The New York Times' Scores

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For 20,269 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: 9,377 out of 20269
  2. Mixed: 8,428 out of 20269
  3. Negative: 2,464 out of 20269
20269 movie reviews
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  1. High & Low: John Galliano
    The director Kevin Macdonald asks Galliano questions in “High & Low,” but the answers are largely self-serving and unsatisfying in a movie that, for the most part, plays like yet another installment in a highly publicized redemption narrative.
  2. Love Lies Bleeding
    In Love Lies Bleeding, Glass borrows liberally but not mindlessly. Instead, she takes familiar themes and more than a few clichés — romantic doom, family trauma — and playfully bends them to her purposes.
  3. Kung Fu Panda 4
    Once again starring Jack Black as the gullible martial arts master Po, the animated film melds together wisecracking comedy and sprightly action sequences with a message of kindness, inner peace and self-discovery.
  4. Ricky Stanicky
    While the high jinks are too haphazard to give him a credible — or heck, even coherent — character arc, Cena is here and there able to seize moments to show us the fissures in his layered personas, a fragile construction of confidence, ego, vulnerability and need.
  5. Code 8: Part II
    In the end, even genre fans with relaxed standards might try to similarly rebel against this insipid offering.
  6. Outlaw Posse
    In direct conversation with cinema’s many spaghetti westerns, Van Peebles’s shaggy script relies on winking nods and plentiful shootouts in lieu of production value. Outlaw Posse may not be innovative, but its regard for family affairs is worth treasuring.
  7. Spaceman
    Spaceman is neither particularly astute about human nature nor discernibly interested in the politics embedded in it, and it is not even meme-ably bad, which is a shame. So much wasted potential.
  8. Problemista
    Problemista, which Torres wrote, directed and stars in, reveals a new willingness to tell a relatable story with a riveting sketch of an honest-to-goodness person.
  9. Shayda
    In her first narrative feature, Niasari, who based the story in part on her own experiences, demonstrates an astounding control of pacing and mood.
  10. Amelia's Children
    A hilariously awful collision of soap opera and horror movie, Amelia’s Children teeters so precariously on the cliff top of comedy that one wishes the director, Gabriel Abrantes, had dared to kick it over the edge.
  11. As We Speak: Rap Music on Trial
    “As We Speak” makes a powerful case for the necessity of being free to make art, and for public awareness that art rarely qualifies as legal evidence.
  12. Dune: Part Two
    The art of cinematic spectacle is alive and rocking in Dune: Part Two, and it’s a blast.
  13. Mea Culpa
    Rowland commits to the thankless task of playing a smart woman gone stupid. Rhodes can’t do much with Zyair, whose affect is more flat than seductive.
  14. Io Capitano
    Garrone doesn’t spare you much, but if the movie never turns into an exercise in art-house sadism, it’s because his focus remains unwaveringly fixed on his characters who, from the start, are fully rounded people, not props, symbols or object lessons.
  15. Veselka: The Rainbow on the Corner at the Center of the World
    Even if some scenes want for energy, the compassion of the “Veselka” subjects — and its filmmaker — never wavers.
  16. Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba - To the Hashira Training
    The combination of finale and premiere inevitably feels lopsided.
  17. Ordinary Angels
    Despite its bona fides, the movies narrative and characterizations practically gorge on clichés.
  18. They Shot the Piano Player
    Javier Mariscal and Fernando Trueba’s They Shot the Piano Player is an astoundingly vibrant animated project, fitting for its subject matter.
  19. This Is Me…Now: A Love Story
    The sad news is that nothing in “This Is Me … Now” is as fun — or funny — as those commercials. This project doesn’t seem to have brought Lopez any closer to serenity or levity. It’s an occasion for even more toil.
  20. The Invisible Fight
    This political context is vital to appreciate the rebellion underneath Sarnet’s romp; otherwise, it’s easy to dismiss it as merely a goofy riff on the Shaw Brothers Studios’ landmark Hong Kong hit “The 36th Chamber of Shaolin,” which likewise followed a novice’s hard-earned spiritual and gymnastic growth. Of course, it is that, too.
  21. Kiss the Future
    This is history told through emotions as much as through well-documented events, conveying both the resilience of Sarajevans and the power of pop music (without falling into too much celebrity self-regard).
  22. Stopmotion
    The director and animator Robert Morgan has crafted a narratively slender, visually sophisticated first feature.
  23. Drive-Away Dolls
    Drive-Away Dolls only snaps alive when the ever-reliable Domingo is on camera and — with just a few hushed words and his trademark charisma — he inevitably draws you in with the promise of a movie that never materializes.
  24. About Dry Grasses
    In About Dry Grasses, Ceylan is asking a vital question of himself as well as the audience: What does it mean to be engaged in the world? And if you choose to back away and watch, rather than become involved, is it self-protection, superiority or just cowardice?
  25. Becoming King
    Becoming King exhibits the kind of self-importance that ultimately diminishes the subject, be it Dr. King or Oyelowo.
  26. God & Country
    Rather than come off solely as a grim forecast, the film presents possible alternatives for the country, most notably from the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, the minister and social activist who offers a voice of hope and inclusivity that feels genuinely healing.
  27. Onlookers
    This is a concept in search of a movie, and an academic exercise that doesn’t give observers much to work with.
  28. The Arc of Oblivion
    The Arc of Oblivion is a documentary, which means it captures something about life right now, archiving it for the future. But Cheney is also exploring the meaning of archiving itself.
  29. Bleeding Love
    Sincere and grindingly predictable, this particular journey mixes tears and reams of dialogue, accusations and confessions with the usual roadside attractions, including a convenience store, a quirky motel and some lightly offbeat American types.
  30. Madame Web
    The only real bummer about Madame Web, the latest installment in the Spider-Man chronicles, isn’t that it’s bad, but that it never achieves memorably terrible status. The story is absurd, the dialogue snort-out-loud risible, the fights uninspired. Even so, there are glimmers of wit and competency. And then there’s its star, Dakota Johnson, who has a fascinating, seemingly natural ability to appear wholly detached from the nonsense swirling around her.
  31. Land of Bad
    Land of Bad, directed by William Eubank from a script he wrote with David Frigerio, is commendable in the abstract for depicting the realities of 21st-century warfare both narratively and thematically.
  32. Monolith
    Lily Sullivan plays this unnamed reporter with cagey, harried intensity, and she is more than capable of carrying this one-woman show.
  33. Bob Marley: One Love
    If the movie succeeds at anything, it’s in capturing Marley’s lingering spell on fans.
  34. Players
    It’s as much a story of love among friends as it is of any couple, and a handful of good gags and great performances keep the whole thing steaming along.
  35. Upgraded
    The movie is unevenly directed, and some scenes struggle to clear even the low bar set by more polished streaming originals. But Young succeeds nonetheless in channeling the freshman thrill of plunging into an alluring adult milieu.
  36. The Space Race
    A theme running through the interviews is that for the U.S. government, sending a Black astronaut to space was more a matter of propaganda than racial justice.
  37. Suncoast
    With commendable wit and zero self-pity, Chinn sketches the daily surreality of her teenage analogue.
  38. Lisa Frankenstein
    Cody gets a little subversive with it all — Lisa’s stepsister, Taffy, for instance, is not at all what this kind of movie usually serves up, and that feels refreshing. But the rest is pretty predictable from the start, and so it starts to wear a little thin after a while, a title in search of a story.
  39. Ennio
    One of the movie’s nice surprises is that Morricone turns out to be a total charmer, a low-key showman with a demure gaze that he works like a vamp and an impish smile that routinely punctuates one of his anecdotes.
  40. The Taste of Things
    In a phenomenological way, The Taste of Things captures the joy of variety injected into mere existence: savory and sweet, hot and sour, juice and cream and astringency are not required for pure subsistence, but the rich range of taste we have created in our daily meals says something about human longings not easily put into words.
  41. Molli and Max in the Future
    Science fiction has become such a mainstay of lumbering franchises that it’s hard not to root for left-field small-scale twists on the genre like the fizzy, funny Molli and Max in the Future.
  42. The Monk and the Gun
    However sincere and justified, the digs are so innocuous that their main purpose seems to flatter Western viewers who will nod along as they coo at the landscapes and chuckle knowingly about ugly truths they think have nothing to do with them, but do.
  43. Lover, Stalker, Killer
    True-crime doc watchers who are in committed relationships may see Lover, Stalker, Killer, a bracing account of a lurid series of misdeeds directed by Sam Hobkinson, and breathe a sigh of relief over being out of the dating pool.
  44. Marmalade
    In essence, Marmalade pretends to be more dunderheaded than it is, then acts as if it’s been smart all along, in a shift that takes it from insulting to incoherent.
  45. Out of Darkness
    Unfolding entirely in a fictional language (which the actors deliver with fluid conviction), and enriched by lovingly rendered practical effects, this first feature from Andrew Cumming pairs its minimalist narrative with the maximum of atmosphere.
  46. Drift
    Drift, a patient character study set on a craggy Greek island, proves a mesmerizing showcase for the actress Cynthia Erivo’s talents.
  47. Cobweb
    Cobweb, directed by Kim Jee-woon, mines the comically absurd reality that is filmmaking, at times with bouncy cinematic verve, at others somewhat aimlessly and a little too indulgently.
