in The Half of It you fall in love with their sheer longing.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Kundun
    Gorgeously shot and utterly respectful of the story of the fourteenth Dalai Lama, but it’s dramatically inert.
  6. Armageddon Time
    By letting the picture embody his failures — by turning Armageddon Time into a self-aware look at his own limitations — the director makes that necessary connection between then and now, between the characters onscreen and us watching. In other words, he denies us the one thing these types of movies almost always provide: reassurance.
  7. Thelma
    Thelma is both more mysterious and more accessible than his other films. The spell it casts transcends the silly plotting. It puts you in a zone all its own.
  8. Plan B
    Despite — or because of — its candor, the film is careful not to traffic in titillation. Everyone is beautiful, everyone is young, but this movie is made for the people in it, rather than appealing to some creepy, objectifying gaze.
  9. Colette
    Politeness may be the film’s weakest point, whether with its characters or bedroom scenes. But it’s hardly something to complain about, especially when the company is this lively.
  10. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
    The turtles’ unceasing, rapid-fire banter is all affectionate dunks on one another and pop-culture quips, and the look of the film is never less than entrancing, with computer animation that creates the feel of something handmade.
  11. Disobedience
    Disobedience isn’t packed with surprises, but that’s not why you go to a movie like this. You go to watch humans with wayward emotions labor to make peace with (or opt to war against) a formal, ritualized way of life.
  12. Becoming Cousteau
    In restoring Cousteau’s human side, Becoming Cousteau shows us both his brilliance and his shortcomings, and it suggests that these extremes were fundamentally connected. He was soft-spoken and modest on the surface yet consumed by an ambition that was driven as much by his remorse as by his vision.
  13. Woman of the Hour
    The whole film feels a bit too careful: composed but also more than a little academic.
  14. A Gray State
    It’s intermittently successful, but even in its more meandering moments it is a gripping, almost unbearably dark watch.
  15. Sand Storm
    Ultimately, this is a tale of a mother and daughter trapped in a cycle of yearning and despair. It’s a lovely, deeply affecting film.
  16. Golden Door
    The greatness of Golden Door is its tone; sympathetic but always wry.
  17. The Town
    In The Town, he (Renner) doesn't signal that Jem is a sociopath... It's a deeply unnerving performance, beyond good or evil.
  18. Ain't Them Bodies Saints
    As Ain’t Them Bodies Saints moves along, its elliptical approach to drama goes from keeping us on our toes to dulling everything down.
  19. In Darkness
    In outline, In Darkness is a standard conversion melodrama, but little within those parameters is easy. The darkness lingers into the light.
  20. Liam
    Has some rapturously observant sequences concerning childhood.
  21. Sully
    Hanks and those scenes in the cockpit make the movie worth seeing, in spite of the dumb melodramatics. But only just.
  22. Interstellar
    In his florid sci-fi opera Interstellar, Christopher Nolan aims for the stars, and the upshot is an infinite hoot — its dumbness o’erleaps dimensional space. It’s hugely entertaining, though.
  23. The Attack
    It could easily have veered into opportunistic melodrama. But the director’s focused restraint and Suliman’s wonderfully understated performance keep us grounded.
  24. Far From Men
    What makes it work is the solemn efficiency of director David Oelhoffen’s storytelling and the quiet intensity of the two leads.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Vixen!
    There's a wild enthusiasm to the heroine's activities and a deadpan stupidity to the dialogue that provide a redeeming entertainment value for non-up-tight adults. [26 May 1969, p.55]
    • New York Magazine (Vulture)
  26. Joy Ride
    Watching the film is a reminder that the most boundary-pushing comedy isn’t about risqué content but a willingness to get uncomfortable and the confidence to assume audiences will join along in that journey. Joy Ride instead seeks out the warm fuzzies in a way that feels like a surrender.
  27. Crazy Rich Asians
    Luckily, Crazy Rich Asians is, at its heart, a fish-out-of-water story, and it has a lot more going for it than its literal money shots.
  28. The History Boys
    The movie is brilliant and infectious, much like Bennett's voice: English-deadpan but never snide, and generous to a fault.
  29. A Mighty Heart
    The movie is clipped, blunt, and grimly realistic. It is practically a POLICIER , although the suspense is mitigated by our knowledge that the investigation will end badly.
