The New York Times' Scores

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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
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  1. Friends and Strangers
    While the pieces don’t necessarily fit in obvious ways, that’s presumably the point — and part of what makes Friends and Strangers so singular.
  2. The Northman
    What’s perhaps most impressive about The Northman is that it hurtles through 136 minutes of musclebound, shaggy-maned mayhem without a whisper of camp or a wink of irony. Nobody is doing this for fun. Even if, in the end — thank goodness — that’s mostly what it amounts to.
  3. Two Gods
    Ali brings a matter-of-fact compassion to the experiences of three different people: Hanif, a Black Muslim man in Newark, and the two boys he is mentoring, Furquan and Naz.
  4. The Birthday Cake
    Giannopoulos might be inexperienced, but he’s canny with mood and unafraid to experiment with the rhythms of violence. I, for one, am keen to see what he does next.
  5. Mark, Mary & Some Other People
    It’s clear these overgrown kids are careening toward adult-size pain. But Marks’s infatuation with her flawed lovebirds also seduces the audience.
  6. Poser
    At once polished and punky, Poser is about the maturing of a vampiric personality. Like its music, the movie feels exploratory and raw-edged, yet with a persistent pathos that clings to Lennon and isolates her.
  7. Bernstein's Wall
    While his celebrity has largely faded, Bernstein’s Wall makes the case that his charge to artists to lead the way in culture is timeless, and more vital than ever.
  8. Lady Boss: The Jackie Collins Story
    The dishiness is fun, but Lady Boss is most penetrating when it lifts the carapace of glamour Collins had constructed, both as alter ego and as armor against her critics.
  9. The Lost Leonardo
    It’s a dizzying tale. And whether or not you believe “Salvator Mundi” to be a real Leonardo, it’s ultimately a disgusting one.
  10. 7 Days
    7 Days takes a warm, witty look at the kinds of companionship that can emerge even — or especially — in the most unromantic, pragmatic of circumstances.
  11. Accepted
    As we witness both the documentary’s subjects — and its director — navigate a shocking development in real time, a quietly probing film emerges that pierces the myth of American meritocracy.
  12. The Heartbreak Kid
    The Heartbreak Kid occasionally goes for laughs without shame (which is what has always bothered me about Simon's brand of New York comedy), but behind the laughs there is, for a change, a real understanding of character — which is something that I suspect, can be attribued to Miss May.
  13. The Witches of the Orient
    If the team was derided by their prejudiced (and defeated) foes in the moment of their success, this documentary elegantly restores the glow of legend, saving the champions the trouble of having to explain their heroism in words.
  14. Lamb
    Slow-moving and inarguably nutty, Lamb nevertheless wields its atavistic power with the straightest of faces, helped in no small measure by an Oscar-worthy cast of farm animals.
  15. Ahed's Knee
    There’s no doubt that this is, in several senses, a personal film. But that doesn’t mean that the character is simply the author’s mouthpiece; one of the things that gives this movie its raw, unbalanced energy is the indeterminacy of the distance between them.
  16. Let It Be Morning
    Despite flashes of droll humor, the film builds up an undercurrent of suspense, with the prospect of violence always near. Kolirin (the movie version of “The Band’s Visit”) orchestrates the proceedings with confidence and significant subtlety, never letting political diagnoses overwhelm character.
  17. All My Friends Hate Me
    Dancing on the line between funny and menacing, the ingenious script (by Stourton and Tom Palmer) is a tonal tease, a limbo where every joke has a threatening edge and every “Just kidding!” only increases Pete’s unease.
  18. Raising Cain
    Risky as it sounds, Raising Cain is enjoyable precisely because it makes the most of its own lunacy and stays so far out on a limb. The fact that Raising Cain is beautifully made is, of course, another attraction.
  19. Lydia Lunch: The War Is Never Over
    Lunch’s entire aesthetic is centered around trauma: how abusers dispense it, how it is — and how she thinks it ought to be — received, and turned back on the world.
  20. Till Death
    This straightforward romp focuses its attention on its cunning and no-nonsense scream queen. And what Fox lacks in dramatic prowess, she makes up for in pure, wicked magnetism.
  21. Can You Bring It: Bill T. Jones and D-Man in the Waters
    The intercutting between vintage footage of the Jones/Zane company and the student production, as well as footage from another contemporary production of the piece — shot with an onstage intimacy that recalls the in-the-ring segments of Martin Scorsese’s “Raging Bull” — make for an unusually lively documentary experience.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mandabi
    As a comedy dealing with life's miseries, it displays a controlled sophistication in the telling that gives it a feeling of almost classic directness and simplicity.
  23. The Most Beautiful Boy in the World
    Andresen’s determination to rise above misfortune, and his hopes for himself, make this movie less than a total tragedy. But it’s an often shudder-inducing cautionary tale.
