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. Darkest Hour
    Churchill’s resolve, like the bravery of the soldiers, airmen and ordinary Britons in “Dunkirk,” is offered not as a rebuke to the current generation, but rather as a sop, an easy and complacent fantasy of Imperial gumption and national unity.
  2. Mr. Roosevelt
    Ms. Wells is appealing onscreen and is a smart writer. She gives Emily some good zingers.
  3. The Man Who Invented Christmas
    Brightly lit and anchored by Mr. Stevens’s infectious, live-wire performance, the film, directed by Bharat Nalluri (“Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day”), nevertheless proceeds like a television holiday special, designed to distract children while winking at their parents.
  4. Coco
    If Coco doesn’t quite reach the highest level of Pixar masterpieces, it plays a time-tested tune with captivating originality and flair, and with roving, playful pop-culture erudition.
  5. Porto
    This first narrative feature from Gabe Klinger seduces with breathtakingly gorgeous visuals that feel both achingly nostalgic and elegantly modern. These often ravishing aesthetics and stylistic quirks act as soft restraints, keeping us watching despite a near-total absence of story and a thinly disguised attitude of male entitlement.
  6. Big Sonia
    Sonia is a powerful subject, but Big Sonia brings little perspective to her story.
  7. The Breadwinner
    In its alternating of Parvana’s day-to-day struggle with the tale she tells herself, the movie doesn’t promote bromides about stories and storytelling transcending reality. Rather, it demonstrates that the way imagination refracts reality can provide not only solace but also real-world strategy.
  8. On the Beach at Night Alone
    Ms. Kim is simultaneously an ordinary woman and a melodramatic heroine, her performance made more layered and intriguing by the intimation that she may be playing herself.
  9. Wonder
    Wonder is that rare thing, a family picture that moves and amuses while never overtly pandering.
  10. Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond — Featuring a Very Special, Contractually Obligated Mention of Tony Clifton
    The result isn’t another ho-hum documentary likeness in which all the elements neatly and often flatteringly stack up. “Jim & Andy” is instead a complexly layered and textured Cubist portrait, one that’s been constructed from fragments of its two title subjects and their work.
  11. Wet Woman in the Wind
    Genre homage or not, trashy, assault-coddling sexism is a turn off — and worse. Perhaps the “roman porno” reboot project should have rebooted its sexual politics before calling “action!”
  12. Sweet Virginia
    A twisty, small-town thriller that blooms in the shadows and shies from the light, “Sweet Virginia” marshals a relentlessly threatening mood from dangerous secrets and unpleasant surprises.
  13. Cook Off!
    The movie tries to do for amateur cooking contests what “Best in Show” did for dog competitions, but the strained folksiness and tired stereotypes couldn’t be further from the snap and wit of prime Christopher Guest.
  14. Roman J. Israel, Esq.
    It offers tonal whiplash for viewers, with several potentially great ideas that don’t settle into a coherent whole.
  15. Mudbound
    It’s a work of historical imagination that lands in the present with disquieting, illuminating force.
  16. 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.
  17. A Fantastic Woman
    Psychologically astute and socially aware as the film is, it is also infused with mystery and melodrama, with bright colors and emotional shadows.
  18. Justice League
    The story is a confusion of noise, visual clutter and murderous digital gnats, but every so often a glimmer of life flickers through.
  19. Song of Granite
    Mr. Collins doesn’t shed light on what makes his subject tick, and the arty shards never cohere.
  20. Hello Again
    The movie benefits from Austin Schmidt’s neon-infused cinematography and Annie Simeone’s lush production design. But Mr. LaChiusa’s songs largely fail to resonate here. Dramatic traction suffers, probably as a result of the many, and diffuse, vignettes. And yet this is a commendably audacious effort by Mr. Gustafson (“Were the World Mine”).
  21. Thelma
    Mr. Trier’s experimenting mostly works, especially when the genre pieces dovetail with his gifts and Thelma’s story.
  22. Daddy's Home 2
    If “Daddy’s Home” (2015) played like a distant, wayward cousin of “Step Brothers,” Daddy’s Home 2, again directed by Sean Anders, is the sort of relative you might disown.
  23. Window Horses
    At first, Rosie’s simplicity is jarring. But as the character learns more about her personal and poetic origins, her minimalist frame absorbs the weight of a rich, complex history. That transformation is the great pleasure of watching this small film.
  24. No Stone Unturned
    What Mr. Gibney uncovers is grave and shocking and could make a viewer concerned for the safety of the filmmaker. But its presentation is flawed.
  25. Mayhem
    The director, Joe Lynch, concocts an uneven blend of video game setups and corporate satire.