  48. They Called Him Mostly Harmless
    It’s a film for those who don’t know the outcome, playing upon the viewers’ thirst for answers as it chips away at a clearer portrait of the man.
  49. Here
    In this painstakingly muted, luminously photographed testimony to connection, nothing much and everything happens — or could.
  50. Perfect Days
    Pay attention to the shadows in Perfect Days. Pay attention also to the trees, to the ways Hirayama (Koji Yakusho) looks at them. They’re as much a character in the story as he is.
  51. The Promised Land
    It has sweep, romance, violence and spectacle, but what makes it finally work as well as it does is that it largely avoids the ennobling clichés that turn characters into ideals and movies into exercises in spurious nostalgia — well, that and Mads Mikkelsen.
  52. Bushman
    The jarring switch to documentary gives Bushman its added charge.
  53. She Is Conann
    It’s more of a fever dream than an actual story, offering a queer counternarrative to the macho vision of the legendary warrior that is as hypnotic as it is gnarly.
  54. Dario Argento Panico
    Part career profile and part psychological exploration, “Panico” smoothly accomplishes the first but teases gold with the second.
  55. Skin Deep
    What does love really mean? Skin Deep gives an answer: that real love is an act of radical imagination, of working to understand what it feels like to be another person. In reality, we can’t just swap bodies to find out — but love beckons us to try anyhow.
  56. Disco Boy
    Disco Boy is a lean but sweepingly ambitious film crafted with formal rigor.
  57. Fitting In
    Its revelations about gender, sexuality and identity tend toward the obvious, and sometimes veer into the facile.
  58. How to Have Sex
    Manning Walker sets the scene and stakes well enough, though after the millionth drink and shriek, whatever contact high you have is obliterated by a contact hangover. The largest problem, though, is that Manning Walker seems weirdly insensitive toward Tara, who endures a trauma that’s meant to say something about something — sex, consent, friendship — but mostly just gives the story some queasy heft.
  59. Argylle
    It is ostensibly a tribute to spy movies of an earlier age, not clever enough to be a spoof and certainly not satire. But a homage shows affection for, understanding of and respect toward the thing it is honoring. Argylle feels pasted together by a robot manipulating some kind of spy Magnetic Poetry.
  60. The Greatest Night in Pop
    While the making of the song was partially detailed in its long-form video, there’s plenty of new, engaging, and sometimes eyebrow-raising anecdotal material here.
  61. Sometimes I Think About Dying
    A movie like this one, reserved and a little mysterious, can be unnerving. Occasionally it feels as if Sometimes I Think About Dying is a bit too withholding, dragging down the story it has to tell. But there’s a lot here to like.
  62. Tótem
    Totem is a coming into consciousness story about a child navigating realms — human and animal, spiritual and material — that exist around her like overlapping concentric circles. Yet even as the story’s focus sharpens, what matters here are the characters: their emotions and worried words, how they hold it together and fall apart, their individual habits and shared habitat.
  63. American Star
    Despite an oddball taste for wide-angle lenses, the director, Gonzalo López-Gallego, can sustain a solid slow burn. Still, neither McShane nor the scenery can take the rust off the basic scenario.
  64. The Peasants
    As the story’s melodrama grows repetitive, so do the visuals.
  65. Lil Nas X: Long Live Montero
    The scenes are assembled like the wall collage of pop stars that we see in his otherwise empty bedroom, resulting in frustrating interview segments that are both broad and cursory.
  66. Mambar Pierrette
    Mbakam hits a remarkable balance. The sociopolitical truths that make up Pierrette’s losing streak are evident, without the miserable patronizing so common in films about struggle in Africa.
  67. Pictures of Ghosts
    Love suffuses Pictures of Ghosts, a cleareyed, deeply personal and formally inspired rumination on life, death, family, movies and those complicated, invariably haunted places we call home.
  68. Miller's Girl
    A work of glaring artifice, Miller’s Girl, written and directed by Jade Halley Bartlett, is being touted as a psychological thriller, but it’s too vapid and silly to do much besides titillate.
  69. The Underdoggs
    The kids in the film are simply too young to make an impact, and Snoop, who is fine enough as an actor, ultimately doesn’t possess the charisma necessary to elevate a lazy script.
  70. The Kitchen
    The direction, by Kibwe Tavares and Daniel Kaluuya, is sure and unfussy, spinning a warmly humane story of cross-generational connection.
  71. The Breaking Ice
    The setting is rife with metaphoric potential, and it is here that Chen falters as a director.
  72. Which Brings Me to You
    Which Brings Me to You is cleverly structured but often feels too crowded with the ghosts of lovers past.
  73. The End We Start From
    It’s as much a movie about the hazy struggles of early motherhood as it is about survival in a destroyed world — and it’s best when it leans into the former, with characters’ discussing why anyone has a baby at all.
