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. See What I'm Saying: The Deaf Entertainers Documentary
    Educates without lecturing and engages without effort.
  2. An African Election
    As we join throngs of excited citizens at a public vote-counting, their uninhibited zeal for the process only highlights the jaded cynicism that threatens to overwhelm our own.
  3. Griffin in Summer
    A winking ode to queer youth who still dream — too fiercely, too soon — amid self-discovery and family disruption, Griffin in Summer gives aching shape to a child’s need for order in a world that defies their understanding.
  4. A Most Wanted Man
    Mr. Hoffman’s performance is so finely etched — and the story so irresistible — that the film becomes, almost inescapably, something of a last testament.
  5. Spaceship Earth
    Like the project itself, Spaceship Earth winds up caught in the gulf between rigor and showmanship. As entertaining as it can be, it is also disappointingly deferential to its subjects — the work of a filmmaker in thrall to characters who have welcomed him inside the bubble.
  6. The World Is Yours
    The young director Romain Gavras does not reinvent the comic caper in the French film The World Is Yours, but he revitalizes that genre with pop verve, goofy humor and visual sophistication. A flamboyant turn from Isabelle Adjani doesn’t hurt either, with the star sending up her own image as an aloof leading lady.
  7. Not Going Quietly
    It is a warm and generous portrait, but the film lacks its central organizer’s propulsive shrewdness.
  8. Arbitrage
    Instead of digging into the psychology and morality of greed, Mr. Jarecki only glances and lectures in that direction before piling on a lot of melodramatic complications, including a death, an investigation and a cynical detective (Tim Roth). These days, it seems, the illegal manipulation of hundreds of millions of dollars simply isn't enough to incite moral outrage.
  9. Somersault
    Somersault, which the Australian Film Institute garlanded with 13 awards, including best film, director, actor and actress (for Ms. Cornish's astonishing performance), is a movie about the looks on people's faces and the disparity between the surface and the roiling chaos beneath.
  10. Blue Beard
    Ms. Breillat narrates the fairy tale three ways: in the period story, through the little girls and, finally, through the overall film. None are fully satisfying, but together they offer a sharp, knowing gloss on how our stories define who we were and who we become.
  11. The Princess and the Frog
    It’s not easy being green. But to judge from how this hand-drawn movie addresses, or rather strenuously avoids, race, it is a lot more difficult to be black.
  12. Beltracchi: The Art of Forgery
    Beltracchi: The Art of Forgery is a case in which a great documentary topic hasn’t yielded a great documentary.
  13. Memory Box
    The relationship between mother and daughter is rather thinly etched — there’s a little too much going on in this ambitious, intergenerational film — but Hadjithomas and Joreige deftly use Maia’s archive to weave together past and present.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
    Clearly, the director was awash in his fantasies about lesbianism.
  15. Jane Austen Wrecked My Life
    Jane Austen Wrecked My Life is both pleasantly diverting and sneakily wise.
  16. Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul
    This new film feels like something of a gift, as if the director had decided to burn some of his favorite songs for his newfound friends, the world-cinema audience.
  17. El mariachi
    Mythic pulp has its allure, and it also has its limitations. El Mariachi displays no real emotion except a profound appreciation for the genre film making that has inspired it, and a delight in manipulating the elements of such stories.
  18. Araya
    Whatever visual poetry the film possesses is overwhelmed by the thuddingly bad and nearly ceaseless narration, written by Ms. Benacerraf and Pierre Seghers.
  19. Coming Home Again
    Wang — using a direct, unadorned shooting style — along with his cast (Justin Chon, who’s been around for some time, makes a strong impression as Chang-rae) put them across with unusual integrity.
  20. The World to Come
    Waterston and Kirby are both superb at creating characters whose attraction must be shown to grow by degrees, without overt admission. Affleck and Abbott, too, navigate a tricky dynamic, playing men who perhaps lack an understanding of their own compassion or brutishness.
  21. The Brothers McMullen
    This modest, enormously likable film, about love and temptation and ties that bind, is about brotherhood most of all. [9 August 1995, p.C9]
  22. ABC Africa
    You come away from his film overwhelmed, hopeful and, perhaps paradoxically, illuminated.
  23. Urbania
    As technically innovative as it is emotionally unsettling.
  24. The Execution of Wanda Jean
    Offers an unusual opportunity to observe the inequities in the death penalty, not just the inherent immorality but also the haphazard administration of it and public misperception of how the whole thing works.
  25. Cuban Rafters
    It remains a documentary at heart, full of astonishing glimpses of human resiliency that have nothing to do with artfulness and everything to do with patience, persistence and sympathy.
  26. Something Wild
    Something Wild is often "Something Wrong."
