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. Tigers Are Not Afraid
    Thematically underdeveloped yet pleasingly creepy, Tigers Are Not Afraid balances its mild terrors with appealing moments of childish creativity.
  2. Sextuplets
    Each comic set piece decomposes on the screen, lifeless and hopeless.
  3. 47 Meters Down: Uncaged
    It’s hard to care for characters when what they do and say rings so false. The result plays like the kind of sleazy exploitation movie that the first one so studiously avoided becoming.
  4. Blinded by the Light
    These songs have the power to move, inspire, make you dance. For the first time in my experience of Springsteen, they made me want to hide under my seat.
  5. The Amazing Johnathan Documentary
    Berman can’t quite juggle it all.
  6. Aquarela
    The movie, like the elemental forces we continue to exacerbate, never explains itself. Surrender to it, though, and a narrative - of spectacle, conflict and retaliation - will eventually become clear.
  7. Socrates
    Socrates isn’t simply about being gay, or poor, or even devastatingly unloved: It’s about honoring a resilience that most of us will thankfully never have to summon.
  8. Driven
    Somewhere deep inside Driven — Nick Hamm’s based-on-real-life crime caper — lies a fascinating movie.
  9. Cold Case Hammarskjöld
    Cold Case Hammarskjold is finally poised unsatisfyingly between an explosive exposé and a self-conscious put-on. Even a full acceptance of its assertions doesn’t do much to illuminate Hammarskjold’s death.
  10. Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles
    The animation is handsome, the graphic settings understated but intelligently detailed.
  11. What You Gonna Do When the World's on Fire?
    The movie unfolds impressionistically. To call it a portrait of collective resilience is accurate, but that description shortchanges its richness on both human and historical scales.
  12. End of the Century
    The measured ordinariness of its first section has been a sly setup for a poetic film that handles narrative as a kind of scarf dance.
  13. Kingdom
    The film acquits itself honorably, even if its ultimate message is disquieting.
  14. Where'd You Go, Bernadette
    Amusing and sleepy pretty much describe this movie.
  15. Los Reyes
    The kids’ ambling chatter, the dogs’ routine of rest and play, lull us into a contemplative state, which allows us to better appreciate the mystery of existence.
  16. Adam
    Adam is a movie that tackles big ideas about queerness and comes out looking confused — making it an experience that frustrates even as it tries to endear.
  17. The Angry Birds Movie 2
    The hoops our heroes jump through become increasingly surreal and hilarious.
  18. Ode to Joy
    Freeman, never the most animated of performers, gives his specific brand of passive British miserabilism free rein. But it’s Melissa Rauch, as Charlie’s safely dull, place-holder girlfriend, who steals the show.
  19. One Child Nation
    Soul-baring and furious, the documentary One Child Nation takes a powerful, unflinching look at China’s present through its past.
  20. The Peanut Butter Falcon
    Gottsagen is a disarming performer who creates a sweet and funny character.
  21. Dora and the Lost City of Gold
    Like a child unwittingly navigating a jungle full of booby traps and deadly creatures, the film walks a treacherously fine line without ever seeming to break a sweat.
  22. This Changes Everything
    Once it finally begins to focus on the mission, however, This Changes Everything not only becomes engrossing but reveals itself as a crucial cri de coeur.
  23. Vision Portraits
    Despite its focus on as fluid and mysterious a subject as art, Vision Portraits addresses blindness in concrete, comprehensible terms.
  24. After the Wedding
    What should be a volcano of betrayal and acrimony never fully erupts; even Moore’s brief meltdown feels staged, and Isabel is so irritatingly tranquil that Williams has no room to breathe in the role.
  25. Love, Antosha
    This affectionate, heartbreaking documentary about his life, directed by Garret Price, presents Yelchin as a soldier of cinema, and a lot more.
  26. The Art of Racing in the Rain
    Enzo is a bad dog, and his antics play worse for the film’s lack of discipline.
  27. Light of My Life
    It’s not original, but it is enlivened by some artful touches and two excellent performances.
