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. The Ivory Game
    While more information on the animals and their ecosystems is needed, the stakes described here are immense, as is the sorrow over majestic creatures massacred only so that their tusks can be made into baubles.
  2. Trash Fire
    I didn’t think I had see a worse fiction film this year than that other failed American Guignol, “Clown.” I may have been wrong.
  3. The Pickle Recipe
    Hilarity is supposed to ensue, but the script, by Sheldon Cohn and Gary Wolfson, is tepid stuff, and Michael Manasseri, the director, doesn’t find a way to enliven it.
  4. Doctor Strange
    The space-and-time warping and mirrored realities in Doctor Strange are a blast. They’re inventive enough that they awaken wonder, provoking that delicious question: How did they do that?
  5. The Eagle Huntress
    Viewers jaded by daily doses of digital dazzlement might not fully register the reality of the wonders they are witnessing. But that doesn’t, in the end, make The Eagle Huntress any less wonderful.
  6. Don't Call Me Son
    The narrowness of its perspective and its relatively brief 82-minute length disappoint. Yet Don’t Call Me Son still manages to be a fascinating, sympathetic portrait of a lost boy abruptly thrown to the wolves.
  7. Hacksaw Ridge
    Desmond Doss was calm, humble and courageous, qualities Mr. Gibson honors but does not share. It is possible to be moved and inspired by Desmond’s exploits while still feeling that his convictions have been exploited, perhaps even betrayed.
  8. You've Been Trumped Too
    As a filmmaker, Mr. Baxter often tends toward needless force-feeding.
  9. The Greasy Strangler
    Its willful determination to be outré proves its undoing.
  10. Mr. Donkey
    Zhou Shen and Liu Lu’s bleak farce Mr. Donkey, adapted from their play, has a sentimental streak, and, as farce can, a tendency to overheat. But beneath its mild staginess and intermittent mania lies a cynical, piercing parable about China’s past and perhaps its present.
  11. Thank You for Your Service
    Thank You for Your Service, directed by Tom Donahue, uses its late scenes to explore nongovernment programs that have arisen to help veterans. Those examples are heartfelt and encouraging, and offer some hope after the devastating early sections.
  12. The Unspoken
    Some of the frights work reasonably well; and Ms. Ferland is convincing. But there aren’t enough surprises or innovations to make this one stand out in the sea of horror fare that comes along this time of year.
  13. Finding Babel
    In what probably qualifies as both an accomplishment and a shortcoming, the movie makes you want to read Babel’s writing instead.
  14. Crosscurrent
    Cramming fantasy and mysticism, faith and history into a single riverboat journey, this dirgelike meditation on China’s painful economic rebirth dispenses with narrative in favor of semiotics.
  15. A Billion Lives
    It’s a net broadly cast and woven of implications rather than of indisputable evidence, but — especially given the tobacco industry’s credibility problems — you’ll probably be inclined to think there’s some truth to the film’s allegations.
  16. Into the Inferno
    It’s an exhilarating trip, filled with strange stories, fascinating rituals and ethereally beautiful images of bubbling magma and flowing lava, some of which were captured using drones.
  17. Gimme Danger
    Gimme Danger is still plenty entertaining and includes many moments of foaming-at-the-mouth musical fury.
  18. By Sidney Lumet
    While it’s no surprise that Mr. Lumet can spin a tale, these murky-looking, less-than-flattering sit-downs are irritatingly suboptimal, particularly given that he was so great at telling intimate stories about men in shadows.
  19. Inferno
    Part of the draw of these movies is that they don’t create beauty, but instead borrow the emotions of the beauty they depict. (This, more or less, is one definition of kitsch, courtesy of the philosopher Tomas Kulka.) That makes the movies easy to watch and easy to forget.
  20. Portrait of a Garden
    The vision of nature being lovingly tended in Rosie Stapel’s documentary, Portrait of a Garden, is remarkably evocative.
  21. Oasis: Supersonic
    It may surprise people who’ve experienced the Gallaghers only in tabloid-fodder mode that “Supersonic” teems with stirring and even moving moments.
  22. Boo! A Madea Halloween
    The whole thing eventually devolves into the maelstrom of reactionary moralizing that is Mr. Perry’s specialty, not that any informed viewer would have reason to expect otherwise
  23. Fire at Sea
    Fire at Sea occupies your consciousness like a nightmare, and yet somehow you don’t want it to end.
  24. King Cobra
    To say it feels reasonably authentic doesn’t mean it’s very good. Mr. Kelly, who directed the well-received “I Am Michael,” starring Mr. Franco as a Christian pastor with a gay past, clearly knows the territory, but he barely skims the surface.
