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. Perpetrator
    Screwy and strange, Perpetrator is gleefully unsubtle, but its ensanguinated excess is part of the fun.
  2. The Shadowless Tower
    This movie opens itself to you with its feeling for people, its grace notes and a few bravura moments that close the distance between characters beautifully.
  3. Hello Dankness
    Hello Dankness belongs to a venerable underground-film tradition of treating refracted entertainment as a mirror for society. No fan of Ken Jacobs’s “Star Spangled to Death,” Richard Kelly’s “Southland Tales” or Joe Dante’s “The Movie Orgy” could help but smile.
  4. Split at the Root
    Split at the Root is a powerful lens into the emotional plight of the thousands of immigrants who cross the border into the United States, the danger they are fleeing and the people trying to help them.
  5. Reggie
    Even as this movie goes deep on still vital topics, it doesn’t skimp on baseball dish.
  6. Chang Can Dunk
    A funny and thoughtful high school comedy.
  7. Late Night with the Devil
    The result is a nasty and delicious, unapologetic pastiche with a flair for menace. I had a blast.
  8. Nam June Paik: Moon Is the Oldest TV
    Paik is undeniable, creating despite lean times (and slowing after a 1996 stroke).
  9. A Lion Is in the Streets
    A headlong and dynamic drama about a back-country champion of the poor who permits his political ambitions to pull him down a perilously crooked road.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Rachel, Rachel
    Rachel, Rachel...is a real Movie movie, a little sappy at moments, but the best written, most seriously acted American movie in a long time.
  11. The Strawberry Blonde
    Its amiable, infectious quality lies in the seriocomic way it re-creates the Eighteen Nineties culture of New York — horse-and-buggy courtships, dancing at beer gardens, Sunday afternoon street music and maybe an occasional brawl.
  12. The Lavender Hill Mob
    Except for a couple of places, there is no hilarity in The Lavender Hill Mob. But its humors are so ingenious and persistent that it is one big chuckle from beginning to end.
  13. Twilight
    It’s a style so minimalist, it approaches maximalism — and this combination of pulp and precision creates an arresting and unique work of film noir.
  14. The Oak
    Though Nela's is a spiritual journey, Mr. Pintilie dramatizes it in the bitter ways of social satire. The movie has the tempo of cabaret theater. It is wildly grotesque, shocking and sometimes very funny. The details are vivid.
  15. The Edge
    There's no need to worry that Mamet is on foreign territory with this action premise. The Edge succeeds ably in blending his famously acerbic dialogue with nerve-racking adventure scenes.
  16. Nuclear Now
    The film’s aversion to formal or rhetorical bombast as it discusses scientists’ hopes for a better future is its own balm. We’re staring down catastrophe, Stone explains matter-of-factly, but our greatest tool is already in our grasp.
  17. It Ain't Over
    A lively, engaging and moving documentary.
  18. Victim/Suspect
    The film, which examines cases in which sexual assault survivors are charged with false reporting, is the rare entry whose revelations feel cogent, earned and memorable.
  19. I Used to Be Funny
    The perceptive dramedy I Used to Be Funny features a mic-drop performance by Rachel Sennott as a rising stand-up comedian derailed by a vague, internet-viral crime.
  20. The Snake Pit
    The Snake Pit, while frankly quite disturbing, and not recommended for the weak, is a mature emotional drama on a rare and pregnant theme.
  21. Museum of the Revolution
    This is an engrossing documentary, and one that raises questions about the ethics of intervening (or not) in the lives of people struggling to get by. That these queries hover unresolved may leave viewers uneasy, but it also positions us alongside the subjects, waiting for a solution that’s yet to arrive.
  22. Youth (Spring)
    While the running time may be indulgent, the experience of feeling trapped in this world is difficult to shake.
  23. Tiger Stripes
    Occasionally the movie feels like it’s lost its direction, stuffing a little too much into its story and deflating the ferocity of its central metaphor. But there’s a great sense of humor in Tiger Stripes, particularly in Zairizal’s impish performance, and the swing between fear and hilarity make for an engrossing ride.
  24. Exodus
    A dazzling, eye-filling, nerve-tingling display of a wide variety of individual and mass reactions to awesome challenges and, in some of its sharpest personal details, a fine reflection of experience that rips the heart.
  25. The Animal Kingdom
    Narrative ambiguity can be fruitful but also a cop-out, as too many would-be art films tediously demonstrate. Here, though, the movie’s vagueness dovetails with both François’s and especially Émile’s confusion, and importantly, it also serves as a counterpoint to their unshakable love for Lana.