  74. Pasang: In the Shadow of Everest
    While the interviewees speak of Sherpa with sincerity and affection, “Pasang: In the Shadow of Everest” never locates a satisfying big-picture idea or formal approach that would make it more than a straightforward tribute.
  75. Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell
    Pham manages to float existential and spiritual questions into Thien’s consciousness and ours without trying to offer solutions, at least in language.
  76. June
    The bare facts of Carter Cash’s story are such that the filmmakers would have had to really mess up to not produce a movie that entertains and moves a viewer to tears. “June,” rest assured, does the job well.
  77. I.S.S.
    What follows is consistently watchable and sometimes tense but, despite some twists, largely unsurprising.
  78. Role Play
    One is quick to forgive faulty plot machinations when an action movie really revs; Role Play merely spins its wheels.
  79. Lift
    Hart possesses neither the charisma of Cruise nor the charm of Redford necessary to shoulder these action movie mechanics, a failure that demonstrates what happens when character actors are told they’re movie stars.
  80. Self Reliance
    The movie is too juvenile and too timid to acknowledge the real-world chill of its online cabal of murderous social misfits.
  81. The Settlers
    Gálvez’s work here is by turns blunt and subtle, and very assured.
  82. Apolonia, Apolonia
    Apolonia, Apolonia is beguiling as a portrait of women with ambition, but also bittersweet.
  83. Inshallah a Boy
    Hawa, a Palestinian actress, is commanding as a woman whose future and faith are buffeted by her narrowing options.
  84. Driving Madeleine
    It’s a heart-warmer about respecting your elders.
  85. The Book of Clarence
    If The Book of Clarence doesn’t totally work, its combination of the sacred and the irreverent is enchanting. It gets bogged down in its own mud, but it’s certainly shooting for the stars.
  86. Mean Girls
    It’s not especially tart and is undeniably over-padded, but its charms and ingratiating likability remain intact.
  87. Public Speaking
    In “Public Speaking,” Martin Scorsese’s enormously enjoyable and perceptive documentary about her, Ms. Lebowitz’s endearing narcissism is a study in the notion that arrogance and insecurity are largely two sides of the same cocktail coaster.
  88. The Beekeeper
    Statham excels as a straight-faced goof. Between his glower and the movie’s high-quality production values, this brain cell-destroying schlock resembles an earnest drama.
  89. Night Swim
    The problem with Night Swim is that it’s trying to say a little too much, which isn’t a complete pleasure-killer, but can get distracting.
  90. Good Grief
    Good Grief does that rare, beautiful thing: It trusts the audience to pay attention.
  91. He Went That Way
    Few things in this laboriously quirky picture mesh at all.
  92. Artie Shaw: Time Is All You've Got
    An all-star roster of interviewees, including the luminaries Mel Tormé and Buddy Rich, contributes to an unfailingly entertaining saga.
  93. Memory
    Chastain reliably holds the screen even if her performance often feels overly studied rather than lived in, never more so than in her scenes with Sarsgaard, whose delicate, quicksilver expressiveness appreciably deepens both the movie and its stakes. You don’t always believe in Sylvia and Saul as a couple, but Sarsgaard makes you want to.
  94. Mayhem!
    A mood board of mashing, slashing, snapping and splintering, this feature, directed by Xavier Gens, is revenge-movie cliché ground down to the studs.
  95. Society of the Snow
    The material is fundamentally gripping, and parts of it are tough to resist . . . But Society of the Snow is a perverse movie to watch the way most people will see it — on Netflix, in the comfort of their homes, with a refrigerator nearby.
  96. Rose
    Alongside Oplev’s commitment to genuine feeling and complexity — you won’t find easy solutions here — Grabol’s performance shines.
  97. The Boys in the Boat
    The script is as subtle as a bonk on the nose, and the editing repeats every beat twice-over in broad pantomime and meaningful looks.
  98. The Teachers' Lounge
    Taking on the uneasy complexity of a progressive modern society, and the friction produced when pluralism and an insistence on order and obedience collide, is a bold move, and The Teachers’ Lounge pulls it off with a sense of tension that makes the whole thing play like a thriller.
  99. The Crime Is Mine
    The Crime is Mine is the epitome of a comfort film, decked out in old-Hollywood nostalgia and unfolding at an auctioneer’s clip. Its fun and games are deceptively smart — all the more because the women know their angles so triumphantly well.
  100. Ferrari
    Mann shoots this lunatic race from every conceivable angle — with cameras in and out of cars, bearing down on drivers’ faces, agitatedly hovering midair — creating an immersive, visceral intimacy that, as engines whine and thunderously roar, you feel in your bones.
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