The New York Times' Scores

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For 20,271 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: 9,377 out of 20271
  2. Mixed: 8,430 out of 20271
  3. Negative: 2,464 out of 20271
20271 movie reviews
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  1. Becoming Who I Was
    The filmmakers rarely delve into the spiritual aspects of the story, but that’s O.K. You don’t have to believe in Padma and Urgain’s religion to believe in them.
  2. Everything Else (Todo Lo Demás)
    A low-key character study whose gently repetitive rhythms mask an unusually keen sense of nuance and subtlety.
  3. Strangers on the Earth
    The sensations that Strangers on the Earth means to evoke are not well suited to the cinematic medium, at least not to a documentary that barely runs more than an hour and a half.
  4. Overboard
    None of the proceedings are sidesplittingly funny, but they grow increasingly sweet-natured. The most remarkable aspect of this movie is its perhaps unwitting gentleness.
  5. The Guardians
    The Guardians is a historical drama that doesn’t lose itself in decorative period detail, a beautifully photographed chronicle of rural existence that refrains from picturesque sentimentality and grinding misery, the usual modes for this kind of film.
  6. The Desert Bride
    A road movie of sorts, it steers clear of melodrama or sentimentality, but it also never risks hitting anything.
  7. Racer and the Jailbird
    The two leads are sensational, but the movie, drained of its life force and stuffed with confusing plot complications — like a shoehorned-in undercover agent and some mysterious Albanians — never recovers.
  8. RBG
    Directed by Betsy West and Julie Cohen, the film is a jaunty assemblage of interviews, public appearances and archival material, organized to illuminate its subject’s temperament and her accomplishments so far.
  9. Angels Wear White
    The moral rot and callous corruption depicted in Angels Wear White has a particularly bracing effect in part because, cultural specifics aside, the inhumanity on display is hardly alien.
  10. Son of Bigfoot
    The Son of Bigfoot, an English-language production from Belgium, more or less does what it sets out to do, which is to offer enough visual activity and bromides to keep the very young interested. To all others: There is no Bigfoot; there’s nothing to see here.
  11. Ray Meets Helen
    Ray Meets Helen has a wistful, whimsical sophistication that has all but disappeared from movies. Filled with imaginative visuals populated by the ghosts of the gone and hopes for the future, the movie is wonderfully, magically humane.
  12. The Cleanse
    The Cleanse” embarks on an allegorical journey with only the vaguest notion of a destination. As a result, the movie feels frustratingly repetitive — a single joke repeated ad nauseam.
  13. The 12th Man
    The reward of Mr. Zwart’s attention to the unique details of this historical account is that Jan’s path to safety frequently shocks, offering scenes of defiance that are unfamiliar or unexpected. In a familiar genre, The 12th Man preserves the element of surprise by understanding its terrain.
  14. Tully
    Tully isn’t really interested in the sustaining joys of female bonding. It has a message to deliver, which is as sincere and decent as it is obvious: Mothers need help, sometimes serious help. Which is why it’s strange that as Marlo very visibly sinks into postpartum depression — you can see Ms. Theron pulling Marlo deeper and deeper inside — the movie pretends that her burden is somehow too hidden for anyone to notice.
  15. Bad Samaritan
    The Bad Samaritan director, Dean Devlin, handles the proceedings like Adrian Lyne (who directed “Fatal Attraction”) on HGH supplements (and divested of over a third of Mr. Lyne’s visual elegance, such as it is).
  16. Cold Water (1994)
    Mr. Assayas succeeded in making a young person’s film when he was on the cusp of turning 40. He has said that he wanted Cold Water to feel like a movie from 1972. It doesn’t really, but, perhaps more remarkably, it’s so fresh it could have been made now.
  17. Duck Butter
    [Ms. Shawkat] and Mr. Arteta, a sensitive observer of life’s everyday churn (his credits include “Beatriz at Dinner”), do some lovely work in a movie that reminds you that sometimes all you need in realist fiction is a glimpse into another person’s being — but with heart and intelligence, good craft and technique.
  18. The Rachel Divide
    Basic sympathy is where the usefulness of The Rachel Divide ends. Ms. Brownson hasn’t figured out how to construct a movie around a figure who essentially owes her fame to the obfuscation of her past. Anything Ms. Dolezal says has to be taken with such a large grain of salt that it’s not clear why it’s worth listening.
  19. The Test & The Art of Thinking
    It’s a film that doggedly questions an exam that affects the futures of millions and feeds the fortunes of several big industries. Someone else — the schools — needs to supply some good answers.
  20. The Escape of Prisoner 614
    A pastiche of western tropes too tongue-in-cheek to sell its dramatic intentions, but just sincere enough to smother any intimations of parody, The Escape of Prisoner 614 never commits to a consistent tone. Or even a consistent setting, really.
  21. Modern Life Is Rubbish
    Britpop is a musical genre I had neutral feelings toward before sitting through Modern Life Is Rubbish, a uselessly nostalgic movie named after Blur’s 1993 album. After it, I wondered whether I had been too generous.
  22. The House of Tomorrow
    Working from Peter Bognanni’s 2010 novel, the writer and director, Peter Livolsi, has created a painfully quirky tale that’s so contrived you can almost hear the gears of the plot grinding.
  23. Love & Bananas
    This film is, in many respects, a plain picture, but also a cleareyed, direct, fat-free one that has something to say and says it affectingly.
  24. In the Last Days of the City
    Whether In the Last Days of the City ultimately comes together as a feature is open to debate, but this is a film of beauty and skill.
  25. Rogers Park
    The screenwriter, Carlos Treviño, crafts frank dialogue and the director, Kyle Henry, films the scenes with an eye for the intimate, dividend-paying gesture. The superb actors, given opportunities to go for broke, make each one count, and make the movie worth watching.
  26. Supercon
    Supercon offers lip service to fan culture, yet it is difficult to imagine who would enjoy watching this ill-conceived satire. Directed by Zak Knutson, who also contributed to the screenplay, the movie is careless with its setting, callous toward its characters and crass about its audience.
  27. Kings
    The first English-language film from the Turkish-French director Deniz Gamze Ergüven (her 2015 movie “Mustang” was a foreign language Oscar nominee) is well-acted across the board, and contains more than a few outstanding, unpredictable scenes. But in tying its story to this particular moment in American history, the movie bites off more than it can coherently chew.
  28. Ava
    Lurching relentlessly from one conflict to another, the movie distills its emotions — and maintains its momentum — in conversations of remarkably controlled intensity.
  29. Mrs. Hyde
    Whenever the movie tries to say something insightful about racial integration — or education, or any number of issues — it backs off or bogs down. It’s so tonally and ideologically unfocused that its ideas just slip away.
  30. Let the Sunshine In
    Ms. Binoche, effortlessly charismatic and ruthlessly unvain, has no investment in the character’s likability. She and Ms. Denis could not care less what you think of her. Let the Sunshine In commits itself to taking Isabelle on her own terms. The challenge, for her and for the audience, is to figure out what those terms are.
  31. Disobedience
    The director Sebastián Lelio should have been a good fit for this story if only because of the sensitivity he’s brought to female-driven movies like “Gloria.” Although Disobedience seems to offer him similar material — female desire up against the patriarchy — it defeats him.
  32. Avengers: Infinity War
    Where you end up may not be where you thought this was going. The final act, including the post-credits sting (to infinity and beyond, as it were) brings a chill, a darkness and a hush that represent something new in this universe.
  33. I Feel Pretty
    Amy Schumer puts out so much energy in I Feel Pretty that it’s hard not to feel charged up, too. The movie is seriously suboptimal, but she is such a force for good — for comedy, for women — and the laughs land often enough that you can go, if somewhat begrudgingly, with the messy flow.
  34. Kodachrome
    If this earnest and forgettable road movie represents a meaningful tribute to taking pictures, we ought to go back to cave drawing.
  35. Ghost Stories
    Managing to feel at once painfully slow and bafflingly truncated, this creaky triptych of not-so-scary tales is a tame curiosity of movie nostalgia.
  36. Little Pink House
    Palely photographed and anchored by a quiet, rather weary performance from Ms. Keener, Little Pink House is a peculiarly enervated affair. The structure is choppy, and there are odd moments of tonal dissonance.
  37. The Devil and Father Amorth
    If this documentary celebrates a crackpot, Mr. Friedkin is his match. The director’s blabbermouth tendencies and wry manner make him an enjoyable M.C.
  38. After Auschwitz
    Jon Kean, the director, chose the material wisely and doesn’t shy from severe images. He and his team also have good ears for anecdotes.
  39. Beyond the Clouds
    Persistent sentimentality — manifested most in the music score by A.R. Rahman — undercuts Beyond the Clouds at almost every turn.
  40. Super Troopers 2
    The antics never out-and-out surprise, but they almost never fail to amuse.
  41. Lou Andreas-Salomé, The Audacity to be Free
    Throughout, the writer and director Cordula Kablitz-Post asserts Andreas-Salomé’s commitment to her own independence. But Ms. Kablitz-Post’s focus on Andreas-Salomé’s suitors has the effect of chaining the early feminist’s legacy to exactly the patriarchal conventions she claims to reject.
  42. Godard Mon Amour
    For hard-core Godardians, Godard Mon Amour will be an indispensable hate-watch. For the Godard-ambivalent, the critical outrage of the partisans will provide its own kind of amusement. But you don’t need to have strong feelings about Godard to notice the off flavors in this airy, brightly colored macaron.
  43. This Is Our Land
    The drama is well-paced, and all of the actors are wonderful. Mr. Dussollier, a regular presence in the late works of Alain Resnais, is resourceful in communicating Berthier’s disturbing dual nature, and Ms. Dequenne remains appealing even when her character is making the most grievously ill-advised choices.
  44. The Judge
    Though voices both welcoming and hostile to women judges are represented, Ms. al-Faqih’s likely Sisyphean battle to reach her position feels insufficiently underlined.
  45. Zama
    Ms. Martel is exploring the past, how we got here and why, but she is more interested in relations of power than in individual psychological portraits. The monstrous must be humanized to be understood, which doesn’t mean it deserves our tears.
  46. The Broken Tower
    Despite earnest attempts, Mr. Franco can’t bring the fervency of Crane’s poetry to life in the extensive recitations.
  47. Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc
    “Jeannette” throws the modern back at the medieval, making no distinction between religious ecstasy and that experienced in certain contemporary contexts of music and ritual. It’s a provocative proposition that yields a film of genuine spiritual dimension.
  48. Wildling
    This creature feature from the director Fritz Böhm is functional but lacks flavor, an imaginative spark that might distinguish it from any number of other I-was-a-teenage-monster movies.
  49. Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami
    The relief of Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami is that it seeks to square the person with the provocateuse. The documentary is a feat of portraiture and a restoration of humanity. It’s got the uncanny, the sublime, and, in many spots, a combination of both.
  50. Aardvark
    Mr. Shoaf wastes an excellent cast (and one cute aardvark — you knew there’d be one) in a movie of astonishing vacancy.
  51. Krystal
    At 93 minutes Krystal feels chaotic and thin, like a pilot that was also forced to be a series finale.
  52. Submergence
    The movie feints in the direction of confronting horrific geopolitical realities, but there’s a specter of sentimentality hovering above the proceedings, waiting to smother everything in sight.
  53. Come Sunday
    While Marcus Hinchey’s screenplay is occasionally too blunt, Come Sunday accords sympathetic moments to all its characters — a strategy that gives this chronicle of religious convictions a conviction of its own.
  54. An Ordinary Man
    A head-scratcher that ends with a shoulder-shrug, An Ordinary Man feels like a scene-study exercise in which two actors invest full measures in a script that’s only half finished.
  55. Sgt. Stubby: An American Hero
    The director, Richard Lanni, whose biography also cites work as a battlefield tour guide, manages a fair amount of wit, particularly with a postcard montage of Stubby’s first trip to Paris.
  56. Blumhouse's Truth or Dare
    Truth or Dare is a wearying slog through crushed feelings and mangled bodies.
  57. Borg vs. McEnroe
    Nothing too grand or grave is at stake here. No special cultural or historical importance can be derived from the Borg-McEnroe battle, but sports don’t always carry that kind of significance. Borg vs. McEnroe is a modest, tactful movie about two guys who, at their peak, were neither.
  58. The Rider
    Ms. Zhao’s commitment to her craft — she knows how to take care and when to take risks — matches Brady’s. She has an eye for landscape and an acute sensitivity to the nuances of storytelling, a bold, exacting vision that makes The Rider exceptional among recent American regional-realist films.
  59. Rampage
    You know what might make an intriguing, revealing movie? The story of how, over 30 years after its debut, a relatively innocent arcade game starring a giant ape and other oversize beasts underwent a corporate transmogrification and became a turgid, logy sci-fi/action blockbuster.
  60. Hitler's Hollywood
    The most charged implication of Hitler’s Hollywood is that artistry enabled the Third Reich.
  61. Beirut
    Mr. Hamm certainly makes it easy to care for Mason and all that he signifies, and it’s a pleasure to watch him just silently nurse another drink, a lifetime of regret weighing on him. Yet as Mason sits alone, the shadows closing around him, you also catch sight of a character whose past — including a cozy association with Henry Kissinger — suggests a tougher, harder and more interesting movie than the one you are watching.
  62. Where Is Kyra?
    As a statement about the economic insecurity inherent in American capitalism, Where Is Kyra? has grim power.
  63. Sweet Country
    The director Warwick Thornton constructs a searing indictment of frontier racism as remarkable for its sonic restraint as its visual expansiveness.
  64. Blockers
    It features a casually diverse cast and is openly, at times dutifully, feminist, with you-go-girl speeches that sound as if everyone involved had tried too hard to be decent. Funny and enlightened would have been better.
  65. ACORN and the Firestorm
    Although the documentary makes clear how some accusations proved false or overblown, perhaps its biggest flaw is that it’s too eager to hand-wave any actual mistakes that Acorn made.
  66. The Heart of Nuba
    The film is worth seeing because it’s a moving and remarkable story and it represents a great cause. Mr. Carlson often puts a directorial foot wrong.
  67. Good Luck
    Both halves feature breathtaking camera work.
  68. The Endless
    The Endless rewards patience with mind-bending twists and turns.
  69. Lean on Pete
    There’s almost a cosmic dimension to some of the most beautiful passages, as if the world (call it nature or God or sensitive direction) were holding Charley in its embrace.
  70. Big Fish & Begonia
    Never short on visual or emotional wonder, Big Fish & Begonia contemplates mortality with the imagination of an old soul who has been given new eyes.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Spinning Man
    A few moody flashbacks and daydreams are presumably intended to add to the noirish sense of uncertainty and unease, but instead of intensifying the mystery, they dissipate it.
  72. The Miracle Season
    That The Miracle Season is based on a true story makes it tough to endure and to review, because it’s no pleasure to report that filmmakers have turned real-life tragedy and tenacity into a manipulative weepie.
  73. All the Cities of the North
    It can be tough to say whether the movie is productively or arbitrarily baffling, but it is never boring, and it achieves a balance between natural flow and purposefulness that suits its subject matter.
  74. Chappaquiddick
    Whether or not events actually unfolded this way, the story the film tells is an interesting and complicated character study, with something to say about the corrosive effects of power and privilege on both the innocent and the guilty.
  75. A Quiet Place
    In its convincing portrayal of a situation where a rusty nail is as lethal as an unexploded bomb, and the few remaining inhabitants seem — much like the audience — more likely to die of stress than anything else, the movie rocks. You may go in jaded, but you’ll leave elated or I’ll eat my words.
  76. You Were Never Really Here
    The gravity and force of Mr. Phoenix’s performance and Ms. Ramsay’s direction are impressive, but it’s hard not to feel that their talents have been misapplied, and that there is less to the movie than meets the eye.
  77. Tyler Perry's Acrimony
    Ms. Henson does what she can with a role that keeps her anger at a low simmer until requiring her to go full banshee within basically one scene. You can’t accuse her or Acrimony of being boring, but the film falls short of a design for living.
  78. Gemini
    What really interests Mr. Katz here are movies — the fingerprints of directors like Robert Altman, David Lynch, Michael Mann and Sean Baker are all on Gemini — and how they have shaped Los Angeles, or at least our ideas about it.
  79. Wilde Salomé
    Wilde Salomé is most fascinating as a portrait of a superstar actor who, for all his wealth and privilege, encounters unusual frustrations as he pursues genuine artistic ambitions.
  80. Salomé
    The concentration of the performers and the power of Wilde’s unusually baroque, even for him, language (he originally composed the play in French, as it happens) makes for some mesmerizing scenes.
  81. Caught
    Underwritten and a smidge too long, Caught is marred by an over-excited musical score that browbeats where it should tease. Yet the movie’s bleak and brutal tone works, as does the visitors’ bizarrely unstable behavior.
  82. Love After Love
    Elegantly shot on film by Chris Teague, the movie feels unforced and at times shockingly authentic, allowing its emotions to percolate and rise of their own volition.
  83. Finding Your Feet
    Watching it demands little effort. Evict your inner cynic and enjoying it should demand even less.
  84. The Last Movie Star
    The director Adam Rifkin wrote this showcase for Mr. Reynolds, who, like Vic, was a college football player. The Last Movie Star effectively allows the ever-assured actor to score a touchdown on an empty field.
  85. All I Wish
    Both sartorially and cinematically, the seasoned star at the heart of All I Wish deserves a movie with more to offer than knockoff style.
  86. Outside In
    In a movie whose greatest tension comes from wondering whether Chris will violate his parole by drinking a beer, the actors need to be compelling. Easily clearing that bar, Ms. Falco gives Carol a gentle kindness and the emotional intelligence to transform Chris’s ardor into a catalyst.
  87. The China Hustle
    In the case of The China Hustle, a documentary may simply be the wrong delivery mechanism for a byzantine exposé that cries out for detailed news reporting.
  88. The Gardener
    Overall The Gardener is flat and lacking in soul, a word that comes up many times in the movie.
  89. Personal Problems (1980)
    This is a work that looks as if it were evolving even as portions of it were completed. That’s entirely appropriate. For all its rough edges, Personal Problems retains a vitality and an integrity that practically bounds off the screen.
  90. After Louie
    Some stronger filmmaking would be welcome, sure, but After Louie has an honesty that’s often just as valuable.
  91. Ready Player One
    Mr. Spielberg, a digital enthusiast and an old-school cineaste, goes further than most filmmakers in exploring the aesthetic possibilities of a form that is frequently dismissed and misunderstood.
  92. Midnight Sun
    Under the limp direction of Scott Speer, Midnight Sun suffocates its sentimental script, portraying passion without wonder, sacrifice without ecstasy.
  93. Game Over, Man!
    This almost laugh-free comedy, a Netflix Original directed by Kyle Newacheck, is distinguished by a relentless level of outrageous yet strangely listless vulgarity.
  94. Sherlock Gnomes
    Sherlock Gnomes offers more variety than its predecessor. Although still laced with glib pop culture references (wow, a skinny latte) and scored with Elton John tunes in a way that plays like a concession to adults, it has occasional fun ideas, such as rendering the inner workings of Holmes’s mind in hand-drawn black and white.
  95. Summer in the Forest
    Summer in the Forest is an extraordinarily tender documentary that asks what it means to be human. Here, even the most gentle scenes raise mighty questions.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Workshop
    It’s a measure of this film’s stealthy brilliance that it blurs the line between empathy and exploitation.
  97. A Bag of Marbles
    Despite the hardships endured by the characters, nearly every shot seems dappled with nostalgia. The music score is sentimental, with shimmering pianos and trembling strings. But the writing and its attendant characterizations have an undeniable integrity, the particular historical detail offered by the story is not common in films about this era, and the lead performers are moving.
  98. Back to Burgundy
    Mr. Klapisch lingers his camera lovingly over shots of grapes being harvested and stomped, all the while employing story mechanics and flashbacks indelicate enough to suggest the churn of a factory juicer.
  99. What We Started
    What We Started appears to have been conceived with contradictory audiences in mind. On one hand, it tries to present an accessible history of electronic music, starting with its outgrowth from disco, house and techno and continuing through its commercialization and fusion with pop. On the other hand, a subcultural cliquishness creeps into the movie.
  100. Ismael's Ghosts
    As is customary in Mr. Desplechin’s work, there’s a lot of dialogue in Ismael’s Ghosts, but this movie’s nerve endings vibrate most avidly and tenderly in scenes where not a word is spoken.
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