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. Memory: The Origins of Alien
    While it is generally engaging to learn about the influences of the screenwriter Dan O’Bannon or the artistic process of H.R. Giger (who designed the alien), the documentary is at its least fawning when it focuses on technique.
  2. Ushpizin
    Stylistically Ushpizin belongs to a classic tradition of raucous Yiddish comedy that is easy to enjoy if taken lightly. At the same time, it sustains a double vision of ultra-Orthodox life.
  3. The Walk
    Almost magically, The Walk transforms itself into a beguiling caper movie, full of comic energy and nimble ingenuity.
  4. The Barbarian Invasions
    The rapprochement between Rémy and Sébastien is beautiful to watch, and all of the characters in The Barbarian Invasions are played with a lusty warmth that makes them lovable even when they are being tiresome.
  5. Dior and I
    There are some amusing moments, to be sure, and some touching ones as well, but the film is less interested in ideas or emotions than in illusions. It produces an aura of suspense without a sense of real risk, and offers devotees of fashion an appealing, shallow fantasy of inside knowledge.
  6. Sundown
    Sundown lands more like a one-note thought exercise than a fully fleshed out story.
  7. Plan 75
    Baisho gets across the creeping despair that morbidity and the loss of community can create — a sensation that lets Plan 75 double as a consummate entry in pandemic-era cinema.
  8. Companion
    The film’s satire is barn-door broad, its humor sidelong and sharp enough to take the edge off the gore.
  9. Fauci
    Fauci is at its best when it draws parallels between the pandemics that define Dr. Fauci’s career. It vexes when it leans on straightforward biography
  10. A Complete Unknown
    Chalamet proves an ideal conduit in A Complete Unknown because the music and its maker have such power. As with any great cover band, it’s the original material that carries you through the night.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Rock 'n' Roll High School
    Rock 'n' Roll High School purports to be little more than summer fun, and, in its zanily unpretentious way, it is certainly that.
  12. The Paper
    Beyond letting its characters talk fast, use jargon and interrupt each other, "The Paper" misses most of the genre's real flavor. Its progress is methodical and sane.
  13. Long Way North
    The frosty landscapes have a subtle beauty, pale and sometimes shrouded in mist, giving the film a very different look from what often comes out of the big studios — somber, which is appropriate to the story.
  14. Maidentrip
    Before our eyes, Laura’s lengthening limbs and deepening introspection become the point of a movie that begins with a child and ends with a young woman.
  15. Friday Night Lights
    Uplifting and troubling, partly because it is more honest than most sports movies about the high cost and short life span of high school football glory.
  16. 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.
  17. Manon of the Spring
    The events in ''Manon of the Spring'' are no more wildly melodramatic than those in ''Jean de Florette'' but, without the indoctrination provided by ''Jean,'' the second film functions as a mean-spirited review of the first.
  18. Ordinary Love
    It almost works, but as persuasive as the performers can be, Tom and Joan seem less real the more time you spend with them.
  19. My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising
    This is canny, passionate filmmaking, a reminder of the power of two-dimensional animation. First, it humanizes, then it astounds.
  20. 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.
  21. The Cup
    A very funny movie, alive with a sense of absurdity and human foible.
  22. Shadow Boxers
    Upbeat.
  23. Swimming Pool
    Simultaneously a thoroughly mannered, mischievously artificial confection and an acute piece of psychological realism. Whose psychology, and which reality, remains ambiguous even after the tart, delicious final twist.
  24. Sweet and Lowdown
    This is one very tuneful labor of love.
  25. Narc
    Narc is convincing, an entertaining, grimy view of the traps of machismo tucked inside a cop thriller.
  26. Galaxy Quest
    It keeps its tongue firmly in its cheek, offers a few genuine laughs, moves swiftly, if not at warp speed, and is led by a talented cast.
  27. A Moment of Innocence
    Almost forbiddingly austere.