  25. A Stray
    The substantial pleasures of the movie are supplemented by the gratification of seeing an emerging talent with concerns far outside the conventional indie realm asserting himself with such authority.
  26. The Uncondemned
    Most extraordinary are interviews with the women who came forward to provide evidence in court. Their integrity and tenacity, and their loyalty to one another, is enough to bring you to tears.
  27. It Had to Be You
    Cristin Milioti (“How I Met Your Mother”) is so quirkily endearing in the lead role that she makes it easy to just go with the airy tale.
  28. The Whole Truth
    The Whole Truth plays like an especially claustrophobic courtroom procedural, drably photographed and generically framed.
  29. Before the Flood
    The film wants to spur individual changes in behavior, but there’s a fair amount in it that might discourage you from even trying.
  30. In a Valley of Violence
    Mr. West retains his signature restraint and slow-burn approach to brutality. Missing, however, is his typically skillful manipulation of tension, partly because his tone veers so often from jokey to reverential, from winking at the western to making a sacrament of it.
  31. Jack Reacher: Never Go Back
    Jack Reacher: Never Go Back is the second movie that Tom Cruise has starred in as this title character. Let’s hope it’s the last.
  32. American Pastoral
    American Pastoral leaves a residue of dread and despair that is oddly in keeping with today’s moment of uncertainty amid an ugly presidential campaign.
  33. Creepy
    Creepy certainly works — looks and feels — like a horror movie, but it also has the conundrums of a detective story, the emotional currents of a domestic drama and the quickening pulse of a psychological thriller, a combination that creates a kind of destabilization.
  34. The Handmaiden
    A rebus, a romance, a gothic thriller and a woozy comedy, The Handmaiden is finally and most significantly a liberation story.
  35. 31
    Awash in blood and revoltingly misogynistic dialogue, this latest redneck ruckus (his seventh feature) is a grindhouse slog of unrelenting bad taste.
  36. Ouija: Origin of Evil
    The director, Mike Flanagan, who with Jeff Howard also wrote the script, demonstrates rare patience for horror fare as he builds toward the macabre.
  37. Keeping Up with the Joneses
    The absence of laughs can’t be blamed on a lack of talent.
  38. Moonlight
    Moonlight is both a disarmingly, at times almost unbearably personal film and an urgent social document, a hard look at American reality and a poem written in light, music and vivid human faces.
  39. Michael Moore in TrumpLand
    Mr. Moore has basically made an earnest but not very entertaining pro-Clinton campaign film, occasionally funny, momentarily heartfelt when he takes up the subject of universal health care and the lives lost for lack of it. Against the rest of his work (“Bowling for Columbine,” “Roger & Me”) it’s fairly tepid stuff.
  40. The David Dance
    Without the benefit of theatrical devices that might clarify the order of events, its time warps undermine the plot.
  41. Huntwatch
    Narrated, rather annoyingly, by the Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds, Huntwatch feels dismayingly one-sided. Yet as we hear of animals being skinned alive and see a bludgeoned pup linger in agony, any pro-hunt argument seems emphatically beside the point.
  42. Jack Goes Home
    The script, by Mr. Dekker, spirals into a muddle of ambiguity, leaving only the imagery and the performances to save the movie. And try as they might, they cannot.
  43. Little Sister
    A strange, spiky movie that refuses to beg for our affection, Little Sister, the fifth feature from Zach Clark, molds the classic homecoming drama into a quirky reconciliation between faith and family.
  44. Coming Through The Rye
    As Salinger, the formidable Chris Cooper has a brief but masterly turn, sympathetically rendering the writer as a curmudgeon defending his literary offspring.
  45. Asura: The City of Madness
    As the suspense slackens and blood starts spilling nearly to the point of self-parody, it almost seems designed as a test of mettle — for both the filmmakers and the audience.
  46. Desierto
    The movie isn’t interested in fully developed characters, just carnage.
  47. Christine
    Even as Ms. Hall’s performance makes you believe that something profound is at stake, the movie noncommittally nibbles at the edge of larger meaning, nodding at current events.
  48. Certain Women
    The subtlety of the film is both an accomplishment and a limitation. It’s hard not to want more for these women, and to wish you could see more of them.
  49. Aquarius
    Aquarius is a marvelous and surprising act of portraiture, a long, unhurried encounter with a single, complicated person. And that is enough to make it a captivating film, an experience well worth seeking out. But there is also, as I’ve suggested, more going on than the everyday experiences of a modern matriarch.
  50. Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise
    Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise covers so much ground that it’s usually easy to forgive the filmmakers for not digging deeper. This is a documentary interested in breadth rather than depth, and on those terms it succeeds.
  51. Miss Hokusai
    While it’s not entirely kid-friendly, this portrait of an artist is both enchanting and thought provoking.
  52. Sky Ladder: The Art of Cai Guo-Qiang
    A documentary that is as rewarding as this artist’s work.
  53. Ordinary World
    Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day is usually pretty appealing when he dabbles in acting, and he’s appealing again in Ordinary World. But after a promising start the script lets him down, and the film turns into a predictable midlife-crisis yarn.
  54. Kevin Hart: What Now?
    The movie is a good representation of Mr. Hart’s comedy, but not a perfect one.
  55. The Accountant
    The movie, directed by Gavin O’Connor (“Tumbleweeds”), makes little sense. The screenplay, by Bill Dubuque, is so determined to hide its cards that when the big reveal finally arrives, it feels as underwhelming as it is preposterous.
  56. Mascots
    Although Mascots is neither as funny nor as satirically acute as its forerunner, it would be churlish to complain too loudly. And the sharpest verbal jokes in the screenplay by Mr. Guest and the actor and writer Jim Piddock are as inspired as ever. Mr. Guest’s gift for the archly comedic mot juste is undiminished.
  57. Tower
    Using a limited frame, Mr. Maitland does his own commemorating, inherently raising questions about terror, the nature of heroism and what it means to really survive. He also does something even more necessary: He turns names on a plaque into people.
  58. Shin Godzilla (Godzilla Resurgence)
    The film is at its best when it’s in parody mode, though it keeps that card too close to the vest for much of its two-hour length. The humor, not the monster, is what you’re left wanting more of.
  59. Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life
    The find here is Alexa Nisenson as Georgia, Rafe’s know-it-all little sister, who takes cars out for a spin. She is blessed with the best lines, comic and dramatic, and appears delightfully cognizant of the fact. If only the movie had more of her.
  60. Under the Shadow
    War may be terrible, but for a woman like Shideh there’s no horror like home.
  61. Ovation
    Dependably genuine, and suffused with Mr. Jaglom’s increasingly mellow intelligence, this lighthearted backstage drama will feel to his fans like a gathering of familiars.
  62. Theo Who Lived
    This is a potent, vital film.
  63. 37
    It is a competent if sometimes heavy-handed affair, a mosaic of fictitious and underexplored characters who hear the assault but are too self-preoccupied to act.
  64. Mirzya
    Sure, the filmmakers overdo their work. But it’s all in the service of love, and somehow that makes it O.K.
  65. Newtown
    This film isn’t content to be merely a “never forget” reminder; it wants to convey just how deep and lasting the pain is, from this attack and, by extension, many others.
  66. Blue Jay
    Nostalgia gives way to melodrama, and dramatic truth to soapy histrionics, and Blue Jay falters on a formulaic revelation about mistakes made and lessons learned too late.
  67. Voyage of Time: The IMAX Experience
    Mr. Malick presents these events as if he had drawn them not from his mind but from some repository of celestial memory. Which may be to say that Voyage of Time ultimately proves his point about the way the universe and human consciousness mirror each other. But it’s a point that might have been more powerful if he had left it unspoken.
  68. The Great Gilly Hopkins
    The title character is a child, but two adult actors, Kathy Bates and Glenn Close, really give The Great Gilly Hopkins its considerable heart. This movie, though uneven, is affecting because of these two reliable stars.
  69. The Late Bloomer
    To make the premise of a 30-year-old who acts like a 15-year-old work, Mr. Pollak has made everyone else in the film act like a 15-year-old, too. It doesn’t quite click.
  70. London Town
    An awkward merger of wide-eyed innocence and political unrest, Derrick Borte’s sweet, almost sugary picture wants to rock but never finds the gumption.
  71. Being 17
    The movie is not really about deciding whether you’re gay or straight — those terms are never spoken. It’s about the chemistry of two people at a moment in time.
  72. The Birth of a Nation
    The movie, uneven as it is, has terrific momentum and passages of concentrated visual beauty. The acting is strong even when the script wanders into thickets of rhetoric and mystification. And despite its efforts to simplify and italicize the story, it’s admirably difficult, raising thorny questions about ends and means, justice and mercy, and the legacy of racism that lies at the root of our national identity.
  73. The Girl on the Train
    The Girl on the Train is a preposterous movie but not an unenjoyable one. If that sounds like faint praise, well, it is and it isn’t. There’s always something to be said for an entertainment that sustains its nuttiness all the way to its twisty finish.
  74. Homeland: Iraq Year Zero
    “Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime,” Ernest Hemingway wrote. Homeland: Iraq Year Zero is both an irrefutable proof of that statement and a nagging reminder that the statement is insufficient to address the ultimate tragedy of war.
  75. M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story
    The movie, written and directed by Neeraj Pandey, is not hagiographic or overly obvious. Instead, it’s something of a quiet muddle, with too many squandered or dramatically blurry scenes.
  76. 13th
    Powerful, infuriating and at times overwhelming, Ava DuVernay’s documentary 13TH will get your blood boiling and tear ducts leaking.
  77. Never Surrender: The Ed Ramsey Story
    Directed by Matthew Hausle and Steven C. Barber, “Never Surrender” frustrates with its lack of focus.
  78. The Rolling Stones Olé Olé Olé!: A Trip Across Latin America
    Directed slickly by Paul Dugdale, “Olé” is less a concert film or travelogue than a historical account — swiftly, smartly assembled, reflecting events only six months old.
  79. Among the Believers
    The directors let their subjects speak without overtly passing judgment.
  80. Masterminds
    The full-on goofiness is not reliably buoyant; this is an intermittently enjoyable but often choppy comic ride.
  81. A Man Called Ove
    Good-hearted stuff, to be sure, but mainly of interest to lovers of cinematic comfort food.
  82. 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.
  83. Harry & Snowman
    In the film, a student of Mr. deLeyer’s recalls some of his advice: “Throw your heart over the top, and your horse will follow.” Harry & Snowman makes you want to do the same.
  84. Do Not Resist
    The film doesn’t unearth anything that hasn’t already been voiced, and it could use more details on the scope of the phenomenon. But with more police shootings in the headlines just in the past few days, it’s nothing if not timely.
  85. Danny Says
    If Mr. Fields’s contributions to pop music deserve more fame, the movie plays like an overcorrection, a spirited but repetitive testament to one man’s excellent taste.
  86. Denial
    The absence of an emotional catharsis in the film, efficiently directed by Mick Jackson (“The Bodyguard,” “Temple Grandin”) from a screenplay by the British playwright David Hare, leaves a frustrating emptiness at its center.
  87. Girl Asleep
    As it seesaws between Greta’s conscious and unconscious minds, the movie begins to feel like a waking dream.
  88. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
    Mr. Burton, whose artistry is at times most evident in its filigree, can be a great collector when given the right box to fill, as is the case here. He revels in the story’s icky, freaky stuff; he’s right at home, which may be why he seems liberated by its labyrinthine turns and why you don’t care if you get a little lost in them.
  89. Amanda Knox
    The directors, Brian McGinn and Rod Blackhurst, have produced a tightly edited, coherently structured and ultimately moving reassessment that burrows beneath the lurid in search of the illuminating.
  90. Passage to Mars
    While those seeking interplanetary scenarios may want more details, fans of endurance stories will be pleased. Indeed, Passage to Mars has the effect of making a trip to another world appear almost secondary. The journey undertaken here seems nearly as frightful and fascinating.
  91. American Honey
    American Honey, long and messy as it is, is by turns observant and exuberant, and sweet in a way that is both unexpected and organic.
  92. Deepwater Horizon
    The film itself is as much a feat of engineering as a work of art, an efficient machine for delivering intricate data and blunt emotions.
  93. Tharlo
    Tharlo instead opts for fleeting charm and shaggy humanism, until the narrative takes a grim turn that’s both trite and sexist. The bottom drops out of the movie, leaving its interest almost exclusively ethnographic.
  94. Sand Storm
    As a director, Ms. Zexer has a fine eye for the texture of daily life, which she fills in with resonant physical details and sweeping, scene-setting views.
  95. The Dressmaker
    Unfortunately, and despite its promising start, The Dressmaker doesn’t move much beyond the level of well-costumed playacting.
  96. The Ruins of Lifta
    An achingly poignant documentary.
  97. Goat
    The performances are conscientious and earnest.
  98. Closet Monster
    Connor Jessup wonderfully inhabits the teenage Oscar, who observes others while trying to find himself.
  99. The Free World
    The heavy-handed man-beast comparison is one of several grossly overstated themes in a movie that abruptly changes direction as it goes along while taking shortcuts that leave its characters underdeveloped and crucial plot elements barely fleshed out.
  100. Chronic
    Chronic ends with a sudden, terrible slap in the face that is a final blow to your equilibrium. It is left up to the viewer to decide whether it is a cheap stunt or an ultimate moment of truth. I vote for the latter.
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