  26. Destination Unknown
    Ms. Ferguson’s film does not seem to have a particular organizing principle at first. These survivors do not necessarily know one another. But their stories, intercut with archival footage over a brisk and frequently harrowing 81 minutes, build to a pitch of horror and sadness that eventually allows for a note or two of hope to sound.
  27. Bitch
    As she did in her gentler but equally original “Good Dick” in 2008, Ms. Palka carves a black and biting niche between a man and a woman, a space where chaos and psychological unease demand to be reckoned with.
  28. I Remember You
    The Icelandic director Oskar Thor Axelsson is clearly fluent in horror conventions. But he has commendable restraint, and his latest film, I Remember You, transcends genre pyrotechnics even as it incorporates elements of Nordic noir.
  29. Intent to Destroy
    While there may be no completely dispassionate way to discuss its topic — the Armenian genocide — the film’s balance of emotion and composure helps make its stories even stronger.
  30. Flesh and Blood
    A dreary pileup of hard-luck monologues and run-down locations, Mark Webber’s Flesh and Blood straddles the line between fact and fiction with exhausting earnestness and a fatal dearth of narrative.
  31. Santa & Andrés
    Santa & Andrés begins as a film about separation and pain, but becomes a movie about reconciliation and healing.
  32. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
    Everything fits together too neatly in “Three Billboards,” even when chaos descends, but the performers add enough rough texture so that it doesn’t always feel so worked.
  33. Murder on the Orient Express
    Most radically, this is a Poirot with heart. This interpretation is a dumb idea, but Mr. Branagh, an actor of prodigious skills, can at least pull this one half off. It’s not the only dumb idea in this film, which nevertheless bounces along in a way that’s sometimes almost entertaining.
  34. A River Below
    The truth turns into a tangled mess in A River Below, a bold and urgent documentary whose seemingly straightforward story quickly runs awry.
  35. LBJ
    Directed by Rob Reiner from Joey Hartstone’s script, LBJ is a frustratingly underdeveloped vehicle for Mr. Harrelson’s talents as well as an unfortunate missed opportunity.
  36. Wait for Your Laugh
    Jason Wise’s documentary, which relies on re-enactments and backstage footage with sparing use of performances, is a love letter to the performer but not the business, in which she managed to achieve a measure of fame for nine decades, while still being overlooked. Her single-minded focus on work is presented as admirable but also something of a curse.
  37. Gilbert
    As an unlikely love story, this movie excels, presenting a relationship so affectionate and warm that it overwhelms the jokes.
  38. 11/8/16
    Considering all that’s been written and said over the last year, there’s not much new to learn from 11/8/16. But the film remains engaging for its stories, and is likely to be more instructive in the future, when passions have cooled. Judging by most people here, that won’t be soon.
  39. Last Flag Flying
    Even if Last Flag Flying isn’t quite persuasive, it is nonetheless enormously thought-provoking, and its roughness is a sign of how earnestly it grapples with matters that other movies about war prefer not to think about.
  40. Dream Boat
    Some of the tougher interviews suggest that Mr. Milewski would like Dream Boat to be more substantial, but that impulse is mostly kept at bay in favor of lighter scenes.
  41. No Dress Code Required
    No Dress Code Required chronicles the grudging advance of cultural change.
  42. It Happened in L.A.
    As a screenwriter, Ms. Morgan is nimble with glib conversation, and she is fearless at playing an often unlikable character. But this movie might only narrowly pass the Bechdel test, and mustering sympathy for Annette’s affluent, insular circle is difficult. The plot resolutions ultimately feel pat, and the conflicts, in retrospect, thin.
  43. Most Beautiful Island
    Dark corners of the immigrant experience in New York City, especially for women, are frighteningly dramatized in Ana Asensio’s suspense film Most Beautiful Island, a modest but effective writing-directing debut.
  44. My Friend Dahmer
    This film is sensitively wrought. It’s credible in its evocation of mid-’70s suburbia. The acting is excellent throughout, and Ross Lynch in the role of Dahmer elicits genuine sympathy for an increasingly lost but not yet monstrous soul. But in abandoning the subjective perspective of the graphic novel, My Friend Dahmer feels a little lacking in purpose.
  45. Along for the Ride
    As moving as Mr. de la Manitou’s testimony sometimes is, this movie too often feels like a credulity-straining attempt at hagiography.
  46. A Gray State
    There’s a morbid fascination inherent to documentaries like A Gray State, which is engrossing for the reasons it’s also unsatisfying: As Adam Shambour, a friend of Mr. Crowley’s, says, it’s a mystery that answers all the major questions except “Why?”
  47. A Bad Moms Christmas
    Add the magnificent Christine Baranski to the mix and A Bad Moms Christmas, while still a slog of base sight gags and lazy profanity, becomes marginally more bearable. Only marginally, given that this pitiful follow-up to last year’s “Bad Moms” is even less able to distinguish between crass and comedic.
  48. Blade of the Immortal
    Though not nearly as mindful or meaty as Mr. Miike’s 2011 triumph, 13 Assassins, “Blade” is creatively gory fun.
  49. Thor: Ragnarok
    Marvel could have gone grimmer, broodier and sterner, but that isn’t its onscreen way; so it has made Thor sunnier, sillier and funnier. It’s a good fit, at least for a while.
  50. 1945
    Absorbing and finely wrought, 1945 is not perfect.
  51. The Light of the Moon
    As a resource for those looking to understand the process of recovery, it’s hard to imagine a more comprehensive or sympathetic look at the challenge of surviving.
  52. Frank Serpico
    The star of the movie is a compelling figure, and Mr. D’Ambrosio presents quite a few people from Mr. Serpico’s past who have a similar draw. But the director’s filmmaking instincts are not always salutary.
  53. Lady Bird
    You might think you’ve seen this all before. You probably have, but never quite like this. What Ms. Gerwig has done — and it’s by no means a small accomplishment — is to infuse one of the most convention-bound, rose-colored genres in American cinema with freshness and surprise.
  54. Maya Dardel
    For all the linguistic gymnastics, the film is hamstrung by its directors’ lack of visual imagination.
  55. Mully
    Mr. Mully’s actions speak for themselves, and his robust personality makes him a pleasure to listen to. If the film doesn’t always dig deeply into this man’s life, we still see the results of his efforts. Those are enough to admire.
  56. Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold
    Ms. Didion’s triumph, as a writer and a human being, has been to take the age for what it is, to pinpoint how she saw it, and to stick it out.
  57. Suburbicon
    Mr. Clooney gets some things right in Suburbicon, including visually and with his two appealing child actors, who together give the movie a heartbeat.... But he skimps on the adult characters’ inner lives, and, once the narrative weight shifts to the Lodges, he never finds the tone that balances the movie’s sincerity with its nihilism.
  58. The Square
    The Square is ultimately a long version of Christian’s rambling apology, ostentatiously smart, maybe too much so for its own good, but ultimately complacent, craven and clueless.
  59. Novitiate
    Ms. Betts refrains from easy, uplifting answers and facile condemnations of organized religion. Aided by Kat Westergaard’s warm, restrained cinematography, she takes the viewer close to an understanding of Cathleen’s evolving sense of her relationship with God.
  60. Félicité
    Mr. Gomis’s cinematic style is spectacularly multifaceted.
  61. Crash Pad
    The movie’s premise isn’t as bad as the forced, unnatural dialogue. Even the reliable Ms. Applegate and Mr. Church can’t salvage the screenwriter Jeremy Catalino’s clumsy lines.
  62. The Work
    Opening an aperture into a process so ego-stripping that it feels unseemly to witness, The Work is enlightening yet also punishing.
  63. The Divine Order
    The Divine Order effectively illustrates how peer pressure can influence the political process. Collective silence, whether it’s from women unwilling to publicly press for their rights or men afraid to voice agreement with their wives for fear of looking weak around co-workers, proves more of an obstacle than any opponent. That message gives Ms. Volpe’s lark a timely edge.
  64. All I See Is You
    The director, Marc Forster (who wrote the script with Sean Conway), fashions such a languid, tipsy aesthetic around the seemingly happy marriage of Gina and James (Blake Lively and Jason Clarke) that it’s easy to keep watching.
  65. Thank You for Your Service
    If, like its characters, Thank You for Your Service sometimes struggles to balance staying strong with wearing its heart on its sleeve, it makes an emotional plea in a direct, effective way.
  66. God's Own Country
    God’s Own Country weaves a rough magic from Joshua James Richards’s biting cinematography and the story’s slow, unsteady arc from bitter to hopeful.
  67. Tyler Perry's Boo 2! A Madea Halloween
    This movie finds Mr. Perry, never the most deft at the technical aspect of filmmaking, drastically off whatever his best game is.
  68. Geostorm
    Geostorm uses digital technology to lay waste to a bunch of cities and hacky screenwriting to assault the dignity of several fine actors.
  69. The Snowman
    A leaden, clotted, exasperating mess.
  70. BPM (Beats Per Minute)
    in spite of its historical specificity, BPM never feels like a bulletin from the past. Its immediacy comes in part from the brisk naturalism of the performances and the nimbleness and fluidity of the editing. The characters are so vivid, so real, so familiar that it’s impossible to think of their struggles — and in some cases their deaths — as unfolding in anything but the present tense.
  71. The Killing of a Sacred Deer
    “Sacred Deer” feels like a dark, opaque bit of folklore transplanted into an off-kilter modern setting.
  72. Wonderstruck
    Mr. Selznick’s emphasis on wonder...can feel bullying, as if he were demanding delight instead of earning it. Yet even as he follows Mr. Selznick’s narrative lead, Mr. Haynes quietly and touchingly makes Wonderstruck his own because the wonder of the film isn’t in its story but in its telling.
  73. Jane
    Jane will delight those familiar with Ms. Goodall and provide a vibrant introduction for newcomers.
  74. Never Here
    Ms. Enos is a credibly fraying voyeur, all anxious looks and nervous starts, but “Never Here” is too emotionally antiseptic to engage.
  75. Jungle
    Slow to get moving and dramatically slack, Jungle cares only about Yossi, whose solo suffering and speed-enhanced hallucinations dominate the narrative.
  76. Tragedy Girls
    Tragedy Girls might add group texts to its instruments of death alongside marauding table saws and falling barbells, but the movie’s gender stereotypes keep it chained to the past.
  77. Only the Brave
    Under its slick, schematic surface, this tale of aspiration and redemption at least offers moments of genuine feeling.
  78. One of Us
    As a documentary, One of Us is a small act of portraiture, but each portrait captures the pain of having a life upended.
  79. Dealt
    Such a dynamic personality as Mr. Turner’s could use a more dynamic documentary to illuminate it. As it is, “Dealt” remains a pleasing — if inoffensive — portrait.
  80. Aida's Secrets
    In this time of mass displacement across the globe, it is a stark reminder of how traumatic the refugee experience often is.
  81. Tempestad
    It’s an artful and lyrical assembly.
  82. Liberation Day
    Liberation Day, a documentary of preparations for the concert directed by Mr. Traavik and Ugis Olte, is a consistently understated chronicle of Westerners who are very carefully playing with fire.
  83. The Paris Opera
    The Paris Opera feels at once sprawling and insufficiently patient.
  84. Te Ata
    The movie’s driving force is its mythic performance scenes, which are choreographed, sung and acted with clear, balletic conviction by the film’s star, Q’orianka Kilcher.
  85. Human Flow
    What Mr. Ai seeks is to go far beyond the nightly news; he wants to give you a sense of the scale of the crisis, its terrifying, world-swallowing immensity. And so he jumps from one heartbreak to the next.
  86. Professor Marston & the Wonder Women
    A sly and thoroughly charming Trojan horse of a movie.
  87. Marshall
    Like his character, Mr. Boseman is the star of this show, while Mr. Gad is the second banana and often comic relief. Both performers are natural showmen who never step on each other’s moment; they’re fun to watch.
  88. Diamond Island
    As with a dream, you can parse what you’ve watched for meaning or just savor what you’ve seen. For this compassionate film, either way works fine.
  89. Breathe
    Offering no hint of the backbreaking drudgery and mental strain of their predicament, this gauzy picture (produced by the couple’s son, Jonathan Cavendish, and directed by his friend, the actor Andy Serkis) is a closed loop of rose-tinted memories.
  90. The Departure
    Sad, tender and quietly moving, The Departure never says more than it needs to, much like its subject, a Buddhist priest who counsels those contemplating suicide.
  91. Tom of Finland
    While Mr. Laaksonen devoted his life (1920-91) to challenging conventions, the film is committed to honoring them.
  92. Thy Father's Chair
    The movie, directed by Antonio Tibaldi and Alex Lora, is quiet and quietly moving and quite different from “Hoarders” in its steady pace and poetic vérité style.
  93. 78/52: Hitchcock’s Shower Scene
    Even moviegoers who know “Psycho” backward and forward...are bound to learn something new from the movie, which addresses the shower scene from critical, historical, theoretical and technical angles, down to the blinding white of the bathroom tiles.
  94. For Ahkeem
    While the film ends at a logical stopping point, it feels incomplete. It probably could have used a few more years of filming.
  95. Happy Death Day
    Niftily paced and tight as a chokehold, the script (by the comic-book writer Scott Lobdell) delivers just enough variation to hold our interest.
  96. The Foreigner
    Mr. Chan is in his early 60s, and he doesn’t deliver the action pizazz here that he used to. Nor, frankly, does he summon enough gravitas to be persuasive in the role of a grief-maddened father. For what it’s worth, Mr. Brosnan, as Quon’s nemesis, sells the angry-all-the-time requirement for his character.
  97. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
    As is customary in Mr. Baumbach’s pictures, the acting is spectacular.
  98. Goodbye Christopher Robin
    Erratically paced and with a pitch-black heart, the movie manipulates at every turn.
  99. Bending the Arc
    The men refused to be deterred by institutional rigidity, political apathy or a skeptical scientific community. Their perseverance is cheering, giving the movie a brightly buoyant tone that belies the suffering at its center and renders the sometimes distracting musical score largely unnecessary.
  100. The Florida Project
    This movie accomplishes something almost miraculous — two things, actually. It casts a spell and tells the truth.
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