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. The Workers Cup
    While it would have been easy for Mr. Sobel to unleash an angrier screed against the inequalities shown, some well-placed images tell us all we need to know about the haves and have-nots here.
  2. Sweetheart
    To the film’s credit, the central relationship remains realistically drawn — a teenage courtship that’s marked by misunderstandings and mood swings. The characters aren’t always sweet, but they never feel phony.
  3. The Future
    The magical, metaphorical strain in The Future is what makes it powerful, unsettling and strange, as well as charming. The everyday fears and frustrations that shadow us on our awkward trip through the life cycle often feel enormous, even cosmic, and Ms. July has the audacity to find images and situations that give form to those metaphysical inklings.
  4. North Face
    Transfixing in the way that well-told life-and-death adventure tales inevitably are. It is the film’s more mundane elements -- an awkward, under-nourished love story and half-baked politics -- that are problematic.
  5. Workingman's Death
    In the film's production notes, Mr. Glawogger wonders, "Is heavy manual labor disappearing or is it just becoming invisible?" In this visually impressive but proudly unscientific hymn to progress, the answers are yes and yes.
  6. Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams
    If Guadagnino sought to reflect the romance of Ferragamo’s red carpet creations, his storytelling is at once more conventional and more awkward in construction. Forget feet; defter hands might have helped.
  7. Cinderella
    Mr. Branagh’s ascension into big-budget studio directing largely remains a mystery, and there’s little in Cinderella beyond its faces and gowns that captures the eye or the imagination.
  8. The Spy Behind Home Plate
    There’s much to absorb throughout “The Spy Behind Home Plate,” and sometimes details speed by too fast or digressions go on a bit long. Still, Kempner’s passion for her remarkable subject is always evident.
  9. Alice
    Woody Allen's marvelous new comedy, Alice, confirms Mr. Allen's safe arrival on a whole new plateau of film-making.
  10. Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos
    This is a movie so unabashedly in love with its subject that even audiences who don't know Giorgio Chinaglia from Georgie Best will leave the theater grinning.
  11. She Dances
    While the picture, directed by Rick Gomez, has an often jaunty tone, it’s really at its best when it leans into the sadness that shadows the father-daughter relationship. Those scenes are where the two Zahns do their best, most affecting acting work.
  12. Mr. Holmes
    The film’s plots are soft and flimsy, and they don’t mesh as gracefully as they might, but they do serve as an adequate trellis for Mr. McKellen’s performance, which is gratifyingly but unsurprisingly wonderful.
  13. Worth
    For all the ways in which it might give short shrift to the politics or policy of the fund, Worth is uncommonly moving by the standards of biopics and certainly by the standards of movies that risk addressing 9/11 so overtly.
  14. A Whisper to a Roar
    A vivid documentary with unusual access to the key players in the geopolitical dramas it recounts.
  15. Web Junkie
    The film lacks either the immersive intensity that would galvanize emotions or a context that would provide enlightenment. Its brief tour of an unpleasant corner of reality feels less revelatory than voyeuristic.
  16. They Will Have to Kill Us First
    Johanna Schwartz’s miraculously hopeful documentary, They Will Have to Kill Us First: Malian Music in Exile, delivers a vibrant testimony of resilience under oppression.
  17. Ruby Sparks
    Ruby Sparks doesn't try to pretend to be more than it is: a sleek, beautifully written and acted romantic comedy that glides down to earth in a gently satisfying soft landing.
  18. Rock School
    Alternately hilarious and alarming documentary.
  19. The Time Machine
    The drama, for all its invention, is creaky and a bit passé. (Apparently there has still been no contact with other planets in 800,000 A. D.) And the mood, while delicately wistful, is not so flippant or droll as it might be in a fiction as fanciful and flighty as this one naturally is.
  20. You Will Be My Son
    [A] beautifully acted movie.
  21. Palestine 36
    The dynamics are rarely simply drawn, and if the film’s default mode is miniseries-expository, there are a few striking stylistic flourishes.
  22. Demonlover
    The entrancing visual imagery goes a long way toward filling in the screenplay's gaps in logic.
  23. A Simple Favor
    Mr. Feig handily manages the mood and scene shifts, using regular laughs to brighten the deepening dark. By far his smartest move was to give Ms. Kendrick and Ms. Lively room to create a prickly intimacy for their characters, a bond that’s persuasive enough to push the story through its more forced moments.
  24. The Witches of Eastwick
    The Witches of Eastwick does have enough flamboyance to hold the attention, directed as it has been by Mr. Miller in a bright, flashy, exclamatory style. But beneath the surface charm there is too much confusion, and the charm itself is gone long before the film is over.
