The New York Times' Scores

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For 20,271 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 20271
  2. Mixed: 8,430 out of 20271
  3. Negative: 2,464 out of 20271
20271 movie reviews
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  1. Four Weddings and a Funeral
    Elegant, festive and very, very funny.
  2. Kati with an I
    Buoyed by a fully integrated soundtrack, Kati With an I delivers a lovingly personal observation of young people at a crossroads. The film's sound is not always crisp, but no matter: Kati's story is written in every vital, vérité frame.
  3. Django Unchained
    Like "Inglourious Basterds," Django Unchained is crazily entertaining, brazenly irresponsible and also ethically serious in a way that is entirely consistent with its playfulness.
  4. Sister
    Trading the cooler, more emotionally detached style and vibe that characterized "Home," her debut feature, about a family falling apart, Ms. Meier quietly goes for the emotional jugular in Sister.
  5. Play
    It is provocative simply in showing how trust is gained and kept, even after the swindled kids have understood their robbers’ motives.
  6. The Peacemaker
    The movie is a fascinating portrait that is if anything too brief.
  7. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
    Even as Ms. Amirpour draws heavily from various bodies of work with vampirelike hunger, she gives her influences new life by channeling them through other cultural forms, including her chador-cloaked vampire.
  8. Accepted
    As we witness both the documentary’s subjects — and its director — navigate a shocking development in real time, a quietly probing film emerges that pierces the myth of American meritocracy.
  9. Us
    A vibrant, appealing screen presence, Nyong’o brings a tremendous range and depth of feeling to both characters, who she individualizes with such clarity and lapidary detail that they aren’t just distinct beings; they feel as if they were being inhabited by different actors.
  10. The Wedding Banquet
    It is the unusual film comedy in which the humor springs as much from character as from situation.
  11. Grin Without a Cat
    A Grin Without a Cat is a work of extraordinary journalism, but it is also a work of deft and subtle poetry, visual (in the rhyming of gestures and shapes across images and sequences) as much as verbal.
  12. The Big Short
    A true crime story and a madcap comedy, a heist movie and a scalding polemic, The Big Short will affirm your deepest cynicism about Wall Street while simultaneously restoring your faith in Hollywood.
  13. Black Orpheus
    It really is not the two lovers that are the focus of interest in this film; it is the music, the movement, the storm of color that go into the two-day festival. M. Camus has done a superb job of getting the documented look not only of the overall fandango but also of the buildup of momentum the day before. (Review of Original Release)
  14. The Devil's Miner
    A brave, sincere film that leaves you wishing that more light had been shed on the darkness.
  15. Closed Curtain
    On one level, the film (or nonfilm; it was shot on digital video and partly with smartphone cameras) is a mischievous, Pirandellian entertainment. It is also an allegory, dark but not despairing, of the creative spirit under political pressure, and of the ways the imagination can be both a refuge and a place of confinement.
  16. Moana
    There are some touching and amusing zigzags on the way to the film’s sweet and affirmative conclusion.
  17. Aisha
    “Aisha” resists tidy answers through the gentle force of its performances and by staying on the rebuffs and uncertainty Aisha suffers.
  18. The Wailing
    I was so invested with Jong-gu and his family that as the suspense, violence and worse ratcheted up, I was not merely scared, but heartbroken. An overly literal bit of business at the end slightly undermines the film. As a whole, though, The Wailing is the hard stuff. Handle with care.
  19. Chris & Don. A Love Story
    The elegantly structured documentary weaves extensive footage of Mr. Bachardy rummaging through their house and reminiscing with readings from Isherwood's diaries by Michael York, old interviews with Isherwood, home movies of their travels and glamorous social life, and commentary by friends, including Leslie Caron and the British filmmaker John Boorman.
  20. The Empty Hours
    Working with grace and patience, Mr. Fernández makes the mundane captivating.
  21. White Sun
    It shows how the lingering disputes of war ripple through lives after guns have ostensibly been laid down.
  22. Shadow
    A martial-arts movie landmark, as strong in its performances as it is spectacularly novel in its violence.
  23. Still Life
    A modern master of postmodern discontent, Jia Zhang-ke is among the most strikingly gifted filmmakers working today whom you have probably never heard of.
  24. The Edge of Democracy
    Though she is a scrupulous and dogged digger-up of hidden facts and a thoughtful interpreter of public events, Costa hasn’t produced a work of objective journalism or detached historical scholarship so much as a personal reckoning with her nation’s past and present.
  25. Gimme the Loot
    Gimme the Loot has a lot to say about the contradictions of a place that is defined by both abundant opportunity and ferocious inequality. But the film makes its points in a lighthearted, street-smart vernacular, treating its protagonists not as embodiments of a social condition but rather as self-aware individuals who are, like teenagers everywhere, both smart and dumb.
  26. Two Trains Runnin'
    This captivating movie, like the blues itself, is at once a recognition of those somber truths and a gesture of protest against them.
  27. Reservoir Dogs
    Though small in physical scope, Reservoir Dogs is immensely complicated in its structure, which for the most part works with breathtaking effect. [23 Oct 1992]
    • The New York Times
  28. Premature
    Every moment rings true, the vividly textured locations and knockabout relationships more visited than created.
  29. Red White & Blue
    Red White & Blue proves the director a bona fide storyteller with more tools in his arsenal than shock and awe.
  30. Tchoupitoulas
    Tchoupitoulas does explore the border between innocence and experience. It is alive with the risk and curiosity of youth, and unapologetic in insisting that the pursuit of fun can be a profound and transformative experience.
  31. The Eel
    Yakusho and Ms. Shimizu deliver unerring performances in a splendid film that harvests hope from a bleak landscape.
  32. Cousin Jules
    Cousin Jules is in many ways a wonder to see and hear, but there is less to it than meets the eye.
  33. Skyfall
    As Bond sprints from peril to pleasure, Mr. Craig and the other players - including an exceptional, wittily venal Javier Bardem, a sleek Ralph Fiennes and a likable Ben Whishaw - turn out to be the most spectacular of Mr. Mendes's special effects.
  34. Thunder Soul
    By introducing funky licks, fancy footwork and many of his own compositions to the band's stodgy set list of jazz standards, this indomitable leader (whose declining health adds a poignant twang to the film's final scenes) instilled racial pride alongside musical competency.
  35. Of Time and the City
    It is a deeply personal piece of art that never descends into the confessional or the therapeutic, and a work of social and literary criticism that never lectures or hectors, but rather, with melancholy, tenderness and wit, manages to sing.
  36. Amanda
    Amanda is absurd and abrasive, but also sympathetic thanks to Porcaroli’s performance. She’s a flaming narcissist with a gooey core of vulnerability, a being forged by the fear of making herself known.
  37. Consuming Spirits
    It is a work of obsessive artisanal discipline and unfettered artistic vision. You have never seen anything like it.
  38. Memoir of a Snail
    The world that Elliot creates is so strangely beautiful that it’s fun to look at. Plus, the end of “Memoir of a Snail” redeems its flights into tedium by giving us a reason to have watched them.
  39. The Janes
    Cookie-cutter though it is, The Janes does have something going for it: its interview subjects, the former Janes, who all speak about their beliefs and shared past with striking clarity.
  40. A Fantastic Woman
    Psychologically astute and socially aware as the film is, it is also infused with mystery and melodrama, with bright colors and emotional shadows.
  41. Your Name.
    The beauty of Your Name is that, as in the best animated movies, the thin black lines of the character design invariably dissolve, and all that remains are Taki and Mitsuha, thoroughly mixed-up teenagers.
  42. The Scent of Green Papaya
    The Scent of the Green Papaya marks a luxuriant, visually seductive debut for Mr. Hung, whose film is often so wordlessly evocative that it barely needs dialogue. Reaching into the past for its precisely drawn memories, it casts a rich, delicate spell.
  43. Melancholia
    Melancholia is emphatically not what anyone would call a feel-good movie, and yet it nonetheless leaves behind a glow of aesthetic satisfaction.
  44. You, the Living
    The film is slow, rigorously morose and often painful in its blunt reckoning of disappointment and failure. It is also extremely funny.
  45. Upstream Color
    With its fragmentation and mysteries, Upstream Color offers itself up as a puzzle as well as a philosophical toy that you can spin and spin until the cafe closes and kicks you into the night.
  46. Dreams
    Coming-of-age works are about discovery, but Dreams reminds us that this process can be fluid and fanciful. Our fantasies shape who we are because they invite us to clear out the mist — and find firmer ground on the other side.
  47. Hunt for the Wilderpeople
    Hunt for the Wilderpeople takes a troika of familiar story types — the plucky kid, the crusty geezer, the nurturing bosom — and strips them of cliché. Charming and funny, it is a drama masquerading as a comedy about an unloved boy whom nobody wants until someone says, Yes, I’ll love him.
  48. Ballets Russes
    Ballets Russes does tell a marvelous story of midcentury show business, encompassing both the most exalted expressions of pure art and the sometimes grubby commerce that sustained it.
  49. The General
    Mr. Boorman, working in top form with a keenly acerbic overview, has written the film so sharply that the facts speak well for themselves.
  50. Disturbing the Peace
    Their stories are compelling — and persuasive.
  51. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
    His (Ralph Fiennes) Voldemort may be the greatest screen performance ever delivered without the benefit of a nose; certainly it's a performance of sublime villainy.
  52. Mikey and Nicky
    Miss May is a witty, gifted, very intelligent director. It took guts for her to attempt a film like this, but she failed.
  53. Paprika
    A gorgeous riot of future-shock ideas and brightly animated imagery, the doors of perception never close.
  54. Hell and Back Again
    You can feel just how jarring and stressful it must be for a soldier to go from the life-and-death adrenaline rush of war to the maddeningly slow world of rehabilitation and forced inactivity.
  55. Il Postino: The Postman
    A rueful, warmly affecting film featuring a wonderful performance by Mr. Troisi, The Postman would be attention-getting even without the sadness that overshadows it. [14 June 1995, p. C15]
  56. The Hate U Give
    Ms. Stenberg, Mr. Hornsby and others in the ensemble (including Regina Hall as Starr’s mother, Lisa) are more than capable of exploring their characters’ depths, but a wonky script gets them only so far.
  57. Come See Me in the Good Light
    Nonfiction films often grapple with mortality and the meaning of existence, and usually those center on grief. This one wraps its arms around the full range of feeling that follows a terminal diagnosis: fear, love, desire, anger, wonder, hope, despair, even joy.
  58. Hairspray
    The overall mood of Hairspray is so joyful, so full of unforced enthusiasm, that only the most ferocious cynic could resist it.
  59. Faya Dayi
    Unifying this elliptical canvas is the sense of a contemplative search, which can also mean an escape from an altered homeland, perhaps to dull what feels lost.
  60. Bruiser
    arren uses an assured hand in treating the family melodrama with the tenderness of a tone poem. For most of the film, he avoids painting in broad strokes while ratcheting up the conflict between Porter, a tattooed veteran living on a boat, and the bespectacled, seemingly upright Malcolm.
  61. I'm the One That I Want
    Several times while watching the movie I laughed until the tears were running down my face.
  62. My First Film
    The irony of My First Film is its two layers: It’s not Anger’s first film, nor is it Vita’s, but it tells the story of one that never quite made it into the world. But really, it’s a movie about learning to have compassion for your younger self, for her dreams and foibles and failures.
  63. King Kong
    The rapport between Ms. Watts and Mr. Serkis is extraordinary, even though it is mediated by fur, latex, optical illusions and complicated effects. Mr. Serkis, who also played Gollum in the "Lord of the Rings" movies, is redefining screen acting for the digital age, while Ms. Watts incarnates the glamour and emotional directness of classical Hollywood.
  64. Chicago
    Who would have expected Ms. Zellweger --- and Miramax -- to come through in a musical? And it's one of the few Christmas entertainments to run under two hours. Who couldn't love that?
  65. That's Entertainment! III
    With the best material used up, That's Entertainment! III cleverly focuses on outtakes, unfinished numbers and behind-the-scenes glimpses of the old musicals. This results in a lively and funny compilation of curiosities suggesting what might have been.
  66. TransFatty Lives
    Refreshingly unpredictable but also frustrating.
  67. Free in Deed
    Each time the movie edges into mannerism Mr. Harewood and Ms. Dickerson pull you close enough to make it hurt.
  68. Daughters of the Dust
    For all its harsh allusions to slavery and hardship, the film is an extended, wildly lyrical meditation on the power of African cultural iconography and the spiritual resilience of the generations of women who have been its custodians.
  69. Battle Royale
    American fans of "The Hunger Games" may not embrace - or even be permitted to see - Battle Royale, which is too bad. It is in many ways a better movie and in any case a fascinating companion, drawn from a parallel cultural universe. It is a lot uglier and also, perversely, a lot more fun.
  70. Goodnight Mommy
    Unspooling with virtually no music and a seriously unsettling sound design, Goodnight Mommy gains significant traction from small moments.
  71. The Fishing Place
    Tregenza is the kind of authentic independent who’s always worth seeking out; when he is behind the camera, he holds you rapt from the get-go.
  72. I Lost My Body
    The movie abounds with imagination, but is unfortunately too unnerving — even nauseating — to enjoy.
  73. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
    “Glass Onion” is completely silly, but it’s not only silly. Explicitly set during the worst months of the Covid pandemic — the spring of 2020 — “Glass Onion” leans into recent history without succumbing to gloom, bitterness or howling rage, which is no small accomplishment. One way to interpret the title is that a glass onion may be sharp, and may have a lot of layers, but it won’t make you cry.
  74. A White, White Day
    The result is an emotionally wringing film, equally effective in the narrative and tone-poem departments.
  75. Two Step
    This lean character-driven movie has such an acutely observant screenplay that it is easy to empathize with people struggling to make a decent living by hook or crook. Its psychological precision elevates it to something more than a genre piece.
  76. Summer 1993
    Summer 1993 is movingly understated and beautifully acted.
  77. Starred Up
    Though it is, finally, an affecting story of two damaged men bound by blood and something like love (and also a thrillerish catalog of double crosses and shifting allegiances), it is, above all, a study in the patterns of chaos that govern penitentiary life.
  78. The Macaluso Sisters
    [Emma Dante] imagines the ripple effects of a sister’s death across generations with metaphysical grace and hints of fantasy, straying from the plot-reliant mold of most human dramas toward something more haunting and powerful.
  79. Midnight in Paris
    It is marvelously romantic, even though - or precisely because - it acknowledges the disappointment that shadows every genuine expression of romanticism.
  80. The Guardians
    The Guardians is a historical drama that doesn’t lose itself in decorative period detail, a beautifully photographed chronicle of rural existence that refrains from picturesque sentimentality and grinding misery, the usual modes for this kind of film.
  81. Mirai
    Fluctuating between the minor daily occurrences of Kun’s life and his touching sojourns into the past and the future, Hosoda’s film privileges moments of emotion over belabored story mechanics. Thus, it gathers complexity without sacrificing any of its guileless modesty.
  82. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning
    Despite the new faces, there are, unsurprisingly, no real surprises in “Dead Reckoning Part One,” which features a number of dependably showstopping stunts, hits every narrative beat hard and, shrewdly, has just enough winking humor to keep the whole thing from sagging into self-seriousness.
  83. Love and Death on Long Island
    John Hurt is simply wonderful -- acerbic, funny and heartbreaking.
  84. Benediction
    The film never quite conjures a link between the life and the work.
  85. 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.
  86. She Dies Tomorrow
    Dazed but far from confused, “She Dies Tomorrow” tugs at you, nagging to be viewed more than once. Eerie and at times impenetrable, the movie (which was completed pre-pandemic) presents a rapidly spreading psychological contagion that feels uncomfortably timely.
  87. Living
    As in a David Lean movie, passion mingles elegantly with repression, and Williams emerges as a kind of romantic figure, a man shocked, then delighted, by the thrill of finding himself.
  88. Chaos
    There is not a decent (or even half-decent) male character to be found in Chaos, a gripping feminist fable with a savage comic edge.
  89. The Story of the Weeping Camel
    Lovely, uncomplicated though limited movie.
  90. Faat Kiné
    Sembène is a far more adroit and elegant storyteller than many may be accustomed to seeing.
  91. Tuesday, After Christmas
    The strength of Tuesday, After Christmas, Mr. Muntean's fourth feature, lies in its rigorous, artful and humane fidelity to quotidian circumstance.
  92. The World's End
    The buzz of The World’s End is more like an antic sugar high than a reeling, drunken stupor. There are no headaches, dry mouth or crushing shame at the end — no “Hangover,” in other words. I’ll drink to that.
  93. Racing Extinction
    It’s the film’s sounds that really wrench. If you’ve ever wondered what a breaking heart sounds like, it’s right here in the futile warble of the last male of a species of songbird, singing for a mate that will never come.
  94. Thy Father's Chair
    The movie, directed by Antonio Tibaldi and Alex Lora, is quiet and quietly moving and quite different from “Hoarders” in its steady pace and poetic vérité style.
  95. Invisible Hands
    Rich in information and dense with quiet outrage, Shraysi Tandon’s debut feature, the investigative documentary Invisible Hands, jumps into the murky and shameful world of child trafficking and forced labor.
  96. Chinese Portrait
    Its primary interest lies in the tension between candid moments and shots that appear artfully composed.
  97. Destry Rides Again
    A bit of the old West with a good bit of the old Dietrich in it; a tightly written, capitally directed show, with perfectly grand supporting performances.
  98. Listening to Kenny G
    As a music industry story, Kenny G’s rise, engineered by the mogul Clive Davis but at times bucked by the artist himself, is fascinating.
  99. Mountains
    As a drama, Mountains, whose characters move fluidly between English and Haitian Creole, is too low-key to leave much of an impression. But as a portrait of intergenerational tensions in an immigrant family, it is poignant, and it captures an area of Miami that is rarely seen onscreen.
  100. 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.
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