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. Kiss of Death
    It's a sleek, muscular thriller played by a terrific ensemble cast, directed by Barbet Schroeder with the somber acuity he has brought to subjects as diverse as Claus von Bulow ("Reversal of Fortune") and Gen. Idi Amin Dada.
  2. Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle
    The light provides wordless, and conveniently apolitical, explanation for why a person might endure nearly three decades (or in cinematic terms, nearly three hours) without action.
  3. Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story
    The ebullient history — which also cites on-site food tents as a mind-blowing component of the fest’s appeal — becomes tearful when Hurricane Katrina decimates New Orleans in 2005.
  4. Inbetween Girl
    Though the dialogue is often hit-or-miss, this young adult drama doesn’t simply put a fresh spin on old tropes: It takes seriously the messiness of growing up, the hardest parts of which involve accepting life’s ambiguities.
  5. Don't Make Me Go
    Cho and Isaac’s stellar performances expose the gulf between familiarity and intimacy.
  6. Odd Man Out
    A most intriguing film.
  7. The Menu
    In service to a gleefully malicious tone, Mark Mylod’s direction is cool, tight and clipped, the actors slotting neatly into characters so unsympathetic we become willing accessories to their suffering.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Early Spring
    This modest classic also conveys the claustrophobia of office life better than any other film I've seen.
  9. Our Father
    It is the siblings — their anguish and their anger, as well as the compassion they extend to one another — that drive the narrative.
  10. The Five Devils
    Smell is perhaps the most opaque of the five human senses; the one that’s hardest to put into words. No wonder it’s key to the uncanny intrigues of the film, part queer love story, part supernatural psychodrama, by the French director Léa Mysius.
  11. Rise
    It’s not simply a movie about how Giannis became one of the most dominant players in the league. It’s about why Giannis is so lovable.
  12. Jonathan Agassi Saved My Life
    Heymann situates the notion of celebrity in the context of not just performance and gay culture but also familial intimacy, with striking detail.
  13. Special Agent
    Crisp, fast moving and thoroughly entertaining melodrama.
  14. She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
    In this big Technicolored Western Mr. Ford has superbly achieved a vast and composite illustration of all the legends of the frontier cavalryman.
  15. Vengeance Is Mine
    VENGEANCE IS MINE, directed by Shohei Imamura, a Japanese director largely unknown in this country, is chilly without being austere, the sort of confounding movie that tells us too much and not enough.
  16. Smoking Causes Coughing
    Welcome back to the zany world of Quentin Dupieux, a French director who cranks out (his previous film, the time-travel fable “Incredible But True,” came out just months ago) low-budget absurdist comedies with preposterous premises that he always takes at face value, no matter how demented. His latest might be his funniest yet.
  17. Cordelia
    Enigmatic and imperfect, but nonetheless absorbing and consistently unsettling, Cordelia offers a haunting visualization of a breaking-apart psyche.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ride the High Country
    Take two cornbelt veterans like Mr. McCrea and Mr. Scott, give them a taut, tangy script (by N. B. Stone Jr.) a trim supporting cast and a good director (Sam Peckinpah), and you have the most disarming little horse opera in months.
  19. Down with the King
    The trait Down With the King exhibits most powerfully is patience, something in short supply in modern cinema or, for that matter, the modern world.
  20. A Taste of Whale
    Provocative as it may be at first glance, A Taste of Whale, in theaters and on demand, offers a refreshingly multidimensional take on the controversy around whale hunting in the Faroe Islands, a tradition that dates back to the 9th century.
  21. Good Night Oppy
    By the end of Good Night Oppy, Opportunity and Spirit have become no less lovable as characters than R2-D2 or Wall-E. It’s tough not to feel for their loss.
  22. The Sentinel
    Although the thriller aspect of "La Sentinelle" doesn't quite add up, the film is still an absorbing, psychologically resonant portrait of French student life. As directed by Desplechin, the attractive young cast hardly seems to be acting.
  23. Pacifiction
    It suggests John le Carré by way of David Lynch — a feverish and haunting but also wry and meditative rumination on power, secrecy and the color of clouds over water at sunset.
  24. The Worst Ones
    Luminously photographed and nimbly edited, The Worst Ones — which won the Un Certain Regard competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 2022 — offers a provocative critique of filmmaking practices. It also presents a subtle defense of the onscreen miracles revealed by the young and the raw.
  25. Revoir Paris
    Even as Winocour piles on too many complications, she retains an appreciable astringency — call it a sense of emotional realism about what it means to actually survive — that keeps bathos at bay. Together with the superb Efira, she earns your tears honestly.
  26. Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe
    “Do the Universe” knows it won’t change the world, or precincts outside it. But the abundance of not entirely cheap laughs that this movie — which is best watched over a plate of nachos — delivers is therapeutic.