  28. The Broken Circle Breakdown
    [A] touching love story and soggy family melodrama.
  29. 1900
    It's a shapeless mass of film stock containing some brilliant moments and a lot more that are singularly uninspired.
  30. Catch-22
    The most moving, the most intelligent, the most humane--oh, to hell with it!--it's the best American film I've seen this year.
  31. Jason Becker: Not Dead Yet
    This heartfelt documentary is also, more subtly, a tribute to the squadron of caregivers that has enabled Mr. Becker not only to survive for an extraordinarily long time but also to continue to compose music, using virtually the only part of him that still moves, his eyes.
  32. Passione
    While Passione praises the spirit of its subjects, it also attends to the discipline and tenacity that makes them worth noticing.
  33. Portrait of Wally
    The film's single-minded treatment puts property issues over other nuances of the affair, not least the art itself and the artist. A brief postscript about the early deaths of Schiele and his pregnant wife feels uncomfortably like an afterthought.
  34. Horn from the Heart: The Paul Butterfield Story
    While the last third of Butterfield’s life is tragic, spending the better part of 90 minutes with the man and his music is exhilarating. The picture may get at least a few people talking about him again.
  35. 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.
  36. Art Bastard
    For philistines mystified by the value attached to so many artworks that to an untrained eye look worthless, Mr. Cenedella comes across as a reassuring voice of sanity.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    King Corn
    Mr. Cheney and Mr. Ellis are so pleasantly nondescript that they make no particular impression. As a result, all the time spent on autobiographical detail and personal banter hampers the film’s urgency, and plays like an awkward attempt to justify a format that the filmmakers are too self-effacing to exploit.
  38. Hooper
    This time, Mr. Reynolds has made a movie to please fans of all persuasions, and to please them a great deal.
  39. All These Sleepless Nights
    For all its visual and sonic pleasures — see it in a theater with a good subwoofer — All These Sleepless Nights feels simple-minded in its commitment to drift above all else.
  40. 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.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    East of Havana
    So much of American pop thrives on a bratty facsimile of courage that when you see the real deal, it's a revelation. East of Havana is the real deal.
  42. Gabrielle
    If the title role of Gabrielle weren’t so fully embodied by its star, Gabrielle Marion-Rivard, this French Canadian movie about love among the disabled would fall on the condescendingly mushy side of the line between heartwarming and saccharine.
  43. Starman
    Starman provides him with a role that, played by anyone else, might seem preposterous. In Mr. Bridges' hands it becomes the occasion for a sweetly affecting characterization - a fine showcase for the actor's blend of grace, precision and seemingly offhanded charm.
  44. 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.
  45. Last Stop Larrimah
    The bloat saps the fun and intrigue from the film, which can’t navigate between playing up eccentricity and committing to the notion that hell can be other people (even in a one-time refuge).
  46. Rosewood
    The film transcends racial divisions by bestowing equally hopeless dialogue on both sides.
  47. Vicky Cristina Barcelona
    Although Vicky Cristina trips along winningly, carried by the beauty of its locations and stars -- and all the gauzy romanticism those enchanted places and people imply -- it reverberates with implacable melancholy, a sense of loss.
  48. Public Enemies
    A grave and beautiful work of art.
  49. Sisu
    For all its gung-ho violence, the film never feels fraught or nasty enough: It never risks true offense or tastelessness, never takes a gamble on anything that could be interpreted the wrong way or that might sidestep expectations. Somehow it makes killing Nazis feel pretty tame.
  50. Resurrection
    While Resurrection harbors more than one theme — empty-nest anxieties, toxic men and the long tail of their manipulations — the movie feels more like an unhinged test of how far into the loonyverse the audience can be persuaded to venture.
  51. Tsotsi
    To his credit, Mr. Hood's meditation on truth and reconciliation doesn't traffic in the cheap thrills of art-house exploitation, like "City of God"; he wrings tears with sincerity, not cynicism.
  52. Lost Embrace
    This is a small movie about a small world, but its modesty is part of what makes it durable and satisfying.
  53. Countdown to Zero
    Paying to see Countdown to Zero is like tipping a fortuneteller to predict the manner of your death.
  54. Final Portrait
    Now and then, brisk restaurant visits and slow strolls through a cemetery (an unnecessary foreshadowing, given the movie’s title) ventilate the film, but Final Portrait (adapted from Lord’s 1965 book, “A Giacometti Portrait”) is pretty thin on drama.
  55. Her Smell
    Moss strips away every shred of her charm to reveal her charisma in its rawest state, implicating Perry and the audience in a voyeurism that can feel almost holy.
  56. 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.
  57. Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made
    The documentary, directed by Jeremy Coon and Tim Skousen, revisits those tender years and what came after with a lot of obvious enthusiasm and not an ounce of critical distance, as if they too were just two more friends playing along.
  58. The Nice Guys
    This is a dumb movie pretending to be smart, even as it wants you to believe the opposite. Still, dumb can be fun.
  59. Bob Roberts
    A very funny, sometimes prescient satire of American politics, and of the comparatively small, voting portion of the electorate that makes a Bob Roberts phenomenon possible.
  60. The Little Prince
    The voice casting and the visual representations of the characters the boy encounters on his journeys are superb.
  61. Guru
    Given a rich, multidimensional role, Mr. Bachchan ably seizes on its abundant opportunities.
  62. Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo
    These are vivid, flawed, even introspective characters. And they're classic American strivers. With rodeo, but not just that, they hope to go beyond where they have been.
  63. A Ciambra
    Mr. Carpignano has a shrewd sense not only of the character’s psychology, but also of the audience’s expectations, and our tendency to confuse realism with magical thinking.
  64. A Shot in the Dark
    The whole thing is colorful, gay — and Henry Mancini's music is as sassy and frivolous as the film.
  65. Wilde
    Fry's warmly sympathetic performance finds the gentleness beneath the wit. He conveys the sense of a man at the mercy of forces he cannot control, not least of them his own brittle genius.
  66. The Young Wife
    These are familiar, even hackneyed themes, which make the film’s relentless theatrics feel gratuitous and somewhat exhausting. Style overpowers substance, though Poe’s fantastic eye for composition and Clemons’s vivacious screen presence are undeniable.
    • 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.
  68. The Brother from Another Planet
    The Brother From Another Planet, set in major part in Harlem, means to be fantastic as well as funny and satiric, and from time to time, it is each of these things. Mostly, though, it's a nice, unsurprising shaggy-dog story that goes on far too long.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Quo Vadis
    Within and around these visual triumphs and rich imagistic displays is tediously twined a hackneyed romance that threatens to set your teeth on edge.
  70. A Traveler's Needs
    This is his third overall feature with Huppert, who adds drollery and an air of mystery. And there is just enough intrigue this time — one motif involves the difficulty of translating a work by Yoon Dong-ju, a Korean poet who died in 1945 after being imprisoned in Japan — to suggest hidden depths.
  71. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
    Above all, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a triumph of technique.
  72. Devils on the Doorstep
    In its dry and forceful way, it delivers the same message as Jiri Menzel's "Closely Watched Trains" and Danis Tanovic's "No Man's Land." While acknowledging that war is hell, it goes further to suggest it is ludicrous.
  73. Smoke
    An inviting but evanescent film that does have casualness, curiosity value and a lot of talent on its side.
  74. Owning Mahowny
    Whatever minor entertainment there is to be gleaned from Mahowny -- set in the early 1980's, mostly in Toronto -- comes in bits and pieces.
  75. Girlfight
    The movie belongs to Ms. Rodriguez. With her slightly crooked nose and her glum, sensual mouth, she looks a little like Marlon Brando in his smoldering prime, and she has some of his slow, intense physicality. She doesn't so much transcend gender as redefine it.
  76. Warrior of Light
    It would be foolish for a middle-class do-gooder confronting homeless children on the streets of Rio de Janeiro to expect conventional morality to have any meaning to them at all. That's one of the blunt, no-nonsense observations of Yvonne Bezarra de Mello, the Brazilian human rights activist profiled in Monika Treut's hard-headed documentary.
  77. Cutter's Way
    It's the sort of picture that never wants to concede what it's about. It is, however, enchanted by the sound of its own dialogue, which is vivid without being informative or even amusing on any level.
  78. Spring
    The actors get a chance to create a real relationship, and they make the most of the opportunity.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Out of the Blue
    The director confronts horror without wallowing in it, a strategy befitting a film that’s not about how people die, but how they live.
  80. More Than Honey
    A fascinating but rambling documentary.
  81. Hedda
    While DaCosta’s intelligence as a writer and director makes Hedda a standout film, her penchant for play makes it a delightful one.
  82. Nakom
    A strong nonprofessional cast and a use of long takes enhance the sense of immersion in a truly organic production.
  83. Unstrung Heroes
    A warm, surprising, gently incandescent film that discreetly describes a family tragedy.
  84. Rodeo
    The guarded Julia certainly intrigues, but too often the film sinks into the clichés of a rugged character study — no wonder she prefers to accelerate.
  85. The Friend
    This is a love story, after all, and one with a keen grasp of the mournful, curious glances between its two leads — of how much goes untranslated between them, and how much is conveyed.
  86. Colossal
    Colossal has such an easygoing, offhand vibe, and takes such pleasure in its characters’ foibles, that it camouflages its deep subject, which is rage.
  87. Blank City
    Ms. Danhier manages to conjure a glorious and grungy bygone past without fetishizing it as a golden age. A bunch of people got together and did some stuff, and this is what it looked like.
  88. Citizen Jane: Battle for the City
    Only intermittently stimulating.
  89. In & Out
    Deliver laughs and skewer a few stereotypes, thanks to extremely sly wit and a fine cast.
  90. Bad Lieutenant
    Mr. Ferrara has his saving graces, too, the chief one being raw talent, which he continues to display while telling even the most far-fetched story.
  91. The Revisionaries
    Interviewing a wide range of concerned parties, Mr. Thurman's presentation is admirably evenhanded; though he clearly supports the scientists.
  92. Late August, Early September
    If Assayas doesn't always transport his film's events beyond the all too commonplace, his understatement can also yield moments of quiet simplicity.
  93. The Justice of Bunny King
    A grim social-realist drama from New Zealand that labors to twist its narrative into a redemptive arc, The Justice of Bunny King has an unsteady tone to match its ungainly title.
  94. Emilia Pérez
    From the start, the movie hooks you because of its abrupt turns, how it veers into places that, tonally, narratively and emotionally, you don’t expect. Yet while Audiard has productively combined classic genres and present-day sensibilities before, even the more personal, confessional numbers here add little more than novelty.
  95. Sword of Trust
    The humor has a persistent goofy streak, but what sticks to the ribs is the poignant stuff.
  96. Monkey Man
    Patel does some fine work in Monkey Man even if its fight sequences rarely pop, flow or impress; they’re energetic but uninspired.
  97. About Last Night...
    You've a right to wonder why anyone would want to work so hard - with such an expenditure of imagination - to transform a play with such a distinctive voice into a movie that sounds like any number of others.
  98. Capital in the Twenty-First Century
    The film necessarily lacks the thoroughness and interrogative qualities of Piketty’s written approach. More than the cutaways to Gordon Gekko and the Simpsons, it tends to be the economist’s own observations that satisfy the true wonk itch.
  99. The Great Muppet Caper
    Here is a thoroughly genial movie, a combination of A.A. Milne, Busby Berkeley and a small bit of Blake Edwards.
  100. Electric Shadows
    Plays as an enthralling but implausible Asian soap opera.
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