The New York Times' Scores

Select another publication »
For 20,280 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: 9,381 out of 20280
  2. Mixed: 8,435 out of 20280
  3. Negative: 2,464 out of 20280
20280 movie reviews
view
per page
  1. Incitement
    Potently, Incitement depicts Amir as just one member of a self-reinforcing fringe.
  2. You Go to My Head
    Until its surprisingly effective ending, You Go To My Head keeps its drama under the skin. Like an animal in captivity, Bafort, who is also a model, slinks and lounges with long-limbed grace; but it’s Cvetkovic who holds the movie steady, giving Jake a secretive, worn gentleness that’s tinged with tragedy.
  3. Tenet
    The film is undeniably enjoyable, but its giddy grandiosity only serves to highlight the brittleness of its purported braininess.
  4. The Silent Partner
    A dense, quirky, uncommonly interesting movie, this time with a high quotient of suspense.
  5. The American Friend
    Like Taxi Driver, The American Friend was a new sort of movie-movie — sleekly brooding, voluptuously alienated and saturated with cinephilia.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dolemite
    Dolemite remains the Citizen Kane of kung fu pimping movies. [26 May 2002, p.1]
    • The New York Times
  7. System K
    Barret makes the viewer understand, implicitly at least, the desperation of these creators, even as views of their work, and the simmering electronic Afro-funk of the soundtrack, make a case for the indomitability of their creative impulse.
  8. Miss Americana
    Wilson has captured Swift at a convincing turning point, ready, perhaps, to say a lot more.
  9. Dick Tracy
    Dick Tracy has just about everything required of an extravaganza: a smashing cast, some great Stephen Sondheim songs, all of the technical wizardry that money can buy (plus the knowledge of how and when to use it), and a screenplay (credited to Jim Cash and Jack Epps Jr.) that observes the fine line separating true comedy from lesser camp.
  10. Beastie Boys Story
    It’s a jaunt down memory lane and also a moving and generous elegy.
  11. Sign 'o' the Times
    Prince, whose ties to soul and jazz are clearer than ever before, whose willingness to embrace different musical forms seems to grow all the time, has never cast a stronger spell.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Booksellers
    Charming.
  13. Candyman
    It’s easy to shock viewers with splatter but the old gut-and-run gets awfully boring awfully fast. Far better is the slow creep, the horror that teases and then threatens. The dread inexorably builds in Candyman, which snaps into focus after Anthony learns of the boogeyman.
  14. Mank
    David Fincher’s Mank is a worthy, eminently watchable entry in the annals of Hollywood self-obsession. That it is unreliable as history should go without saying.
  15. The Night House
    As the screenplay teases natural explanations for these sinister goings-on — Extreme grief? Nightmares? Mental illness? — Bruckner maintains a death grip on the film’s mood while his cinematographer, Elisha Christian, turns the home’s reflective surfaces into shape-shifting puzzle pieces.
  16. On the Record
    Most of the accusations have been reported on extensively in the last two years in various publications. What the film does is bring these accounts to living, breathing and moving life, taking us beyond the media cycles of allegation and denial to a survivor’s intimate confrontations with cultural pressures and trauma.
  17. The Painter and the Thief
    The film resonates most deeply during its raw, vulnerable scenes.
  18. Lost Girls
    There are different ways to describe Garbus’s telling of this mystery: it’s serious, respectful, gravely melancholic. Yet anger best describes the movie’s atmosphere, its overall mood and its authorial tone.
  19. Worth
    For all the ways in which it might give short shrift to the politics or policy of the fund, Worth is uncommonly moving by the standards of biopics and certainly by the standards of movies that risk addressing 9/11 so overtly.
  20. Miss Juneteenth
    Instead of just depicting the myriad ways black women carry their communities, the movie goes further to explore how these women and black girls support each other in a world that often fails them.
  21. The Truffle Hunters
    A charming and slyly poignant documentary.
  22. Falling
    Some scenes scrape your senses like sandpaper, while others are so tender they’re almost destabilizing. Together, they shape a picture that’s tragically specific, yet more comfortable with mystery than some viewers might prefer.
  23. State Funeral
    Composed entirely of footage shot at the time in various parts of the Soviet Union, the film is a haunting amalgam of official pomp and everyday experience, the double image of a totalitarian government and the people in whose name it ruled.