  24. Rock, Paper and Scissors
    Given the cast’s three outstanding performances and slick camerawork by Nicolás Colledani, this makes for a fascinating capsule of family brutality.
  25. Brian Wilson: I Just Wasn't Made for These Times
    I Just Wasn't Made for These Times, a documentary about Mr. Wilson that ought to fascinate anyone who's ever turned on a car radio in America, does more than induce this legendary rock recluse to speak for himself. . . . This film also illuminates the music itself and makes interesting, accessible sense of Mr. Wilson's very real genius.
  26. Eternity and a Day
    All things being relative, this is a dreamy, lulling film but also a more concise and straightforward one than the magnificently grandiose Ulysses' Gaze, the Angelopoulos opus that directly preceded it.
  27. Underground
    Feverish, whimsical allegory elevated by moments of brilliant clarity.
  28. Woodstock 99: Peace Love and Rage
    Much of the footage is hair-raising, especially the women being groped and the mobs of young white men whipping themselves into a frenzy of aggressive stupidity, aimless anger and turbo-boosted misogyny. This is these dudes’ coming-of-age as an aggrieved demographic, and it’s frightening.
  29. Nitram
    The killings themselves may remain off-camera, but the movie is still an uncomfortable watch. In Jones’s smoldering performance, we see a man stretched beyond his limits, a rubber band just waiting to snap back.
  30. Her Socialist Smile
    Her Socialist Smile, written, directed and shot by John Gianvito, is a fascinating and challenging exploration of Keller’s political thought.
  31. The Last Matinee
    Tipping his hat to the Italian thriller genre known as giallo, Contenti (who wrote the unfussy script with Manuel Facal) sets up a string of witty, highly specific slayings of audience members unaware they’re both voyeurs and prey.
  32. Western
    A funny, romantic film filled with cozy intimacies and lovely, wide-screen images of the French countryside.
  33. Belfast
    Branagh’s remembrances may be idealized, but with Belfast he has written a charming, rose-tinted thank-you note to the city that sparked his dreams and the parents whose sacrifices helped them come true.
  34. The Electrical Life of Louis Wain
    Louis is a funny, complicated character, and while the movie could have expanded its horizons (particularly in view of the changes roiling the art world), Cumberbatch fills in this expressionistic portrait exquisitely.
  35. Mosquito State
    Borne along on the whine of insects and a lead performance of surpassing strangeness, “Mosquito State” is a disquieting merger of body horror and social commentary.
  36. On Broadway
    On Broadway sure knows how to work a theater-lover’s heart.
  37. Ridicule
    As written by Remi Waterhouse, who draws on real historical detail here, Ridicule satirizes this world of absurd protocol while it proves that skewering fatuousness and snobbery, however obviously, is never out of style.
  38. Isabella
    While the pieces more or less fall into place, trying to solve the mysteries of Isabella may be missing the point.
  39. Petite Solange
    As Solange’s teenage woes bubble up and then cool to a simmer, Ropert reveals a knack for calibrating emotion. It can be agony to accept one’s parents as people with needs and faults all their own, and Ropert observes Solange’s coming-of-age lucidly and without judgment.
  40. Pickpocket (Xiao Wu)
    As skillfully written and directed by Jia Zhang Ke, a product of the Beijing Film Academy who uses a nonprofessional cast, the cool-eyed Xiao Wu appears to be more than a relatively nonjudgmental portrait of an emotionally repressed young thief turned against the weight of conformity.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Firecreek
    Firecreek is a good, sturdy and occasionally powerful little Western.
  42. The Friends of Eddie Coyle
    The Friends of Eddie Coyle is so beautifully acted and so well set (in and around Boston's pool halls, parking lots, side-streets, house trailers and barrooms) that it reminds me a good deal of John Huston's Fat City. It also has that film's ear for the way people talk—for sentences that begin one way and end another, or are stuffed with excess pronouns.
  43. The Guilty
    Essentially a one-man show, The Guilty necessarily vibrates to the rhythms of its lead.
  44. A Boy Called Christmas
    Magic abounds in A Boy Called Christmas, Netflix’s first prestige holiday movie of the season, but pulsing through this winning adventure tale is something even stronger: the immersive power of storytelling.
  45. The Deer King
    The film is tenderly wrought and brilliantly animated, with transitions that emphasize the communion between the land and the human body.
  46. Clara Sola
    Araya is remarkably tender as she sinks her fingers into the earth or gingerly lifts bugs off the ground, while Sophie Winqvist Loggins’s hushed, soft-focus camerawork imbues these moments with an almost spiritual grace.
  47. The Rescue
    The mechanics of the operation boggle the mind, and in presenting them so elegantly, Vasarhelyi and Chin offer more edge-of-your-seat drama than most thrillers — certainly enough to make the Hollywood version in the works from Ron Howard feel surplus to requirements before cameras have even rolled.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    That's Entertainment!
    The pleasures are abundant: Gene Kelly squelching sublimely through puddles in Singin' in the Rain; Judy Garland singing Get Happy over a series of clips of her faces at all ages—the result is a joyful obituary.
  49. Luzzu
    Malta’s views are arresting, but the images Camilleri chooses would never be found in a travel brochure. In his subtle, vérité approach, he captures something special — not one man’s crisis, but a community’s culture.
  50. No Responders Left Behind
    While pragmatic in bent, the documentary repeatedly underlines the toxic manner in which this country treats many who have sacrificed body and mind in service to others.
  51. Jacinta
    This is not a happy story. The lucidity with which these subjects speak to their own mistakes and sorrows will leave you haunted.
  52. Listening to Kenny G
    As a music industry story, Kenny G’s rise, engineered by the mogul Clive Davis but at times bucked by the artist himself, is fascinating.
  53. Attica
    There is a fascination in hearing about the logistics of the riot and just how surreal events were for the prisoners.
  54. Citizen Ashe
    Ashe’s story certainly has moments of great drama and high tension, but, as a sports figure, he inspired decidedly undramatic sobriquets like “the gentle warrior.” This documentary shows you a truer, sharper picture.
  55. A Banquet
    You’re likely to leave this film starving for answers, but that hunger can be just as stimulating as it is burdensome.
  56. Beba
    Beba is profound. The filmmaker delves into all of who she is, including darker or more destructive aspects of her identity, pushing viewers to see Huntt’s complexity — and perhaps their own.
  57. Procession
    To judge Greene’s experiment, not least because of its visible salutary effects, feels like intruding on private breakthroughs. But the discomfiting power of Procession comes from its ability to show and, to all appearances, facilitate them.
  58. V/H/S/94
    I suppose it doesn’t cohere into anything more than the sum of its parts. But this is the first time I’ve felt the anthology horror format really worked, and gosh, the parts are really good.
  59. The Tale of King Crab
    The movie’s depictions of landscapes both sere and fertile, and its all-but-palpable portrayals of isolation, have echoes of the best work of Werner Herzog and Lucrecia Martel. But de Righi and Zoppis here show more genuine affinity than affected influence; they’re moviemakers worth keeping an eye on.
  60. Prism
    Densely thoughtful, Prism has beautiful and poignant moments.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Opera
    Inspired by Argento’s own frustrations with directing a production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Macbeth, Opera replaces the supernatural with the sexual, leaving room for a conversation about the link between sexual and artistic impotence. [25 Oct 2018]
    • The New York Times
  62. Son of Monarchs
    The film’s rich imagery will be imprinted in your memory, returning to you in dreams.
  63. Found
    While the young women harbor overlapping questions, Found makes it clear they also have yearnings unique to them.
  64. Noroît
    The movie’s intellectual provocations — mostly pertaining to the elasticity of cinematic form — remain as lively as they were many decades ago.
  65. Sankofa
    [Mr. Gerima's] film is ambitious in its depiction of slavery and accomplished in its visual command.
  66. 14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossible
    In widening its aperture — from the ascents to visits to Purja’s childhood home as well as brief dives into Nepal’s history — “14 Peaks” expands a genre often focused on the feats of individuals to celebrate lessons about vast dreams and communal bonds.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Quiet Man
    Let's face it. Mr. Ford is in love with Ireland, as is his cast, and they give us a fine, gay time while they're about it.
  68. Where the Day Takes You
    This is Rebel Without a Cause without the grown-ups and without boundaries, transposed to a world of hard drugs, petty crime, hand-to-mouth existence and hopes that somehow will not die.
  69. North by Current
    Out of the fractured family documentary, what emerges finally is a drama of self-realization.
  70. Try Harder!
    Quiet yet assertive, Try Harder! itself succeeds at not trying too hard.
  71. A Son
    As the tone, vibe and storytelling parts shift and shift again — the movie is by turns a hospital drama, a marriage melodrama, a black-market intrigue — Meriem and especially Fares draw you near, push you away and prompt you to choose sides.
  72. Girl Picture
    Haapasalo blesses her trio with a pop soundtrack that crescendos at the peak of a kiss, and climactic crises that are a mite too readily resolved, adamantly gracing this awkward stage of girlhood with forgiveness — not hectoring lessons.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Olive Trees of Justice
    What has emerged is not a towering film, nor a definitive war drama, but an extremely good one with real people, French and Algerian, dark and light.
  74. Alfie
    The whole thing is played expertly by everyone in the large cast, and a lively jazz score and bright color make it seem much more casual than it is.
  75. Through a Glass Darkly
    It has a simple, straight cinematic form, unifying a little tangle of experience within a modest frame. It may strike one as slight and disappointing alongside the intellectual magnitude of such as his film "The Seventh Seal." But it suggests a new mood of its author—introspective, troubled, cold.
  76. Nocturna: Side A — The Great Old Man’s Night
    Sad and strange and deeply upsetting, “Side A” profits from Claudio Beiza’s velvety, gray-green images and a soundtrack pulsing with heartbeats and the distressing whine of Ulysses’s hearing aid.
  77. Nocturna: Side B — Where the Elephants Go to Die
    Calzado uses more experimental techniques to expand his narrative, paralleling the flickering impermanence of filmed images with physical and psychological decay.
  78. Breaking
    It depicts in stomach-churning detail how the contemporary militarization of law enforcement creates an atmosphere in which violence is near inevitable. This conscientious attention balances out the movie’s occasional lapses into sentimentality.
  79. Good Luck to You, Leo Grande
    “Leo Grande” proves to be a tart and tender probe into sex and intimacy, power dynamics and human connection.
  80. Hatching
    A sometimes uneasy merger of monster movie and psychological horror — with a dollop of social-media satire — this inventive first feature mines tween confusion (there are nods to both bulimia and menstruation) for grotesque fun.
  81. Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.
    Regina Hall is a wonder as the woman who stands by her man for a mash-up of reasons, not least being the elevated position the title first lady confers.
  82. Navalny
    This documentary, directed by the Canadian filmmaker Daniel Roher (“Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band”), plays like a crowd-pleaser, a profile of a politician with the unflagging courage to swim against a rising totalitarian tide. It helps that Navalny has a movie star’s charisma and wit.
  83. The Princess
    This is a harrowing movie that depends on our collective hindsight to underscore its manifold and particular ironies.
  84. Superior
    It is the film’s shaggier pleasures that leave an impression, particularly its soundtrack of ’80s electro disco and a physically shaggy ice-cream parlor manager (played by Stanley Simons) who is too stoned to notice that his new employee is two different people.
  85. Coma
    Coma pushes the boundaries of the so-called lockdown movie with its thrilling, chaotic form.
  86. Incredible But True
    Coming in at a tight and talky 74 minutes, Incredible but True is a sweetly absurd time-travel comedy that coats its lunacy in a touching poignancy.
  87. Dear Mr. Brody
    Dear Mr. Brody invites timely thoughts about the wealthy and income disparity.
  88. Three Months
    The contrast between Caleb and Estha remains the movie’s greatest asset. Their relationship grants room for the audience to witness and appreciate their differences, not just culturally, but as fully drawn individuals.
  89. Servants
    Ostrochovsky often begins shots with characters frozen in place for several seconds before they launch into action, as if they were chess pieces moved by God across the bare lines of the seminary’s crumbling stone architecture.
  90. The Unknown Man of Shandigor (1967)
    This gangly picture isn’t a lost masterpiece, to be clear. But it’s a magnetic curio, a fascinating relic of a vanished strain of European cinema.
  91. Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood
    Apollo 10½ is more a modest memoir than a whiz-bang space epic. Its view of the past is doggedly rose-colored, with social and emotional rough edges smoothed away by the passage of time and the filmmaker’s genial temperament.
  92. Anaïs in Love
    What took a while to grasp is that it isn’t necessary to like Anaïs. What’s crucial is that you stick with her, that you listen to what she says and doesn’t say, that you look beneath the skittishness to get a handle on what drives this woman — that you see her for who she is.
  93. Fly Away Home
    Rekindling the delicacy and invigorating naturalness he brought to "The Black Stallion," and again helped immensely by the radiant cinematography of Caleb Deschanel, Ballard turns a potentially treacly children's film into an exhilarating '90s fable.
  94. To Leslie
    The director, Michael Morris, knows from the start what movie he’s making: one that robs us of our easy assumptions about who Leslie is. She’s unbearably flawed, and the screenwriter Ryan Binaco explains why without forcing long beats of exposition upon the viewer.
  95. The Woman King
    The kinetic action adventure The Woman King is a sweeping entertainment, but it’s also a story of unwavering resistance in front of and behind the camera.
  96. Creed III
    As entertaining as it is predictable, Creed III does exactly what you expect, delivering nicely balanced helpings of intimacy and spectacle, grit and glamour.
  97. RRR
    Rajamouli shoots the film’s action with hallucinogenic fervor, supercharging scenes with a shimmering brand of extended slow-motion and C.G.I. that feels less “generated” than unleashed.
  98. Shepherd
    With Shepherd, the Welsh writer and director Russell Owen shows us how to accrue a great deal of atmosphere with very little fuss.
  99. The Asphalt Jungle
    Mr. Huston has filmed a straight crime story about as cleverly and graphically as it could be filmed.
  100. Captains Courageous
    With its rich production, magnificent marine photography, admirable direction and performances, the film brings vividly to life every page of Kipling's novel and even adds an exciting chapter or two of its own.
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