  30. Dream Scenario
    Kristoffer Borgli’s Dream Scenario starts off with a rich, surreal premise, and for much of its running time, it mixes playful, cringe-comic energy with an undercurrent of existential anxiety. But it eventually manages to undo much of what made it so tantalizing by turning metaphor and subtext into a more narrow-minded satire.
  31. Big Hero 6
    Therein lies part of the dissonance with this often-wonderful, deceptively strange movie. You could get emotional whiplash watching it.
  32. Will & Harper
    The film’s most powerful achievement is perhaps also its most basic: the simple sight of two friends talking, openly and gently, about all the things on their minds.
  33. The Italian
    I was utterly gripped by The Italian. The only problem is that I was rooting for the bad guys.
  34. Highest 2 Lowest
    Highest 2 Lowest is an old man’s movie, and I don’t mean that as a criticism.
  35. The Duchess of Langeais
    Rivette has aged into one of cinema’s most ingenious minimalists. In The Duchess of Langeais he uses intertitles--bits of literary exposition--with cheeky understatement.
  36. The Golden Dream
    Don’t expect incendiary topicality from The Golden Dream; this is more poetry than politics.
  37. Two Lovers
    Although Paltrow is radiant (and she nails the character’s ditzy sense of entitlement), it's Phoenix's movie. He is, once again, stupendous, and stupendous in a way he has never been before.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Wag the Dog
    Barry Levinson’s political and media satire Wag the Dog goes as fast as the wind, and that’s a relief because the idea behind the movie is thin. Very thin -- and at times offensively glib.
  39. Sin City
    The visually stunning Sin City has grit to spare and a thrilling undercurrent of morality.
  40. tick, tick...Boom!
    It’s a movie that sings, poignantly, from many times at once.
  41. Source Code
    It's a crackerjack ride, shot and edited for maximum discombobulation.
  42. Little Woods
    It’s a testament to the strength of Thompson’s performance, and DaCosta’s control of tone and action, that for all the bleakness of this world, we keep watching. The result is a work that lingers, grimly, in the mind.
  43. Joe
    You can be of two minds about the movie’s climax without shame. It’s galvanizing and, after all the accumulated tension, longed-for. And it’s too easy. And it’s rousingly well done. And it’s cheap. And that’s what makes the vigilante myth so vexing.
  44. Thor: Ragnarok
    This one is probably my favorite, being the most unlike the others.
  45. Bird
    Bird is the newest feature from Andrea Arnold — her first scripted film since the 2016 U.S. road odyssey American Honey — and it serves up an endearing, ungainly mix of the gritty and the magical.
  46. Queen & Slim
    Queen & Slim does a disservice to both the themes of love and anger by never giving the latter the depth it deserves, leaving the film a beautiful object to behold but a hollow narrative to consider.
  47. Breach
    Cooper's performance is outlandishly great, but Phillippe’s knocks Breach down a peg.
  48. 28 Days Later...
    A first-rate zombie movie. The best tribute I can offer is that it makes you want to go out directly afterward and down some expensive single-malt scotch.
  49. Japanese Story
    Tsunashima gives a deft performance in a role that starts out as caricature but becomes full-bodied. Collette commands the screen virtually the entire time.
  50. Novitiate
    Betts has succeeded in capturing a watershed moment in the life of the Catholic Church — a push to adapt that is, in important ways, at odds with its very origins. Her irresolution makes for excellent drama.
  51. (T)error
    For all of (T)error’s topicality and its thriller-like qualities, what makes the film is Sutcliffe and Cabral’s compact, complex portrait of Saeed — paranoid, chatty, mired in self-loathing, but also oddly reflective.
  52. On the Rocks
    On the Rocks isn’t a great movie, but it’s one overflowing with feelings that it tries to squash into something tidier.
  53. Final Destination: Bloodlines
    If we judge these films primarily by the creativity and elaborate absurdity of their death scenes, this latest entry ably expands the palette without messing with the formula.
  54. Palm Trees and Power Lines
    The relationship McInerny and Tucker build is so convincing in its mixture of exploitation and yearning that Palm Trees and Power Lines capably secures what Lea desires most too: your attention.