  27. *Corpus Callosum
    A playful parlor trick, a departure from the performance-art films that have made this director's reputation. In keeping with his lighter side, *Corpus is also fun; imagine a Looney Tunes segment or an episode of Nickelodeon's "Kablam!" directed by Red Grooms.
  28. Strange Fruit
    Polished, well-structured film.
  29. Host
    Though not as dynamic as “Unfriended,” another “desktop movie,” Host observes uncannily the supernatural, ephemeral, and material worlds colliding together, gesturing toward an uncertain future.
  30. This Closeness
    The film’s stripped-down aesthetic is mirrored in the actors’ performances; they deliver straightforward lines with a hint of self-consciousness and discomfort, even between friends and lovers. It’s as if the closeness is projected through a scrim, which creates a kind of purposeful clumsiness the audience can feel, too. When actual physical contact occurs, it’s almost jarring.
  31. School Life
    School Life is a loving portrait, primarily, of the inspirational educator couple, who command the respect of their students and always seem to know what a particular child needs to hear.
  32. Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case
    Mr. Johnsen offers viewers the challenge and pleasure of an important artist’s company, and a chance to appreciate anew his wisdom, his wit and his bravery.
  33. The Killing of a Sacred Deer
    “Sacred Deer” feels like a dark, opaque bit of folklore transplanted into an off-kilter modern setting.
  34. Wind River
    An actor before he was a screenwriter, Mr. Sheridan clearly spent a lot of his time learning about filmmaking on movie sets; his direction is assured throughout.
  35. Free Angela & All Political Prisoners
    Shola Lynch’s documentary about Angela Davis, the activist and beacon of counterculture radicalism, is a snappily edited, archivally wallpapered recollection of fearless behavior in the face of an antsy establishment. But it’s equally significant as a pointed act of retelling.
  36. One, Two, Three
    That's about the nature of the picture. It is one with which you can laugh--with its own impudence toward foreign crises--while laughing at its rowdy spinning jokes.
  37. 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.
  38. Air
    Written by Alex Convery, Air nicely hits the sweet spot between light comedy and lighter drama that’s tough to get right. It’s funny, but its generous laughs tend to be low-key and are more often dependent on their delivery than on the actual writing.
  39. Black Cat, White Cat
    Made with such overriding jubilation that its coarseness is mostly liberating...well worth admiring for its sheer glee.
  40. Far Out Isn't Far Enough: The Tomi Ungerer Story
    A record of a man’s tormented youth, his broad artistic impulses and the price he paid for following them.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Skin Game
    Garner and Gossett seem like originals out of American humor, and in a better movie they might have continued that way. But Skin Game is neither written nor directed with enough toughness, or enough compassion, to realize its potential.
  42. Billie Eilish - Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour (Live in 3D)
    In some ways, the movie is a bizarre Venn diagram of aesthetic and emotional interests: a totally immersive experience into the power of Eilish’s music, and a test film for Cameron to play with his latest gadgets.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Marnie
    At once a fascinating study of a sexual relationship and the master's most disappointing film in years.
  44. Spider-Man
    Spider-Man, while hardly immune to these vices, is, like Mr. Maguire, disarmingly likable, and touching in unexpected ways.
  45. The Wings of the Dove
    Few films have explored the human face this searchingly and found such complex psychological topography. That's why The Wings of the Dove succeeds where virtually every other film translation of a James novel has stumbled.
  46. John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
    In “Chapter 3,” the violence has been supercharged, and so has the virtuosity. At a certain point, though, the carnage becomes deadening, its consequences no more than soulless tableaus of damage that encourage disengagement.
  47. The Raid: Redemption
    The mousetrap setup and tight fight spaces, the bad blood and cruel deaths - soon makes the movie grindingly monotonous, a blur of thudding body blows.
  48. Sonatine
    Sonatine, made in 1994, predates the Japanese director's art-house hit Fireworks by three years and is arguably stronger than its successor.
  49. The Cave of the Yellow Dog
    The dog is cute, the children are adorable, and the earth and the sky seem to stretch on without limit in The Cave of the Yellow Dog. Unfortunately, so does the slight story.
  50. Sorry Angel
    It took a while for this digressive movie to get its hooks in me, but once it did, Sorry Angel didn’t let go.
  51. Karl Marx City
    Karl Marx City, Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein’s unsettling new documentary, is a smart, highly personal addition to the growing syllabus of distressingly relevant cautionary political tales.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Great Mouse Detective
    In The Great Mouse Detective the Disney formula is used undiluted, and that is how it works best. The heroes are appealing, the villains have that special Disney flair - humorous blackguards who really enjoy being evil -and the script is witty and not overly sentimental.
