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 Body Snatcher
    This new gloomlodger, though not as nerve-paralyzing as the performers might lead you to expect, has enough suspense and atmospheric terror to make it one of the better of its genre.
  2. You Are Not My Mother
    Imaginative and spooky, You Are Not My Mother shows just how frightening — and stigmatizing — a parent’s mental illness can be to a child.
  3. Becoming Traviata
    May not be fully satisfying as a documentary. But it has what any good movie needs: a star — the ever-game soprano Natalie Dessay.
  4. Raise Hell: The Life & Times of Molly Ivins
    While cuddling up to the adored one is a familiar biographical tactic, some critical distance might have made for a deeper, stronger movie.
  5. Fastball
    This appealing documentary makes you understand why aficionados regard baseball as a form of poetry.
  6. Sir! No Sir!
    In his smart, timely documentary about the G.I. Movement, Sir! No Sir!, Mr. Zeiger takes a look at how the movement changed and occasionally even rocked the military from the ground troops on up.
  7. Dream Scenario
    Pondering the downside of notoriety and our willingness to exchange safety for fame, Dream Scenario is often funny and frequently surreal.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Them!
    Suffice it to say that the combination of three writers, director Gordon Douglas, producer David Weisbart and a cooperative cast have helped make the proceedings tense, absorbing and, surprisingly enough, somewhat convincing.
  9. The Ghost of Peter Sellers
    Neither bitter nor maudlin, The Ghost of Peter Sellers is a movie about filmmaking and soul-searching, a tale of two Peters and maybe the worst of times for both.
  10. Wild Nights with Emily
    This is an irreverent film, but its lightness is meaningful. With each silly flourish, Olnek offers joy and companionship to a figure whose history was more conveniently presented to generations of readers as solitary.
  11. Place Vendôme
    In spite of its many flaws, the film never loses its focus on its fascinating central figure.
  12. Invictus
    It’s an exciting sports movie, an inspiring tale of prejudice overcome and, above all, a fascinating study of political leadership.
  13. Herb & Dorothy
    Interviews with artists whom they collected testify to their sharp eye and good spirits, while the Vogels themselves, sitting in their same old apartment, overflowing as ever, make for charming company.
  14. Big Hero 6
    Big Hero 6 is good enough to transcend its blah ending and to make the case that every superhero story should be entirely animated.
  15. 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.
  16. Bad Hair
    Bad Hair is an uncomfortably accurate depiction of a poignant mother-son power struggle in a fatherless family in which each knows how to get under the other’s skin.
  17. Edward Scissorhands
    Like a great chef concocting an exquisite peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich, Mr. Burton invests awe-inspiring ingenuity into the process of reinventing something very small.
  18. The Italian
    There is something slightly magical about the lighting, almost as if this were a fantasy land from which Vanya might actually make an escape. This sense of unreality, of magical thinking and wishing, carries the story and Vanya through a remarkable journey.
  19. The Pirogue
    The most powerful thing about The Pirogue is the way it deals with emotionally charged events matter-of-factly, rather than melodramatically. The story Mr. Touré has chosen to tell is both painfully specific - about these individuals, in this boat - and immeasurably vast, since the experience it depicts is shared by millions of people around the world. And yet somehow he gets the scale just right.
  20. Mommy
    To take Mommy as an undisciplined outpouring of aggression and angst is to underestimate its artistry. [Mr. Dolan] has both advanced beyond the romanticism of “Heartbeats” and “Laurence Anyways” and regressed toward a more primal and confrontational mode of storytelling. Mommy may seem out of control, but it knows exactly what it’s doing.
  21. The Opera House
    To its credit, The Opera House, directed by Susan Froemke, only sometimes plays like a fund-raising tool.
  22. Highest 2 Lowest
    Washington’s most successfully sustained sparring partner is Jeffrey Wright, who plays Paul, the family’s chauffeur. He comes into focus through his beliefs, his attire and salient details (including a banner for the Five Percenters, an offshoot of the Nation of Islam), though primarily through Wright’s discreet, moving performance.
  23. Filmmakers for the Prosecution
    It’s all a reminder of the labor and risks that go into creating and preserving essential imagery of the past, even for the most notorious events in history.
  24. The Duchess of Langeais
    Duchess of Langeais seems to me a nearly impeccable work of art -- beautiful, true, profound.
  25. The Golden Dream
    Buoyed by the wonderfully natural performances of its young leads, La Jaula de Oro is a compelling social-realist drama that owes much to the style of the British social-realist filmmaker Ken Loach.
  26. Starlet
    The bright sun that blasts through Starlet, a thrillingly, unexpectedly good American movie about love and a moral awakening, bathes everything in a radiant light, even the small houses with thirsty lawns and dusty cars.
  27. Eastern Boys
    Explores interlocking themes of sexuality, immigration and power dynamics with a cleareyed sensitivity and refuses to demonize even its shadiest characters.
  28. The Silent Partner
    A dense, quirky, uncommonly interesting movie, this time with a high quotient of suspense.
  29. My Kid Could Paint That
    Mr. Bar-Lev has made an excellent documentary, but it would have been better if he had not made it at all.
  30. Two Lovers
    The flaws in Two Lovers are inseparable from its strengths. You could, I suppose, criticize the movie for being too sincere; too generous to its imperfect, self-deluded characters; too absorbed in their small crises and disproportionate reactions. But that criticism might sound a lot like praise.
  31. As I Open My Eyes
    As I Open My Eyes is best when it observes the fraught but loving mother-daughter relationship between Hayet and Farah.
  32. Wag the Dog
    Wag the Dog, the poison-tipped political satire that's as scarily plausible as it is swift, hilarious and impossible to resist.
  33. Cosmos
    It is possible to appreciate Mr. Zulawski’s perverse ingenuity, and to miss his eye and voice, without quite succumbing to the strenuous charms and overcooked provocations of Cosmos.
  34. Kill
    Manipulative to the max (one upsetting murder is almost pornographically protracted), Kill is dizzyingly impressive and punishingly vicious.
  35. Sin City
    Sin City has been made with such scrupulous care and obvious love for its genre influences that it's a shame the movie is kind of a bore.
  36. Neil Young Journeys
    Mr. Young's passionate cracked whine assumes an oracular power.
  37. Old Dog
    Raw and resolute, this unsettling fable feels driven by an anger that remains largely unexpressed.
  38. Land and Shade
    In Land and Shade, the setting holds more interest than the plot: a fable-like, elemental story that sketches its characters too faintly to develop much power.
  39. For the Love of Spock
    This film nimbly straddles biography and “Trek” valentine (Adam is a longtime television director), but also recounts the fraught if ultimately devoted ties between Adam and Leonard.
  40. tick, tick...Boom!
    Miranda’s devotion to his idol keeps him from expanding the musical’s myopic fretting into a universal story of sacrifice and resolve. Garfield at least gives Larson an endearing vulnerability.
  41. My Country, My Country
    Without comment but with unusual sensitivity, Ms. Poitras, exposes the emotional toll of occupation on Iraqis and American soldiers alike.
  42. Starfish
    If White’s wild formal experimentation and narrative cul-de-sacs result in a strange identity crisis for the film — a sense that he wasn’t entirely sure which movie he wanted to make — Gardner’s stellar work unifies it.
  43. 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.
  44. Creep
    The film is remarkable, considering its minimal means and surprising lack of bloodshed, given the genre. Does it stay with you? A little.
  45. A Matter of Taste
    This deliciously nasty French deconstruction of male pecking orders, directed by Bernard Rapp, should send a pleasant shiver down the spine of anyone who has ever obsessed about wanting to please a devious and manipulative boss.
  46. The Nazi Officer's Wife
    Packed with revelations and withheld information that comes to life; it is like an old movie castle full of false fireplaces and trap doors.
  47. 7 Days in September
    An almost unbearably powerful documentary.
  48. Such a Long Journey
    The main problem with Such a Long Journey is its storytelling. There is simply too much happening.
  49. Metallica: Some Kind of Monster
    You realize you are witnessing a psychodrama of novelistic intricacy and epic scope.