  26. The Scent of Green Papaya
    The Scent of the Green Papaya marks a luxuriant, visually seductive debut for Mr. Hung, whose film is often so wordlessly evocative that it barely needs dialogue. Reaching into the past for its precisely drawn memories, it casts a rich, delicate spell.
  27. National Velvet
    Indeed, in its simple comprehension of the faith and affection of youth it is likely more tender and affecting than even the story of Lassie was. And it certainly is more exciting in its vivid, dramatic display.
  28. A Woman Escapes
    [Campbell's] Audrey does nothing less than enact a kind of communion through voice and image.
  29. 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.
  30. Irma la Douce
    Mr. Lemmon is little short of brilliant — vigorous, incisive and deft.
  31. Sin La Habana
    Nabatian is sympathetic to all three characters and their lack of easy choices, and his eye for small cultural details and rituals. . . enforces how identity continues to shape their lives even as they’re far from home.
  32. The Eternal Memory
    An uncannily intimate portrait of a couple adapting their relationship to a disease that affects the mind, The Eternal Memory doesn’t aim to hold spectators’ hands.
  33. Wham!
    Nothing here’s overthought or pumped up. To invoke the words of a different beacon of catchiness, “Wham!” is a teenage dream. You could drink it from a coconut.
  34. Once Upon a Time in Uganda
    Once Upon a Time in Uganda reminds you how the art of moviemaking can make dreams real.
  35. Return to Dust
    China’s leadership has a history of suppressing art that spotlights the failings of its ruling class and ideology, which is exactly what Li’s film does, with a script that feels only occasionally overwritten. That he succeeds without making it feel like homework — which is to say beautifully, humanely — is presumably what made the film so threatening.
  36. Glitch: The Rise & Fall of HQ Trivia
    The documentary “Glitch” is slyer and smarter than some of its paint-by-numbers dramatized contemporaries, and the story it prefers to tell is more interesting and complex than the battle of two domineering egoists who came up with a novelty app.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Venture Bros.: Radiant Is the Blood of the Baboon Heart
    If we were never to see the Ventures again, “Radiant” lets us part with them on a high note, but hopefully this end is just the beginning.
  38. Lady Killer (Gueule d’Amour)
    Like other love stories of the period, Gueule d'Amour has a melodramatic surface, yet it hits a nerve in anyone who has ever spent too much time thinking about the wrong person.
  39. Blue Box
    The familial and personal tensions give it something extra, elevating it beyond the standard historical documentary.
  40. Aurora's Sunrise
    The film’s coherence is a reflection of both the skill of the filmmaker, and the heroic efforts of Aurora herself to ensure that her view of history would not be forgotten.
  41. The Plot Against Harry
    Behind the film's easygoing mood there is firm directorial control. This, together with Mr. Roemer's keen sense of personality and place and his wry humor, accounts for why The Plot Against Harry holds up so well.
  42. Marty
    Marty makes a warm and winning film, full of the sort of candid comment on plain, drab people that seldom reaches the screen.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Emitaï
    It is a cool, balanced, proportionate spirit, affectionate but unillusioned, and wonderfully suited to the intricacies (and the idiosyncracies) of the subject matter. Sembene does not grab you; he engages you.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wings
    Amazing air duels and an impressive study of aviators are depicted in Wings, Paramount's epic of the flying fighters of the World War.
  45. Winter Kills
    Winter Kills isn't exactly a comedy, but it's funny. And it isn't exactly serious, but it takes on the serious business of the Kennedy assassination.
  46. Sound of the Police
    If you need a refresher on what “systemic” looks like, these thinkers offer it.
  47. Nyad
    Diana wants our respect — and by the end of the movie, she’s earned it. While she’s one of the prickliest protagonists you’ll see this year, she’s so raw and earnest and apologetically herself that you adore her anyway — from the safe distance of the screen.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Time Limit
    What Time Limit has to say is sobering, important and exciting and, though its principals are caught in circumstances that are extraordinary, it meticulously arrives at terrible truths that are timeless and universal.
  49. The Promised Land
    It has sweep, romance, violence and spectacle, but what makes it finally work as well as it does is that it largely avoids the ennobling clichés that turn characters into ideals and movies into exercises in spurious nostalgia — well, that and Mads Mikkelsen.
  50. The Bikeriders
    Not much happens, but the people are beautiful and so too are their bikes, rumbling beasts that tribe members ride and ride on that familiar closed loop known as Nowheresville, U.S.A.
  51. The Mouse on the Moon
    Sensitive music by Mr. Pintoff and some wonderfully wry dialogue, subtly laced with motivations, top off this animated jewel.
  52. The Royal Hotel
    Inspired by Pete Gleeson’s 2016 documentary about two Finnish backpackers, “Hotel Coolgardie,” The Royal Hotel is after something more subtle than pure horror.
  53. The Burial
    Directed by Maggie Betts from a script she wrote with Doug Wright, The Burial develops into a lively courtroom drama with wide-ranging pertinence. Of course its two lead actors give the bravura performances you’d expect from them, but they don’t eat the scenery — they take the material seriously and invest in it with welcome nuance.
  54. Silver Dollar Road
    Amid the looming threats to a cherished home, Peck’s accomplishment is to let the Reels family own their emotional space.
  55. Dream Scenario
    Pondering the downside of notoriety and our willingness to exchange safety for fame, Dream Scenario is often funny and frequently surreal.
  56. Lee
    “Lee” feeds the desire to seek out more of her images. Winslet’s performance demands that we consider the force behind the camera.
  57. Sleep
    Yu’s direction is confident, and he manages to convey how a little apartment can transform from domestic comfort by day to claustrophobic agony by night. His restraint throughout keeps us guessing.
  58. Gasoline Rainbow
    There’s an uncommon sweetness to this film, which is less about running away from something and more about discovering the road of life is littered with goodness, if you know where to look.
  59. Hoard
    Though at times squirmingly unpleasant, Hoard is never a drag. The insolence of the filmmaking and the artlessness of the leads energize a plot of stunning recklessness and unexpected humor.
  60. Stopmotion
    The director and animator Robert Morgan has crafted a narratively slender, visually sophisticated first feature.
  61. American Symphony
    While some of the backstage material has an official feel (Batiste and Jaouad are listed among the many executive producers, along with Barack and Michelle Obama), the documentary does not shy from showing private moments.
  62. Inshallah a Boy
    Hawa, a Palestinian actress, is commanding as a woman whose future and faith are buffeted by her narrowing options.
  63. Fire Through Dry Grass
    The combination of firsthand footage with poetry makes for an intimate and raw film that gives a real sense of the confinement faced by the residents, some of whom compared the experience to previous jail stints.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Holiday Inn
    Mark Sandrich, director and producer, has taken the inevitable melange of plot and production numbers and so deftly pulled them together that one hardly knows where the story ends and a song begins—a neat trick if you can do it.
  65. Silent Night
    This is suspenseful and cathartic, and even the schmaltzy stuff is so distinctly John Woo that it’s welcome.
  66. What's Up, Doc?
    It has a soul of its own, which reflects the changes, for good and evil, in American life in the last 40 years.
  67. The Letter
    It is an evil tale, plotted with an eye to its torturing effects. And Mr. Wyler has directed the film along those lines. With infinite care, he has created the dark, humid atmosphere of the rubber country. At a slow, inexorable pace, he has accumulated the details.
  68. Concrete Utopia
    Smoothly shaping familiar genre tropes into a brutal study of class warfare and the stifling of pity, the director, Um Tae-hwa (who wrote the script with Lee Shin-ji), makes human kindness the first casualty of social disorder.
  69. Smoke Sauna Sisterhood
    Hints, whose grandmother introduced her to the smoke-sauna ritual, uses the documentary to speak volumes about what it means to be a woman, even as the focus remains fixed on a single location: a cramped sauna-cabin located in a forest.
  70. The Strangler (1970)
    It’s like “Peeping Tom” meets one of Dario Argento’s giallo joints, but slathered in a coat of melancholic malaise.
  71. In the Court of the Crimson King: King Crimson at 50
    Fripp, an endlessly thoughtful and meticulously articulate guitarist, is the group’s most tireless and paradoxical explainer in the film.
  72. Conclave
    With pomp and circumstance, miles of scarlet cloth and first-rate scene-stealers, the movie snakes through the marbled corridors of Vatican City, pauses in bedchambers as cold as mausoleums and tunnels into the deepest secrets of the human heart. It’s quite the journey, and as unpersuasive as it is entertaining.
  73. Nosferatu
    Setting aside some gratuitous jump scares, Eggers has now made a Dracula movie that’s more than an exercise, more than an assertion of talent. There’s a vision at work.
  74. Bad Press
    Landsberry-Baker and Peeler could linger more on details about the people involved instead of the horse-race suspense of vote counts. But who can blame them when freedom is in the balance, and as local media outlets dwindle nationally.
  75. Love Me
    The Zucheros bring a great deal of imagination to the task, and the sheer audacity of the movie is enough to make it worth watching, even if, at times, the gadgets’ sentimental education starts to feel repetitive.
  76. Good Grief
    Good Grief does that rare, beautiful thing: It trusts the audience to pay attention.
  77. The Actor
    Johnson and Stephen Cooney have shaped an unsettling, sorrowful journey from damage to a kind of deliverance.
  78. The Outrun
    The movie gets dangerously close to being overwrought. But Ronan’s restraint keeps it truthful, even when she’s screaming, or crying, or blacking out. In the end, it mostly aches, and aches, and aches.
  79. Queer
    [Lee] may have been Guadagnino-ized, and much about what makes him tick, his past and his art, remains obscured. Yet in Craig’s ravaged charisma you do see someone who’s ready to blow open other doors of perception.
  80. Union
    Union is as interested in intra-union disputes as it is in the fight writ large. But the external obstacles are clear as well.
  81. The First Omen
    The film revels in mashing up familiar genres: the monster movie, body horror and the Gothic church thriller. But it injects a revitalizing juice into the franchise — smartly edited and well paced, with a good cinematic eye.
  82. In the Shadow of Beirut
    The four stories are almost overwhelming to witness all packed together, but the mission to communicate them to a larger audience is admirable.
  83. Household Saints
    Household Saints, a warmhearted fable spiced with magic realism and zesty performances, may be the most endearing of multigenerational Italian American family sagas and is likely the most mystical.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Luther: Never Too Much
    The fulcrum of the film is heartbreak — ours, not his — that someone responsible for shaping the universal feeling of falling in love never experienced it himself.
  85. Stress Positions
    With shimmer, shadow and verve, Stress Positions . . . captures the often hallucinatory pandemonium wrought by that “long-ago” moment.
  86. War Game
    The first time I saw War Game, it shook me up; the second time, my visceral response was tempered by a skepticism about power that the movie doesn’t invite.
  87. Immaculate
    Immaculate doesn’t try to reinvent anything but instead cheerfully embraces the familiar, which is part of what makes the movie enjoyable.
  88. Tuesday
    Without much to distract from the three central characters, Tuesday can feel overlong and a little claustrophobic. Yet this compassionate fairy tale works because the actors are so in sync and the imagery — as in one shot of the bird curled like an apostrophe in a dead woman’s tear duct — is often magical.
  89. The Invisible Fight
    This political context is vital to appreciate the rebellion underneath Sarnet’s romp; otherwise, it’s easy to dismiss it as merely a goofy riff on the Shaw Brothers Studios’ landmark Hong Kong hit “The 36th Chamber of Shaolin,” which likewise followed a novice’s hard-earned spiritual and gymnastic growth. Of course, it is that, too.
  90. In the Summers
    Lacorazza’s deftness with actors, feel for the setting and aesthetic decisions — shooting in the snapshot-like 1.66-to-1 aspect ratio, or leaving the characters’ Spanish without subtitles — help the drama ring true.
  91. Bushman
    The jarring switch to documentary gives Bushman its added charge.
  92. Unfrosted
    The jokes spill forth so fast that there’s no time for the shtick to get soggy.
  93. Molli and Max in the Future
    Science fiction has become such a mainstay of lumbering franchises that it’s hard not to root for left-field small-scale twists on the genre like the fizzy, funny Molli and Max in the Future.
  94. Small Things Like These
    Murphy, fresh off his “Oppenheimer” Oscar win, is both producer and star of this film. His performance is unsurprisingly searing and nuanced, especially since Bill is not much of a talker.
  95. Dahomey
    Most interestingly, we listen in on young Beninese as they discuss the wider repercussions in an open forum. . . It’s a rich conversation that rapidly lays out the controversies and bigger issues at stake.
  96. Dandelion
    In the end, Dandelion feels like one artist’s emotional prequel, leaving us wishing for even more.
  97. Copa 71
    Copa 71 is engrossing, but it struck me that like another documentary about a forgotten moment in history — the Oscar-winning “Summer of Soul” (2021) — this movie reveals the power of recording history for future generations.
  98. Taking Venice
    It’s still fascinating to imagine a time, not all that long ago, in which painting, sculpture, jazz, literature and more were considered keys to the exporting of American influence around the world.
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