The New York Times' Scores

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For 20,313 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: 9,401 out of 20313
  2. Mixed: 8,446 out of 20313
  3. Negative: 2,466 out of 20313
20313 movie reviews
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  1. 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.
  2. Ashes and Embers
    The film's concerns emerge as heartfelt even when they aren't clearly expressed. On those occasions when clarity prevails the style becomes emphatic and tough, but at other times it tends to preach and to wander.
  3. Men & Chicken
    The movie’s grave commitment to its own quirkiness is admirable, I suppose. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to recommend it.
  4. Café Society
    It is, overall, an amusing little picture, with some inspired moments and some sour notes, a handful of interesting performances and the hint, now and then, of an idea.
  5. The Shallows
    Mr. Collet-Serra’s busy visual style, which uses a lot of fast-cutting, willy-nilly variations between slow and fast motion, and illogical but vivid point-of-view shots, seems at least somewhat apt under the exhilarating circumstances.
  6. Havana Motor Club
    [A] serviceable but slightly drawn-out documentary.
  7. Only Angels Have Wings
    When you add it all up, Only Angels Have Wings comes to an overly familiar total. It's a fairly good melodrama, nothing more.
  8. Wedding Doll
    Mr. Gilady, a documentarian making his fiction feature debut as a writer and director, over-stacks the deck with this belabored if artfully shot story.
  9. New York New York
    Its tightly shot scenes never reveal much context, and the rather cryptic subtitles can lead a viewer to mistaken conclusions until the identities and motivations of the characters click into focus.
  10. Hockney
    When it deepens its intellectual focus, Hockney begins to lose coherence, with rushed sequences that cover his stage designs, his landscapes and his experiments with photography.
  11. The Wild Life
    The Wild Life is pretty to look at, with its skies and ocean, calm or stormy, and it has a driving soundtrack. But the story lacks that extra layer of complexity and meaning that parents can appreciate.
  12. Indian Point
    Ms. Meeropol is steadfast in providing both sides of the story. That’s admirable, yet it can come across as uninvolving.
  13. We the People: The Market Basket Effect
    The tale, ripped from the headlines, is stirring, even if the repeated rally scenes and aerial views of the region grow stale.
  14. L'Attesa (The Wait)
    The performances are vivid and moving, but there is ultimately less to this well-made, impeccably acted film than meets the eye. Its meticulousness is to some degree a flaw, an evasion of nearly every variety of human messiness.
  15. Fassbinder: To Love Without Demands
    The access to Fassbinder that the relationship provided was a boon to the film, but a disadvantage as well because the close-up view results in a patchy portrait rather than a coherent biography.
  16. Dough
    Dough is sweet, often funny and always nonthreatening, a movie for those who wish the intractable realities of the world would just disappear.
  17. The American Side
    If the self-consciousness can be charming, it also prevents The American Side from becoming fully its own film.
  18. American Pastoral
    American Pastoral leaves a residue of dread and despair that is oddly in keeping with today’s moment of uncertainty amid an ugly presidential campaign.
  19. Approaching the Unknown
    If Approaching the Unknown isn’t entirely satisfying, Mr. Strong reaches high with his portrayal of the unraveling of a man who believes survival is a matter of engineering.
  20. Bridgend
    Everything’s in service of the images in Bridgend, a stylishly shot, eerily scored and moodily acted film that wants for nothing but a plot. Depending on how you like your movies, this is either a walkout or a must-see.
  21. Rabin in His Own Words
    The obvious problem with its subject-says-all approach is the lack of outside voices and perspective. This is a broad summation of the man, not a critical look at his policies.
  22. Those People
    The director, Joey Kuhn, making his feature debut from his own script, has created fairly credible and sympathetic characters, despite the 1-percenter milieu.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Black Girl (1966)
    [Mr. Sembène's] sadly pensive story of a young Dakar girl hired as a governess for a white couple's three children appears unevenly weighted in favor of Mr. Sembène's dolorous thesis.
  24. Two Lovers and a Bear
    The beauty and absurdity (things also get harrowing) don’t entirely compensate for the overheated romanticism in which the movie is grounded, but they do make Two Lovers and a Bear a nearly singular cinematic trek.
  25. A Moment of Silence
    This ambitious documentary, by Ferdinando Vicentini Orgnani, is largely pleasing to the eye, and it pays close attention to the eloquent activists at its core. Journalists of every stripe provide context, perhaps more than we can digest.
  26. Mimosas
    At best ambiguous and at worst unfathomable, Mimosas, the sophomore feature from the Spanish director Oliver Laxe, merges harsh reality and offbeat mysticism into a reflection on the tug between our higher powers and baser instincts.
  27. Argentina
    For the non-Argentine audience, though, more context would have helped these wonderful songs and dances tell the nation’s story.
  28. Be Somebody
    The Japanese have a term for a certain type of character in manga (comic books) and anime: bishonen — pubescent in appearance, devoid of facial hair, sensitive, unthreatening. That would be Mr. Espinosa.
  29. Cosmos
    It is possible to appreciate Mr. Zulawski’s perverse ingenuity, and to miss his eye and voice, without quite succumbing to the strenuous charms and overcooked provocations of Cosmos.
  30. Nocturnal Animals
    There’s much to admire in Nocturnal Animals, including Mr. Ford’s ambition, but too often it feels like the work of an observant student.
  31. Lowriders
    Cars could easily have been the stars of Lowriders, but the film makes them supporting players in a family drama that’s a mix of strong scenes and shopworn ones punctuated by clichés.
  32. Atomic Blonde
    As she does, Ms. Theron locks down your attention immediately, holding you with her beauty and quiet vigilance.
  33. Department Q: The Absent One
    The Absent One finds Mr. Kaas as watchable as before, though a few well-intentioned attempts to lighten up his character — an orphaned cat is brought in, a speech about his motivations is given — are clumsily executed, and instead divert from his terse and magnetic personality.
  34. The Discovery
    The story stays intriguing for much of the way, but eventually things cease to make sense.
  35. Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie
    Serviceably, at times awkwardly, directed by Mandie Fletcher, the movie skews softer than the series at its barbed best, partly because the celebrity culture that once provided such rich material has become just another ratings opportunity for the Kardashians.
  36. Ants on a Shrimp
    None of the concoctions left me salivating (a basic, I’d think, for any food porn), and the exercise seems silly if not decadent. But foodies with a refined palate might differ — de gustibus, after all — and other viewers can appreciate the manic creativity that drives Mr. Redzepi and his crew.
  37. Quitters
    Quitters is repellent but believable, which makes it a little scary.
  38. I Am Not a Serial Killer
    Mr. Records (the child actor in “Where the Wild Things Are”) is nimble and unsentimental in playing a character who is playing at normal, supported by a solid cast in a well-filmed indie that doesn’t let its low budget get in the way of some true chills.
  39. Richard Linklater: Dream Is Destiny
    Such an uncommon artist warrants a less conventional survey than this one.
  40. The Confessions
    An investigation among the attendees grants Mr. Andò the opportunity to pursue pithy, discursive exchanges about power, austerity and capitalism amid high-end accommodations and a tasteful classical soundtrack.
  41. Hieronymus Bosch, Touched by the Devil
    The movie comes alive only when the camera lingers over the actual paintings and allows their power to speak for itself.
  42. For the Love of Spock
    This film nimbly straddles biography and “Trek” valentine (Adam is a longtime television director), but also recounts the fraught if ultimately devoted ties between Adam and Leonard.
  43. Harry Benson: Shoot First
    The film, by Justin Bare and Matthew Miele, would be better if it spent less time gushing about how great Mr. Benson is and more time confronting some of the questions his approach raises.
  44. On the Silver Globe (1988)
    A certain amount of work is required to stitch together a sense of the plot, but as is often the case in Zulawski’s films, the story is less the point than an excuse, a loose temporal conceit holding together flights of visual invention, verbal extravagance and male and female nudity.
  45. The Commune
    Tobias Lindholm’s screenplay sacrifices credibility for quirkiness.
  46. Split
    Split is lurid and ludicrous, and sometimes more than a little icky in its prurient, maudlin interest in the abuse of children. It’s also absorbing and sometimes slyly funny.
  47. Mascots
    Although Mascots is neither as funny nor as satirically acute as its forerunner, it would be churlish to complain too loudly. And the sharpest verbal jokes in the screenplay by Mr. Guest and the actor and writer Jim Piddock are as inspired as ever. Mr. Guest’s gift for the archly comedic mot juste is undiminished.
  48. Pete's Dragon
    At two hours and 14 minutes, the movie is a lot longer than it needs to be. On the other hand, Elliott (whose beeps and bomps and chomping sounds are supplied by Charlie Callas) is very sweet and emotive, and you don't often see children's musicals as ambitious as this one any more.