  50. Shower
    Uplifting, witty.
  51. Source Code
    In crucial ways, Source Code, written by Ben Ripley, recalls "Moon," Mr. Jones's accomplished feature debut about a solitary astronaut played by Sam Rockwell. Source Code is bigger, shinier, pricier.
  52. Beast
    Bathed in a shadowy beauty and slippery psychological atmosphere, “Beast” soars on Ms. Buckley’s increasingly animalistic performance.
  53. 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.
  54. Little Woods
    DaCosta is better at setting scenes than digging into them.
  55. Joe
    Mr. Cage gives his most committed performance in years as this divided soul, but it still looks like acting when compared with Mr. Poulter’s embodiment of pure evil.
  56. Jay Myself
    It’s a fun journey.
  57. Utama
    While climate change shadows every anxious discussion here, it also remains at a safe remove, a vague threat embedded in an aesthetically soothing package and gently salted with tears.
  58. Under Fire: Journalists in Combat
    Well made, and for once the talking-heads format is satisfying.
  59. After Parkland
    After Parkland is not easy to watch, and certain choices (of images, of music) could be construed as calculated. But the movie succeeds where it counts: showing the reverberations of violence long after most cameras left.
  60. Albert Brooks: Defending My Life
    While Brooks deserves acclaim, he deserves it in a format as compelling and dynamic as he is. “Defending My Life” is simply too flat.
  61. 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.
  62. Older Than Ireland
    It’s often said that the Irish, blessed with the gift of gab, can be splendid raconteurs. You’ll find generous evidence to that effect here. And a bit of poetry as well.
  63. Lapsis
    The narrative eventually loses steam, but the movie’s politics remain as low-key as its acting and as basic as its special effects. Lapsis isn’t a polemic, it’s a caricature, and all the more likable for having its claws sheathed in velvet.
  64. The Song of Sparrows
    Although The Song of Sparrows has some of the trappings of a naturalistic drama, it is really a series of strict moral lessons pieced together into an austere Islamic sermon.
  65. Linda Linda Linda
    The irritations and tedium of high school life are staged with refreshing simplicity, while the performers interact with an age-appropriate naturalness the American teenage movie rarely achieves.
  66. State of Fear
    Pamela Yates's harrowing documentary chronicles 20 years of terror, brutality and repression.
  67. Tehran Taboo
    Subtlety and aesthetic elegance — the jerky animation complements the blunt tone — are not among the film’s virtues. Tehran Taboo aims to expose systemic hypocrisy; in that respect, it is brisk and bracing.
  68. Decade of Fire
    Decade of Fire is at its best when showing how the fires affected individuals effectively left to fend for themselves.
  69. The Naked City
    There are countless more fascinating facets to this city than the work of cops with crime and countless more striking characters in it than genial detectives and mumbling crooks. However, within that range of interest, Mr. Hellinger has done a vivid job in this, his appropriate valedictory, which comes to you spontaneous and unrehearsed.
  70. Inbetween Girl
    Though the dialogue is often hit-or-miss, this young adult drama doesn’t simply put a fresh spin on old tropes: It takes seriously the messiness of growing up, the hardest parts of which involve accepting life’s ambiguities.
  71. 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.
  72. Música
    Música, Mancuso’s phenomenal feature debut, is a comic trip inside a mind that’s forever feverishly creating — even against his will.
  73. La faute à Fidel!
    Julie Gavras’s wonderful film, Blame It on Fidel, views its ideological conflicts through the eyes of a smart, willful child.
  74. Thor: Ragnarok
    Marvel could have gone grimmer, broodier and sterner, but that isn’t its onscreen way; so it has made Thor sunnier, sillier and funnier. It’s a good fit, at least for a while.
  75. Gabby Giffords Won't Back Down
    Even during more analytic or crusading sections, the documentary’s mood never strays from inspirational.
  76. Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project
    The documentary offers only what the poet is willing to give.
  77. Narco Cultura
    Narco Cultura feels like two short films sandwiched together to make a feature. One is a shallow pop-music documentary focusing on Mr. Quintero. The other is an equally superficial portrait of the embattled Ciudad Juárez, across the border from El Paso.
  78. Teacher's Pet
    Marvelously quick-witted and gloriously goofy hand-drawn feature shows there's still more than 21 grams of life left in the form.
  79. Bird
    There’s a wealth of lovely performances in Bird, including Adams, who holds the film together by slowly taking on tenderness as it progresses. But the two poles of the movie are Rogowski and Keoghan, who radiate precisely opposite energies.
  80. Beats
    This tender, detail-filled movie lives for the moment.
  81. The Restless
    Lafosse’s empathy as a director is admirable, but The Restless falls short of putting a compelling story to film.
  82. La Sapienza
    The movie is an unapologetically rarefied undertaking and at the same time a gracious and inviting film. And it embodies an elegant and melancholy paradox: What looks like tourism is really the pursuit of truth and beauty, and vice versa.
  83. The Haunting
    So it looks as though this film simply makes more goose pimples than sense, which is rather surprising and disappointing for a picture with two such actresses, who are very good all the way through it, and produced and directed by the able Robert Wise.
  84. Splendor in the Grass
    Miss Wood has a beauty and radiance that carry her through a role of violent passions and depressions with unsullied purity and strength. There is poetry in her performance, and her eyes in the final scene bespeak the moral significance and emotional fulfillment of this film.
  85. Wild Indian
    The ensuing violence and its aftermath are chilling, woeful and utterly consistent with the tragedy that began long before a fateful afternoon in the woods.
  86. Lemon Tree
    A wrenching, richly layered feminist allegory as well as a geopolitical one.
  87. Queen & Slim
    The film fumbles some of its big gestures and over-italicizes a few statements. What lingers, though, are strains of anger, ardor, sorrow and sweetness, and the quiet astonishment of witnessing the birth of a legend. This movie feels like something new, and also as if it’s been around forever, waiting for its moment.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    U-Carmen e-Khayelitsha
    Mr. Hazlewood’s strategy also draws attention to the lack of psychological detail in the central love triangle, which isn’t good. But the music still pierces, the blood still flows, and the overall conception is so original that even when the movie falters in the moment, it dazzles in the memory.
  89. Wildlike
    The Wildlike landscapes are exhilarating, but when the film works, it’s because of the interiors.
  90. Breach
    One of the strengths of Breach, a thriller that manages to excite and unnerve despite our knowing the ending, is how well it captures the utter banality of this man and his world.
  91. 2 or 3 Things I Know About Him
    If it tells, in Mr. Ludin’s words, "a typical German story," the movie also offers an unusually matter-of-fact picture of the private and public effects of ordinary evil.
  92. Among the Believers
    The directors let their subjects speak without overtly passing judgment.
  93. Tully
    The movie's unhurried rhythm eventually works a quiet spell, and after a while you find yourself settling back, adjusting to the film's bucolic metabolism and appreciating its eye and ear for detail.
  94. Les convoyeurs attendent
    A sharp critique of empty values and pointless striving.
  95. Japanese Story
    Ultimately too thin for its length and too dependent on easy assumptions about its characters. But it does demonstrate that Ms. Collette is more than able to carry a movie, and it leaves you hoping she will soon have another chance to do it.
  96. 28 Days Later...
    Mr. Boyle has hardly lost his sly, provocative perversity or his ear for the rhythms of unchecked violence, but he does seem to be maturing. It's as if, in contemplating the annihilation of the human race, he has discovered his inner humanist.
  97. South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut
    Very funny, extremely obscene movie spinoff from the popular animated Comedy Central series.
  98. Arna's Children
    Has the makings of a great documentary, but a subject as complex as this demands greater rigor, deeper intelligence and a sense of dialectics.
  99. Novitiate
    Ms. Betts refrains from easy, uplifting answers and facile condemnations of organized religion. Aided by Kat Westergaard’s warm, restrained cinematography, she takes the viewer close to an understanding of Cathleen’s evolving sense of her relationship with God.
  100. (T)error
    Because of its shortcomings, (T)error serves as evidence of a broken system rather than an indictment of it. Yet such evidence is worrisome and points to a threat to civil rights.
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