  25. Fiddler on the Roof
    They want to show us everything, to give us our money's worth. In so doing, they've not just opened up the play, they've let most of the life out of it.
  26. Time to Leave
    Time to Leave subordinates narrative to mood. Since the end of the story is never in doubt, the only surprises lie in the particulars of Romain’s behavior and the nuances of sorrow, determination and doubt that pass over Mr. Poupaud’s face.
  27. The Dutchman
    As with the play (and its 1967 film adaptation), the sexual politics here are messy. What isn’t is the filmmakers’ bold dive into the archives of the nascent Black Arts Movement for a throughline.
  28. Gabriel
    This film maintains its anxious themes throughout, which makes for some tedious stretches because the tension never breaks. Despite that, or maybe because of it, Gabriel is unexpectedly absorbing.
  29. I Saw the Devil
    A droll Nietzschean fable that's fully aware of its lapses into absurdity.
  30. The Eclipse
    A moody little number, The Eclipse makes good on its name by sometimes obscuring its themes and even point, which can have its charms though also severe drawbacks.
  31. Kill List
    That assured style is the spackle that holds Kill List together: when the plot doglegs into insanity, and the characters follow suit, this brutal fever dream refuses to fall apart.
  32. Giant Little Ones
    Where many coming-of-age films build their stories around the discovery of a fixed selfhood, “Giant Little Ones” succeeds when it chooses to treat youthful identity as open to shift with accumulated experience.
  33. Blink Twice
    Blink Twice is haunted by lost opportunities. As a woman and survivor, Frida feels ignored. But Kravitz leaves the erasure that Black women feel untapped.
  34. Whisky
    A deadpan comedy shot through with a vein of despair, the Uruguayan film Whisky is a pint-size pleasure.
  35. We Jam Econo: The Story of the Minutemen
    The spiky documentary in their honor keeps alive the echoes of their slapdash, Smithsonian-worthy sound.
  36. Tupac: Resurrection
    Ms. Lazin succeeds in conjuring his presence and in showing how smart and likable he could be, but the film's perspective is frustratingly limited.
  37. Two Girls and a Guy
    Robert Downey Jr.'s Blake Allen is enough of a raging dynamo to find the dark humor and desperate romanticism at the heart of Mr. Toback's ego trip of a premise, and to make Blake sympathetic too.
  38. Looking for Eric
    Mr. Loach’s touch is a bit lighter here. “Sweet Sixteen” is a coming-of-age story shot through the lens of social tragedy, while “The Wind That Shakes the Barley” is an epic of historical disaster. Looking for Eric is, by comparison, gentle and sweet and often very funny.
  39. Kung Fu Panda 3
    Lots of comedic fight scenes break up the story’s more somber stretches, and the animation, especially in 3-D, is simply gorgeous.
  40. Bones Brigade: An Autobiography
    Gradually becomes an echo chamber of personal dramas and exploits, not to mention propulsive soundtrack cues - all within a sport already nursing a penchant for self-documentation.
  41. Himizu
    Mr. Sono uses sound, a low, grumbling noise like an earthquake, to convey this chaos. He also gives the film a harrowing cacophony and a sense of trauma with sound effects, including subtle echoes.
  42. The Apostate
    The Uruguayan director Federico Veiroj’s leisurely comedy-drama The Apostate has its charms, though the story (and its hero) could benefit from a tarter approach.
  43. 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.
  44. The Journey of Natty Gann
    If The Journey of Natty Gann were only a speedier, more energetic movie, Natty might have real staying power.
  45. The Boys Next Door
    A very well made, disorienting movie about inarticulated despair and utter hopelessness. It reminds me a lot of ''Over the Edge,'' Jonathan Kaplan's bleak, bitter picture of teen-age life in an architecturally perfect, California housing development. Unlike ''Over the Edge,'' however, The Boys Next Door is less interested in causes than in effects, which Penelope Spheeris, the director, turns into the photographic record of a grim, vivid, joyless ride to hell.
  46. Happy Face
    Happy Face dares to be distinctive, and that’s something, even if the behavior — particularly Stan’s — isn’t always convincing.
  47. Being Mary Tyler Moore
    The film itself is so smitten by Moore that it skips over the worst of her self-inflected wounds.
  48. Speak No Evil
    Sleek and ever more unsettling, Speak No Evil is closely based on a far colder, downright nasty 2022 movie of the same title from the Danish director Christian Tafdrup. For the most part, Watkins adheres to the original’s overall design and trajectory while adding some new details and scenes; he also pads the running time an unnecessary 15 or so minutes.
  49. World Trade Center
    Mr. Stone has taken a public tragedy and turned it into something at once genuinely stirring and terribly sad. His film offers both a harrowing return to a singular, disastrous episode in the recent past and a refuge from the ugly, depressing realities of its aftermath.
  50. Wonder
    Wonder is that rare thing, a family picture that moves and amuses while never overtly pandering.
  51. Jimi: All Is by My Side
    Mr. Ridley’s ambitions and refusal to treat Hendrix as a solvable mystery are welcome, given how often biopics re-embalm their subjects. Here, a legend is born, and a man too.
  52. The Inventor
    The Inventor is rife with somewhat didactic lessons — about power, innovation, curiosity — yet a presumably unintended one might be that lessons themselves, however insightful, are not always captivating.
  53. To Be Takei
    [Ms. Kroot's] banalizing documentary is self-defeating as it tags along with Mr. Takei and his wonky husband, Brad, on their busy daily schedule.
  54. The Breakfast Club
    The five young stars would have mixed well even without the fraudulent encounter-group candor towardS which The Breakfast Club forces them. Mr. Hughes, having thought up the characters and simply flung them together, should have left well enough alone.
  55. Al otro lado
    This infectious little movie enriches understanding of the immigrant experience insofar as it translates one of its main forms of expression. Where the movie goes wrong, albeit down a forgivable path, is in the attempt to personalize its subject by means of biographical focus on an aspiring corrido composer.
  56. LA 92
    [A] taut and commanding primer.
  57. Innerspace
    It takes great confidence to think of a second film before the first is even finished; either that, or it takes great nerve. In any case, Innerspace, which opens today at the Criterion and other theaters, has all the brashness of a hit, if not all the luster.
  58. Blackpink: Light Up the Sky
    While its salute to the artists flicks at the cynical side of their industry, it is less a probing profile than a backstage pass for fans of the band (a.k.a. Blinks) old and new.
  59. Luzifer
    Its intellectual aspiration produces an ideologically crowded film, where each philosophical meditation struggles to receive the attention and depth it deserves. Perhaps that is the point: Brunner seems to want to leave us with more questions than answers — or at least, compel us to search for the devil in everything.
  60. The Take
    A stirring, idealistic documentary that examines the grass-roots cooperative movement in financially devastated Argentina, raises basic questions about economics, government and human nature.
  61. The Girl Who Played with Fire
    Ms. Rapace, tiny and agile, her steely rage showing now and then the tiniest crack of vulnerability, belongs to another dimension altogether. She makes this movie good enough, but also makes you wish it were much better.
  62. Darfur Now
    What Darfur Now offers is a collective vision of actions, small and large, taken on many fronts, to end the crisis. The movie is a quiet, methodical call to action.
  63. Everything Else (Todo Lo Demás)
    A low-key character study whose gently repetitive rhythms mask an unusually keen sense of nuance and subtlety.
  64. The Trip to Spain
    Though the spaces between the funny voices are filled with verdant hillsides and vanilla beaches that stretch the length of the frame, there’s an occasional sour edge to the comedic sparring.
  65. The Wind
    The movie’s most striking aspect, though, is Lyn Moncrief’s arresting cinematography, which turns the vast vacancy of the plains into both hostile observer and hellish metaphor. The story might finally slip its leash, but the baleful mood holds firm.
  66. Honor Society
    A twist whipsaws the movie into a darker place, one in the vicinity of Patricia Highsmith. But no murder takes place, and the movie’s resolution confirms what one may have suspected all along: Its dominant room tone is kinda-sorta that of “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before.”
  67. Borgman
    That Borgman restrains itself from turning into a full-scale horror movie makes it all the more unsettling, although it has its bumpy moments.
  68. The Candidate
    One of the few good, truly funny American political comedies ever made.
  69. Zelary
    It has a familiar, lived-in feel, and if its observations of rural life at a time of political turmoil don't feel terribly original, they are nonetheless absorbing and sometimes powerful.
  70. What Keeps You Alive
    True horror fans will forgive its shortcomings since they serve the greater good of gorgeous gore and stunningly staged scenes.
  71. Racing with the Moon
    Racing With the Moon demonstrates such intelligence and wit that the result is an unexpected pleasure.
  72. The Tenth Man
    The Tenth Man, a modest charmer from Argentina, breathes considerable life into the rather trite scenario of a man discovering his religious roots, in part because it seems genuinely curious about the community in which it’s set.
  73. Mister Universo
    Ms. Covi and Mr. Frimmel’s Mister Universo is a disarming and humane picture, an unexpected delight.
  74. The Ipcress File
    The Ipcress File is as classy a spy film as you could ask to see.