  55. Into the Wild
    With all the narration and fits of slow motion, the movie seems like the work of a nervous chain-smoker. It lacks concentration--and with it, the potential for rapture.
  56. Miss Juneteenth
    Miss Juneteenth is a film defined by its gentle beauty and simplicity.
  57. The Party
    The Party is breathlessly well shot — and, even better, in lustrous black and white. The look conveys an unspoken message: Even playing fools, these actors are pure class.
  58. The Iron Claw
    Late in The Iron Claw comes a sequence that departs from everything that’s come before and drops us unabashedly into Kevin’s mind at a time of intense grief. It’s earnest, and corny, and utterly devastating, and it makes you yearn for a film that wasn’t so intent on holding its tragic subjects at a brawny arm’s length.
  59. Red Cliff
    Any war picture in which the heroine stalls the villain with a quiet, painstaking tea ceremony until the wind shifts direction and the good guys can firebomb the bad guys into oblivion is too ineffably Zen not to love.
  60. Rust and Bone
    Rust and Bone doesn't come together, but it's a triumph of non-actorish acting.
  61. Inland Empire
    Inland Empire is way, way beyond my powers of ratiocination. It's the higher math.
  62. Val
    Val is not a gloomy movie at all. Quite the opposite. It’s vibrant, quick, and alive, and Val Kilmer today makes for an entertaining guide, with his hammy facial gestures now doing double duty since he can’t talk.
  63. Wordplay
    Niceness also takes the edge off Patrick Creadon's otherwise revitalizing documentary.
  64. Fair Play
    Chloe Domont’s film divides the entire world into binary moments of understanding and misunderstanding — without the shades of gray that would make Fair Play and its characters more tangible and its central tension less didactic.
  65. I'm Not There.
    Too often, it’s the MOVIE that isn’t there. What’s meant to be archetypal comes across as superficial.
  66. Inside Out 2
    New characters and elements get added, the metaphor becomes overextended, and the idea that this world is meant to be a reflection of one person’s psyche gets lost in a sea.
  67. The Son's Room
    A bit too awed by its depiction of the healing power of love. It's minor indeed compared with "In the Bedroom," which deals with a similar subject and doesn't back away from the rawness of grief.
  68. The Man Who Wasn't There
    The Coens have a true feeling for the sleek surfaces of the genre, but they don't connect with its sordid, sexy undercurrent; that's why Crane is made to seem so passive.
  69. The Fall Guy
    There are many elements that make The Fall Guy enormous fun, but what makes it genuinely artful is the way that Leitch and his team (including writer Drew Pearce and stunt coordinator Chris O’Hara) have conceived the film’s stunts as extensions of the characters.
  70. Creed III
    Creed III’s greatest achievement is demonstrating that there’s more story to be told about Donnie, who after two films had been looking pretty thoroughly explored as a character.
  71. Wicked
    Wicked is as enchanting as it is exhausting.
  72. A Most Wanted Man
    What’s on display here is a great actor at his absolute peak — damn it all.
  73. Spaceship Earth
    Viewed under quarantine, Spaceship Earth has a visceral kick.
  74. Arbitrage
    Jarecki puts the veteran actor to brilliant use in the insanely gripping Arbitrage.
  75. Jane Austen Wrecked My Life
    Agathe is concave in both posture and spirit, but she feels right for this muted world of amorous contemplation, of long, uncertain glances met by equally long, equally uncertain glances. By the end, romance in the abstract becomes something much more real — and we can’t help but fall for all these characters ourselves.
  76. The Killing of a Sacred Deer
    To see an unfettered nightmare like this from such an idiosyncratic director feels like a cruel treat, and a welcome stylistic stretch.
  77. Wind River
    Although the resolution to the mystery wouldn’t do credit to a third-rate thriller, it’s crazily powerful — sudden and bloody but with no real catharsis, just a sense of waste and a feeling of, “What now?” I’m not sure how Sheridan would answer that — not that an artist really needs to.
  78. Air
    Air might seem at first like a ridiculous idea for a movie, but it is in fact an ingenious one.
  79. Spider-Man
    Despite all the computer-generated effects and highflying superhero theatrics, this roughly $120 million movie is, with few exceptions, remarkable only in its small human touches.
  80. John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
    The movie should by rights be a “Wow!” But it feels bloated, self-conscious, and pretentious, with long waits between its few dazzling fights. Evidently, it’s hard to build on a premise that’s basically so vacuous and dumb.
  81. The Raid: Redemption
    Once the action starts - and it starts very quickly - The Raid is relentless, breathtaking in its sheer propulsive majesty. But it's also shot through with moments of bleak poetry amid the carnage.
  82. Supernova
    Supernova isn’t adapted from a play, but it sometimes feels like it was, not because of its talkiness or the tightness of its focus, but because it has a tendency to be a little blunter in practice than its understated initial tone might have you expect. The performances are lovely, though, and they carry this minor-key movie through to its ambiguous end.
  83. Beyond the Lights
    Beyond the Lights is a deft, gorgeous movie. For all its honesty, it’s never slow, and for all its criticism of the music industry, it’s never finger-wagging.
  84. The Impossible
    I'm not sure any other actress today could have pulled this off without seeming cheap or manipulative. The same, unfortunately, cannot be said for the movie itself, which often traffics in the manipulative.
  85. Big Animal
    Audiences for this film should have no such qualms: When the camel lolls his jaws at dinnertime, or sways his Bactrian bulk, you may decide you've never seen anything quite so hilarious -- or magnificent.
  86. Super Size Me
    Spurlock's movie is an attack on our eating habits, but it's also a prime example of an all-American sport--making a spectacle of oneself for fun and profit. Spurlock, you'll be surprised to learn, is developing a TV spinoff, with himself as host.
  87. Le Week-End
    Le Week-End is a marital ­disintegration–reintegration drama that opens with a dose of frost and vinegar and turns believably sweet—and unbelievably marvelous, in light of what had seemed a depressing trajectory.
  88. Exiled
    If you’ve never seen a Johnnie To crime picture, Exiled is a simple, stylish, and utterly delightful introduction.
  89. Hoppers
    Hoppers is a fun, modest little movie with enough zip and charm to keep kids engaged, and as such, one doesn’t want to criticize it too much. But the memory of what Pixar once was, the behemoth that redefined animation for multiple generations, may still make us wonder where all that energy and originality and artistry went.
  90. Cold Mountain
    Cold Mountain has some marvelous, intimate moments and a real feeling, at times, for the loss that war engenders, but it also has more than its share of hokum--which would be more entertaining if the hokum were juicier.
  91. American Sniper
    It’s a cracker­jack piece of filmmaking, a declaration that he’s (Eastwood) not yet ready to be classified as an Old Master, that he can out-Bigelow Kathryn Bigelow. Morally, though, he has regressed from the heights of Letters From Iwo Jima (2006). In more ways than one, the Iraq occupation is seen through the sight of a high-powered rifle. The movie is scandalously blinkered.
  92. The Forgiveness of Blood
    [A] compelling film touching on the perils of being young - that's it, merely young - in a culture without justice.
  93. Funny Pages
    A debut as packed with promise as with underdeveloped ideas.
  94. Our Lady of the Assassins
    By the end of the movie, the characters are numbed, while the audience is sensitized to the mayhem to an almost unbearable degree.
  95. Spider-Man: Homecoming
    The breeziest, most convivial Marvel movie in ages.
  96. Prince Avalanche
    The movie barely seems to hold together. Could it even be called a movie? And yet, it's captivating — a bit like Gus Van Sant's "Gerry," but not as conceptually hidebound.
  97. The Grandmaster
    In short, I'd be the happiest person in the world if Wong announced there was a four-hour cut of this film somewhere. For now, neither version is perfect, but they’re both so beautiful, so heartbreaking, that the question may be moot. Whatever its flaws, seeing The Grandmaster theatrically, in any version, should be a sacrament for any true film lover — a spiritual duty.
  98. Gran Torino
    The movie is ludicrous, but Eastwood’s consistency is poignant. He has an agenda and sticks to it.
  99. Honey Boy
    As an origin story for a young actor’s warped worldview, Honey Boy is compelling.
  100. The Killer
    Filled with expertly composed sequences undone by the protagonist’s relentless observations about the meaninglessness of existence, the movie feels like an attempt to highlight its own emptiness.
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