  53. Blazing Saddles
    Much of the laughter Mr. Brooks inspires is hopeful, before-the-gag laughter, which can be terribly tiring...Blazing Saddles has no dominant personality, and it looks as if it includes every gag thought up in every story conference. Whether good, bad, or mild, nothing was thrown out.
  54. When the Road Bends: Tales of a Gypsy Caravan
    As a music document and as a labor of unabashed love, the nonfiction feature Gypsy Caravan could hardly be better; as a movie, it could stand some improvement.
  55. Sunset Song
    Like most of Mr. Davies’s films, Sunset Song makes you see the world through his sorrowful eyes. He is a die-hard romantic, whose acute sensitivity to the passage of time conveys a bittersweet awareness of the fragility of beauty, which, for him, is synonymous with melancholy.
  56. Free Chol Soo Lee
    Free Chol Soo Lee is somewhat dry and, as criminal-justice documentaries go, sadly familiar when it strays from Lee’s unique and grim perspective, which includes details of his struggles with prison life and depression.
  57. The Memory of a Killer
    The title character in this nicely kinked Belgian thriller faces a unique adversary: the enemy hot on his heels is Alzheimer's.
  58. Casino
    Of all the bravura visual effects in Martin Scorsese's dazzingly stylish Casino, it's a glimpse of ordinary people that delivers the greatest jolt.
  59. 'Tis Autumn: The Search for Jackie Paris
    Part tribute, part musical mystery, ’Tis Autumn: The Search for Jackie Paris shines an overdue spotlight on a great who got away.
  60. Transpecos
    Though rife with implausibilities, Transpecos is fortified by strong acting and a location whose desolate beauty is a gift to Jeffrey Waldron’s serene camera.
  61. Re-Animator
    Re-Animator has a fast pace and a good deal of grisly vitality. It even has a sense of humor, albeit one that would be lost on 99.9 percent of any ordinary moviegoing crowd...All of this, ingenious as it may be and much as it will redound to Mr. Gordon's credit in hard-core horror circles, is absolutely to be avoided by anyone not in the mood for a major bloodbath.
  62. Seven Days in May
    The whole thing achieves a tingling speed and irresistible tension under John Frankenheimer's direction, which deftly lifts some of the tricks of pictorial and musical emphasis from the old Nazi "Blitzkrieg" films.
  63. Unsettled: Seeking Refuge in America
    More than the informational nuggets the movie flashes onscreen, these scenes of personal interaction help make “Unsettled” distinctive.
  64. Supernova
    It’s rare to see a cinematic drama executed with such consistent care as Supernova, written and directed by Harry Macqueen and starring Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci. And here, that care pays off to devastating effect.
  65. Madre
    The result is an unusually compelling character study, one that, commendably, opts to end on a humane note rather than a dark judgment.
  66. Dust Bunny
    At times, it can seem that Fuller is about to lose himself in the movie’s filigreed details, its curlicue lines, lush flowers and confectionary rest. In truth, I think he’s is sharing his delight in the imaginative possibilities of storytelling and in the plasticity of the medium itself, which is as infectious as it is welcome.
  67. Meet the Parents
    This is a high-concept comedy, and none of the jokes are forced, which makes Meet the Parents a singular achievement.
  68. Beyond the Lights
    Beyond the Lights may be a fantasy — movies about love, like songs about love, tend to fall into that category — but it is an uncommonly smart and honest fantasy.
  69. The Matrix
    The martial arts stunts that are its single strongest selling point.
  70. Lucy and Desi
    Here is a documentary that invites us to delight in the unexpected pairing of a famed funny lady and a hunky musician — but without analysis or nuance. Better to flip on a few “I Love Lucy” reruns instead.
  71. Last Flight Home
    “Last Flight” is at once a memorial to Eli, the last of that generation of the family to die, and — almost incidentally — a philosophical argument about how death can be faced well.
  72. Once Upon a Time Verônica
    Mr. Gomes remains laudably faithful to his character, and Ms. Guedes’s bodily sense of languor gets across more than any crystal-clear dramatic statement would.
  73. The Impossible
    There is a troubling complacency and a lack of compassion in The Impossible, which is less an examination of mass destruction than the tale of a spoiled holiday.
  74. Calle Málaga
    The viewer might think, Ah, it’s going to be one of those films where the hero’s resistance softens as she meets a quirky collection of fellow residents. It is not. The Moroccan director Maryam Touzani and her husband, Nabil Ayouch (“The Blue Caftan”), who wrote the script with her, have something more delicate in mind.
  75. After the Life
    Mr. Belvaux's sensitive, generous way with actors suggests that, with more discipline and less gimmickry, he might have made a single masterwork, and After the Life provides the best support for this assessment.
