New York Magazine (Vulture)'s Scores

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For 3,960 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: 2,219 out of 3960
  2. Mixed: 1,378 out of 3960
  3. Negative: 363 out of 3960
3960 movie reviews
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  1. Girlhood
    A fine example of what a filmmaker can achieve when she takes on a great subject and lets it play out with all the respect and attention it deserves.
  2. Elephant
    It’s just another example of art-house hokey-pokey. Amazingly, this film won both the Palme d’Or and Best Director Award at Cannes, beating out, among others, "Mystic River."
  3. The Singing Detective
    It’s powerful, all right, and Downey’s performance is lacerating, but missing is any sense of lyricism in Dark’s hallucinatory yearnings. Without that leap of transcendence, this new Singing Detective doesn’t sing.
  4. In the Cut
    Campion is dabbling in several different types of movie here: police procedural, film noir, romantic melodrama, sex fantasia. None really succeeds.
  5. Runaway Jury
    The inevitable showdown between these two paragons is something of a fizzle; there's too much over/under-acting going on.
  6. Pieces of April
    Hedges keeps everything in balance: The sadness and frivolity all seem to be part of the same emotional continuum. He’s made a lingeringly poignant little movie.
  7. Sylvia
    The problem with Christine Jeffs’s Sylvia, as with most movies about deeply troubled artists, is that for the most part we are seeing the troubles and not the artist.
  8. Veronica Guerin
    A character as psychologically complex as Guerin -- whose drive may not have been fully comprehensible even to herself -- needs a lot of room to expand on screen. Schumacher and Bruckheimer box her in.
  9. Intolerable Cruelty
    Intolerable Cruelty, while tolerable, isn't very radical--or very good, either. The Coens wrote the script eight years ago on assignment, not intending to direct it, and that may explain why the result often lacks their customary bizarro facetiousness.
  10. Kill Bill: Vol. 1
    When French New Wave directors like Truffaut and Godard paid tribute to Hollywood pulp, they poeticized it and gave it an infusion of feeling. Tarantino’s tributes are, for the most part, far less complicated: He’s a fan, and Kill Bill is his mash note.
  11. Mystic River
    Sean Penn is so frighteningly good in this movie that he outdoes even the best of his earlier work.
  12. Bus 174
    It all adds up to a searing portrait of social misery.
  13. Out of Time
    A crime thriller that is strong on sultry atmosphere--you practically break into a sweat watching it--but weak on believability.
  14. School of Rock
    Linklater, whose previous movies include "Slacker," "Before Sunrise," and "Waking Life," may be the most versatile director of his generation. School of Rock is his most unabashedly mainstream movie by far, and yet it’s commercial in the best way.
  15. Concert for George
    The jamboree is beautifully shot and directed, by Chris Menges and David Leland respectively, and there is a haunting touch: the presence of George’s son, Dhani, on guitar, looking near-identical to his dad in his twenties.
  16. The Station Agent
    A bit too satisfied with its own sweet sensitivities.
  17. My Life Without Me
    A weepie for audiences under the (mistaken) impression that independent movies are always more emotionally honest than Hollywood movies.
  18. Anything Else
    Being a cultural icon is a time-limited occupation; after a while, the culture moves on, and if you don't move with it, you end up with a movie like Anything Else.
  19. Secondhand Lions
    The only saving grace is that Caine and Duvall don’t overdo the southern-coot stuff.
  20. Casa de los babys
    The cast…is first-rate, but each is given a single note to play.
  21. In This World
    Excruciatingly vivid.
  22. To Be and to Have
    The emotional honesty of this movie rescues it from sentimentality. To Be and to Have is about more than a dedicated teacher and his pupils; it’s about how difficult and exhilarating it is to grow into an adult.
  23. Matchstick Men
    The movie is moderately enjoyable, but it also makes you feel conned: It offers up a disturbing protagonist and then substitutes cuteness for character.
  24. Lost in Translation
    Coppola both wrote and directed, and there’s a pleasing shapelessness to her scenes. She accomplishes the difficult feat of showing people being bored out of their skulls in such a way that we are never bored watching them.
  25. So Close
    Cory Yuen's So Close is a kind of Hong Kong martial-arts variation on the Charlie's Angels movies, only better.
  26. Taking Sides
    Taking Sides has a padded-out, stagebound quality that is anything but lyrical. And Szabó, a Hungarian best known for "Mephisto" and "Colonel Redl," is not at his best here.
  27. Thirteen
    Thirteen doesn't really offer much more insight into exasperated mother-daughter relationships or twisted teens than, say, "Freaky Friday," which I much prefer. At least that film was funny and didn't try to fob itself off as a bulletin from the front lines.
  28. American Splendor
    It would be a mistake to regard American Splendor as an anthem for the common man. It is the UNCOMMON that is being celebrated here.
  29. Open Range
    Costner is always at his best when he’s a little ornery, and Duvall is the same way. His grizzled performance is so thoroughly in character that he even chews as if it were 1882.
