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. The Boys in the Band
    The ensemble is superb, and each member has at least one standout moment, but the movie rides on the shoulders of Parsons, as Michael, the host of the party.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Glorias
    The intersectional core of the movement is rightfully emphasized, yet in the apparent push to make this movie as instructional and inspirational as possible, the dialogue gets saddled with some heavy-handed exposition.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    American Murder: The Family Next Door
    Popplewell’s film presents the Watts story as more than a crime story. It is a thematic film about marriage and the deception of social media, as well as a piercing examination of domestic violence constructed with care and undeniable craft.
  4. Myth of a Colorblind France
    This is a huge subject, and the film, which favors anecdotes over a macro treatment, doesn’t have much structure to speak of. It consists of one brief profile after another — a strategy that is efficient for delivering information, but that leaves Myth of a Colorblind France dry and disarrayed as filmmaking.
  5. Public Trust
    The documentary is conventionally structured and sometimes placid, but it has an alarming message.
  6. Bird Island
    Not much happens in Bird Island, but the center’s cycles of regeneration and care leave their mark, invigorating both the characters and us.
  7. Secret Society of Second Born Royals
    The most polished superpower on display in the defiantly unexciting Secret Society of Second-Born Royals is the ability to say its title without spitting.
  8. Kajillionaire
    Wrapping damage and poverty in bubbles and sunshine, Kajillionaire is about intimacy and neglect, brainwashing and independence.
  9. The Artist's Wife
    The best, perhaps the only reason to see The Artist’s Wife is Lena Olin, an actor incapable of giving a so-so performance.
  10. The Last Shift
    So far, so good, in the mismatched maybe-eventual-buddy-comedy department. But the movie, written and directed by Andrew Cohn, wants a deeper dimension, and in pursuing that, goes wrong.
  11. Ottolenghi and the Cakes of Versailles
    Ultimately the results are eye-popping, sometimes almost confoundingly so.
  12. Misbehaviour
    Like most commercial movies about feminist history, though, it also has a toothless vision of protest and empowerment that’s doomed to fail its subject because its makers don’t (can’t) risk making the audience uncomfortable.
  13. The Trial of the Chicago 7
    I don’t think, on balance, that this is a very good movie. It’s talky and clumsy, alternating between self-importance and clowning. But it’s also not a movie that can be easily shaken off. Partly this is an accident of timing.
  14. Kiss the Ground
    The film makes a case for the healing power of soil, arguing that its capacity to sequester carbon could be the key to reversing the effects of climate change.
  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. Stuntwomen: The Untold Hollywood Story
    While the documentary successfully champions stunt women’s dignity in the workplace, it lacks finesse — failing to showcase their talents in a way that would be exciting for an audience outside the industry.
  17. Rifkin's Festival
    It’s a relief to report that Rifkin’s Festival is, to the ravenous captive, like finding an unexpected stash of dessert: not substantial and not nutritious, but sweet enough to remind you in passing of the good times you once had, despite all that’s happened in the interim.
  18. Enola Holmes
    The film is successful in balancing these broad themes with our heroine’s adventures, and that is due in large part to the work of Brown, whose energetic performance breathes new life into the Holmes creative world.
  19. I've Got Issues
    The movie observes collective pain with endearing absurdity.
  20. A Chef's Voyage
    Mostly the movie is a drizzle of platitudes.
  21. God of the Piano
    Rarely does a debut feature showcase a talent so fully formed. This is a remarkably potent film.
  22. Residue
    Gerima’s challenging, engrossing filmmaking style is measured, simultaneously realistic and impressionistic. What’s out of the frame is often as important, if not more important, than what’s in the frame.
  23. The Nest
    If Durkin’s writing doesn’t always match his formal flair, The Nest has a bracing economy, cramming a lot into tight quarters.
  24. Alone
    This minimalist survival thriller unfolds with such elegant simplicity and single-minded momentum that its irritations are easily excused.
  25. Blackbird
    The characters are so flimsy, and so wearyingly familiar . . . that Michell is incapable of giving their conflicts life.
  26. The Way I See It
    The movie is impeccably crafted and consistently engaging.
  27. H is for Happiness
    Its meticulous visuals do frequently tip into preciousness, yet this cuteness is offset by the movie’s refreshingly direct take on depression and despair. This unusual children’s film may be fussy, but to its credit, it is not frivolous.
  28. The Devil All the Time
    Every faded dress looks attentively fitted, each ramshackle house artfully weathered. If the performances are considerably less persuasive it’s partly because Campos shows no interest in the inner lives of his characters. And while Pattinson’s and Keough’s roles are risible, the actors at least show signs of (comic) life.
  29. Antebellum
    Written and directed by Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz, and propelled by the charisma of Janelle Monáe, it lines up moments of possible insight and impact and messes up just about all of them.
  30. The Secrets We Keep
    An exploitation film that proceeds as if it were a solemn memorial, The Secrets We Keep doesn’t do right by the Holocaust history it invokes — or much else.
  31. Red, White & Wasted
    Distracted by Confederate flags and twerking women, the directors, Andrei Bowden Schwartz and Sam Jones, make only a halfhearted attempt to illuminate a disappearing subculture.
  32. Unpregnant
    Its driving force may seem topical, but the story’s heart is timeless: the harmony between longtime friends, and Veronica and Bailey throw themselves into even the most fraught situations with giddy enthusiasm.
  33. Suspensión
    Uribe directs for sensory effect rather than context, which is minimal and parceled out as needed, and deals with the politics of the construction project glancingly, an approach that registers as alternately poetic and coy.
  34. Black Boys
    When does the eye of the documentarian obscure the sight? The Peacock film Black Boys examines the beauty of Black boys but suffers from a failure to police its own gaze.
  35. Sibyl
    Whether psychological drama or sexual farce — and, really, there’s no way to tell — Sibyl is a soapy mess.
  36. Buoyancy
    There is evil and it helps keep the world running, our clothes and food coming. This is the greatest, most difficult, most unspeakable violence laid bare in Rathjen’s measured, insistently political movie.
  37. I Am Woman
    I Am Woman, a pleasant, yet disappointingly trite biopic of the singer Helen Reddy, has a flatness that’s difficult to ascribe to any one element.
  38. Space Dogs
    Space Dogs commits to its art-house pretensions. The result isn’t pleasant, but it does effectively provoke.
  39. Our Time Machine
    This often visually beautiful movie sometimes ventures full-time into Maleonn’s own dreams and is frank in its depiction of the conflicts in the family — as well as of Maleonn’s struggles to be a good son and an active artist, as his ambitions for the project run ahead of his financial resources.
  40. Rent-A-Pal
    Eventually the movie paints itself into a corner then sinks into grisly sludge. Stevenson’s technical skill can’t save him from a trite worldview.
  41. Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President
    “Rock & Roll President” is a potent and poignant reminder of how some things used to be and may never be again.
  42. Gather
    Rawal covers a substantial amount of ground and deftly balances the dense material without losing sight of the mission driving the bigger story: Healing from generational trauma sometimes starts with just one person.
  43. All In: The Fight for Democracy
    In a sense, it’s less a documentary for posterity than an urgent broadcast. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth hearing.
  44. The Social Dilemma
    The Social Dilemma is remarkably effective in sounding the alarm about the incursion of data mining and manipulative technology into our social lives and beyond.
  45. Love, Guaranteed
    Love, Guaranteed, simmering at a low boil, is a short and mostly sweet affair. Its successes are due in large part to Cook who, donning a vast array of snug fall coats, is endearing as a willful working woman with a new crush.
  46. Feels Good Man
    At its best, the movie is a vertiginous, head-slapping examination of the tangible, unpredictable consequences of making art.
  47. Measure for Measure
    Glancing social commentary — like the difficulties of cultural assimilation and the invisible wounds of war — is welcome, but the script (by Ireland and Damian Hill, who died in 2018) is too cluttered for it to resonate and too mired in a muddle of sin and redemption.
  48. Critical Thinking
    Critical Thinking does little to detach itself from genre cliché; yet this heartfelt drama about a rough-and-tumble group of high-schoolers who claw their way to a national chess tournament has a sweetness that softens its flaws.
  49. 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.
  50. I Hate New York
    Because Sánchez followed his subjects for so long, he was able to pack some surprises up the movie’s sleeve. As a couple of its figures undergo drastic life changes, a narrative both tragic and inspiring emerges.
  51. The Golden Girl
    Deftly, the film shifts focus from Raducan’s disqualification to the entrenched injustices of Olympic sports, with their outsized pressures and brittle illusions of meritocracy.
  52. Chuck Berry: The Original King of Rock ‘n’ Roll
    Leaving aside its cheesy, colorized dramatizations, Jon Brewer’s movie offers a strangely bifurcated portrait.
  53. Isadora's Children
    Isadora’s Children is made with such unusual delicacy that it may elude the grasp of audiences who demand things such as, well, plot. But its sensitivity is rare and valuable.
  54. Class Action Park
    Class Action Park loses its footing somewhat in the closing passages; Scott and Porges don’t seem to know quite how to wrap things up, and the film’s big tonal shift is a turning point that is all but impossible to come back from.
  55. The Mole Agent
    The movie’s straddling of the dramatic and the documentary forms is unsettling. Unless you unquestioningly accept its method, this chronicle can look like a glaring invasion of privacy. But the film’s people are moving, and the payoff is compassionate, humane and worth heeding.
  56. i'm thinking of ending things
    This is Kaufman’s most assured and daring work so far as a director.
  57. Children of the Sea
    Children of the Sea finds plenty of beauty and purpose in the watery depths but doesn’t provide enough grounding first: It’s all too easy to get lost 20,000 leagues under the sea.
  58. Robin's Wish
    As potentially valuable as Robin’s Wish is for illuminating Williams’s death — initial reports noted his past struggles with addiction and depression — it is more affecting and appealing as a tribute. Stories of Williams as a matchless improviser, an unpretentious neighbor and a man who had a gift for consoling others suggest the world lost not just an uproarious presence but a kind one.
  59. The New Mutants
    The New Mutants spent three years on ice before being allowed to escape into the slowest summer season in a century. That’s fitting for a film that’s all buildup and no bang.
  60. Bill & Ted Face the Music
    The new movie, directed by Dean Parisot, is an amiable, sloppy attempt to reassert the value of friendliness and crack a few jokes along the way.
  61. Made in Bangladesh
    As Shimu’s efforts ramp up and appear increasingly futile, Made in Bangladesh acquires a quiet power.
  62. Mr. SOUL!
    Broad in scope and rapidly paced, the film can feel as if it’s bursting at the seams. But it acutely conveys the radical joy that “Soul!” inspired, barely contained in the movie’s running time.
  63. You Cannot Kill David Arquette
    What’s fascinating is Arquette’s vulnerability, both emotionally and physically.
  64. Ghost Tropic
    Beguiles and fascinates on several levels.
  65. Fatima
    While the film may speak to viewers with a spiritual investment in these events, it does little to bring them alive for others.
  66. Epicentro
    Whether Sauper’s travels delivered a cohesive movie this time is debatable, but what he does find is always interesting.
  67. The Binge
    Here’s an equation for third-period math: Take “Superbad,” “Booksmart,” and, hell, any teen-party movie, add in a useless overarching conceit, subtract all originality. The result is The Binge, a new Hulu original that is only exceptional in its mind-numbing inanity.
  68. Matthias & Maxime
    This exploration of suppressed homoerotic longing would be infinitely more moving if the pair had even a smidgen of sexual chemistry.
  69. All Together Now
    The movie’s familiar suggestion of music as a light in the darkness works primarily because its star shines so brightly.
  70. Lingua Franca
    The mood is meditative, the camera patient; yet the film is too dramatically shy and narratively slight to stir.
  71. Rising Phoenix
    By avoiding complexity, Rising Phoenix preserves its inspiring mood, but offers only a platform for champions who already dominate the arena.
  72. The Personal History of David Copperfield
    Restructuring some story arcs and jettisoning others, Iannucci and his collaborator, Simon Blackwell, have created a souped-up, trimmed-down adaptation so fleet and entertaining that its cleverness doesn’t immediately register.
  73. Get Duked!
    The scenery is pretty and the actors appealing enough to almost excuse the thinness of the material.
  74. Nomad: In the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin
    To elaborate as Chatwin did, Herzog implies, is a legitimate response to places that can’t help but exert a strong pull on the imagination. And of course, the truth-and-a-half principle figures heavily in Herzog’s own art — of which this film is a particularly outstanding example.
  75. Tenet
    The film is undeniably enjoyable, but its giddy grandiosity only serves to highlight the brittleness of its purported braininess.
  76. The Sleepover
    As The Sleepover juggles the genres of heist movie, action thriller, scavenger hunt and teen/tween comedy, it never finds an identity which it slips into effortlessly, the way a good thief can.
  77. Chemical Hearts
    Despite the movie’s sympathy for the high stakes of Henry’s adolescence, the myopia of his point of view settles over “Chemical Hearts” like a layer of grime.
  78. Watch List
    It has a sturdy, vivid construction, and is a convincing demonstration of the venality that’s central to the thinking of hardly squeaky-clean antidrug zealots.
  79. Tesla
    You might not learn everything there is to know about Tesla — that’s what the internet is for — but you will nonetheless feel illuminated by his presence.
  80. The Crimes That Bind
    Roth is never less than a treat as a woman whose veil of class and privilege is being slowly lifted to reveal her misplaced loyalties. The Crimes That Bind might feel leaden, but Alicia’s transformation feels lighter than air.
  81. Desert One
    Though comprehensive and often stirring, the accounts lack new insight or analytical heft.
  82. The 24th
    This stultifyingly earnest movie makes its points with such a heavy hand that its horrors struggle to resonate.
  83. Unhinged
    While Derrick Borte’s filmmaking is bluntly efficient — and the vehicular stunt work impressive — the character is a windup toy, a dumb and dirty symbol of male grievance.
  84. Cut Throat City
    The reversals the characters suffer across the movie’s running time are epic, and the movie’s finale unfolds to genuinely startling effect.
  85. Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula
    Here, after the gunfire dies down, terror at times gives way to a melancholy that can be quite affecting even if the message remains familiar: We have met the zombie, and it is us.
  86. The One and Only Ivan
    Mostly The One and Only Ivan consists of fairly standard Disney lessons, about the hardships of losing parents (real and surrogate) and how difficult it is to embrace change.
  87. Emperor
    Okeniyi has a strong presence that conveys a genuine moral authority.
  88. Coup 53
    Is Coup 53 trustworthy in every respect? Perhaps not. Both as a detective story and as a deep dive into a world event whose consequences linger, it is bracing, absorbing filmmaking.
  89. Boys State
    By eliding the Legion’s history and focusing on winning personalities, the filmmakers have made an engaging movie about some kids who — as their jokes give way to debates, stratagems and even shocks — already seem to be drafting their own more interesting sequel.
  90. Project Power
    The humanity of the leads fills up the hollowness, putting flesh, or at least charm and attitude, on their archetypes.
  91. An Easy Girl
    Sultry, but never sleazy, observant yet nonjudgmental, An Easy Girl is more than just a tale of innocence and experience. Taking a nuanced look at sexual awakening and, to a lesser extent, class distinction, the movie has a charming flightiness that builds to an unexpectedly touching climax.
  92. Represent
    The film deduces that these women need meaningful support, but doesn’t fully explore what that might look like — whether it would come in the form of campaign teams, money, endorsements or all of the above.
  93. Yusuf Hawkins: Storm Over Brooklyn
    The competing agendas surrounding the case would prevent anyone from making a cohesive Hawkins documentary, and Storm Over Brooklyn never settles on a satisfying point of view.
  94. Spree
    Coarsely merging social-media critique and slasher comedy, this shallow take on the evils of internet addiction is as unoriginal as it is unfunny.
  95. The Bay of Silence
    There is less to The Bay of Silence than meets the eye.
  96. Sputnik
    While Sputnik doesn’t make its substantial borrowings from other sci-fi pictures entirely new, it does juice them up enough to yield a genuinely scary and satisfying experience.
  97. Martin Margiela: In His Own Words
    It is a poem about the ways in which the speed and ubiquity demanded by the internet have squeezed certain creative wells dry, perhaps irreparably.
  98. Work It
    Work It is no “Step Up,” but its best sequences involve Jake and Quinn, who share a chemistry in motion that, for a beat or two, conjures the genre’s magic.
  99. Out Stealing Horses
    The overall integrity of the effort is impressive.
  100. Waiting for the Barbarians
    Guerra aestheticizes everything to an extreme.
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