  49. The Girl with All the Gifts
    The Girl With All the Gifts doesn’t really venture into new territory, but it does a decent job of reminding us why zombies are so scary, and so interesting.
  50. Sid and Nancy
    Sid and Nancy doesn't try to win its audience's sympathy in any conventional way, which is just as well, since that would have been a losing battle. But it does succeed in offering bleak, nasty and sometimes hilarious glimpses of life in the punk demimonde.
  51. Kampai! For the Love of Sake
    [A] crisp if feather-light documentary.
  52. Do Not Resist
    The film doesn’t unearth anything that hasn’t already been voiced, and it could use more details on the scope of the phenomenon. But with more police shootings in the headlines just in the past few days, it’s nothing if not timely.
  53. My Blind Brother
    It’s made watchable by an appealing cast.
  54. Born in China
    The narrative, read by John Krasinski, is kid-friendly in a cloying sort of way, and unpleasant realities like China’s pollution are not mentioned. So as an introduction for children to exotic creatures in picturesque landscapes, the movie is harmless enough.
  55. Voyage of Time: The IMAX Experience
    Mr. Malick presents these events as if he had drawn them not from his mind but from some repository of celestial memory. Which may be to say that Voyage of Time ultimately proves his point about the way the universe and human consciousness mirror each other. But it’s a point that might have been more powerful if he had left it unspoken.
  56. Darkest Hour
    Churchill’s resolve, like the bravery of the soldiers, airmen and ordinary Britons in “Dunkirk,” is offered not as a rebuke to the current generation, but rather as a sop, an easy and complacent fantasy of Imperial gumption and national unity.
  57. Defying the Nazis: The Sharps' War
    Defying the Nazis: The Sharps’ War is a generic documentary about two people who were anything but. Yet even when the film wanes, its subjects still come across as remarkable.
  58. The Journey
    Though the script tilts to the didactic, the performances are absolutely delicious, with Mr. Meaney droll and understated and Mr. Spall fiery and derisive, yet not above a joke.
  59. Blue Jay
    Nostalgia gives way to melodrama, and dramatic truth to soapy histrionics, and Blue Jay falters on a formulaic revelation about mistakes made and lessons learned too late.
  60. Southwest of Salem: The Story of the San Antonio Four
    "Southwest of Salem” proceeds with what have become sobering tropes for true-crime documentaries: a defendant saying she didn’t realize she needed a lawyer; outsiders explaining how they grew convinced of a miscarriage of justice.
  61. A Street Cat Named Bob
    A savvy exercise in inspirational feel-good cinema lightly seasoned with grit.
  62. A Good American
    A Good American gets bogged down in details and personnel talk, but its subjects have an urgent narrative to tell.
  63. Shin Godzilla (Godzilla Resurgence)
    The film is at its best when it’s in parody mode, though it keeps that card too close to the vest for much of its two-hour length. The humor, not the monster, is what you’re left wanting more of.
  64. Mulan
    It’s lightly funny and a little sad, filled with ravishing landscapes and juiced up with kinetic fights (if not enough of them). It has antiseptic violence, emotional uplift and the kind of protagonist that movie people like to call relatable.
  65. My Cousin Rachel
    It’s all very pretty, but too often the movie’s beauty isn’t tethered to deep feeling or strong ideas, one reason you may often find your eyes and thoughts drifting away from the quietly escalating drama toward the vast green fields, the majestic horses and nice detail work.
  66. 100 Streets
    The threads may not all be original, but they’re kept nicely distinct. Rather than awkwardly intertwining, they merely brush up against one another.
  67. Michael Moore in TrumpLand
    Mr. Moore has basically made an earnest but not very entertaining pro-Clinton campaign film, occasionally funny, momentarily heartfelt when he takes up the subject of universal health care and the lives lost for lack of it. Against the rest of his work (“Bowling for Columbine,” “Roger & Me”) it’s fairly tepid stuff.
  68. By Sidney Lumet
    While it’s no surprise that Mr. Lumet can spin a tale, these murky-looking, less-than-flattering sit-downs are irritatingly suboptimal, particularly given that he was so great at telling intimate stories about men in shadows.
  69. Crosscurrent
    Cramming fantasy and mysticism, faith and history into a single riverboat journey, this dirgelike meditation on China’s painful economic rebirth dispenses with narrative in favor of semiotics.
  70. Carlito's Way
    Carlito's Way is best watched as lively, colorful posturing and as a fine demonstration of this director's bravura visual style.