  76. Big Animal
    Mr. Stuhr, an actor who worked frequently with Kieslowski and who plays the main character in this film, honors his old friend's memory, producing a minor but nonetheless charming footnote to his oeuvre.
  77. Last Life in the Universe
    May seem frustratingly elusive at times, but it's a rewarding film that's beautiful to look at.
  78. I'm Not Scared
    Although the movie takes on many of the characteristics of a conventional thriller, it refuses to go for cheap, vicious shocks, and the adults are seen through the curtain of Michele's trust.
  79. Super Size Me
    Goes down easy and takes a while to digest, but its message is certainly worth the loss of your appetite.
  80. Divorce Iranian Style
    Reminds you that marital discord knows no geographic boundaries.
  81. Woman on the Beach
    Wry and tender and delicately melancholic, Woman on the Beach shows a newly confident filmmaker again working near the top of his form after the disappointing “Tale of Cinema” (2005), even if the new film unfolds straightforwardly, with none of the narrative ellipses and puzzle-box complications, the flashbacks and parallel story lines of his earlier work.
  82. Lost in the Jungle
    Lost in the Jungle can’t really explain how the children survived, or how, ultimately, they were rescued. Miracles and mysteries happen in the jungle. What the film does elucidate, in rich and tense storytelling, is that no headline story like this is ever as simple as it seems on the surface.
  83. Heading South
    A beautifully written, seamlessly directed film with award-worthy performances by Ms. Rampling and Ms. Young.
  84. Le Week-End
    Don’t be fooled by Mr. Broadbent’s genial sarcasm, Ms. Duncan’s warm smile or the literary felicities of Mr. Kureishi’s script. This is not a movie about the gentle aging of lovable codgers.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Exiled
    The movie is consistently engrossing and sometimes touching, thanks to its hard yet subtle characterizations and Mr. To’s refusal to condescend.
  86. High Art
    To their credit, the actors immerse themselves deeply in the film's self-conscious aura. Ms. Sheedy reinvents herself as a tough, fascinating presence, while Ms. Mitchell's earnest bewilderment also serves the story well.
  87. Five Fingers For Marseilles
    In stylish and entertaining fashion, Five Fingers for Marseilles looks over the South African countryside and finds fresh vistas for the western genre.
  88. United in Anger: A History of ACT UP
    And by exploring the lighter side of communal action - the camaraderie and cruising that turned weekly meetings into what one member calls "a combination of serious politics and joyful living" - he uncouples the gravity of the cause from the perceived humorlessness of advocacy. Foot soldiers for the dying, the members of Act Up never forgot how to live.
  89. Gilbert
    As an unlikely love story, this movie excels, presenting a relationship so affectionate and warm that it overwhelms the jokes.
  90. Love & Bananas
    This film is, in many respects, a plain picture, but also a cleareyed, direct, fat-free one that has something to say and says it affectingly.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Burn, Witch, Burn
    This low-budget, British import, with Janet Blair and a small cast, is quite the most effective "supernatural" thriller since Village of the Damned.
  92. On the President's Orders
    The thesis of On the President’s Orders isn’t terribly original, but in a needlessly roundabout way, it makes its case that these killings are not the work of isolated individuals, but the product of a top-down culture that stems from Duterte's assent.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Life with Father
    All that the fabulous play had to offer in the way of charm, comedy, humor and gentle pathos is beautifully realized in the handsomely Technicolored picture.
  94. True Confession
    A valiant comedy, it stands on a level with such blissfully remembered items as I Met Him in Paris and Nothing Sacred... for they are all of a piece -- witty, clever and hugely amazing shows.
  95. Road to Zanzibar
    Farce of this sort very seldom comes off with complete effect, but this time it does, and we promise that there's fun on the Road to Zanzibar.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Burmese Harp
    This poetically photographed Japanese drama is an earnest but extremely circuitous and overstated antiwar film. It moves like a figure 8, making its point at the middle, then looping around for a second, none-too-convincing hour.
  97. The Daytrippers
    The main action of The Daytrippers is bright, real and even poignant enough to make this journey worth the ride.
  98. The Platform
    A gnarly mash-up of midnight movie and social commentary, the picture is overly overt but undeniably effective, delivering genre jolts and broad messaging in equal measure.
  99. What's Eating Gilbert Grape
    Particularly impressive are the sweet, weirdly idyllic tone of Mr. Hallstrom's direction and Johnny Depp's tender, disarming performance as the long-suffering Gilbert Grape.
  100. Hoppers
    It’s a fable, really, with a science-nerd edge and some charming animal friends. You could do a whole lot worse at the movies.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »