The New York Times' Scores

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For 20,278 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: 9,380 out of 20278
  2. Mixed: 8,434 out of 20278
  3. Negative: 2,464 out of 20278
20278 movie reviews
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  1. The Dark and the Wicked
    Pitiless in its intent, and hopeless in its sense of sorrowful dereliction, The Dark and the Wicked fully earns its horrifically distressing final scenes.
  2. City Hall
    City Hall runs four and a half mostly engrossing hours, making it one of Wiseman’s longest. That sounds daunting, but I could have watched hours more of people simply talking to one another in auditoriums and across conference-room tables.
  3. Wife of a Spy
    Wife of a Spy is something like linear narrative perfection, with every scene perfectly calibrated.
  4. Enemies of the State
    Kennebeck weaves uncertainty into the formal design, staging re-enactments mingled with original audio, for instance. The movie is a spoiler deathtrap, but the questions it raises are fascinating.
  5. Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds
    This film rests on the fact that Mother Earth is always being called on by other worlds in the forms of comets, meteorites and asteroids — and it’s about as transportive as documentaries get.
  6. Limbo
    Limbo, written and directed by a ferociously talented filmmaker, Ben Sharrock, takes an insinuating, poetic and often wryly funny approach. And it’s both heartbreaking and heartlifting.
  7. MLK/FBI
    The result is at once suspenseful, visually engrossing and intellectually bracing. It also raises urgent, sometimes uncomfortable questions about power, privacy and the ethical challenges of examining the past.
  8. Shiva Baby
    It’s rare for a film to simultaneously balance such wildly divergent tones, to interweave big laughs with gut-wrenching discomfort, but Seligman pulls it off.
  9. What the Constitution Means to Me
    Schreck succeeds in widening her autobiographical play into a paean for basic fairness: The American Constitution, admired as it is, fails to protect all of us from violence and discrimination.
  10. Small Axe: Alex Wheatle
    A film in which violence and stillness alternate with queasy regularity.
  11. Small Axe: Mangrove
    A history lesson doesn’t have to be a lecture, and at its best, Mangrove, with its clear and painful implications for the present, conveys the sense of a world in motion, as the possibility of something new comes into being.
  12. Small Axe: Education
    McQueen, who attended one of these schools, uses this small, hopeful story to illustrate how one generation, by means of an ingenious workaround to bigotry, fought to secure the future of the next.
  13. Small Axe: Red, White and Blue
    Some of Red, White and Blue is hard to watch, but the film is eloquent on how an institution will resist change, perhaps especially from inside its own walls.
  14. David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet
    The film’s grand achievement is that it positions its subject as a mediator between humans and the natural world. Life cycles on, and if we make the right choices, ruin can become regrowth.
  15. Oliver Sacks: His Own Life
    While the movie steers around the details of how post-fame Sacks became something of a brand, it beautifully presents a portrait of his compassion and bravery.
  16. The Human Voice
    Almodóvar’s sense of cinema design — the décor simulates a luxe apartment and lays it bare as a soundstage illusion — is acutely keyed to Swinton’s performance here, which projects mercurial emotion with Swiss watch precision.
  17. They Were Expendable
    It is nostalgic, warm with sentiment and full of fight in every foot. It is hard to commend any actor above the rest. Each plays his part well.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Mister Roberts
    It is loaded to the gunwales with screamingly funny scenes which, in several instances, are visual improvements on the play.
  19. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
    Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is a powerful and pungent reminder of the necessity of art, of its sometimes terrible costs and of the preciousness of the people, living and dead, with whom we share it.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    A Tale of Two Cities
    For more than two hours it crowds the screen with beauty and excitement, sparing nothing in its recital of the Englishmen who were caught up in the blood and terror of the French Revolution and of Sydney Carton, who gave his life for his friends.
  21. My Psychedelic Love Story
    [A] heady, fascinating movie.
  22. On-Gaku: Our Sound
    In a world of C.G.I.-everything, “On-Gaku” comes as a refreshing blast from the past.
  23. Being a Human Person
    The revelation of Andersson’s method, his painstaking use of trompe l’oeil both painterly and cinematic, is fascinating enough. But the chronicle takes an unexpected turn.
  24. The Man Who Came to Dinner
    A deliciously wicked character portrait and a helter-skelter satire.
  25. Fat City
    A knockout scene by that grand old battler, John Huston.
