The New York Times' Scores

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For 20,312 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 46% higher than the average critic
  • 5% same as the average critic
  • 49% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 4.2 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 61
Highest review score: 100 Short Cuts
Lowest review score: 0 Gummo
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9,400 out of 20312
  2. Mixed: 8,446 out of 20312
  3. Negative: 2,466 out of 20312
20312 movie reviews
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  1. Yakuza Apocalypse
    Mr. Miike’s narrative model is essentially the Kool-Aid commercials of the 1980s: Periodically, somebody new bursts into the room or onto the street, and a fight or something bizarre takes place.
  2. Land and Shade
    In Land and Shade, the setting holds more interest than the plot: a fable-like, elemental story that sketches its characters too faintly to develop much power.
  3. The Club
    There is power in this vision, but it can also feel forced, almost mechanical.
  4. Runoff
    The movie’s extreme compression is its biggest failing. The business end is so minimally sketched, you are left wanting to know a lot more.
  5. 3 Generations
    Ray is courageous just for making the decision to change sexes. The film — which, by the way, includes a surprising amount of droll humor — would be better if it trusted the audience to recognize this, rather than piling ordeals worthy of the Labors of Hercules onto its protagonist.
  6. Cartel Land
    Mr. Heineman has said that he wanted Cartel Land to feel like a narrative film as much as possible, and to an extent it does. What’s missing is a directorial point of view, including about vigilante groups, the so-called war on drugs, and Mexican and American policies and politics.
  7. The Stranger
    The movie benefits greatly from Mr. Amoedo’s largely steady direction and the uniform acting skills of its Chilean cast (performing in English).
  8. Tentacle 8
    Mr. Chi, making his feature debut with Tentacle 8, lavishes attention on his characters at the expense of the through line binding them.
  9. The Midnight Swim
    The pieces don’t entirely cohere, but Ms. Smith has a promising sensibility.
  10. Stations of the Cross
    As Maria crumples before our eyes, many will find Stations of the Cross heartbreaking and infuriating. Others may laugh out loud at her mother, a walking nightmare of pious, punishing rectitude.
  11. Bonobos: Back to the Wild
    Bonobos: Back to the Wild is an uncomfortable mix of fictionalized account and nature film, but you have to admire the work it documents.
  12. Tap World
    It would be better if it had a bit less proclaiming and a bit more nuts-and-bolts information, but still, it’s refreshing to see people bubbling over with enthusiasm for an art that is somewhat out of the mainstream.
  13. Solo: A Star Wars Story
    It doesn’t take itself too seriously, but it also holds whatever irreverent, anarchic impulses it might possess in careful check.
  14. The Young Kieslowski
    This small, observant movie, directed and written by Kerem Sanga, is the better for not going in predictable directions. A story that you half-expect to turn into a melodrama stays true to the sensibilities of its immature, painfully sincere characters, who are faced with life-changing decisions.
  15. Meet the Patels
    Meet the Patels is a tidy, easygoing documentary in which peripheral players prove more intriguing than its central focus.
  16. Famous Nathan
    The movie is choppy and rushed — a bumper-car ride that somehow fits the rough-and-tumble era it recalls.
  17. Lucky Stiff
    With songs about shoes and dogs, Lucky Stiff couldn’t be sillier, but Mr. Marsh and especially Ms. James make it an enjoyable curiosity for fans of musical theater.
  18. The Outrageous Sophie Tucker
    The movie isn’t especially well made, yet because Tucker is such a gloriously rich figure — immigrant turned runaway mother turned vaudevillian turned superstar — she renders its formal and aesthetic shortcomings (mostly) irrelevant.
  19. Before We Go
    The chemistry makes the movie’s pleasures easy to surrender to, albeit fleetingly.
  20. Zipper
    The script, by Ms. Stephens and Joel Viertel, though lurching at times into overstatement, is enhanced with worthy if fleeting performances from John Cho and Christopher McDonald as Sam’s colleagues. Ray Winstone, as a journalist, effectively melds sleaze and compassion.
  21. Our Brand Is Crisis
    It’s cute for a while. The stars are pros, and their scenes, often staged so that the characters are within breathing distance of each other, have snap.
  22. Wild City
    The crisscrossing pursuers and pesky police suggest a watered-down version of the treacheries in “City on Fire.” But the cluttered, unfolding dynamism of Mr. Lam’s action scenes remains resilient when gunplay or knife fights are thrust into street life.
  23. The Second Mother
    The Second Mother goes soft toward the end, defusing its conflicts too easily and inconsequentially.
  24. Room
    While it flickers with grace and imagination during its initial half, largely because of Jack, it devolves into a dreary, platitudinous therapy movie in its second, largely because of Ma.
  25. Beltracchi: The Art of Forgery
    Beltracchi: The Art of Forgery is a case in which a great documentary topic hasn’t yielded a great documentary.
  26. Homme Less
    Mr. Wirthensohn, who has known Mr. Reay since both were models, sees Mr. Reay’s life as a metaphor for the vanishing middle class. But Mr. Reay merely comes across as an aging casualty of Manhattan fashion, vainly chasing his fortune in a fickle industry that prizes youth.
  27. Arabian Nights: Volume 1, The Restless One
    Mr. Gomes has a tendency to revel in his own cleverness and to indulge in self-conscious cinematic jokes. He also has a penchant for obscurantism, a habit of confusing ambiguity with depth.
  28. Arabian Nights: Volume 3, The Enchanted One
    There is a fine line between delving into the mysteries of life and engaging in mystification, and Mr. Gomes lands on the wrong side of it. There is something disingenuous in the way this movie disowns its own ambitions and scorns the possibility of clarity or coherence. Maybe its opacity is a matter of principle. Or maybe it’s just an excuse.
  29. Ready Player One
    Mr. Spielberg, a digital enthusiast and an old-school cineaste, goes further than most filmmakers in exploring the aesthetic possibilities of a form that is frequently dismissed and misunderstood.
  30. Brothers ... Blood Against Blood
    Although Brothers is a remake of Gavin O’Connor’s 2011 “Warrior,” its plotting, timeouts for montages and a song or two — Kareena Kapoor appears as a spangly item girl, the sole female in a sea of leering chorus boys — are echt Hindi movie. Even more so is its emotional appeal.
  31. Searching for Home: Coming Back From War
    There is little new insight, although the film does create an instructive tension between admiring bravery and sacrifice and being appalled by war itself.
  32. Fever
    Fever doesn’t come to a neat ending and ultimately feels unsatisfying. Before then, though, it’s an intriguing and intelligent update of a true crime still chilling more than 90 years later.
  33. Wildlike
    The Wildlike landscapes are exhilarating, but when the film works, it’s because of the interiors.
  34. Wolf Totem
    The landscape and painstakingly trained wolves are the true stars.
  35. The Hallow
    Mr. Hardy, however, would rather busy himself with reminders of earlier creature features.... Luckily, John Nolan’s old-school effects are wicked good, and Martijn van Broekhuizen’s mossy photography is pleasingly sinister.
  36. The House That Jack Built
    As directed by Henry Barrial, there is solid ensemble acting, particularly by Mr. Bonilla, who dependably anchors a movie that is almost too busy.
  37. Home from Home: Chronicle of a Vision
    Home From Home is imbued with the villagers’ attachment to the land, but while dutifully capturing the period, the film feels less layered than Mr. Reitz’s past work.
  38. The Moving Creatures
    Mr. Gotardo uses long, slowly unfolding shots and extended close-ups to aid our familiarity with each set of characters — almost by osmosis, we grasp their domestic dynamics, the rhythm of their routines.
  39. The Beauty Inside
    The film, pleasing and inoffensive, often amuses as it wrestles with the nature of familiarity as well as the question of where beauty resides.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A Ballerina's Tale
    Mr. George chooses to avoid the more heart-wrenching aspects of Ms. Copeland’s tough upbringing, and his presentation of her remarkable comeback is remarkably low on suspense.
  41. The Warriors
    The film is as handsome to watch as it is preposterous to listen to, full of gorgeous nocturnal city images that splash blaring neon colors against filthy, rain-slicked gray. Mr. Hill uses subways, jukeboxes, spectacularly eerie costumes and deserted streets to create a stark yet extravagant visual style, and a grimy little world in which everything looks curiously brand-new. Thanks to a lot of wipes and slow-motion shots, you are never in danger of forgetting that somebody clever is at the helm.
  42. Front Cover
    Though too slight to be memorable, the gay romance Front Cover takes a gentle, thoughtful look at the intersection of ethnicity and sexuality.
  43. The Family Fang
    Mr. Bateman’s direction of the actors is especially sensitive in this and other tricky scenes, showing a delicacy with emotional textures that isn’t always matched by the story, especially when Annie and Baxter speak in therapeutic clichés.
  44. A War
    The conclusion would be chilling if it weren’t so reserved. For Denmark, the film, an Oscar nominee in the foreign-language category, might seem quietly radical, but Mr. Lindholm errs too far on the side of quiet.
  45. Lolo
    Many little touches in the film reflect the offbeat hand of Ms. Delpy. But she sells herself short by not giving the mother-son conflict a bit of a sharper edge beyond Lolo’s awfulness.
  46. Rabin, the Last Day
    Rabin, the Last Day is not interesting in spite of its flaws as a film. It’s interesting because of them, because of Mr. Gitai’s refusal or inability to clarify or even coherently narrate the history he addresses.
  47. (T)error
    Because of its shortcomings, (T)error serves as evidence of a broken system rather than an indictment of it. Yet such evidence is worrisome and points to a threat to civil rights.
  48. Heist
    Battling a preposterous plot and second-tier performances that are, at best, serviceable, this roll-along thriller from Scott Mann works its keister off to turn beef jerky into chateaubriand.
  49. The Boy and the Beast
    Mr. Hosoda is skilled with fight scenes, and his settings — the pastel-hued Jutengai and the drab Shibuya, evoked at times with surveillance-camera perspectives and crowd-paranoia angles — are impressive. But the characterizations and conflicts here are strictly generic
  50. This Changes Everything
    Moving, humane and unfailingly polite, This Changes Everything presents a Panglossian view of approaching disaster that (according to the film’s publicity notes) seeks to empower rather than to scare. But we should be scared.
  51. Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans
    It doesn’t really succeed in conveying McQueen’s great passion for auto racing. In truth, it mostly makes him seem like a jerk — but cinephiles might enjoy it as a case study of moviemaking gone wrong.
  52. A Woman Like Me
    The rambling, uncertain tone engendered by Ms. Sichel’s striving to align her Buddhist beliefs with the harsh realities of terminal illness also weakens her story’s gravitational pull.
  53. The Emperor's New Clothes
    The Emperor’s New Clothes is moderately effective agitprop.
  54. Fist Fight
    While I can’t exactly say that the movie cheered me up, it did give me something I needed. Not catharsis or uplift but a bracing dose of profane, sloppy, reasonably well-directed hostility. We take what we can get.
  55. Flowers
    To its benefit, it has rich roles for, and splendid performances by, its three principal actresses. To its detriment, their characters are each in their own way pining for the same man, whose simple actions in life seem undeserving of their considerable exertions after his demise.
  56. Mi America
    Mi America is not just about a murder case but about how residents of divided communities share a history and deal with one another, sometimes hopefully, always warily.
  57. The Russian Woodpecker
    Whatever the facts, Mr. Gracia’s messily structured film works best as a document of fear in today’s Ukraine and as a kind of ghost story about the Soviet Union.
  58. Godzilla vs. Kong
    An action movie made with lavish grandiosity, zero pretension and not too much originality.
  59. The Man Who Knew Infinity
    Mr. Irons handily hits the emotional beats, as does Mr. Patel.
  60. The Tainted Veil
    The subject matter makes The Tainted Veil much more visually interesting than many issue-oriented documentaries, though the thriller-like score goes too far in trying to counter dryness.
  61. A Royal Night Out
    What makes A Royal Night Out palatable are the lead performances.
  62. Band of Robbers
    This comic take on “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” is infused with a gleefully absurdist sense of humor while retaining a childlike sense of wonder.
  63. City Slickers Can't Stay with Me: The Coach Bob Larsen Story
    The director, Robert Lusitana, who ran for Larsen himself, has assembled a touching celebration of a coach and mentor.
  64. Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers
    Halloween 5, which was directed by Dominique Othenin-Girard and opened yesterday at area theaters, is a bit more refined in its details than the conventional horror movie.
  65. Sembene!
    Mr. Sembène was an inspiration; as a film, Sembène! is something less than that, petering out as it goes on, but at least offering a fair-minded tribute to a master.
  66. Noma: My Perfect Storm
    Less a documentary than a glittering souvenir, but it’s still a record of a legend.
  67. Frame by Frame
    The film’s four-person shuffle turns into a bit of a hash.
  68. Prem Ratan Dhan Payo
    The director, Sooraj R. Barjatya, courts and embraces cliché at every turn, which is both the movie’s charm and its limitation.
  69. Stinking Heaven
    The brisk clip and dashes of dark humor ward off actual despair, but the length poses challenges for some of the heavy lifting of character growth.
  70. Dreams Rewired
    Dreams Rewired is mostly content to entertain. Its explanations of how new inventions work are simplified to the point of superficiality.
  71. TransFatty Lives
    Refreshingly unpredictable but also frustrating.
  72. Ma
    Alternately sexy and silly, galvanic and gentle, MA is best enjoyed as a slide show of visual blessings and, sometimes, bafflements.
  73. Safe
    Brilliantly as it begins, Safe eventually succumbs to its own modern malady, as the film maker insists on a chilly ambiguity that breeds more detachment than interest.
  74. Love Beats Rhymes
    The script by Nicole Jefferson Asher toggles between sharp observations about wordcraft and some “Dynasty”- or Tyler Perry-level soap operatics. RZA’s direction lacks visual personality, but he keeps the narrative moving and elicits strong performances from his cast.
  75. Those Who Feel the Fire Burning
    The immersive style is always fascinating. But it also seems uneasily suited to the material.
  76. Naz & Maalik
    Despite its deficiencies, Naz & Maalik feels authentic, and Mr. Johnson and Mr. Cook bring their characters completely alive.
  77. Rabid Dogs
    If you can endure the messy slaughter, with a body count in double digits, the plot is not without its rewards.
  78. King Georges
    King Georges feels stretched into feature length, but its ending neatly portrays a man with a fierce personal code who seems to have accepted change.
  79. Wiener-Dog
    Mr. Solondz’s eye for the petty hypocrisies and delusions of American life has lost some of its sharpness, and he flails at flabby targets — avant-garde art, campus “political correctness” — in ways that sometimes carry an ugly whiff of racial and sexual bigotry.
  80. Goat
    The performances are conscientious and earnest.
  81. Bleak Street
    The film’s enigmas are atmospheric, and somewhat superficial. It solicits the audience’s morbid curiosity rather than gripping our emotions or haunting our dreams. It’s a creepy and beguiling oddity, willfully weird but, at the same time, not quite weird enough.
  82. The Perfect Match
    The scenarios and their attendant psychologies are utterly conventional, but the characters and cast are appealing in equal measure.
  83. Baywatch
    Like its source material, Baywatch is sleazy and wholesome, silly and earnest, dumb as a box of sand and slyly self-aware. It’s soft-serve ice cream. Crinkle-cut fries. A hot car and a skin rash. Tacky and phony and nasty and also kind of fun.
  84. River of Grass
    It is wonderful at conveying a sense of suffocating ennui. Too wonderful, since the story is so sketchily told and the dialogue is so fragmentary that it doesn't quite cohere. The characters remain hazy ciphers in the torpid atmosphere of a place you'll never want to visit.
  85. Miracles from Heaven
    Until it delivers an eye-rolling scene near the end, Miracles From Heaven is an unexpectedly effective tear-jerker. More surprising still, that late diversion doesn’t negate much of the movie’s early sincerity.
  86. Christine
    Even as Ms. Hall’s performance makes you believe that something profound is at stake, the movie noncommittally nibbles at the edge of larger meaning, nodding at current events.
  87. Author: The JT LeRoy Story
    "Author” is most interesting — and least self-aware — as a study in the gullibility and narcissism of the celebrity class.
  88. The Hollars
    Too much happens too quickly in The Hollars for the story to be credible, but the film has some likable qualities, among them the fun of seeing actors in unexpected roles.
  89. Other People
    Other People tries to lighten its heavy load with mixed results.
  90. F9: The Fast Saga
    The director Justin Lin, happily brandishing all the expensive digital tools at his disposal, makes “F9” feel scrappy and baroque at the same time. The identity of the brand rests on twin foundations of silliness and sincerity, both of which are honored here.
  91. Jane Wants a Boyfriend
    The diagrammatic script, by Jarret Kerr, has wit but could sometimes use more nuance. But there are tasty performances.
  92. The Great Gilly Hopkins
    The title character is a child, but two adult actors, Kathy Bates and Glenn Close, really give The Great Gilly Hopkins its considerable heart. This movie, though uneven, is affecting because of these two reliable stars.
  93. John Wick: Chapter 2
    The plot matters only inasmuch as it allows the returning director, Chad Stahelski, to stage his spectacular fight sequences in various stunning Roman locations, where they unfold with an almost erotic brutality.
  94. Baskin
    This proudly derivative genre exercise will not be to every taste (or stomach), but the director, Can Evrenol, shows a certain knack for tension and for framing viscera in wide screen, even if his cutting is sometimes too quick.
  95. They're Watching
    The storytelling becomes muddled in the middle, and the suspense doesn’t build as well as it ought to, but the winking undercurrent keeps the film watchable.
  96. Rise of the Legend
    Mr. Peng has charisma, though his moves are less convincing than those of an earlier Fei.... But “Legend” does offer the hefty authority of Mr. Hung, who at 64 can still — almost — hit, kick and do wire work with the best of them.
  97. Emelie
    Working from Richard Raymond Harry Herbeck’s script, Mr. Thelin plays with genre clichés without upending them, and the results are more creepy than scary.
  98. Lion
    As a purely emotional experience it succeeds without feeling too manipulative or maudlin. I mean, it is manipulative and maudlin, but in a way that seems fair and transparent. Still, it isn’t quite satisfying.
  99. 13 Cameras
    Yes, it’s an exploitative sort of filmmaking, but Mr. Zarcoff keeps it fairly restrained for most of the way. You know things will end badly for someone, and perhaps everyone. The ominousness just keeps building.
  100. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
    That character, or rather Ford, or really the two of them together are the main arguments for seeing “Dial of Destiny,” which is as silly as you expect and not altogether as successful as you may hope.
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