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. Welcome to Leith
    Welcome to Leith wisely resists the kind of gimmickry that might have resulted in a stylistic hybrid of “The Blair Witch Project” or “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”
  2. Palio
    Despite its oversights, the film — shot and scored beautifully — is an enthusiastic introduction to this delirious event and its peposo of passion, style and intrigue. As the Sienese like to say, the Palio is life.
  3. Miss You Already
    To accuse it of being manipulative is like accusing it of being in color. The genre is melodrama. The assault on the tear ducts and heartstrings is part of the contract, and the movie more than holds up its end of the bargain.
  4. Shout Gladi Gladi
    [A] thorough, powerfully straightforward documentary.
  5. Race
    If Race is a standard inspirational biopic that exalts the legend of an athletic hero, at least it doesn’t soft-pedal the racism that Owens encountered at every turn.
  6. Paul Taylor: Creative Domain
    Through it all, Mr. Taylor’s creative mysteries remain intact; a master of the casual and the vernacular (a good way to learn about movement, he says, is to watch football halftime shows), he nonetheless approaches the mystical.
  7. Sweaty Betty
    Defiantly amateurish yet never less than engaging, “Sweaty Betty” is a true oddity.
  8. Chevalier
    [Ms. Tsangari's] inquiry stops short of the hearts of these men, and she seems content to dramatize some of the sad, ridiculous and tender ways that boys will be boys.
  9. Tired Moonlight
    It certainly demands patience (and a forgiving eye) as it experiments with an odd style. Yet it’s also a compassionate look at characters who don’t dwell on life. Instead, they live.
  10. Prophet's Prey
    Ms. Berg has created an unnerving, sometimes infuriating documentary. She makes smart choices throughout as she weaves together this chronicle of faith and abuse.
  11. Born to be Blue
    In Mr. Hawke’s extraordinary performance, this glamorous enigma becomes a credible, if pathetic character who lives for only two things: to play the trumpet and to shoot heroin.
  12. Labyrinth of Lies
    It is content to be a chilly, disquieting study of a society in a state of denial until the truth is bared.
  13. Poached
    The subject matter is only part of what makes Poached one of the more unsettling documentaries to come along lately. The presentation is also pivotal.
  14. A Trick of the Light (1995)
    With its light silent comedy, Mr. Wenders’s film presents movie history as a meeting of the inventive and the inevitable — a playful lark.
  15. Veteran
    Mr. Ryoo (“The Unjust,” “The City of Violence”) isn’t known for his sense of humor, but Veteran is amusing throughout, even if the funny scenes are more subdued or go on a beat or two longer than American viewers are used to.
  16. A Brave Heart: The Lizzie Velasquez Story
    The makers of A Brave Heart: The Lizzie Velasquez Story leave a few too many questions unanswered, but their subject’s immense optimism steamrolls through the documentary’s shortcomings. Indeed, there seems to be little this woman can’t vanquish.
  17. The Childhood of a Leader
    It’s a persuasive portrait of a monster-to-be, one etched in thrown tantrums and rocks, and heavily supported by an excellent cast that includes Robert Pattinson and Yolande Moreau as well as a driving score that occasionally threatens to upstage the movie.
  18. Francofonia
    It’s a work of art that troubles the conscience, in part because it suggests, both by default and by design, that no art is innocent, and that its preservation, like its destruction, depends on the operation of power.
  19. Meadowland
    The setup is a scriptwriting gimme — if your central couple lose a child, practically any subsequent behavior is justifiable — but the actors sell what they’re given quite effectively.
  20. Unbranded
    What lingers, though, are stirring vistas of the backcountry West, and admiration — for the Aggies’ achievement, Mr. Masters’s imagination and Mr. Baribeau’s skill in chronicling it all.
  21. Ingrid Bergman in Her Own Words
    Part of what makes In Her Own Words so pleasurable is that it’s so insistently celebratory, despite the traumas and hurts that trickle in. To that upbeat end, it tends to soften and even elide some of the thornier passages in Bergman’s life.
  22. Deathgasm
    In between the rampant four-letter words and the occasional partial nudity are likable attempts at humor — some sweet, some saucy.
  23. Extraordinary Tales
    Harnessing a range of appropriately spooky-oddball narrators and striking visual styles — including graphic novels, early photography and Expressionist painting — the Spanish director and animator Raul Garcia simultaneously honors and reimagines.
  24. A Monster with a Thousand Heads
    A Monster With a Thousand Heads will make your blood boil.
  25. Northern Soul
    Funny and feisty, gritty and sometimes grim, this first feature from the photographer Elaine Constantine delivers a sweaty snapshot of a very specific time and place.
  26. Darling
    Mickey Keating’s horror outing Darling manages to conjure an effectively unsettling miasma.
  27. The Idol
    Mr. Abu-Assad’s pop filmmaking is resolutely simple in its approach and efficiently sentimental.