  26. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
    Miller is such a wildly inventive filmmaker that it’s been easy to forget that he keeps making movies about the end of life as we know it. It’s a blast watching his characters fight over oil, water and women, yet while I’ve long thought of him as a great filmmaker it’s only with “Furiosa” that I now understand he’s also one kick-ass prophet of doom.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
    Miss Jane Pittman fulfilled my deepest expectations. I did not look for a miracle nor did I view it with malice. That the show will spawn another film depicting other blacks in other experiences is unquestioned. That it was a triumph of and for the enduring strength of black people is also beyond doubt.
  28. Derek DelGaudio’s In & Of Itself
    In & Of Itself reframes familiar tropes like card tricks, vanishing objects and stupendous feats of mentalism to new ends. It is not often that a magic show makes you ponder not just the how, but the why.
  29. Stray
    The filmmaker's eyes may rarely leave the dogs, but what she’s really looking at is us.
  30. You Will Die At Twenty
    Avoiding didactic conclusions or pat answers, Alala’s film questions blind belief but finds boundless enchantment in every frame.
  31. Much Ado About Nothing
    He has taken a Shakespearean romantic comedy, the sort of thing that usually turns to mush on the screen, and made a movie that is triumphantly romantic, comic and, most surprising of all, emotionally alive.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Captain Blood
    With a spirited and criminally good-looking Australian named Errol Flynn playing the genteel buccaneer to the hilt, the photoplay recaptures the air of high romantic adventure which is so essential to the tale.
  33. Flee
    Less a sociological case study than a psychological portrait, the film is both probing and tactful.
  34. Pleasure
    Excess is the sine qua non of porn, so that’s expected. What is more surprising — and welcome — is how Thyberg engages feminist issues like a woman’s agency while making you laugh, freaking you out and prompting you to squirm.
  35. Tina
    You may believe you know Turner’s tale. And you may be right. It is retold well here, but the most moving portions — and they could bring tears to your eyes — come as Turner, almost 80 at the time of this interview (and as beautiful as she has ever been), wearing a tailored black suit, sits and discusses where she’s at now.
  36. The Lover
    the film that Mr. Annaud and his producer, Claude Berri, have made is something of a triumph. It's tough, clear-eyed, utterly unsentimental, produced lavishly but with such discipline that the exotic locale never gets in the way of the minutely detailed drama at the center.
  37. Singles
    Mr. Crowe (who wrote "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" and directed "Say Anything") has an exceptional ability to enjoy such characters without a trace of condescension
  38. Hope
    Raw, melancholy and unquestionably mature, Hope understands that some wounds may never be healed. Even so, it takes a brave movie to hold that stance until its very last second.
  39. Violation
    Sims-Fewer and Mancinelli have given their subject matter the focus it deserves, distinguishing themselves as thoughtful, artistic and uncompromising in their shared vision. This female-centered story manages to be gutsy while resisting exploitation — a welcome and nuanced addition to a genre often hobbled by didacticism.
  40. The Fever
    By showing us the world through Justino’s searching gaze, Da-Rin gives us an elusive but powerful sense of the limits of our own vision.
  41. The Inheritance
    The Inheritance, Ephraim Asili’s debut feature film, beautifully abandons genre to consider questions about community, art and Black liberation.
  42. Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn
    Shooting in the summer of 2020, Jude and his team were clearly constrained by the realities of Covid-19, but they also succeeded in turning a bad situation to creative advantage, facing the awfulness and absurdity of the present with wit, indignation and a saving touch of tenderness.
  43. I'm Your Man
    Edging now and then into the surreal, this unusual and tender little movie gingerly interrogates the gulf between digital and biological wiring.
  44. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
    Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy is a perfect entry point into Hamaguchi’s work. Not every episode works equally well or hits as hard, but both times I watched this movie, I found something to admire, consider, argue with and weep over.
  45. Miracle Fishing: Kidnapped Abroad
    Few people in this position would think to pick up a camera, let alone keep filming for so long. That makes Miracle Fishing a unique and harrowing record.Few people in this position would think to pick up a camera, let alone keep filming for so long. That makes Miracle Fishing a unique and harrowing record.
  46. Gas Food Lodging
    There are subtly etched characters, effortlessly fine performances, and a moving story that is not easily forgotten.
  47. Oklahoma!
    A full-bodied Oklahoma! has been brought forth in this film to match in vitality, eloquence and melody any musical this reviewer has ever seen.
  48. The Fallout
    Ortega nails her role as a levelheaded teen who, nevertheless, is still a teen, reeling from an unthinkable event on top of the usual growing pains.
  49. Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché
    More than a journeyman rockumentary, “Poly Styrene” is a thoughtfully finessed filial reckoning: a daughter’s journey toward understanding her mother as a young artist and as a young woman of color.