  30. Step Into Liquid
    Inspires the requisite shock and awe, but a little goes a long way. About the fifth time I saw someone slip-sliding away from a 60-foot wave, I longed to hear someone on the soundtrack say, “That guy is really nuts.”
  31. Le divorce
    It may be that Merchant Ivory need the armature of the past in order to create a sense of the present. Le Divorce is mustier than any of their movies set back in time.
  32. S.W.A.T.
    There is something sneakily gratifying about all this: Not since the days of "Earthquake" have Hollywood producers so indulged their fantasies of trashing the town.
  33. Freaky Friday
    Freaky Friday gives Curtis the chance to go all goofy and showcase her gift for splayed physical comedy.
  34. The Magdalene Sisters
    When it comes time for some of the girls to flee, the result is one of the most emotionally satisfying of all prison breaks.
  35. The Secret Lives of Dentists
    Refreshingly uncategorizable: It’s somewhere between a marital-discord drama and a mystery thriller, but it also has its madcap moments.
  36. Buffalo Soldiers
    This is low-grade satire. The shocks to the system in Buffalo Soldiers are nothing more than cheap thrills.
  37. Seabiscuit
    Watching this movie, you get the feeling that the Depression existed so that Seabiscuit could be memorialized.
  38. Camp
    Art as a passport to healing may be what audiences are craving these days, but the poultice provided by this movie couldn't cover a paper cut.
  39. Masked and Anonymous
    Here’s a good rule of thumb: Any movie featuring a quote in its ad from the poet laureate of Great Britain—“Deeply engaging!” -- is in trouble.
  40. Dirty Pretty Things
    Though worth seeing, should be better than it is.
  41. Bad Boys II
    Resembles a full-length promo for itself. The action, virtually nonstop, is a series of can-you-top-this? set pieces.
  42. September 11
    An ungainly, intermittently harrowing omnibus filled with moments of piercing sorrow and rage.
  43. A Housekeeper
    Berri is very good at bringing out his characters' emotional contradictions so that we seem to be discovering them right along with Jacques and Laura.
  44. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
    The law of commerce worked this time around: One terrific thrill ride has begotten another.
  45. Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas
    People who see Sinbad for its star power--a big selling point in the movie’s marketing campaign--are being oversold.
  46. Swimming Pool
    Ozon has a smooth gift for scenes of unease, but ultimately Swimming Pool liquifies into a dreary puzzle movie.
  47. Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde
    I realize Legally Blonde 2 was not intended as scathing political satire, but I wish someone out there in movieland did indeed have just such an intention these days.
  48. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
    I don’t mind the movie’s retro-ness, but I wish Mostow didn't take pulp so seriously.
  49. 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.
  50. Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle
    So relentlessly giddy and hyperactive that it doesn’t really need a movie review--it needs a prescription.
  51. Alex & Emma
    Life imitates art, except there’s precious little of either here.
  52. Hulk
    The result is perhaps the most elegantly shot, and certainly the most disturbing, of the recent fantasy films.
  53. Hollywood Homicide
    A frustrating blend of the sharply funny and the ploddingly generic. Although he does them well enough, we don’t really need Ron Shelton to give us the same old skidding-U-turn cop-thriller theatrics. He’s a much more distinctive talent than this crass spree allows for.
  54. The Heart of Me
    O'Sullivan's movie could easily have been made 60 years ago. This is not intended as a compliment.
  55. Manito
    Has an appealing rawness.
  56. Love the Hard Way
    Brody doesn’t deserve this movie.
  57. Capturing the Friedmans
    Jarecki shows off this footage as evidence of a truly dysfunctional family in various stages of denial. What it reveals at least as much is the modern phenomenon of reality-TV self-exposure carried to such lengths that, by comparison, the Osbournes look like the Cleavers.
  58. Together
    Since this is a coming-of-age movie about a poor rural kid who grapples with the big city, it would be nice if its protagonist weren’t such a lummox.
  59. The Italian Job
    An elaborate techno-heist thriller, The Italian Job features some spectacular chase scenes, but for a change, the people doing the chasing are also worth watching.
  60. Finding Nemo
    It has what the most heartfelt Disney animated features used to have: rapturous imagery matched with real wit.
  61. The In-Laws
    Why do filmmakers persist in remaking films that were already great to begin with? Why not instead remake bad movies that had terrific premises?
  62. The Matrix Reloaded
    This monstro-budgeted sequel to The Matrix has more than twice as many special effects as the original... there is also more than twice as much philosophic bull as before--and there was plenty of that the first time around.
  63. The Shape of Things
    LaBute is attacking our society’s obsession with the surface of things, whether it be a painter’s canvas or a human one, but his drama is, in itself, relentlessly superficial.
  64. Only the Strong Survive
    This is no antique show: Faced with an audience, they are still amazingly vital and sometimes amazingly lewd.
  65. Down with Love
    It’s all strenuously camp.