  75. Son of Rambow
    A likable, lightly sticky valentine to childhood, the 1980s and the dawning of movie love, Son of Rambow was written and directed by Garth Jennings and produced by Nick Goldsmith, the duo behind the underappreciated fantasy "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."
  76. In Good Company
    In Good Company lacks both the emotional sting and the bright pop-culture snap of "About a Boy," as well as Mr. Hornby's carefully cultivated irony, but it makes for an agreeable solo directing debut.
  77. The Phenom
    The director and writer, Noah Buschel, has no fresh insights to add to the well-worn dynamic and doesn’t give the actors or the audience much to work with.
  78. Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine
    This deflating documentary gives up its quest for answers too easily.
  79. Unmistaken Child
    The beauty of the landscape and the monk’s sweetness, humility and good humor evoke a plane of existence, at once elevated and austere, that is humbling to contemplate. That said, Unmistaken Child offers no scholarly perspective on Tibetan Buddhism and leaves fundamental questions unanswered.
  80. Cop Car
    It’s an extremely well-lubricated entertainment machine filled with attractive images and wall-to-wall appealing performances.
  81. Werewolves Within
    Werewolves Within darts between sharp visual gags, intricately choreographed scenes and a few standout performances, but its climax lands with a thud.
  82. To Dust
    You can see what this movie is after, something cockeyed but sincere, something in the neighborhood of Paul Mazursky, Elaine May or Alexander Payne. But the writing and filmmaking (Snyder directed) just aren’t quick enough.
  83. On the Outs
    Certainly not the first film to show how a crushing urban environment can make a sensible-sounding antidrug slogan like "just say no" seem like so much nonsense, but it's one of the strongest.
  84. La Nouvelle Ève
    But most of the movie's notes are appallingly right.
  85. Chutney Popcorn
    Because Chutney Popcorn knows its characters deeply enough to let them determine events, it rises above formula. It is also unusually well acted.
  86. Much Ado About Something
    An inviting piece of film. Mr. Rubbo's cast of characters have the charisma of true devotees and stoked egos that match their intentions.
  87. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
    For all the hype and the inevitable box office bonanza, Terminator 3 is essentially a B movie, content to be loud, dumb and obvious.
  88. Seaside
    While she (Lopes-Curval) portrays the brittleness of their lives with lovely splashes of generosity, the lack of condescension doesn't change the fact that there's not much drama to be found in those very limitations; her characters don't do much beyond getting on one another's nerves.
  89. Shadow Magic
    Gentle and easy to take.
  90. Last Dance
    One of the thrills of the movie is watching the improvisatory trial-and-error process as the dancers explore psychological themes, contorting their graceful, amazingly limber bodies into visual representations of relationships and emotional states.
  91. The Lost Arcade
    Part scrappy, part sweet and wholly enjoyable, The Lost Arcade is a love letter to a vanished piece of New York, and a little wish for the future.
  92. Pelosi in the House
    So what does this long-gestating, obviously affectionate, obviously politically simpatico account of Nancy Pelosi’s career, including her rise to and tenures as the first female House speaker, have to offer? For a start, it provides an unusual opportunity to watch Pelosi negotiate legislation and rally votes.
  93. Julie & Julia
    Julie & Julia proceeds with such ease and charm that its audacity -- is easy to miss.
  94. Emma
    Gwyneth Paltrow makes a resplendent Emma, gliding through the film with an elegance and patrician wit that bring the young Katharine Hepburn to mind.
  95. Avengers: Age of Ultron
    For a Marvel agnostic like me, the single most interesting thing about Age of Ultron is that you can sense that Mr. Whedon, having helped build a universal earnings machine with the first “Avengers,” has now struggled mightily, touchingly, to invest this behemoth with some life.
  96. Captain America: The First Avenger
    Has a winningly pulpy, jaunty, earnest spirit.
  97. Glassland
    There’s much in the movie to admire until it runs headlong into a stone wall.
  98. Three... Extremes
    Though Three ... Extremes may seem tame to jaded fans of what has been termed New Asian Horror, it serves as a fine introduction to the genre for those who are curious but squeamish.
  99. Born to Be Wild
    The women's efforts have already had a fair amount of publicity, so the attraction here is the cinematography, and it makes good use of Imax and 3-D technology, with lovely aerial views and startling close-ups.
  100. Smash & Grab: The Story of the Pink Panthers
    Smash and Grab has a grating, repetitive score and can look a little homely on the big screen. But unlike many true-crime accounts, it cherry-picks its material successfully and preserves the conspiratorial sense that we’re learning the ins and outs of an illicit art.
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