  28. Going Away
    It’s a quietly compelling story.
  29. Xenia
    Xenia has been called a farce. But it is much more than that. Both the story and the performances are packed with raw emotion.
  30. Killing Them Safely
    Mr. Berardini’s packed documentary makes its case early and often, perhaps too often, but it’s more chilling than your average issue film.
  31. Guilty (Talvar)
    Mr. Khan is this movie’s best weapon. Playing a familiar character type, the world-weary detective, he gives a performance, full of small, sly details, that doesn’t seem familiar at all.
  32. Toy Story 4
    In other words, the movie is exactly what you expect — not more, not less — from an estimably well-oiled machine like Pixar.
  33. Censored Voices
    An essential amendment to the historical record, Censored Voices reminds us that no war is entirely virtuous and makes clear that, even at the time, the dangers of becoming an occupying force were evident.
  34. The Boy from Geita
    [A] brutally powerful documentary.
  35. The Wannabe
    Mr. Piazza offers a persuasive portrait of decline, but it is the crumbling beauty and flailing hopes of Rose that resonate. Ms. Arquette comprehends the character inside and out, and her aim is true.
  36. Heneral Luna
    I’m only a little embarrassed at liking Heneral Luna, an audaciously manipulative movie that’s more involving than it should be. But really, when a film works this hard to rouse you, there’s no shame in just giving in.
  37. Crumbs
    This debut feature from the Spanish-born director Miguel Llansó can’t claim a coherent mythology, but it has a lo-fi charm and humor.
  38. India's Daughter
    India’s Daughter is a portrait of a place and time. And for all of its horrors, the movie has a positive message, too: Out of tragedy — and this case is just one of many — can come galvanizing change.
  39. Insiang (1976)
    Mr. Brocka likes to go big and blunt, but in Insiang, he does his strongest work when he delivers his politics quietly.
  40. The Armor of Light
    Not every point of view portrayed in the film will sit well with each viewer, but Mr. Schenck and Ms. McBath do their utmost to act in good faith.
  41. Hard Labor
    The filmmakers, largely forgoing a soundtrack, skillfully manipulate stillness, silence and anomie to unsettling effect.
  42. 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.
  43. McCullin
    McCullin is not a groundbreaking documentary, but it wears its conventional format well, taking its cues (and its power) from the photographs themselves.
  44. Halloween III: Season of the Witch
    Mr. Wallace clearly has a fondness for the cliches he is parodying and he does it with style.
  45. In the Basement
    Ulrich Seidl’s raw portrayals of ordinary people have been criticized as unflattering and wallowing in abjection. But occasionally, as in his newest, In the Basement, the director can make you wonder whether the problem doesn’t lie with his films but with everyone else’s.
  46. The Nightingale
    The virtues of understatement and restraint are vividly apparent in Philippe Muyl’s The Nightingale.
  47. Madam Phung's Last Journey
    Gentle, coaxing questions from off camera draw out their stories.
  48. Casa Grande
    Mr. Barbosa blends tales of a coming-of-age and a burgeoning class consciousness, and never loses sympathy for Jean (Thales Cavalcanti).
  49. Song of Lahore
    If all of Song of Lahore were as exciting as its ending, you’d need an hour afterward to catch your breath. It’s not, yet despite a lackluster start, this documentary redeems itself by the finale.
  50. Karski & the Lords of Humanity
    Karski & the Lords of Humanity is fascinating, but Mr. Lanzmann’s efforts tower over it.
  51. The Creation of Meaning
    Cutaways to nature’s splendor abound: Mists enfold the mountain; Mr. Casanova mesmerizingly holds one cross-fade from these clouds.
  52. Drone
    There are no suggested solutions here to the difficult issues raised, but the film at least reminds us that it’s important not to accept this new way of warring without scrutinizing it.
  53. Alien: Covenant
    The fact that you know more or less exactly what’s coming doesn’t diminish the creepiness, or lessen the jolt when the thing you’re dreading arrives.
  54. Iraqi Odyssey
    Watching it is like slowly leafing through a giant scrapbook whose contents include the individual stories of a large extended family.
  55. Stink!
    Sensible and unnerving, Stink! is likely to incite, at the least, a purging of Axe body spray from adolescent boys’ bedrooms.
  56. Sound of Redemption: The Frank Morgan Story
    It’s a fond and forgiving tribute to the man, filled with music that moves beyond happy and sad, and toward something like brilliance.
  57. Fraulein
    An intimate, elusive drama about the boundaries of friendship and nationality, Fräulein presents immigrant lives with significantly more empathy than detail. For some, though, the movie’s narrative shorthand will be enough.
  58. The Ones Below
    Toward the end, Mr. Farr employs familiar cinematic sleights of hand, but with a finely calibrated touch.
  59. Night Owls
    The performances are so crackling that you can imagine Ms. Salazar and Mr. Pally, given richer material, becoming a slapstick comedy team: the spitfire and the nerd.