  50. Barbarosa
    The best western in a long while is Barbarosa, a film that uses one American legend, Willie Nelson, to create another.
  51. This Is Not a Burial, It's a Resurrection
    Mhlongo (who also appears in Beyoncé’s “Black Is King”) carries the movie on her shoulders with an authoritative presence.
  52. Jackass Forever
    Two things continue to hoist “Jackass” above its legion of imitators, many of whom are now found on TikTok. First, the razor-sharp slow-motion cinematography, which immortalizes writhing men in wet underpants with the devotion of Michelangelo sculpting “The Pietà.” Second — and more important — is the crew’s friendship.
  53. Paris Calligrammes
    The filmmaker has what seems like a torrent of anecdotes and attendant ideas to impart, but the movie never feels rushed.
  54. The Last Days
    Each person's story is so compelling it is worthy of a feature-length documentary itself. If The Last Days has a flaw, it is that the stories have been so abbreviated to keep the film moving quickly that they feel incomplete.
  55. 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.
  56. A Hero
    Nothing in this stressful, intricately plotted fable of modern life is as simple as we or the characters might wish.
  57. Slow Machine
    Difficult to describe and confounding to follow, the film is best when you submit to the surreal nature of it; then, you will be open to witnessing one of this year’s most mesmerizing movies unfold. Films of such lo-fi aesthetics rarely feel this major.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Ailey
    Like Ailey’s dances, the documentary leaves you swimming in sensation.
  59. Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain
    With immense perceptiveness, Neville shows us both the empath and the narcissist: The man who refused to turn the suffering he saw in war zones into a bland televisual package, and the one who would betray longtime colleagues to please a new lover.
  60. 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.
  61. The Novice
    Fuhrman’s performance matches the filmmaking for its intensity. The movie achieves a surreal allure — at times, it’s hard to pay attention to the dialogue because the images and the sound design are already communicating so much.
  62. After Love
    The film’s structure may be conventional, and yet its story is unusually rich, and uninterested in easy answers as to why people hurt the ones they love.
  63. Paris, 13th District
    Audiard’s touch here is light, sensitive and attentive as usual; you feel his fondness for these characters and their world in every frame.
  64. Bergman Island
    It’s a movie that isn’t quite sure whether it wants to be one, or which one it wants to be. Which makes it feel like more than just a movie.
  65. Belle
    Colors and hearts explode in Belle, and your head might too while watching this gorgeous anime.
  66. Eyimofe (This Is My Desire)
    The portrait of life that emerges organically from this understated, observant approach makes Eyimofe the rare social realist drama that conveys critique without didacticism and empathy without pity.
  67. Sabaya
    Mahmud and Ziyad, volunteers at the Yazidi Home Center in Syria, will make several more such trips over the course of the film, and hundreds more after the cameras stop rolling. Their task is enormous, and it demands a stoicism that Hirori’s intrepid, immersive filmmaking mirrors.
  68. In Balanchine's Classroom
    There is a beautiful act of translation that this documentary observes, as Balanchine’s former students — now wizened teachers themselves — attempt to render his movements into speech.
  69. The Hidden Life of Trees
    The documentary The Hidden Life of Trees uses the sensorial capacities of cinema to thrillingly visualize Wohlleben’s observations.
  70. The French
    Klein weaves all these moments into a story one could call spectacularly earthbound.
  71. Pig
    Pig, Michael Sarnoski’s stunningly controlled first feature, is a mournful fable of loss and withdrawal, art and ambition.
  72. The Eel
    Yakusho and Ms. Shimizu deliver unerring performances in a splendid film that harvests hope from a bleak landscape.
  73. Cousins
    Widespread racism, discriminatory laws and the Maori people’s centuries-long struggle for autonomy bracket the characters’ lives in Cousins. The film trembles with sound, color and feeling, deriving much of its power from an excellent ensemble cast (particularly Te Raukura Gray and Ana Scotney as the child and adult Mata).
  74. White on White
    Court — whose languorous pacing heightens the film’s brief, bewildering moments of action — summons an unsettling experience from relatively restrained gestures.
  75. Encanto
    The Madrigal family members belong even when they’re not conjuring roses or transforming the weather. And even with these fantastic feats of wizardry, the Madrigals, with all of their relatable family dynamics, are believably loving, funny and flawed.
  76. The Worst Person in the World
    If The Worst Person in the World is about Julie’s indecision, it’s also about Trier’s ambivalence. Some of the suspense in the film comes from wondering what he will do with her, and whether, as much as he loves her, he can figure out how to set her free.