  24. Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid
    A genial, gently mocking, brilliantly executed spoof that may offend the purists but which should delight the buffs.
  25. Target
    Target is far more accomplished than anything Chris would have seen on television in the 1970's. However, its narrative shape is so familiar and its automobile chases so spectacularly choreographed that the humanity of the characters, carefully established at the start, gets lost -ground down - by the obligatory mechanics of melodrama.
  26. The Bob's Burgers Movie
    The Bob’s Burgers Movie, directed by Bouchard and Bernard Derriman, is such a breezy, engaging picture that it qualifies as a summer refreshment.
  27. Benedetta
    Verhoeven brings more vitality to his work than many filmmakers half his age, and his screenplay (with David Birke) is a tasteless hoot, gleefully cramming the frame with blood, fornication and flagellations galore.
  28. The Mean Season
    Philip Borsos, who directed ''The Grey Fox,'' builds the suspense of The Mean Season slowly and, for the most part, very effectively.
  29. The Old Guard
    I’m not usually someone to hope for sequels, but I guess if you live long enough …
  30. Swing Shift
    Mr Demme has a special talent for locating the humor and pathos within the commonplace experiences of American life.
  31. The State Against Mandela and the Others
    Mandela did not die before effecting a huge change in his still-traumatized country. This movie sheds a valuable light on his struggle.
  32. Compromising Positions
    Although Compromising Positions is supposed to be a comedy and a mystery, the film's comedy is of such a high order that the rather ordinary question of the identity of the murderer seems to be interruptive of Mr. Perry's and Miss Isaacs' otherwise nastily funny, suburban satire. Reduced to its essentials, Compromising Positions is ''Nancy Drew and the Case of the Dissembling Dentist.''... A very entertaining film.
  33. Birdy
    Mr. Modine's performance is exceptionally sweet and graceful; Mr. Cage very sympathetically captures Al's urgency and frustration. Together, these actors work miracles with what might have been unplayable.
  34. The Salt of Tears
    The Salt of Tears is quite a bit more than a cad’s progress. There are fleeting shadows of Flaubert in this tale, which Garrel crafted in collaboration with two venerable screenwriters, Jean-Claude Carrière and Arlette Langmann.
  35. All of Me
    If this, the best American comedy since Tootsie, doesn't have you in stitches, check your vital signs: you may be in as much trouble as Edwina Cutwater, the dying dowager Miss Tomlin plays.
  36. Feels Good Man
    At its best, the movie is a vertiginous, head-slapping examination of the tangible, unpredictable consequences of making art.
  37. Mogul Mowgli
    With the director of photography (Annika Summerson) and the sound designer (Paul Davies), Tariq stitches domestic drama, satire and magical realism into a tissue of moods and meanings, held together by the shattering credibility of Ahmed’s performance.
  38. Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue
    The movie is an affecting group portrait and also a complex and subtle piece of literary criticism.
  39. Racing with the Moon
    Racing With the Moon demonstrates such intelligence and wit that the result is an unexpected pleasure.
  40. There Is No Evil
    To make a movie that ponders the moral rot of an unjust system while under the gun of that unjust system is courageous and artistically potent.
  41. No Mercy
    No Mercy is a passionate film noir that depends heavily upon Mr. Gere to give it credence, and Mr. Gere delivers.
  42. Tender Mercies
    Tender Mercies has a bleak handsomeness bordering on the arty, but it also has real delicacy and emotional power, both largely attributable to a fine performance by Robert Duvall.
  43. 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.
  44. Atlantis
    Vasyanovych and his actors manage to make this parable both heartening and stupefying.
  45. Selah and The Spades
    Selah and the Spades shimmers with youthful promise, both in front of the camera and behind it.
  46. Big Trouble
    It possesses high points you simply don't find in lesser if more consistently funny movies.
  47. Love Affair
    Mr. McCarey has balanced his ingredients skillfully and has merged them, as is clear in retrospect, into a glowing and memorable picture.
  48. The Boy Who Could Fly
    A gentle and affecting film that ought to charm older children while also holding their parents' interest,
  49. The Shop Around the Corner
    A pretty kettle of bubbling brew it makes under Mr. Lubitsch's deft and tender management and with a genial company to play it gently, well this side of farce and well that side of utter seriousness.
  50. Silent Movie
    A virtually uninterrupted series of smiles.
  51. Butt Boy
    Maybe it’s the hell we’re all living through right now, but Tyler Cornack’s orificial fantasy struck me as a hilariously bawdy, intermittently inspired act of vivacious vulgarity.
  52. Villain
    The result is an exceedingly well-made first feature, a simple genre movie elevated by strong visuals, potent performances and a mood that falls somewhere between resignation and guttering hope.
  53. Mayor
    A disarming subject, Hadid comes across as a cleareyed, forthright leader. But Mayor also stands out because Osit has thought it through in cinematic terms: He knows when to dwell on a striking image (such as Hadid examining a painting of Jerusalem on his global travels) and when to let a counterintuitive soundtrack selection play through.
  54. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
    Spider-Verse achieves the challenging task of building a sequel that not only replicates the charms of the first film but also expands the multiverse concept, the main characters and the stakes, without overinflating the premise or shamelessly capitalizing on fan service.
  55. We Are Little Zombies
    Smart, noisy and flashily assured, We Are Little Zombies is entirely, gleefully its own thing.
  56. The Fate of Lee Khan (1973)
    Once the players are established, the movie falls into a sweet lather, rinse, repeat mode of scenes, alternating character intrigue and fighting.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Murder to Mercy: The Cyntoia Brown Story
    This is a quiet, elegant memoir that humanizes a systemic American challenge — and offers a narrative catharsis only possible with real-life mercy.
  58. The Bride of Frankenstein
    Another astonishing chapter in the career of the Monster.
  59. Dreamland
    Strange, challenging and boundlessly confident, this tripped-out noir from the Canadian filmmaker Bruce McDonald (best known for his 2009 horror movie, “Pontypool”) is part lucid dream, part drugged-out nightmare.
  60. The Human Factor
    A fascinating, slightly chilly picture — as well as one of the best Preminger films in years.
  61. California Split
    A fascinating, vivid movie, not quite comparable to any other movie that I can immediately think of. Nor is it easily categorized.
  62. Athlete A
    Cohen and Shenk amplify the voices of the survivors while recognizing that Nassar’s arrest doesn’t dissipate the pain or deep-rooted exploitation.
  63. Dear Diary
    As both a skillful director and a lovable oddball, [Moretti] commands interest. It's easy to follow him anywhere.
  64. Shoot the Moon
    At its best, Shoot the Moon is as spare and as sharp in its detail as fine prose and as continuously surprising.
  65. Keeper of the Flame
    A courageous and timely drama which touches frankly upon a phase of American life that is most serious and pertinent today. And in it Mr. Tracy and Miss Hepburn perform with a taut solemnity that is in decided contrast to their previous collaborative roles.
  66. Brute Force
    Jules Dassin's steel-springed direction keeps the whole thing approriately taut.
  67. Sweetie
    Sweetie looks like a small movie, and in every measurable way it is, but it possesses remarkable strength and tenacity.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Front Page
    Front Page displays a giddy bitterness that is rare in any films except those of Mr. Wilder. It is also, much of the time, extremely funny.
  69. Searching Eva
    The film illustrates that being self-baring is different from being self-revealing. It inspires a vexing but welcome question: What did I just watch?
  70. Get on the Bus
    Some of the film's best and most comfortable moments find the bus passengers simply singing together in a show of warm, spontaneous unity.
  71. In My Blood It Runs
    The director Maya Newell gains access to both worlds that Dujuan traverses — home and school — and the trust that she seems to have built with all participants is vital to the success of this film.
  72. Look Back in Anger
    The fury and hate that John Osborne was able to pack into a flow of violent words in his stage play, Look Back in Anger, are not only matched but also documented in the film that the original stage director, Tony Richardson, has made from that vicious play.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Girl Crazy
    With George Gershwin's music and plenty of elbow room, for its twin stars, Girl Crazy is a funny, fast and completely infectious entertainment.
  74. The Entertainer
    It works out to a fascinating picture, for one reason because of its superior illustrative performance and, for another, because of its striking mise en scène.
  75. Europa
    Although the actual story of Zentropa is the stuff of an ordinary thriller, that plot is the only conventional aspect of a film that is an almost impudently flashy and knowing exercise in post-modern cinematic expressionism.
  76. Disclosure
    With each successive trip to the grim vaults, the hard-won dignity of the film’s transgender speakers is brought into sharper and sharper relief.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Honeymoon Killers
    Within the limits of its type it is one of the best and, curiously, most beautiful American movies in recent years.
  78. A Huey P. Newton Story
    The production doesn't resolve the paradoxes in Newton's life, but it does give viewers some idea of what it might have been like to be inside his head.
  79. When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts
    Although seeds of hope are woven into this tapestry of rage, sorrow and disbelief, the inability of government at almost every level to act quickly and decisively leaves you aghast at what amounts to a collective failure of will.
  80. The 11th Green
    The measured tone with which the movie presents its ostensible revelations is more than half the fun; nothing that comes up is ever played as a twist; the aforementioned opening scene shows Munch’s hand deliberately.
  81. The Postman Always Rings Twice
    The picture achieves its distinction through the smart way in which it has been made and through the quality of its representation of two passion-torn characters.
  82. Denise Ho: Becoming the Song
    The film does an excellent job of introducing the pop star to unfamiliar audiences, contextualizing her activism and, more broadly, examining the role art can play in shaping our beliefs.
  83. Sabotage
    A masterly exercise in suspense. His new film is imperfect narrative, but perfect dramaturgy.
  84. The Bishop's Wife
    If you can resist seeing Cary Grant playing an angel, David Niven playing a bishop and Loretta Young playing Loretta Young, you're too tough a critic for The Bishop's Wife.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cimarron
    It gives a wonderfully impressive idea of the early days in the territory, from the time the hordes of persons on horseback, in wagons and on foot make the dash to lay out their claims on the signal of a pistol shot, to the gradual improvements that come to Osage as years go by.
  86. Adam's Rib
    Of Adam's Rib we might say, in short, that it isn't solid food but it certainly is meaty and juicy and comically nourishing.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Arabesque
    Producer-director, Stanley Donen, apparently goes on the theory that in a chase movie the plot should only be used as a framework, for visual entertainments. Arabesque provides those, all right—Op photography, lush décor, gimmicky locations and hairraising pursuits. And, of course, Sophia Loren, a stunning bit of animated scenery who is not called upon to act but to Dior.
  88. The Chalk Garden
    Ronald Neame, who has directed the picture, and John Michael Hayes, who has written the script, present us with a cozy, compact drama that follows a comfortable, sentimental line.
  89. F11 and Be There
    The film is as beautifully composed as Uzzle’s pictures. The director Jethro Waters also shot the movie, a subtle feast of light and color.
  90. Days of the Whale
    The cast is appealingly natural, the cinematography subtly seductive, and the Colombian pop songs on the soundtrack establish a sinuous groove.
  91. Howard
    By the end of Howard, it’s the songs we’ll never hear that may haunt us most.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Naked Kiss
    Between his stylish handling of sensational nonsense and Mr. Marton's turgid floundering around a serious theme, Mr. Fuller's wild little movie has a decided edge.
  93. You Cannot Kill David Arquette
    What’s fascinating is Arquette’s vulnerability, both emotionally and physically.
  94. I Care a Lot
    An unexpectedly gripping thriller that seesaws between comedy and horror, I Care a Lot is cleverly written (by the director, J Blakeson) and wonderfully cast.
  95. 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.
  96. Desire
    You will not, in Desire, find a great story, but you will discover one that has been splendidly told. If it is a Lubitsch production, constantly highlighted by those indefinable touches of his, still one should not overlook the skill of its director, Frank Borzage; its excellent camera work, or the performances.
  97. A Foreign Affair
    A dandy entertainment which has some shrewd and realistic things to say.
  98. Hold Back the Dawn
    An amazingly poignant picture, rich in humor, heart and subtle ironies.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Horse Feathers
    Some of the fun is even more reprehensible than the doings of these clowns in previous films, but there is no denying that their antics and their patter are helped along by originality and ready wit.
  100. Lassie Come Home
    Oftentimes, animal pictures make the unhappy mistake of attributing almost human rationalization to simple four-footed beasts. An outstanding virtue of this picture is that it does nothing of the sort. It treats the dog as an animal whose loyalty is all the more wondrous and appealing because it is simple and free of human wile.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »