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. Skin
    Ultimately, Skin — despite its artful compositions and meditative editing choices — devolves into a reductive redemption fable that doesn’t fully wrestle with the racism or politics governing Babs’s decisions.
  2. Brothers
    Sheridan’s actors work with their intellects fully engaged--and they engage us on levels we barely knew we had.
  3. Happy Death Day
    It’s a fun little movie, more of a giddy rom-com than a splatter-y slasher.
  4. The High Note
    While Ross lacks the bite and Johnson lacks the depth, Kelvin Harrison Jr. feels like a revelation. He’s bristling with warmth, intrigue, and mystery.
  5. Eden
    The pressures of the untamed setting, combined with the inability of these characters to ever trust each other, results in an over-the-top melodrama that gets loopier as it goes on. But it pulls us along, too.
  6. Jumanji: The Next Level
    Jumanji: The Next Level, represents the version we might have dreaded, the tired and only modestly funny one that just coasts on its proved, no-longer-novel premise.
  7. Moana 2
    It’s so devoid of bangers or any remotely memorable tunes that there’s nothing to distract you from the movie’s lack of clear stakes, or meaningful drama, or antagonists with any personality.
  8. Mean Girls
    It turns out that Mean Girls: The Musical: The Movie is pretty good, and likely to succeed at its primary purpose, which is to remind you that the original Mean Girls is fun.
  9. Ask the Dust
    Something is missing, though. The themes are all there, but the movie doesn't cross the blood-brain barrier and rev you up.
  10. The Equalizer 3
    It delivers the goods, thanks to Washington’s performance and Fuqua’s zest for going graphic.
  11. Hope Gap
    A brief, sad little piece that doesn’t quite hurdle the blood-brain barrier and rattle you to the core, but it does achieve a half-sublimity, thanks to coastal settings with white cliffs that inspire both awe and thoughts of flinging oneself off, and also thanks to poetry.
  12. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
    The grandeur of the Lord of the Rings trilogy [has] been replaced by something that resembles tatty summer-stock theater.
  13. Shrek the Third
    Computer-generated animated movies with wall-to-wall jokes can be excruciating, but these jokes are the funniest money can buy.
  14. The Hummingbird Project
    Some of the supporting actors register, especially Michael Mando as the unpretentious but quick-witted chief engineer. But the only surprise is Skarsgård. He has played wife-beaters, vampires, rapists, and mute would-be detectives, but who’d have thought he’d make a credible nerd?
  15. The Seagull
    Despite a few scenes that are too on the nose, The Seagull... turns out to be very fine. Above all, it’s a platform for a handful of definitive performances.
  16. The Night Before
    It’s a pageant, as they say — a bunch of cameos and funny situations all sort of held together with a bare bones plot and some nods to the Christmas spirit.
  17. Hotel Artemis
    Ultimately, in all its artifice and haphazard but enthusiastic invention, Hotel Artemis makes me a bit nostalgic for French ’90s genre fare of Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro and, of course, Luc Besson, embracing their daffiness and dreaminess with an somewhat counterintuitive, almost naïve lack of vanity.
  18. Ocean's Twelve
    So fizzy it nearly fizzles out.
  19. Away We Go
    Travel--finding the self by escaping the self--is central to the novels of Eggers and Vida, but Mendes knows where he's going before he gets there. And so the subject of Away We Go turns out to be not travel but child-rearing, which is at best well-meaning and anguished and at worst downright monstrous.
  20. Fading Gigolo
    What hallucinogen was Turturro on when he came up with this plot? It’s so crazy that it’s … fun.
  21. Gemma Bovery
    After a while, the film feels more like a cute conceit that hasn’t really been developed further. It’s intriguing, and very well-acted, but empty.
  22. We Bought a Zoo
    Cameron Crowe is a romantic bordering on utopian, and his authentic family values - biological and surrogate - shine through in his enchanting We Bought a Zoo.
  23. Monday
    If Monday succeeds as a compelling drama — and, for all the clichés of its story, it does mostly succeed — it’s because Papadimitropoulos and his actors capture the intoxication of new love, as well as the slow-burn agony of the psychological combat that often ensues, with all the small skirmishes and victories and defeats that slowly pick away at a relationship.
  24. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
    The damn thing is fun. Mangold may not have the young Spielberg’s musical flair for extravagant action choreography (who does?), but he is a tougher, leaner director, using a tighter frame and keeping his camera close.
  25. Wicked: For Good
    Wicked: For Good is shorter than the first film and, while it might be a step back in terms of spectacle, it’s a leap forward in (go ahead, laugh) subtlety and emotion. My audience was audibly sobbing by the end.