  27. We
    An acute awareness of the relationship between memory, whether personal or collective, and identity emerges as the engine of We.
  28. Equinox Flower
    Equinox Flower—a particularly inscrutable title even for this great Japanese director—is one of Ozu's least dark comedies, which is not to say that it's carefree, but, rather, that it's gentle and amused in the way that it acknowledges time's passage, the changing of values and the adjustments that must be made between generations.
  29. A Sexplanation
    Liu lends a frankness and sensitivity to the topic that would make A Sexplanation suitable to be shown in a classroom, which was perhaps his intention all along.
  30. She Will
    Blending sensuous imagery with jabs of feminist wit — at one point, a vibrator is weaponized against a male intruder — Colbert sends her heroine on a transformative journey of revenge and renewal.
  31. Being BeBe
    With her feature debut, Branham exposes her hand as filmmaker, and reminds us that Being BeBe is only a snapshot of Ngwa’s persona; the real thing is so much richer.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Russians Are Coming the Russians Are Coming
    Mr. Arkin and Mr. Reiner meet and the comedy takes off in wild flight.
  33. 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.
  34. Smile
    A relentlessly somber, precision-tooled picture whose frights only reinforce the wit of its premise, Smile turns our most recognizable sign of pleasure into a terrifying rictus of pain.
  35. The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer
    It is all reminiscent of some of those gay, galvanic larks that Gregory LaCava and Leo McCarey used to make ten or more years ago. And a higher recommendation we can't give to a light summer show.
  36. Sidewalk Stories
    Even more impressive than the tact, warmth and humor of Sidewalk Stories is the fact that it exists at all. Mr. Lane has flown quite fearlessly in the face of fashion, and done this so confidently that any comparisons with Chaplin deserve to be appreciative.
  37. Ennio
    One of the movie’s nice surprises is that Morricone turns out to be a total charmer, a low-key showman with a demure gaze that he works like a vamp and an impish smile that routinely punctuates one of his anecdotes.
  38. Les Misérables
    However turbulent its narrative, this Les Miserables unfolds in a comforting style, serious and intelligent in ways that seem much too quaint today. The essence of Hugo's morality tale remains pure, and so does the value of a vigorous, gripping story, straightforwardly told.
  39. Slam
    What Slam possesses is real passion, and that is in short supply in movies these days.
  40. Run Silent Run Deep
    A better film about war beneath the ocean and about guys in the "silent service" has not been made.
  41. Aftershock
    Aftershock is a moving ode to Black families in a society where too many forces work to tear them apart.
  42. A Dark, Dark Man
    The mystery aspect is handled obliquely. The film is more of a mood piece, and much of its pitch-black humor derives from the contrast between the barren landscape and the sheer number of horrors it contains.
  43. Ivanhoe
    Production of this picture in England endowed it with a rich, distinctive air. It is a grand picture, told in what Sir Walter himself called his "big bow-wow style."
  44. 2 Days in the Valley
    Two Days in the Valley lacks the humanity of ''Short Cuts'' or the edgy hipness of ''Pulp Fiction,'' but it is still a sleek, amusingly nasty screen debut by a film maker whose television credits include an Amy Fisher docudrama.
  45. Stay on Board: The Leo Baker Story
    This is a candid look at one person’s experience with coming out, a humane document that shows the bravery and resilience of queer people who seek relief from the categories that are imposed on them.
  46. Sanctuary
    The writing (by Micah Bloomberg, a creator of the 2018-20 TV series “Homecoming”) is so sharp, the acting so agile and the cinematography (by Ludovica Isidori) so inventive that what could have been a stuffy experiment in lockdown filmmaking is instead a vividly involving battle of wills.
  47. The Blue Caftan
    Touzani’s film becomes an ode to the many kinds of love that persist, even in an unforgiving world.
  48. The Swan Princess
    Loosely based on the legend that inspired "Swan Lake," and blatantly borrowing the formula of Disney's "Beauty and the Beast," this animated musical turns out to be funny and enchanting on its own. Directed by Richard Rich, who started an animation company after 14 years at Disney, "The Swan Princess" makes first-rate copying seem like a good idea.
  49. Mulholland Falls
    Mulholland Falls is so well cast and relentlessly stylish (thanks to some fine technical talent assembled here) that its sheer energy prevails over its shaky plot.
  50. Piaffe
    Its experimental style, marked by long, dialogue-free stretches, color flares and pristine sound effects, can seem calculated and off-putting, the narrative slight and dramatically slack. Yet the film’s provocations have a playfulness and generosity that are enormously appealing.
  51. The Rugrats Movie
    The pleasant surprise is that the film is a delight.