  28. This Is Not Berlin
    This Is Not Berlin so wants to evoke a time and a place that the backdrop engulfs the characters like a supernova.
  29. Brian Banks
    Brian Banks isn’t a great movie, but it is a worthwhile one. And if it’s indicative of a new direction for its director, you won’t hear any complaints from me.
  30. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
    Whether it’s the scene-setting blast of Donovan (“Zodiac”), the low-height Steadicam work (“The Shining”), the red-suffused hallways (David Lynch) or “Night of the Living Dead” playing at a drive-in, the movie takes from the best.
  31. The Kitchen
    An offense against feminism, narrative logic and Fleetwood Mac, The Kitchen is a terrible, witless mess.
  32. Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw
    The whole thing just makes me miss how horny and violent movies used to be. Here, all the violence is sex. Only, it’s not. It’s just winking.
  33. La Flor
    La Flor is perhaps more fun to think about than to sit through, though there are some exquisitely beautiful sequences.
  34. The Son
    Schindel is more interested in suspense gamesmanship for its own sake, and all other provocations fade from the canvas.
  35. Tel Aviv on Fire
    The story risks being overwhelmed along with its protagonist — pulled apart by too many competing arcs that collide in ways that aren’t always graceful. But on the other hand, too neat a movie might risk inauthenticity.
  36. The Nightingale
    This is a difficult movie because the questions it raises are not easy. There are sentimental and reassuring movies about vengeance, and comforting stories about the resistance to historical oppression. This isn’t one of those. You might say it’s too angry. Or too honest.
  37. Them That Follow
    We learn so little about these characters or the forces that shaped them that we’re never drawn into their drearily blinkered world.
  38. A Score to Settle
    Not even John Newman’s distressingly awful dialogue can slow Cage’s roll to a histrionic finish.
  39. Ladyworld
    Kramer choreographs action through striking tableaus that follow the group’s shifting dynamics; the score, built from percussion and a chorus of girlish hoots, builds the tension.
  40. Luce
    To say that it unfolds like a play is both accurate and undersells how gorgeously it has been rendered for the screen.
  41. Piranhas
    In its reliance on a conventional narrative through-line, it’s more reminiscent of “The Public Enemy” than “Goodfellas” in spite of its stylings of contemporary cinematic realism.
  42. The Operative
    The Operative, directed by Yuval Adler, doesn’t offer much distinctive, but it does deliver a few suspenseful sequences, some interesting nuts-and-bolts details of espionage work and a good lead performance en route to an unsatisfying ending.
  43. Jay Myself
    It’s a fun journey.
  44. Boi
    The tantalizing clues, occasional laughs and lapses in reality are not enough to hold this film together.
  45. Honeyland
    The opening minutes of Honeyland are as astonishing — as sublime and strange and full of human and natural beauty — as anything I’ve ever seen in a movie.
  46. The Mountain
    Like Alverson’s 2015 character study, “Entertainment,” The Mountain sets forth a profoundly anhedonic vision of America — and humanity — that’s simultaneously upsetting and mesmerizing.
  47. Mike Wallace Is Here
    There are times when you wish Belkin wouldn’t cut away so quickly and would allow answers to tough questions (or Wallace’s own words) to play in full.
  48. Skin
    A blistering story of rage and redemption that never fully illuminates the journey from one to the other.
  49. The Ground Beneath My Feet
    This is crafty, first-rank filmmaking.
  50. Jirga
    Despite the performance’s credibility, few things are more irritating, artistically and historically, than the stranger-in-a-strange-land interloper who hasn’t got a clue what he’s doing.
  51. For Sama
    The activists of this film, including al-Kateab herself, don’t speak in the language of philosophers or politicians. Their quotidian aspirations — to build a garden, to send their children safely to school — demonstrate the brutality of the government’s response, but they also invite viewers to picture themselves in the shoes of these modest political dissidents.
  52. Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood
    It’s a western, for Pete’s sake. Politics are wound into its DNA, and Tarantino knows the genome better than anyone else. Which is just to say that like other classics of the genre, “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” is not going anywhere. It will stand as a source of debate — and delight — for as long as we care about movies. And it wants us to care.
  53. Angels Are Made of Light
    The director finds beauty everywhere — in a cloud of dust, a traffic jam, the raucous din of children at play. And wherever such beauty exists, we imagine, hope can never be entirely absent.
  54. The Great Hack
    If the paranoia level could probably withstand a slight reduction, much of the movie feels utterly credible.
  55. Cassandro, the Exotico!
    This effervescent picture has an often infectious underground-movie aesthetic.
  56. TINY: The Life of Erin Blackwell
    The combination of “Streetwise” and “Tiny” belongs on a short list with “Boyhood,” the “Up” documentaries and “Hoop Dreams” as exemplars of time-capsule filmmaking.
  57. Luz
    Despite the strange, echoing beauty of its images ... "Luz" is, as a whole, visually numbing and mentally taxing.
  58. She's Just a Shadow
    I wouldn’t dare to predict who might cough up admission for this; but if watching prostitutes guzzle Twinkies and swallow handguns is your thing, then by all means come on down.
  59. I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians
    Until its devastating final scenes, the way “I Do Not Care” makes its points is discursive rather than dramatic.
  60. Bottom of the 9th
    The result is pleasing — a stadium snow cone, palatable despite being sweetened with corn syrup.
  61. A Faithful Man
    [A] low-key, engaging comedy.
  62. Rosie
    [A] moving drama ... With its quiet realism and almost unbearably intimate hand-held camera work ... "Rosie" holds our hands to a flame of desperation.
  63. Point Blank
    If anything, the film emanates a startling ineptitude, unable as it is to clear some basic standards of craftsmanship.
  64. David Crosby: Remember My Name
    Fans will enjoy the backstage access, the home movies, the snapshots and the reminiscences, but the movie keeps you at a distance, while implying that it may be just as well not to get too close.
  65. At War
    To this viewer, it is a spectacular whiff.
  66. Crawl
    A smoothly efficient popcorn picture...Though Scodelario is spunky and game in what must have been an extremely uncomfortable shoot, the script (by the brothers Michael and Shawn Rasmussen) is airless and repetitive.
  67. The Cat Rescuers
    While The Cat Rescuers movingly portrays the unique individuals committed to helping these cats, it doesn’t quite tackle the full complexity of this subject. Still, no animal lover should be surprised to find themselves holding back tears while watching this documentary.
  68. Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love
    While Broomfield’s films often take a sardonic, close-to-cynical tone, “Marianne & Leonard” is admiring, affectionate and a little awe-struck.
  69. The Sweet Requiem
    The plot intrigues are arguably appropriate to genre pictures, but “Requiem” manages to play out as an urgent but understated drama. The film puts its points across with a delicacy and sobriety rare in moviemaking.
  70. General Magic
    General Magic is engaging, but there’s a tougher, tighter film in here struggling to get out.
  71. American Heretics: The Politics of the Gospel
    American Heretics: The Politics of the Gospel doesn’t break ground cinematically, but it is eye-opening in other ways.
  72. Cities of Last Things
    As the full picture comes into focus, the narrative can tend toward the trite. The chief pleasure of the movie is the 35-millimeter cinematography of Jean Louis Vialard.
  73. Sword of Trust
    The humor has a persistent goofy streak, but what sticks to the ribs is the poignant stuff.
  74. Summer Night
    The film is transparently derivative, but it has enough visual panache and a feel for the rhythms of a laid-back summer evening that it’s tough to dislike.
  75. Firecrackers
    This is a movie that, like its characters, is more fluent in feelings than in words.
  76. Sea of Shadows
    The plot twists are so spot on that a screenwriter might have rejected them.
  77. Rojo
    Adopting a cool, oblique yet accessible approach that complements the washed-out, nicotine-stained palette, Naishtat builds a modular narrative that increasingly bristles.
  78. The Farewell
    Its affection for its characters feels protective; the film is reluctant to spill any secrets or cause any embarrassment. There is admirable kindness and impressive loyalty in this approach, but it also puts a bit of a damper on the party.
  79. The Lion King
    The songs don’t have the pop or the splendor. The terror and wonder of the intra-pride battles are muted. There is a lot of professionalism but not much heart. It may be that the realism of the animals makes it hard to connect with them as characters, undermining the inspired anthropomorphism that has been the most enduring source of Disney magic.
  80. Stuber
    It’s one of those dumb movies that are so gleeful about their own idiocy that taking it seriously may seem pointless, which is always a good reason to take a movie seriously.
  81. The Art of Self-Defense
    The one halfway-interesting part of this movie is Nivola’s performance, which operates at both a deeper register of seriousness and a higher pitch of comedy than anything else.
  82. Ray & Liz
    Performed with absolute commitment by its cast (Justin Salinger and Ella Smith play the younger versions of the title characters), Ray & Liz is a quietly harrowing movie. Billingham risks tedium, though, in withholding anything like an inner life for any of its characters until the movie’s very end.
  83. Cold Blood
    If Petitjean’s dialogue is problematic, its delivery is no less so: at times, the discord between a character’s words and lip movements suggests that some line readings had to be dubbed.
  84. Phil
    The only thing grimmer than the material in Phil is its execution.
  85. Midsommar
    Despite all the time he lavishes on Dani and Christian’s relationship, which is drawn along stereotypical gendered lines (consuming female need that becomes devouring), the couple remains instructively uninteresting. That’s the case despite Pugh.
  86. Ophelia
    It’s an interesting exercise and, for the most part, a passably diverting one.
  87. Spider-Man: Far from Home
    The high-school comedy bits of “Far From Home,” while not especially original, have a sweet, affable charm.
  88. Mine 9
    The goings-on are grim, grueling and, eventually, grisly. Mensore shoots them with a sharp eye for maintaining coherent spatial relations, which enhances the suspense. It’s a sometimes bracing simulation.
  89. Killers Anonymous
    While you might leave with several unanswered questions, the most concerning one is how this fiasco was ever financed in the first place.
  90. Euphoria
    Notwithstanding a lively turn from Charles Dance as a chatty brain-tumor sufferer and a perfect Charlotte Rampling as a tranquil guide to oblivion, Euphoria gives up the ghost well before either of its unhappy heroines.
  91. Three Peaks
    Three Peaks has a placid surface, but Zabeil uses abstraction — with edits that elide information or play tricks with spatial perception — to deepen a trite scenario.
  92. The Plagiarists
    The Plagiarists does skewer its characters, but where it goes from there is more genuinely bleak than what mere finger-pointing can achieve.
  93. The Other Story
    The surfeit of subplots muddles the message.
  94. Maiden
    A sleek, exhilarating documentary.
  95. Yesterday
    Yesterday is more of a novelty earworm than a classic. It’s appealing and accessible in a way that the Beatles never really were. If it took itself — and them — a bit more seriously, it would be a lot more fun. But it wasn’t made to last.
  96. The Chambermaid
    The film’s style is austere — there are few camera movements and no musical score — but its visual wit and emotional sensitivity lift it above the minimalist miserablism that drags down so many well-meaning films about modern workers. After you’ve seen it, the world looks different.
  97. Annabelle Comes Home
    Burdened neither by fresh ideas nor common sense, Gary Dauberman’s lethargic screenplay (he also directed, an inauspicious debut) takes so long to get moving that Annabelle herself should demand a do-over.
  98. Anna
    Anna isn’t as stylish or gripping as “Nikita,” but it does have its own demented charm, particularly in how it toys with structure, nesting competing narrative timelines within each other.
  99. Endzeit - Ever After
    Once Vivi and Eva are forced off the train and start wandering the countryside, the forest seems to fold its arms around them, and Endzeit modestly deepens into beguiling mystery.
  100. 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.
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