  26. The Invention of Lying
    However cheeky and blasphemous, this is, at heart, a rather sweet little fable. Which of course would mean nothing if it weren’t explosively funny.
  27. Elemental
    While Sohn has said Elemental was inspired by his parents, his upbringing in multicultural New York City, and his own mixed marriage, the lack of deeper consideration his film gives to its ideas leads to some ugly reductiveness.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Way of the Dragon
    The film’s appeal rests almost entirely on his fight scene with his student, Chuck Norris — arguably the best one ever captured on celluloid.
  29. The Lords of Salem
    The Lords of Salem is gloomy, lacks variety, and is not without its flat patches. Heidi is an increasingly dullish heroine, and in the first 15 minutes you’ll know what’s going to happen in the next 80.
  30. The Book of Clarence
    It begins as a comedy, takes a turn toward the earnest, and ends with a sort of genial blasphemy. There’s definitely nothing else like it out there, for better and worse, and even if it doesn’t work, there’s something admirable about how at ease the film is with its own erratic rhythms.
  31. Rabbit Trap
    Director Chaney clearly has a lot of skill and talent. But for all of Rabbit Trap’s technical accomplishments, it’s very hard to be frightened or moved by something that never stops feeling like an exercise in style.
  32. Paul
    The third and least original of the Pegg-Frost features, but it's still a lot funnier than most films of its ilk.
  33. Color Me Kubrick
    The movie is endless even at less than 90 minutes. You could use it, "A Clockwork Orange" style, as aversion therapy for seemingly incorrigible con artists.
  34. The Laundromat
    A broad agitprop comedy written by Scott Z. Burns that’s labored in parts but is, as a whole, sensationally valuable.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Laughing Policeman
    Don't let the pre-title violence throw you; The Laughing Policeman stands as a solid, rewarding detective story. [24 Dec 1973, p.69]
    • New York Magazine (Vulture)
  36. Spinal Tap II: The End Continues
    This Is Spinal Tap is a comedy about how the desire to be seen as a rock god collides with the humiliations of actually being human, and the visual of a group of guys in their 70s and 80s unable to move on from the styles of their youthful heyday is as effective a continuing riff on this theme as any. It’s also the only one fully realized by the new film.
  37. The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them
    Anyone who has ever ended a relationship and taken long walks in the rain will relate, at least until the characters open their mouths.
  38. Dicks: The Musical
    Dicks: The Musical is never as outrageous as it clearly would like to be . . . But its determination to avoid any trace of self-importance or greater meaning is admirable in its own right — embracing the freedom to just be ridiculous.
  39. Lisa Picard Is Famous
    Fortunately, it never dips into bathos. These two actors SHOULD be noticed. They've crafted the most ingenious résumé of the year.
  40. Thor
    Equal parts trippy, tacky, and monumental, the blend surprisingly agreeable, a happy change from all those aggressively down-to-earth superhero flicks like "Iron Man."
  41. Me and You
    For all the limitations of its setting and palette, this is a gorgeous, visually exciting movie.
  42. Body of Lies
    The film has one indelible asset: Mark Strong, who plays the Jordanian spymaster Hani. He's sleek and lounge-lizard sharp like a young Andy Garcia, and he could be bigger than Garcia. The Jordanian holds all the cards, and opposite two superstars, Strong is the only actor who holds the camera.
  43. The Wedding Guest
    It’s all quite gorgeous, and surprisingly moving. The Wedding Guest shows just how much you can do with a wisp of a story and a whole lot of cinematic vision.
  44. Towelhead
    The film is superbly acted (especially by Macdissi, who makes the father a borderline hysteric), but it's hard to know what to feel except, "How can any girl navigate this oversexualized culture?"
  45. Teeth
    Most of the movie works because the blonde Weixler has a darling-daffy face (a pinch of Alicia Silverstone, a dollop of Drew Barrymore) and a should-I-or-shouldn’t-I ambivalence about sex that’s part realism, part screwball.
  46. Road House
    Despite the mercenary nature of its existence, Road House is better than it has any right to be — perfectly enjoyable schlock that’s helped along by how unserious it is.
  47. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
    It’s not so much bad as dismayingly bland. It’s WTF for all the wrong reasons.
  48. Army of the Dead
    It starts off great. But then it goes on. And on. And on. And takes itself ever more seriously at each turn. By the end, any buoyancy has disappeared into a familiar wasteland piled high with corpses and exploding heads.
  49. Smart People
    The middling romantic comedy Smart People, which centers on a hyperintellectual dysfunctional family, is of interest chiefly for the first post-Juno role of Ellen Page.