  66. Man on the Train
    As in many a French movie, especially crime movie, the philosophe and the crook turn out to be each other’s mirror image.
  67. The Dancer Upstairs
    At its best in the interludes between explosions.
  68. Owning Mahowny
    Hoffman has his specialty, though, and it’s not inappropriate here: He always looks supersmart and yet his reactions to what goes on around him are superslow.
  69. X2: X-Men United
    The best new addition to the corp is Alan Cumming’s Nightcrawler.
  70. Spellbound
    Entertaining documentary.
  71. Confidence
    By the end of the film, everybody has been triple- and quadruple- and even quintuple-crossed, but the characters still standing all seem to be very pleased with themselves for a job well done. If only we could figure out what the job was exactly.
  72. It Runs in the Family
    Fred Schepisi, the great Australian director, had the thankless task of trying to turn Jesse Wigutow’s screenplay into something with a pulse, but his finesse is wasted on this steaming heap of dysfunctionalism.
  73. People I Know
    Trashy and lurid as this movie is, it’s certainly not boring, and it keeps its star in hog heaven throughout.
  74. City of Ghosts
    Great on atmosphere and less good on everything else. That’s not entirely a knock.
  75. Winged Migration
    Parts of this film are as blandly lulling as a mood tape, but at best it’s a literally soaring experience.
  76. Love and Diane
    Harrowingly straightforward.
  77. A Mighty Wind
    Achingly funny movie...Guest has cultivated a stock company of players whose work together is so intuitively sharp that it seems to redefine the boundaries of acting.
  78. Anger Management
    Disposable, sporadically amusing.
  79. The Good Thief
    Bob is a marvelous creation--a faker who is also the genuine article. He’s the perfect hero for a movie about the world as one big scam.
  80. Cet amour-là
    The real passion here is the almost erotic thrill that acting still holds for Moreau.
  81. Raising Victor Vargas
    A comedy in the best sense--it draws its life from the pitch-perfect authenticity of its characters.
  82. Dreamcatcher
    It would take a filmmaker of truly astonishing versatility to harmonize all these disparate tones...But there are moments in Dreamcatcher when Kasdan gives you the giggles and the creeps at the same time, and that’s not easy to do.
  83. Japan
    Reygadas is both a sophisticate and a primitive: He sets up his film as a religious allegory, with the nameless painter as a kind of suffering Christ and the old woman--whose name is Ascen, as in Ascension--as his redeemer.
  84. Spun
    As the cowboy-hatted wild man who cooks up speed in his motel-room lab, Rourke, who looks at home in his tattoos, is mesmerizingly grungy. He strikes a rare note of authenticity in this otherwise phony fandango.
  85. Bend It Like Beckham
    Every generation has to discover the same clichés that were drummed into previous generations, and kids could do worse than to learn them from this film.
  86. Tears of the Sun
    In a movie with so much graphic suffering by innocent Africans, it’s a bit disconcerting that so much loving attention is paid to Bruce Willis’s anguished mug. There’s an uncomfortable Great White Father (and Mother) aspect to this movie.
  87. Laurel Canyon
    Frances McDormand deserves much better than Lisa Cholodenko’s flat-footed Laurel Canyon...McDormand alone makes the picture worth seeing: Her character is a rash combo of steel and dissolution and regret.
  88. Bringing Down the House
    Although that pairing (Martin/Latifah) alone may be enough to make this movie a hit, the material is thin and pandering and almost criminally negligent in bypassing opportunities for humor.
  89. Irreversible
    Noé shoots his sequences in long, unbroken takes, and the unblinking horror that results is, I think, the opposite of exploitation. There has been so much lurid bloodletting in the movies that you might think nothing could faze us anymore. Think again.
  90. Dark Blue
    Powerful, uneven police drama.
  91. The Life of David Gale
    The Grisham-esque murder-mystery plot got so scrambled that, finally, it’s anybody’s guess what the filmmakers intended.
  92. Amandla! A Revolution in Four Part Harmony
    Scattershot but rousing documentary.
  93. All the Real Girls
    There’s a ravishing aliveness to the spacious imagery; at least the clichés have room to roam free.
  94. Gerry
    A wee Boy Scout would have done far better in the wilds. It’s tough to think "Waiting for Godot" when what you’re watching is closer to "Dumb & Dumber."
  95. Painted Fire
    The mystery of the artistic process is left mysterious -- as it should be.
  96. Stone Reader
    A marvelous literary thriller that gets at the way books can stay with people forever.
  97. Lost in La Mancha
    A mesmerizing documentary.
  98. The Recruit
    For most of this movie, things are exactly what they seem--mediocre.
    • New York Magazine (Vulture)
  99. Blind Spot. Hitler's Secretary
    Although Junge had consulted with a few historians and moviemakers over the years, she had never really unburdened herself, and this 90-minute documentary is a devastating act of personal confession.
  100. City of God
    Undeniably powerful, but also rather numbing.
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