The New York Times' Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. Mandibles
    Mandibles is sweet, simple, and oh-so-very stupid — a stupidity that’s oddly liberating, like making up ridiculous scenarios with a pal over bong hits.
  2. Oklahoma City
    Oklahoma City suggests that conspiracy theories today have consequences for tomorrow — a message with terrifying implications in an age of fake news.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Rachel, Rachel
    Rachel, Rachel...is a real Movie movie, a little sappy at moments, but the best written, most seriously acted American movie in a long time.
  4. 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.
  5. Terribly Happy
    Not a horror movie but a witty, expertly constructed psychological thriller.
  6. Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present
    Like many other recent documentaries about artists, it is more celebratory than analytical, a kind of slick, extended promotional video for its subject.
  7. The Bridesmaid
    Deceptively understated and finally ferocious.
  8. They Cloned Tyrone
    Even when the dialogue runs long and the film’s frights offer less terror than you’d want in a sci-fi-mystery flick, an inspired Foxx, a subversive Parris, and a ruthless yet melancholic Boyega, who shoulders the bulk of the dramatic weight, retrofit common stereotypes of urban Black life into the rich, dynamic humanism of its reality.
  9. Rise
    It’s not simply a movie about how Giannis became one of the most dominant players in the league. It’s about why Giannis is so lovable.
  10. Natural Born Killers
    Natural Born Killers never digs deep enough. Mr. Stone's vision is impassioned, alarming, visually inventive, characteristically overpowering. But it's no match for the awful truth.
  11. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
    The film is touching and small, but also thoughtful and assured in a way that lingers after the inevitable tears have been shed and the obvious lessons learned.
  12. The Rabbi's Cat
    The film presents an often sharp commentary on dueling beliefs and idiocies that unfolds in lush pastel hues and distinctively retro drawings.
  13. Porcelain War
    Impressively, nearly everything was shot by the documentary’s subjects. Yet although their double duty is an awful fact of life in Ukraine, the film lurches between its varying components and tones.
  14. Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon
    Focusing on the magazine and not its offshoots, the film is uproarious, not for what its many talking heads say but for its astonishing procession of brilliant, boundary-breaching illustrations and captions (augmented by some animation), many of which are as explosively funny today as they were when first published.
  15. The Willow Tree
    The Iranian director Majid Majidi’s sad, soulful film The Willow Tree is his second movie to explore blindness and sight on multiple levels.
  16. The Woodmans
    Family dynamics examined through the prism of art: The Woodmans, C. Scott Willis's compelling documentary study of an artistic clan whose comfortable life was shattered by the suicide of its youngest member, asks profound questions to which there really are no answers.
  17. Found Memories
    Its clever final plot twist adds a gratifying jolt of the uncanny to what is otherwise a charming, bittersweet meditation on the passage of time and the equivocal power of images to capture an older world at the moment of its disappearance.
  18. Dancing in Jaffa
    Predictably, the film culminates in a dance competition, irresistible to behold and leading to an ending just about too pat to believe.
  19. Vince Giordano: There's a Future in the Past
    This movie, directed and produced by Dave Davidson and Amber Edwards, digs deeply enough into Mr. Giordano’s world to convey the drudgery and headaches of being a bandleader.
  20. Lancelot of the Lake
    What's missing from the film is any urgent interior meaning, and this it may be because of the distractions of the exterior details. It may also be because the conflicts that rage within Lancelot — between duty and desire, courtly love and physical love — simply aren't complex enough to bring out the best in Mr. Bresson.
  21. 78/52: Hitchcock’s Shower Scene
    Even moviegoers who know “Psycho” backward and forward...are bound to learn something new from the movie, which addresses the shower scene from critical, historical, theoretical and technical angles, down to the blinding white of the bathroom tiles.
  22. I Kill Giants
    Magical, subtle, sensitive and touching, I Kill Giants is everything the bombastic “A Wrinkle in Time” is not.
  23. Adam
    In Maryam Touzani’s Adam, certain stylistic choices — a muted palette, the absence of a melodramatic score, hand-held camerawork — help temper sentimentality with verisimilitude.
  24. The Green Pastures
    Naïve, ludicrous, sublime and heartbreaking masterpiece of American folk drama.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Big House
    It is a film that sweeps swiftly along, with some conspicuously fine episodes and others where the humor is not a little forced.
  26. Slut in a Good Way
    In satisfying fashion, Slut in a Good Way recognizes the potential for cruelty that exists as teenagers experiment and learn through sex, but its portrait of adolescence never feels less than loving.
  27. Sicko
    Sicko is the least controversial and most broadly appealing of Mr. Moore’s movies. (It is also, perhaps improbably, the funniest and the most tightly edited.) The argument it inspires will mainly be about the nature of the cure, and it is here that Mr. Moore’s contribution will be most provocative and also, therefore, most useful.
  28. Monster
    The movie's biggest disappointment is the vague, unfocused performance of Ms. Ricci, an actress known for taking risky, unsympathetic roles. Here she seems somewhat intimidated by her character.
  29. Citizen Ashe
    Ashe’s story certainly has moments of great drama and high tension, but, as a sports figure, he inspired decidedly undramatic sobriquets like “the gentle warrior.” This documentary shows you a truer, sharper picture.
  30. The Lady and the Duke
    The director manages to evade both the stuffy antiquarianism and the pandering anachronism that subvert so many cinematic attempts at historical inquiry.
  31. Daddy Longlegs
    He (Lenny) is completely appalling, and also completely himself, a kind of mad, disturbing integrity that is both matched and mitigated by the honesty of this lovely, hair-raising film.
  32. A Bigger Splash
    The world that Mr. Guadagnino creates is at once seductive and aspirational, and another reminder that movies have always excelled at stoking consumer desires.
  33. Tabloid
    The sheer heterogeneity of human experience is one of his (Morris) enduring preoccupations, and he has found, once again, an impossible and perfect embodiment of just how curious our species can be.
  34. Very Semi-Serious
    If you’ve ever been curious as to how a cartoonist gets into The New Yorker and what happens then, Very Semi-Serious offers very satisfactory info.
  35. The Mission
    The most barbed aspect of the movie, a National Geographic release, is its acknowledgment of the role that National Geographic itself has played in exoticizing groups like the North Sentinelese.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Monkey Business
    Whether it is really as funny as Animal Crackers is a matter of opinion. Suffice it to say that few persons will be able to go... and keep a straight face.
  37. What Maisie Knew
    What Maisie Knew lays waste to the comforting dogma that children are naturally resilient, and that our casual, unthinking cruelty to them can be answered by guilty and belated displays of affection. It accomplishes this not by means of melodrama, but by a mixture of understatement and thriller-worthy suspense.
  38. The Watermelon Woman
    That it succeeds in being both stimulating and funny is a testament to the talent and open-heartedness of Ms. Dunye, who wrote and directed the movie and is its star.
  39. 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.
  40. The Women's Balcony
    The entire cast is solid, but the women, especially Ms. Hagoel, bring depth to their comedic and dramatic turns.
  41. Augustine
    Everything depends on the subtlety of the direction and the charisma of the performances. Augustine is intellectually satisfying partly because it communicates its ideas at the level of feeling, through the uncanny power of Soko’s face and body.
  42. Key Largo
    The script prepared by Mr. Huston and Richard Brooks was too full of words and highly cross-purposed implications to give the action full chance.
  43. Janis: Little Girl Blue
    Although Ms. Berg’s enthralling film tells a story somewhat similar to “Amy,” Asif Kapadia’s recent documentary portrait of Amy Winehouse (who also died at 27), the demons that devoured Winehouse came from outside as much from within. Not so with Joplin.
  44. Frankenweenie
    While Frankenweenie is fun, it is not nearly strange or original enough to join the undead, monstrous ranks of the classics it adores.
  45. Divine Intervention
    It is impossible not to marvel at Mr. Suleiman's knack for turning rage and hopelessness into burlesque.
  46. Code Unknown: Incomplete Tales of Several Journeys
    Haneke, who wrote and directed, is a skillful, minutely observant filmmaker who trusts his audience to be able to put two and two together. Unfortunately, he's often too cryptic, which leaves viewers still trying to make connections when they should already be reacting to the moral lessons implied by them.
  47. Black Hawk Down
    Sitting through the accomplished but meaningless Black Hawk Down is like being trapped in an action film version of "Groundhog Day," condemned to sit through the same carnage over and over.
  48. The Wise Kids
    In its unassuming way, this tiny, low-budget film is a universal reflection on issues of personal identity and choice for which there are no easy answers.
  49. For a Few Dollars More
    The fact that this film is constructed to endorse the exercise of murderers, to emphasize killer bravado and generate glee in frantic manifestations of death is, to my mind, a sharp indictment of it as so-called entertainment in this day.
  50. Radio Days
    As free in form as it is generous of spirit.
  51. Beans
    This is the first fictional film directed by the documentarian Tracey Deer, and she brings a good eye for which characters might make a compelling story.
  52. Strawberry Mansion
    This is a movie about letting the mind roam.
  53. Woman of the Year
    It's as warming as a Manhattan cocktail and as juicy as a porterhouse steak.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Black God, White Devil
    At once, one of the most visually effective and artistic examples of the work of Glauber Rocha, a leading light among Cinema Novo's young directors. But as a contemporary allegory fulminating darkly against miseries inflicted on the poor by landowners and the Government, it is more mystically stylized than moving.
  55. Southside with You
    Mr. Tanne has clearly made a close study of his real-life inspirations, yet his movie is soon hostage to the couple’s history. His characters feel on loan and, despite his actors, eventually make for dull company because too many lines and details serve the great-man-to-be story rather than the romance.
  56. Rize
    Indeed, the movie sometimes has trouble living up to the richness of its subject, or keeping up with the dances' rapid spread and evolution.
  57. Bottoms
    For most of its tight running time, Bottoms hovers on the cusp of greatness. It’s often funny but it also never delivers satisfying set pieces, and stops short of questioning — not to mention subverting — the warped high school stratification that remains one of America’s building blocks.
  58. Wild
    In its thrilling disregard for the conventions of commercial cinematic storytelling, Wild reveals what some of us have long suspected: that plot is the enemy of truth, and that images and emotions can carry meaning more effectively than neatly packaged scenes or carefully scripted character arcs.
  59. The Return of Tanya Tucker: Featuring Brandi Carlile
    The movie interweaves the contemporary sessions with a very selective — and, while not wholly sanitized, certainly discreet — account of her tumultuous past. Overall it’s a better-than-competent piece of fan service and a not unpersuasive bid for an auxiliary youth audience.
  60. Beastie Boys Story
    It’s a jaunt down memory lane and also a moving and generous elegy.
  61. Daaaaaalí!
    Dupieux captures Dalí’s self-promoting genius but the constant trickery eventually becomes a little tiresome.
  62. The Ground Truth
    Tries to do too much in too little time. It would be a stronger film if it devoted more detailed attention to the plight of the returning veteran. As it stands, it is a scattershot antiwar polemic that doesn't bolster its arguments with any historical perspective or statistical evidence. No one from the government or the military is trotted out to give an opposing view. This is not to say that The Ground Truth, on its own terms, isn't devastating.
  63. The Sea Beast
    This script’s greatest sin is its steadfast predictability.
  64. Bombay Beach
    Looks and feels like a fever dream about an alternate universe. Suffused with a sense of wonder, it hovers, dancing inside its own ethereal bubble.
  65. The Decay of Fiction
    If there were more experimental films as entertaining as The Decay of Fiction, Pat O’Neill's luminous Hollywood ghost story, the notion of a thriving avant-garde cinema might not be so intimidating to the moviegoing public.
  66. Iron Island
    Less consumed by behavioral details than many of his filmmaking compatriots, Mr. Rasoulof makes bold use of symbolic imagery - a satellite television is confiscated and tossed overboard - suggesting that utopias inevitably come at the price of isolation and authoritarianism.
  67. Gagarine
    Gagarine is more interesting conceptually than it is in execution, but at least the filmmakers know to exalt the setting’s spectral qualities, adding dreamy, hypnotic touches to their phantom portrait of a place that is no longer of this world.
  68. Raya and the Last Dragon
    The unity rhetoric feels awfully trite, but it also teaches forgiveness: a worthy lesson for the kids.
  69. The Stone Roses: Made of Stone
    By the time the long, throbbing concert finale begins, there is no doubt that Mr. Brown’s intensity has not faded over the years and that the Stone Roses’ breakup was a serious loss.
  70. Salt of the Earth
    The hard-focus, realistic quality of the picture's photography and style completes its characterization as a calculated social document.
  71. My Favorite Blonde
    Bob is the hub of the picture, and Director Sidney Lanfield has kept the confusion spinning around him. That is entirely gratifying, for, in these times, we can't have too much Hope.
  72. Humpday
    The movie’s unblinking observation of a friendship put to the test is amused, queasy making, kindhearted and unfailingly truthful.
  73. Shakespeare Behind Bars
    The filmmakers, Hank Rogerson and Jilann Spitzmiller, encourage us to marvel at the transformative power of art. In Shakespeare Behind Bars, the most restricted people in society find freedom in performance and release in words.
  74. A Crooked Somebody
    Often uncomfortable and all the better for it, A Crooked Somebody doesn’t mind watching its characters squirm a little. That’s tough for them but good for us in this highly enjoyable thriller.
  75. Burning Cane
    Burning Cane is short and difficult. It does not aspire to entertain. Its realism is shot through with a constant dull ache.
  76. The Vanquishing of the Witch Baba Yaga
    This two-track meditation wraps ethereal glimpses of age-old Slavic locales around a fairy tale told through hand-drawn illustrations.
  77. The Heartbreak Kid
    The Heartbreak Kid occasionally goes for laughs without shame (which is what has always bothered me about Simon's brand of New York comedy), but behind the laughs there is, for a change, a real understanding of character — which is something that I suspect, can be attribued to Miss May.
  78. Scarlet
    One of the attractions of Scarlet is that it doesn’t fit obvious categorization, which means that you’re not always sure where it’s headed or why. The vibe is by turns sober, warm, melancholic and playful to the point of near-silliness.
  79. The Burial
    Directed by Maggie Betts from a script she wrote with Doug Wright, The Burial develops into a lively courtroom drama with wide-ranging pertinence. Of course its two lead actors give the bravura performances you’d expect from them, but they don’t eat the scenery — they take the material seriously and invest in it with welcome nuance.
  80. My Mother's Smile
    Though the narrative is spotty, and occasionally confounding, there is an epic warmth in the way it's rendered.
  81. Oliver!
    The focus of the movie is so wide, and the logistics of the production so heavy, that Oliver himself, dutifully played by 9-year-old Mark Lester, gets flattened out and almost lost, as if he had been run over by a studio bulldozer.
  82. Backspot
    Its early execution strains and wobbles some, but “Backspot” sticks its landing.
  83. Porfirio
    Vividly depicting the indignities of the flesh, Porfirio offers a harshly sensual portrait of a man imprisoned by paralysis and the callousness of the state.
  84. Jawline
    A “Grey Gardens” for Generation Z, Jawline underscores the contrast between Austyn’s optimism and his drab surroundings.
  85. Polisse
    The messiness of the film seems appropriate to its subject, which is the attempt to bring at least a measure of order - and even a touch of grace - to a chaotic and frequently ugly reality.
  86. Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight
    Because she lacks a conception of colonialism, Davidtz sometimes struggles to negotiate the film’s fidelity to her point of view with a more complete picture of the war.
  87. Miracle Mile
    As Harry and Julie, Mr. Edwards and Ms. Winningham make an unusually refreshing pair.
  88. The Sea Inside
    The film fails to convey the claustrophobic terror experienced by a man who called his book "Letters From Hell."
  89. Smoking Causes Coughing
    Welcome back to the zany world of Quentin Dupieux, a French director who cranks out (his previous film, the time-travel fable “Incredible But True,” came out just months ago) low-budget absurdist comedies with preposterous premises that he always takes at face value, no matter how demented. His latest might be his funniest yet.
  90. The Others
    The icy reserve that sometimes stands in the way of Kidman's expressive gifts here becomes the foundation of her most emotionally layered performance to date.
  91. Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child
    It places Basquiat's art in a cultural context with an enthusiasm and zest that make the many pictures shown come blazingly alive.
  92. Fake It So Real
    The taunts in the ring may be make-believe, but the slams against the mat are agonizingly genuine in Robert Greene's vivid documentary Fake It So Real.
  93. Flushed Away
    It is a relief to encounter such exuberant and infectious silliness.
  94. Awakenings
    Awakenings both sentimentalizes its story and oversimplifies it beyond recognition. At no point does the film express more than one idea at a time. And the idea expressed, more often than not, is as banal as the reality was bizarre.
  95. Catherine Called Birdy
    Dunham prevails in convincing audiences that coming-of-age in a so-called simpler time was equally tumultuous, and crams the corners of her movie with images of other female characters discreetly seizing their own moments of satisfaction — glimpses of joys which realize that it’s in the margins of a medieval tale where the best stuff happens.
  96. Mary and The Witch's Flower
    The spell Mr. Yonebayashi casts is effective, but also ephemeral. It’s minor magic.
  97. The Measure of a Man
    Mr. Lindon’s physically reserved, inward turn as Thierry (wrinkled brow, downcast eyes) dovetails with Mr. Brizé’s restrained realism.
  98. Liv & Ingmar
    [A] small, likably sentimental film.
  99. McCullin
    McCullin is not a groundbreaking documentary, but it wears its conventional format well, taking its cues (and its power) from the photographs themselves.
  100. Like Crazy
    An energetic, visually attractive but ultimately irritating comedy-drama.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »