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. Leonor Will Never Die
    The effect is by turns comical, maddening and endearing as Escobar reaches for more ambitious ideas about the political appeal of the authoritarian hero; but “Leonor” is finally too mired in its film-within-the-film frolics for more serious themes to gain traction.
  2. Amreeka
    One of the most accomplished recent films about a non-European immigrant coming to the United States.
  3. 93Queen
    Without denying that these women face discrimination in reaching their goal, the movie shows how its subjects are able to find ways to combine strict observance and progress.
  4. The Endless Trench
    It’s fertile thematic ground, but as in most survival movies, showy feats of filmmaking take precedence over insight or revelation.
  5. CODA
    The template of CODA — the title is also a term used to describe the hearing children of deaf adults — might be wearyingly familiar, but this warmhearted drama from Sian Heder opens up space for concerns that feel fresh.
  6. Polyester
    Polyester is not Mr. Waters's ordinary movie. It's a very funny one, with a hip, stylized humor that extends beyond the usual limitations of his outlook.
  7. Fire Island
    The pace is slacker than it should be, but still, “Fire Island” fits neatly alongside Kristen Stewart’s lesbian Christmas movie “Happiest Season” on Hulu’s rom-com shelf.
  8. Will-o'-the-Wisp
    Will-o’-the-Wisp, an off-balance provocation from the Portuguese titillater João Pedro Rodrigues, is a prank in fancy dress, a plastic boutonniere that squirts battery acid. The joke is on everyone, particularly the powerful and those holding out hope that the powerful will save the planet.
  9. Neither Heaven Nor Earth
    On the most fundamental level, Neither Heaven Nor Earth is an impressive stunt, a horror movie masquerading as a film about the horrors of war. But its gravity and intelligence...make it something more.
  10. Bros
    Bros is hyper-conscious that it’s a landmark built on a fault line. No matter how many ideas it crams into its quick-paced plot, it’s doomed to fall short of representing an entire group of people — and it knows it shouldn’t have to. As such, Eichner’s challenge makes for a conflicted Cupid.
  11. Roald Dahl's Matilda The Musical
    For a film that takes this much glee in cruelty — Matilda is called “a brat,” “a bore,” “a lousy little worm” and “a nasty, little troublemaking goblin” in her first three minutes onscreen — it also includes scenes of genuine loveliness.
  12. Stevie
    Because Stevie has none of the glamour of "Hoop Dreams," with its portrait of gifted teenage athletes struggling for glory, it is not nearly as likable a film; but in its earnest, plodding way it is every bit as deep.
  13. A Song for Martin
    Watching it, I kept imagining the depth of feeling Ingmar Bergman and his troupe might have brought to the same material. As much as A Song for Martin hurts, it doesn't quite go the distance.
  14. Road to Perdition
    A truly majestic visual tone poem.
  15. Broadway: The Golden Age, by the Legends Who Were There
    Anyone who attended Broadway shows in the days when ticket prices were reasonable and the actors and singers performed without amplification will feel a rush of nostalgia as these troupers offer what amounts to a breezy compilation of after-dinner remarks.
  16. The Dish & the Spoon
    This wisp of a movie doesn't pretend to be more than a series of disconnected vignettes in a moody story that sometimes seems invented on the spot. The boy, for all his eccentricities, is a healing spirit who, without realizing it, gives Rose the fortitude to face her problems and resume her old life, for better or for worse.
  17. 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.
  18. Ammonite
    The movie needs Winslet and Ronan’s skills, their ability to semaphore more with sliding glances and tiny gestures than many actors manage with pages of dialogue. There’s pleasure in deciphering these signals.
  19. Climates
    This film paints a haunting portrait of existential solitude, one in which the images speak louder and often more forcefully than do any of the words.
  20. Skate Kitchen
    The movie’s disinclination to judge doesn’t deprive it of a point of view. Skate Kitchen is unfailingly compassionate to, and genuinely appreciative of, the people it chronicles.
  21. It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley
    Most artist documentaries attempt but rarely get to a true and palpable essence of their subjects, but it’s this sense of his earnestly tender nature, pieced together from loved ones and old archive interviews of Buckley, that leaves an impression.
  22. The Devil's Candy
    To enjoy The Devil’s Candy, then, one must tolerate slapdash writing (by the director, Sean Byrne) and profoundly irritating adult behavior. Yet Mr. Byrne...somehow whips his ingredients into an improbably taut man-versus-Satan showdown.
  23. Gone Baby Gone
    One of the graces of Gone Baby Gone is its sensitivity to real struggle, to the lived-in spaces and worn-out consciences that can come when despair turns into nihilism.
  24. Iron Crows
    A startlingly beautiful documentary by Bong-Nam Park that is also devastatingly sad.
  25. The Insult
    There is something undeniably exhilarating about the film’s honest assessment of the never-ending conflict between decency and cruelty that rages in every nation, neighborhood and heart.
  26. Fremont
    Jalali maintains a mysterious ambiguity, but Wali Zada conveys what matters.
  27. Phil Ochs: There But for Fortune
    The story told by Mr. Bowser's film is complicated and tragic.
  28. Where Is Kyra?
    As a statement about the economic insecurity inherent in American capitalism, Where Is Kyra? has grim power.
  29. Zodiac Killer Project
    The truth is that Shackleton isn’t settling for one mode; he’s working in a bunch of them at once, mixing affection and critique. Just like any true fan would.
  30. Magic Mike
    It works - beautifully.
  31. The Adventures of Milo and Otis
    The wonder of Mr. Hata's anthropomorphic fairy tale, which opens today at Cinema 3 and other theaters, is that it is cast with real animals who seem to share deep affection. And the mixture of realism and fantasy lends this children's film a poignancy that cuts much deeper than might a similar story featuring animated characters. [25 Aug 1989, p.10]
  32. Straight Outta Compton
    The partying is as bland as any all-purpose music video and feels more like another script signpost (and audience-pandering) than a serious attempt to get out what it means to be young, black, gifted, fabulously wealthy and much desired. Mr. Gray does far better when the story edges into heavier, more dappled realms.
  33. Tale of Tales
    Strip away the smatterings of sex and globs of gore, and children would really get a kick out of Tale of Tales, Matteo Garrone’s colorful and kinky exploration of what women want. And what men will do to give it to them.
  34. Juror #2
    Eastwood has explored systemic injustice before, including in “Changeling” and “Richard Jewell.” This is a stronger movie than those two by far, and if this one proves, as rumors have it, that it’s his last as a director, he is going out with a bang.
  35. Captain Fantastic
    It’s left to Mr. Mortensen, who can make menace feel like vulnerability — and turn vulnerability into a confession — to keep the movie from slipping into sentimentality. He’s the most obvious reason to see it, although Mr. Ross’s insistence on taking your intelligence for granted is itself a great turn on.
  36. Shithouse
    Raiff deserves credit for an unexpectedly elliptical coda, but much of the chatter between the leads has the emo-tedium of dorm room blather.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    White Palms
    The term "sports film" doesn't do justice to the director Szabolcs Hajdu's movie White Palms, a punishing, beautiful drama.
  38. Scarecrow
    It all goes decisively wrong when Jerry Schatzberg, the director, and Garry Michael White, who wrote the screenplay, decide to saddle the pair with a poetic vision that suddenly makes everything needlessly phony.
  39. Joy of Man's Desiring
    As with his other features, brevity — in this case, 1 hour 10 minutes — has a way of making the film seem minor. It’s a little diffuse, but it suggests that Mr. Côté is trying out a sketch, with more experiments to come.
  40. Call Her Applebroog
    Beth B is not out to deliver a comprehensive biography. Instead, she achieves a vivid snapshot of a still-vital artist late in a still-purposeful life.
  41. Swim Team
    Swim Team mostly aims to educate and inspire; on those counts, it succeeds.
  42. Rebels on Pointe
    The cinematography isn’t the greatest, and the structure is hit or miss, but so what? In a movie this good natured, the heart is everything. The performances are hilarious, but the dancing is no joke.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Pumping Iron
    An interesting, rather slick and excessively long documentary about the small but intensely competitive world of body-building.
  44. There Was a Crooked Man...
    There Was A Crooked Man . . . is really a duel between two men, one good, one bad, and it's these smaller, more civilized confrontations, done with irony and wit, that make the film one of the more pleasant things you're likely to see this season.
  45. Milli Vanilli
    The performers Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus earn your empathy in the documentary Milli Vanilli, a jolting, eye-opening investigation on how fame destroyed them. The war-of-words film, directed by Luke Korem, unfolds like a whodunit.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Kid Glove Killer
    On its own modest level, "Kid Glove Killer" is a first-rate job all round.
  47. Matilda
    Twisted enough by Mr. Dahl and given a jolt of caricature by Mr. DeVito, Matilda makes too perverse a tale for very young children. But this one has playful flamboyance and a dark verve that older children should appreciate. And it has a sweet, self-possessed little heroine.
  48. New York Doll
    Greg Whiteley's small, tender documentary portrait New York Doll looks at life after rock 'n' roll as experienced by Arthur (Killer) Kane, the original bassist for the legendary glam-punk band the New York Dolls.
  49. DJ Ahmet
    In this strikingly assured debut, the writer-director Georgi M. Unkovski demonstrates gentle realism, paired with luminous cinematography and a superb young cast.
  50. Mahjong
    For all its sloppiness, this satiric morality tale still has a sharp comic bite.
  51. All the Money in the World
    All the Money in the World revs up beautifully, first as a thriller. But while the kidnapping is the movie’s main event, it is only part of a story that is, by turns, a sordid, desperate and anguished tragedy about money.
  52. One Week and a Day
    It meanders from start to finish, searching for a tone that it never quite finds.
  53. Still Mine
    The film’s vision of a long-married couple keeping each other going with mutual love and support, and a shared resistance to outside interference, is more vital than a thousand movies populated by hot, squirming teenagers.
  54. A Screaming Man
    It's a modest film, if only in scale and apparent budget, about some of the greatest questions in life, like the existence of God, our capacity to see beyond our own vanity and the legacies of fathers, both blood and state.
  55. Nanny
    Jusu draws fluidly from different genres and modes in “Nanny” — from scene to scene, the movie plays like an immigration drama, a lonely woman melodrama and a cruel labor farce — but at one point you realize that what you are watching looks, sounds and feels like a horror movie.
  56. The Island President
    The hope that infuses this movie makes it all the more upsetting to walk out of the theater and contemplate a looming disaster that the world's leaders seem unable to prevent.
  57. The Cabin in the Woods
    Novelty and genre traditionalism often fight to a draw. Too much overt cleverness has a way of spoiling dumb, reliable thrills. And despite the evident ingenuity and strenuous labor that went into it, The Cabin in the Woods does not quite work.
  58. Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1
    The story is deepened with a distinctively European political subtext as the increasingly grandiose Mesrine engages in a running dialogue with various characters about the differences between gangsters and revolutionaries.
  59. American Pain
    The utility of an energetic character study of depraved opioid kingpins is questionable. But the documentary unspools with enough style and spark to engage.
  60. Miami Blues
    Miami Blues is best appreciated for the performances of its stars and for the kinds of funny, scene-stealing peripheral touches that keep it lively even when it's less than fully convincing.
  61. Friendship
    These men are so lonely. Thankfully, in a movie, they’re also really funny.
  62. Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould
    A tour de force of archival research and dogged interviewing, and the portrait it presents is remarkably complete.
  63. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
    I call it wondrous because, in spite of lapses and imperfections, a few of them serious, Mr. Burton's movie succeeds in doing what far too few films aimed primarily at children even know how to attempt anymore, which is to feed - even to glut - the youthful appetite for aesthetic surprise.
  64. Headhunters
    As black comedy, the film is crude and downright sloppy when compared with the clockwork machinations of the Coen brothers' creations, as it has been since its premiere. Brown's panic is capably rendered, but his ordeals are not worth enduring to the bitter end.
  65. Quinceañera
    As smart and warmhearted an exploration of an upwardly mobile immigrant culture as American independent cinema has produced.
  66. Marcel Proust's Time Regained
    Struggles under the burden of adapting such rarefied material.
  67. The Trials of Henry Kissinger
    A muckraking effort that will probably play best to the converted.
  68. Stone Reader
    Enchanting and diverting documentary.
  69. All or Nothing
    All the drinking, arguing and brooding, which in lesser hands might have produced oppressive and unvarying dreariness, somehow adds up to a tableau of extraordinary vividness and variety.
  70. Bowling for Columbine
    Disturbing, infuriating and often very funny film.
  71. Brittany Runs A Marathon
    Bell imbues Brittany with humanity and wit, but all too frequently she is working within the framework of a story that seems hellbent on robbing her character of joy.
  72. Sea of Shadows
    The plot twists are so spot on that a screenwriter might have rejected them.
  73. Alléluia
    Alleluia is a fever dream of sex, jealousy and murder whose intensity leaves you spellbound.
  74. Millennium Mambo
    Despite its artistry, it seems to last nearly a millennium.
  75. Half Moon
    Fateful and funny, haunting and magical.
  76. Girl with a Pearl Earring
    An auspicious feature-directing debut by Mr. Webber in so many ways -- a groaning board of temptations for the eye and ear -- that you may almost forgive the film its lack of drama and the perfunctory attempts at characterization. Viewing this film has been likened to watching paint dry; actually it is more like watching a painting dry.
  77. JFK
    The movie, which is simultaneously arrogant and timorous, has been unable to separate the important material from the merely colorful.
  78. Promising Young Woman
    A muddled mélange of black comedy, revenge thriller and feminist lecture, Promising Young Woman too often backs away from its potentially searing setup.
  79. Easier with Practice
    A tale about appearances in which not everything is as it seems, Easier With Practice tries to use phone sex as a way to explore contemporary alienation.
  80. Sabrina
    In our wistful estimation, the most delightful comedy-romance in years.
  81. The Wedding Plan
    In a complicated role, the excellent Ms. Koler exudes a kind of flighty confidence: For all her nuptial-related anxieties, Michal is completely comfortable with who she is.
  82. Working Man
    An unconventional labor story, the movie doesn’t bask in the triumph of rebellion; instead, it’s an introspective portrait of men for whom working is a replacement for living.
  83. Best Summer Ever
    Tender and exuberant, it includes set pieces modeled on “Footloose” and “Grease,” and feels closer to those films in spirit than to the Disney Channel. This is the kind of movie that vibrates with the energy of the people who made it, whose enthusiasm radiates from the screen.
  84. Red Moon Tide
    Though thin on story, the film (streaming on Mubi) is a majestic vision. But most captivating are the settings.
  85. Sisters on Track
    Both films are conventional in cinematic style, and they constitute the kind of feel-good entertainment that is easy to recommend. But what is timely and interesting — even thorny — about these films is their focus on the economic opportunities generated by athletic achievement
  86. Love, Simon
    The emotional resonance may be surprising given the movie’s relentless gloss, but it’s real. The spectacularly charming cast, led by the young Nick Robinson in the title role (who brings a knowing touch of 1980s Matthew Broderick to some of his line readings), puts it all across, including a genuinely crowd-pleasing ending.
  87. Diplomacy
    The value of Diplomacy is that it produces at least as much unsettlement as relief, compelling the viewer to remain haunted by nightmarish thoughts of what might have happened.
  88. Crime After Crime
    Recording every success and setback, the wrenching documentary Crime After Crime favors the personal over the political, creating a no-frills portrait of a stoic and remarkably unembittered woman.
  89. Dogtooth
    Dogtooth supplies no such explanation and at times seems as much an exercise in perversity as an examination of it.
  90. True Son
    Rough-hewed but naturally inspirational, True Son gains heft from its portrait of a city sharply segregated by race and income.
  91. Smithereens
    Eventually, it becomes clear that neither Wren nor the movie is going anywhere, since the character never becomes any more thoughtful or less selfish than she was to begin with, and since her bouncing between Paul and Eric has become both predictable and strained. But before it runs out of steam, Smithereens is ragged, funny and eccentric. It has as much life as the indefatigable Wren, and that's plenty.
  92. Prick Up Your Ears
    The film covers the main events of the Orton life in a manner that is nothing less than distracted. One has little understanding of the fatal intensity - and need - that kept Orton and Halliwell together.
  93. The King and I
    Every bit of the humor and vibrant humanity that flowed through the tender story of the English school-teacher and the quizzical king is richly preserved in the screen play that Ernest Lehman has prepared.
  94. I'm No Longer Here
    Frías de la Parra is thoughtful and precise in conveying the cultural identity of these young people, and their spirit pulses through the story.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Sons of Katie Elder
    A good, tough, unpretentious and gory little Western with a professional stamp and a laconic bite.
  96. In the House
    In the House weaves a pleasant and clever spell, manipulating the viewer much in the way that Claude plays with Germain.
  97. Hal
    It’s a consistently engaging trip. Ms. Scott has assembled a nice, fairly well-rounded group to testify on her subject’s behalf, including people who were part of Ashby’s foundational years in Hollywood — most important, the director Norman Jewison.
  98. A Face in the Crowd
    Mr. Schulberg and Mr. Kazan spawn a monster not unlike the one of Dr. Frankenstein. But so hypnotized are they by his presence that he runs away not only with the show but with intellectual reason and with the potentiality of their theme.
  99. Exotica
    Exotica may not be as perfectly formed as some of Mr. Egoyan's earlier work. Because Thomas's subplot is not as intriguing as the scenes in the club, the stories take too long to merge. But the flaws are minor. Mr. Egoyan continues to build an important, uncompromising career.
  100. The Thomas Crown Affair
    Hard to believe that real emotion was involved anywhere in this story.
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