  52. Alienoid
    The movie is bursting at the seams, as if Choi, in his first outing since the 2015 historical action drama “Assassination,” was drunk on pure filmmaking pleasure and threw every cinematic genre into a gigantic blender.
  53. Katrina Babies
    Katrina Babies is deeply personal and thoughtfully political.
  54. A Couple
    Even at 63 minutes, A Couple is not an easy sit. It took me three viewings before I was able to become absorbed in it — to settle into the rhythms of Boutefeu’s performance, to find the monologues less monotonous, to admire the beauty of the garden that Wiseman uses so calmingly to counterpoint the anger of Sophia’s words.
  55. Dead for A Dollar
    It’s solidly and proudly a B picture, as the Boetticher dedication makes clear. But in an age of blockbuster bloat and streaming cynicism, a solid B movie — efficiently shot (by Lloyd Ahern II) and effectively acted (by everyone) is something of a miracle. Hill had a job to do. He did it. That’s worth something.
  56. Enola Holmes 2
    This time around, the director Harry Bradbeer and the screenwriter Jack Thorne forgo prolonged dialogue when Enola breaks the fourth wall, making more room for Brown’s intense looks and physical gestures to resonate.
  57. Operation Crossbow
    It is a grandly engrossing and exciting melodrama of wartime espionage, done with stunning documentary touches in a tight, tense, heroic story line.
  58. 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.
  59. Louis Armstrong's Black & Blues
    The film is a trove of Armstrong’s love of music and his labor. And because so many of those who lend their insights are now departed, it has the feel of a mausoleum worthy of a humble yet celebratory “Saints Go Marching In” second line.
  60. Significant Other
    Significant Other does not reinvent the genre, but its narrative flourishes make for an exciting outing.
  61. Waterloo Bridge
    Miss Leigh shapes the role of the girl with such superb comprehension, progresses from the innocent, fragile dancer to an empty, bedizened street-walker with such surety of characterization and creates a person of such appealing naturalness that the picture gains considerable substance as a result.
  62. The Lost King
    Though raising serious questions about the way history is written, and by whom, The Lost King isn’t a polemic, or even a biopic. It’s a quietly droll detective story, a warm portrait of a woman who lost her health and found her purpose, exhuming her self-respect along with Richard’s bones.
  63. Dreamin' Wild
    While it can occasionally seem as though Pohlad is eking out conflict to support a narrative, the film’s restraint ultimately works in its favor, offering a thoughtful meditation on music, creativity and what it really means for talent to be “overlooked.”
  64. Carmen
    Writer and director Valerie Buhagiar makes the wise decision to orient her film toward what’s pleasurable rather than what’s logical. The Maltese countryside sparkles in the sunlight, and McElhone delights with a charming and slightly loopy performance as the irreverent spiritual leader.
  65. They Cloned Tyrone
    Even when the dialogue runs long and the film’s frights offer less terror than you’d want in a sci-fi-mystery flick, an inspired Foxx, a subversive Parris, and a ruthless yet melancholic Boyega, who shoulders the bulk of the dramatic weight, retrofit common stereotypes of urban Black life into the rich, dynamic humanism of its reality.
  66. Sr.
    The details of how the father cleaned up, became a caregiver to his terminally ill second wife and tried to help his son are terribly moving.
  67. Miracle in Milan
    Although it is questionable whether this picture has the simple, universal appeal of an old Chaplin film, for instance, or whether its meanings are as sharp as some may think, it is certainly a lively entertainment and should be a subject of discussion for months to come.
  68. La Ronde
    The performers are as seductive as the script. It's quite an affaire.
  69. Scarlet
    One of the attractions of Scarlet is that it doesn’t fit obvious categorization, which means that you’re not always sure where it’s headed or why. The vibe is by turns sober, warm, melancholic and playful to the point of near-silliness.
  70. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
    It probes how the act of co-opting idealisms and converting them to dogmas has occurred many times over. What’s more, it points directly at the immense danger of romanticizing the past, imagining that if we could only reclaim and reframe and resurrect history, our present problems would be solved.
  71. Duel
    Mr. Spielberg's 1971 television film Duel took advantage of the very narrowness of its premise, building excitement from the most minimal ingredients and the simplest of situations.
  72. Sisters
    A good, substantial horror film with such a sense of humor that it never can quite achieve the solemnly repellent peaks of Roman Polanski's "Repulsion."
  73. Nil by Mouth
    Even for American audiences used to the argot of Mike Leigh films, the accents are thick here and the characters impenetrable at first. But it isn't long before the film begins exerting a powerful hold, once the hard edges of its story begin to emerge.
  74. Personality Crisis: One Night Only
    A first-rate raconteur, Johansen — wearing a pompadour, sunglasses and bespoke suit — brings the funk. The storied Café Carlyle delivers the chic.
  75. Stutz
    A film that skillfully navigates vulnerability, brainy insights and artistry.
  76. The Fortune
    It's a marvelous attempt to recreate a kind of farce that, with the notable exceptions of a handful of films by Blake Edwards and Billy Wilder, disappeared after World War II.
  77. Retrograde
    The shrewdly observant film sticks with one Afghan general, Sami Sadat, to tell an emotional story that feels as significant as any analysis of troop numbers.
  78. The Long Good Friday
    The Long Good Friday charts a perilous course through a world of powerful people, ghastly acts of vengeance and ominously shifting fortunes.
  79. The Blackening
    The Blackening comes with a horror movie’s requisite skittish and stalking camerawork, its creaks and breath-holding hushes, its gore and payback. But it is the friends’ flee, fight, freeze — or throw under the bus — banter that makes the film provocative fun.
  80. Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power
    The power of the collective, more so than any individuals, is the focus here. The film is anchored with the arresting faces of Lowndes locals and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee organizers, who recall a range of stirring details — from setting up camp in a house with no running water to internal debates over the term “Black power.”
  81. Blanquita
    Unfolding like a David Fincheresque procedural and doused in gloomy grays and blues, the film, by the writer and director Fernando Guzzoni, may seem provocative to some in the context of #MeToo and its popular mantra to “believe women.”
    • 95 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sunrise
    Mr. Murnau shows himself to be an artist in camera studies, bringing forth marvelous results from lights, shadows and settings. He also proves himself to be a true story teller, and, incidentally, here is a narrative wherein the happy ending is welcome.
  83. Nelly & Nadine
    The film is moving for the intimacy it depicts, an archive as unlikely as the love story itself.
  84. January 6th
    The film does not offer any particularly new insights, but witnessing the events of Jan. 6 this way — as a matter-of-fact, two-and-a-half-hour montage that seems to occur at once in slow motion and with shocking speed — creates a terror that is perhaps newly visceral and sustained.
  85. Late Spring (1949)
    Ozu's recognition of the wall of skin separating the mind of the character from the viewer is an integral part of his philosophy. It amounts to a profound respect for their privacy, for the mystery of their emotions. Because of this—not in spite of this—his films, of which Late Spring is one of the finest, are so moving.
  86. Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie
    While this documentary draws on a standard tool kit of re-enactments and archival material, its best device is to use clips of Fox’s own movies as a counterpoint to his words, as if Fox weren’t playing fictional characters, but himself.
  87. The Outwaters
    The Outwaters conjures a swoony, dreamlike atmosphere that heightens the shocks to come.
  88. Past Lives
    The movie’s modesty — its intimacy, human scale, humble locations and lack of visual oomph — is one of its strengths.
  89. Flora and Son
    This is Carney’s saltiest ode to creative expression — and, peculiarly, his most relatable.
  90. Theater Camp
    Clearly, the actors feel their characters in their bones.
  91. Talk to Me
    By choosing simplicity over specifics, the filmmakers free themselves from the weight of words and open up space for a mood of intense disquiet and unusual sensitivity.
  92. The Disappearance of Shere Hite
    Nicole Newnham’s film recoups Hite’s story from the margins of feminist history with both style and substance, taking its cue from its subject.
  93. In My Mother's Skin
    True to classic folklore, this is a story that delivers fantasy and queasiness in equal measure.
  94. Full Time
    The film is a portrait of modern labor that moves with the breathless tension of a Safdie brothers’ joint. But instead of gangsters and cocaine, it finds a flurried momentum in one ordinary woman’s everyday obligations.
  95. Hannah Ha Ha
    Jordan Tetewsky and Joshua Pikovsky, the filmmaking duo who wrote and directed the movie, are natives of the semirural townships southwest of Boston, and their familiarity with the region and its people is what makes “Hannah Ha Ha” transcend — or, in many cases, take full advantage of — its shoestring budget.
  96. 3:10 to Yuma
    A good, lively script has been written by Halsted Welles, and sharp, business-like direction has been contributed by Delmer Daves.What's more, the whole thing is neatly acted.
  97. Biosphere
    I can say without hyperbole that there are conversations in this movie that I have never heard before (and refuse to spoil). Better, I can confirm that Brown — the straight man to Duplass’s comic relief — delivers his half with conviction.
  98. Punch
    Flowing and keenly observant of its characters and setting, Punch swings above its weight class.
  99. Judy Blume Forever
    Blume has always been an open book, despite the flurry of controversy around her. That may not make for the most exciting documentary, but it does make Blume herself even more endearing.
  100. Music
    Hope was never something that I associated with Schanelec’s typically dour films, yet here, from the darkness of a timeless tragedy emerges light.
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