  77. Compartment No. 6
    Part of what makes Compartment No. 6 engrossing and effective is how Kuosmanen plays with tone.
  78. Nowhere Special
    The mostly low-key mode of Nowhere Special is the right one. Norton is spectacular, but little Lamont delivers one of those uncanny performances that doesn’t seem like acting, and makes you feel for the kid almost as much as his onscreen parent does.
  79. Petrov's Flu
    Despite the grimness, the violence and the grotesque bleating of some hateful, prejudiced trolls, the movie never drags you down (though it might exhaust you) because it’s buoyed by Serebrennikov’s bravura, unfettered filmmaking.
  80. Vortex
    Among the comforts Vortex refuses is the bittersweet balm of nostalgia. It’s a blunt reckoning with the inevitability of loss, including the loss of memory. We dream for a while, and then we sleep.
  81. A Chiara
    You feel the weight of Chiara’s dilemma, the cost of the knowledge she demands, and the heroism of her willingness to pay it.
  82. Bring Your Own Brigade
    It’s a tough, smart, impressive movie, and one of its virtues is that Walker, a British transplant to Los Angeles, doesn’t seem to have figured it all out before she started shooting.
  83. Parallel Mothers
    The central plot of Parallel Mothers is vintage Almodóvar: a skein of reversals, revelations, surprises and coincidences unraveled with style, wit and feeling.
  84. Il Buco
    Frammartino connects the physical with the metaphysical. The world as he renders it is an anthology of concrete objects and unrepeatable moments that are somehow infused with abstract, even spiritual meanings.
  85. The Lost Daughter
    Only a superficial reading of The Lost Daughter would describe it as a meditation on the twin tugs of children and career. It is, instead, a dark and deeply disturbing exploration of something much more raw, and even radical: the notion that motherhood can plunder the self in irreparable ways.
  86. Spencer
    Stewart leverages her own star power to turn Diana into someone familiar. The intimacy and care the character craves is something the audience feels compelled to supply.
  87. The Hand of God
    I wouldn’t say that this movie is a distraction from reality, any more than I would call it a work of realism. It’s a beautiful tautology: a true-to-life movie about a life made for movies.
  88. The Box
    The Venezuelan director Lorenzo Vigas’s The Box weaves some of the greatest horrors of modern Mexican life into an unsettlingly cryptic thriller.
  89. Reflection
    It would be a bracing, haunting work even if it weren’t so timely.
  90. Fauna
    Brimming with postmodern flourishes, Fauna calls attention to the slippery nature of performance and identity, lodging a complex, yet highly engrossing critique of narco culture’s influence on Mexican storytelling — and it does so without a drop of that pesky didacticism.
  91. Uppercase Print
    The film, a rousing, form-bending new feature by the Romanian auteur Radu Jude, rails at the tyrannical potential of language — particularly when backed by government power — to suffocate people’s freedoms.
  92. An Unmarried Woman
    It is high comedy of a sharp, bitter kind, and Michael Murphy is fine as the weasel husband named Martin, but Miss Clayburgh is nothing less than extraordinary in what is the performance of the year to date.
  93. Bix: 'Ain't None of Them Play Like Him Yet' (1981)
    The movie looks like a 40-year-old mix of talking-head and archival footage. What makes it extraordinary is the story it tells of an uncanny musician and his beautiful playing and songs.
  94. Fever Dream
    Lllosa’s sensually shot film takes the story of a mother facing strange danger and casts a spell that feels like being dropped into the character’s mind.
  95. 7 Prisoners
    Rather than being a simple examination of a social problem, the film excels at excavating the deep-rooted, sprawling violence that affects everyone living under hierarchies of power.
  96. Mad God
    Strange and squelchy and all kinds of sick, Mad God comes at you with nauseating energy, its flood of dystopian images both playful and repulsive.
  97. Neptune Frost
    This isn’t a tight, tidy allegory of capitalism and colonialism so much as a collage of vivid images, sounds and words that punch the movie’s themes like hashtags. Williams and Uzeyman marry anarchist politics with anarchist aesthetics, making something that feels both handmade and high-tech, digital and analog, poetic and punk rock.
  98. Aloners
    Hong’s greatest strength is restraint. At every moment in which she could turn the film into an easier, feel-good story about a woman being taught how to wake up to life, she pulls back.
  99. Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song
    The documentary’s account of the song’s fate, indebted to Alan Light’s book “The Holy or the Broken,” is a fascinating study in the mechanics and metaphysics of pop-culture memory.
  100. Futura
    Anyone with a heart will be stirred by the generous, critical, humanist spirit shared by the kids in front of the camera and the grown-ups on the other side.
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