  71. Buster's Mal Heart
    Buster’s Mal Heart is about the making of a madman. It also aspires, with less success, to philosophically query the void at the center of modern life and Christianity’s failure to fill it.
  72. Finding Babel
    In what probably qualifies as both an accomplishment and a shortcoming, the movie makes you want to read Babel’s writing instead.
  73. You've Been Trumped Too
    As a filmmaker, Mr. Baxter often tends toward needless force-feeding.
  74. Ali and Nino
    Asif Kapadia, the director (whose film “Amy” won an Oscar for best documentary), has a fine eye for splendor, as does Gokhan Tiryaki, his cinematographer. Mr. Kapadia’s sense of pacing isn’t as acute.
  75. Growing Up Smith
    The movie has a roughly equal number of clumsy moments and sweet ones.
  76. Blood on the Mountain
    The film may be one-sided, but if nothing else, it is a reminder that the “coal equals jobs” equation is a serious oversimplification.
  77. American Assassin
    The movie, directed by Michael Cuesta from a script by a team of blue-chip writers (Stephen Schiff and Michael Finch are credited, along with Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz), shows more skill than personality.
  78. Gifted
    What’s in a child’s best interest? It depends on who’s answering the question. That’s the crux of Gifted.
  79. Like Crazy
    An energetic, visually attractive but ultimately irritating comedy-drama.
  80. Uncle Kent 2
    Uncle Kent 2, directed (for the most part) by Todd Rohal from Mr. Osborne’s script, is a funnier and more imaginative film than its predecessor, but it’s still what you might call a niche proposition.
  81. Downsizing
    Downsizing is an ambitious movie about the value of modesty, and its faults are proportionate to its insights. I sort of wish it felt like a bigger deal, but maybe that’s my problem.
  82. Space Jam
    It's both a frantic, innovative mixture of animation technologies and a fan magazine full of adulation for Michael Jordan. He handles this tribute with regal bearing and good grace.
  83. The Wall
    The vein-popping mood is ultimately more exhausting than exciting.
  84. Sky on Fire
    This is a Hong Kong action picture in the classical mode, balancing mayhem with sentimentality, offering up bone-crunching and jaw-dropping set pieces, and pulling out all the stops for a finale teeming with stressful twists and turnabouts — not to mention kicks, punches, gunshots and explosions.
  85. Contemporary Color
    Over all, this movie is less “you are there” than “you had to be there.”
  86. The Sense of an Ending
    Directed by Ritesh Batra from a screenplay by Nick Payne, The Sense of an Ending maintains intrigue and emotional magnetism as its mystery unfolds.
  87. Dying Laughing
    As one comic after another recalls triumphs, misadventures and painful lessons learned, the stories become redundant.
  88. The Ardennes
    Even though, in retrospect, The Ardennes feels a little obvious and secondhand, it unfolds with enough speed and wit to hold your attention.
  89. How to Be a Latin Lover
    The whole enterprise is so fundamentally good-natured and fluffy that it’s sometimes hard to stay annoyed by it.
  90. A Different American Dream
    Mr. Brook and Ms. Wells are in a sense not documenting a controversy at all; they are capturing an endemic, heartbreaking defeatism.
  91. Leap!
    Leap! remains peppy as it sets its bar at a low-to-medium height then cheerfully clears it.
  92. The House
    It is a dark, startlingly bloody journey into the bitter, empty, broken heart of the American middle class, a blend of farce and satire built on a foundation of social despair.
  93. Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank
    Despite its risqué origins, “Paws of Fury” manages to dish out lighthearted fun, swashbuckling action and surface-level messaging about following your dreams, though not every joke lands.
  94. Victoria and Abdul
    In the shift from comedy to drama the movie goes wobbly.
  95. S Is for Stanley
    For Kubrick enthusiasts, this picture will provide a fun and sometimes moving fix.
  96. The Other Half
    Mr. Klein is well served by his actors, who exude conviction, charisma and palpable ardor.
  97. My Name Is Emily
    It’s a sometimes rocky road cinematically, slipping from enchanting to trite, magical to indulgent with some regularity.
  98. Dean
    If Mr. Martin’s take on grief is facile, the movie overall is a pleasant trip, and Dean’s doodles — by Mr. Martin himself — are a treat.
  99. My Father Die
    Bathed in a funk of testosterone, and heaving with homophobia and misogyny, My Father Die is a trashy jewel.
  100. Strike a Pose
    Beyond the personal stories, the movie frames the tour and Truth or Dare as landmarks in the push for gay rights and awareness, and makes a convincing case.
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