  50. Bad Words
    The film itself is uneven, but it’s kind of awesome seeing Bateman act so vile.
  51. The Grand
    The Grand is a seesaw, but the setting--the high-stakes poker subculture--is remarkably fertile and the actors are a treat.
  52. The Forbidden Kingdom
    Once past the clunky prologue, the film is great fun, with a good balance between computer effects and athleticism.
  53. Albert Nobbs
    The performance is extraordinary, literally: Close resembles no man I've ever seen, or woman either. She's the personification of fear - the fear of being seen through, seen for what she is.
  54. The Human Stain
    Roth's deep-dish introspection would be difficult for any movie to achieve, but with the right cast and more passion, we might have been pulled right into Coleman's psychic prison. The Human Stain isn't a movie of ideas, and it's too inert to be a probing character study. No stain is left behind, just a wan watermark.
  55. Teen Spirit
    Violet wants to sing. Does Violet want to be a pop star? This is posed as the the driving question of the film, but nothing about Fanning’s performance suggests a desire for much of anything.
  56. Southpaw
    I veered between being awed and appalled, though mostly the latter. The trouble with Gyllenhaal is that he shows little range, not from role to role but within roles.
  57. Instant Family
    Instant Family is a surprisingly foul-mouthed, filled-to-bursting roller coaster of a comedy-melodrama that tosses you in eight different directions before leaving you a teary, conflicted mess. And when it works, it’s genuinely funny and moving. But when it doesn’t, hoo boy, it’s atrocious.
  58. Happy Death Day 2U
    Stalk-and-kill movies bear some resemblance to classic farces, but no horror movies have taken the similarities as far as Happy Death Day and its busier, just-as-fun sequel, Happy Death 2 U. The new film repeats some of the original material but with even more madcap permutations.
  59. Shirley
    To damn by faint praise: Shirley is a perfectly serviceable film.
  60. Miss Potter
    Miss Potter hardly deserves ridicule. It's sweet with lovely Lake District vistas and a heartfelt endorsement of land conservation. It will certainly play well with older audiences and the kind of adolescent girls who draw faces in their O's.
  61. Lovely, Still
    A haunting duet for two great actors who haven't lost a step and have gained the most exquisite lyricism.
  62. Evil Dead
    The passing of the torch from Raimi to Alvarez is not a momentous occasion. In the end, who really cares? Five years from now, will you want to watch this bloody $14 million extravaganza or Raimi’s shoestring original, which was Amateur Hour elevated to pop art?
  63. Thor: Love and Thunder
    Waititi hasn’t always been the most precise at mixing pathos and humor (Hunt for the Wilderpeople, yes, Jojo Rabbit, no), and the calibrations in Love and Thunder are all off.
  64. The Burnt Orange Heresy
    As a thriller, The Burnt Orange Heresy is entirely underwhelming, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth watching.
  65. City of Ghosts
    Great on atmosphere and less good on everything else. That’s not entirely a knock.
  66. Hannibal
    The audience for Hannibal is far more primed for a good time; if the film is a hit, it will be because Lecter has been cartoonized; his ghoulish panache, his double entendres about cannibalism, and his pet phrases like "goody-goody" and "okeydokey" all serve to make him a figure of fun.
  67. My Life Without Me
    A weepie for audiences under the (mistaken) impression that independent movies are always more emotionally honest than Hollywood movies.
  68. Code 46
    Their doomy romance is supposed to be fated, but it just seems sloggy, certainly not the stuff of myth. A good comedy could be made from this same premise.
  69. The Maze Runner
    The Maze Runner only answers some of the questions it so marvelously sets up. And while I probably now know too much about the story for it to work a similar magic next time, I find myself genuinely anticipating the next one.
  70. Iron Man 2
    It doesn’t come close to the emotional heft of those two rare 2s that outclassed their ones: Superman 2 and Spider-Man 2. But Iron Man 2 hums along quite nicely.
  71. Journey to the Center of the Earth
    It would be barely passable under normal circumstances, but in 3-D it's a circus of excellent FX.
  72. Cold Pursuit
    Cold Pursuit ultimately winds up being about how unsatisfying films like Cold Pursuit can be.
  73. The House with a Clock in Its Walls
    The cast in House is exceedingly fancy, but they never seem to connect; Blanchett and Black are about as awkward a pairing as they sound on paper, engaged in two irreconcilable ways of going about their performances.
  74. Charlie Says
    A social worker’s take on a lost soul can be valuable, but in a drama it’s too orienting. You want to see how a person could surrender herself — her self — to something so diabolical, which demands a higher level of insanity than the filmmakers can muster.
  75. Snow White and the Huntsman
    The movie's revisionist tone is startlingly enough to carry you along.
  76. Finch
    Despite the ticking clock of Finch’s rapidly progressing illness, the movie doesn’t build up much urgency or excitement. The script is pretty thin, almost all premise and little incident. But director Miguel Sapochnik has the eye to make this world compellingly hostile and bleak, and that counts for something.
  77. Coach Carter
    Jackson's wonderfully nuanced, witty performance, and a few unexpected plot turns, give Coach Carter a subtext that helps complicate such knee-jerk oversimplifications, redeeming the role with energetic humor and a loose-limbed grace.
  78. The Great New Wonderful
    The new 9/11 movies aim to rekindle feelings that most of us have, by necessity, moved beyond. But there’s more than one way to move beyond, as suggested by the spottily affecting ensemble psycho-comedy The Great New Wonderful.
  79. A Walk Among the Tombstones
    The talented writer-director Scott Frank comes awfully close in his adaptation of one of Block’s better novels, A Walk Among the Tombstones. I’d be way more enthusiastic if Frank hadn’t swapped out the book’s horrific, unforgettable ending for something so conventional, I can barely remember it a few days later.
  80. Wrath of Man
    Wrath of Man could have been salvaged had it delivered on some decent action sequences, but once such sequences come, they tend to be either lifeless or unintelligible or both.
  81. Mama
    The plotting isn't fresh, and the politics are a tad reactionary, but the movie is also shapely, rounded, satisfying - a classical ghost story.
  82. The Company You Keep
    As a piece of suspense, it ain’t exactly "North by Northwest," or even "Three Days of the Condor"; the awkward attempts at chase scenes make it clear that Redford the actor, who has always given off a slightly lugubrious air, has lost a step or two physically.
  83. Galveston
    The pitch-black and paper-thin Galveston not only fails to find a way to reinvent, or at least refresh, that old tired idea, it also piles a few more tired ideas on top of it.
  84. Cet amour-là
    The real passion here is the almost erotic thrill that acting still holds for Moreau.
  85. Bread and Roses
    Loach has gotten hold of a marvelous subject -- the invisibility of the working poor in the environs of the rich -- that keeps you watching despite all the banner-waving.
  86. Dark Blue
    Powerful, uneven police drama.
  87. The Strange Ones
    The arty but suspenseful drama The Strange Ones is a perfect demonstration of how the craft of storytelling is also the craft of withholding — of revealing as little as possible in carefully parceled-out amounts.
  88. Havoc
    Evans has assembled a worthy cast and has crammed his film full of what should be fun elements, and yet the final result is weirdly without joy — akin to filling your plate with all your favorite foods at a buffet, only to sit down and realize you have no appetite to eat it.
  89. I Origins
    I Origins really loses its oomph when Ian travels to India in search of a particular pair of eyeballs, and the movie closes on a note that would make even M. Night Shyamalan roll his own.
  90. The Equalizer
    There’s a special kind of hell for artists who array vigilante revenge-porn in saintly garb, and Denzel Washington and director Antoine Fuqua should go to the front of that damnable line after The Equalizer.
  91. Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
    The movie itself isn’t dull. It’s moderately stylish, moderately suspenseful, fun in patches. It hits its marks. But the setup lacks urgency.
  92. Sherlock Holmes
    By now we’ve seen so many good, bad, and indifferent Sherlocks that it’s almost a relief to get something different, however wrongheaded. And there’s no such thing as too much Downey.
  93. Immaculate
    Mohan seduces us with form while the central performance engages us on a more elemental level.
  94. Brotherhood of the Wolf
    An exuberantly garish French movie.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Ghosts of Mississippi
    The movie tries to turn boringness into a virtue. Every time Rob Reiner builds a little suspense, he goes off into a civics lesson, but he has nothing interesting to say.
  96. Ezra
    The story is hell to follow--the flashbacks aren’t in chronological order--and the nonacting variable.
  97. The Kingdom
    Sensationally directed by Peter Berg, it’s a combination forensics detective movie (car bomb blows up secure American compound in Saudi Arabia--who dunnit and how can we stop him from doing it again?) and red-meat waste-the-terrorists action picture.
  98. 3 Hearts
    This is a deceptively weird movie. There’s always been an immediacy to Jacquot’s visual style; he likes to follow his characters closely, and he gets performances that are energetic but quiet.
  99. Mufasa: The Lion King
    All the technological marvels of the world can’t breathe life into a film that doesn’t know what it wants to be.
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