  60. Dark Horse
    Dark Horse is a canny package that uses the classic structure of the sports-underdog story to deliver a glowing ode to community pride and the merits of collective action over individual gain.
  61. Almost There
    This first feature from Dan Rybicky and Aaron Wickenden demonstrates that these documentary filmmakers might do well to think more like journalists sometimes.
  62. Among the Believers
    The directors let their subjects speak without overtly passing judgment.
  63. The Bye Bye Man
    Jonathan Penner’s sharp script (from a story by Robert Damon Schneck) and Stacy Title’s assured direction keep the heat on, and there’s some resourceful misdirection that deepens the story and intensifies the scares.
  64. Bad Moms
    If I could write sonnets, I would write one about Ms. Hahn, whose timing — she finds depths in that little pause before a joke crests — can turn laughs into howls.
  65. Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore
    This is the most absorbing and well-paced film in the trilogy to date, despite its nearly two-and-a-half-hour running time — de rigueur for modern spectacles that want to convince audiences they’re getting enough bang for their buck. “Secrets of Dumbledore” gestures toward themes of frailty, thwarted intentions and forgiveness.
  66. Colliding Dreams
    A swift primer that favors breadth over depth, the movie saves some hopeful notes for the end.
  67. Southbound
    These are fragments more than complete stories, and the incompleteness is its own kind of creepiness.
  68. Kevin Hart: What Now?
    The movie is a good representation of Mr. Hart’s comedy, but not a perfect one.
  69. 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.
  70. Eisenstein in Guanajuato
    Beyond the arty trappings and flamboyant showmanship that are typical of Mr. Greenaway, 73, Eisenstein in Guanajuato is a brazen provocation.
  71. Pee-wee's Big Holiday
    Like the Muppets and the Simpsons, Pee-wee Herman seems not to age. But in his new Netflix movie, Pee-wee’s Big Holiday, he does take things down a notch; he’s less frenetic and more reactive.
  72. The Invitation
    If the movie works as well as it does, it’s because Ms. Kusama can coax scares from shadows, silences and ricocheting looks.
  73. Antarctica: Ice and Sky
    The movie is both heady (there are real thrills in the stories of exploration) and sobering (Mr. Lorius’s findings are convincing). This is a cogent, accessible cinematic delineation of an increasingly crucial problem.
  74. Sing Street
    The charms of Sing Street should not be underestimated. Partly because its manner is unassuming and its story none too original...it’s easy to overlook Mr. Carney’s ingenuity and sensitivity.
  75. 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.
  76. Songs My Brothers Taught Me
    You come at the story, such as it is, as a visitor from the outside world, picking up information as the movie goes along. This approach impedes comprehension, and at moments you may be tempted to sit back and not try to make the pieces fit. For those unwilling to make the effort, Songs My Brothers Taught Me has other rewards.
  77. Audrie & Daisy
    Audrie & Daisy is strongest when it investigates what it regards as shortcomings of justice, for reasons technical and implied.
  78. The Intervention
    Despite her script’s omissions...Ms. DuVall juggles the emotional dynamics with fluid editing and light comic touches. The skilled cast members must flesh out their characters, and the unselfconscious Ms. Lynskey, who invites the audience’s mockery and ends up with its sympathy, is the revelation.
  79. Joshy
    Mr. Baena (who, with David O. Russell, wrote the tricky 2004 “I ♥ Huckabees”) is more accomplished than many microbudget filmmakers, and the looseness with which he imbues the middle section of Joshy is deceptive, creating a sense that the necessary emotional crash might not actually occur.
  80. Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World
    The internet is an elusive quarry. It’s a marvel and a menace, a banal fact of life and a force for incalculable change. But it’s also less the subject of this captivating, uneven film than an excuse for its director to add to his collection of memorable faces and voices.
  81. The Lovers and the Despot
    Despite its flaws and will to kitsch, The Lovers and the Despot has enough enigmas and chills to merit a look, even if some of its spookier moments involve cinephilia rather than the usual weapons of mass destruction.
  82. Under the Shadow
    War may be terrible, but for a woman like Shideh there’s no horror like home.
  83. Requiem for the American Dream
    [A] well-paced and cogent seminar.
  84. 4th Man Out
    The director, Andrew Nackman, in making a super-mainstream film, leans so far toward the feel-good end of the spectrum that he forgoes the opportunity to make something that is more real, more fraught, more complex.
  85. Glassland
    There’s much in the movie to admire until it runs headlong into a stone wall.
  86. Five Nights in Maine
    Maris Curran had plenty of opportunities to insert a cheesy plot twist into “Five Nights in Maine,” her delicate drama about loss and its aftermath. Yet she stayed true to her intentions, and the result is a believable character study that may not draw crowds but certainly challenges its two lead actors.
  87. Diamond Tongues
    The prickly tone is a difficult balancing act, and Diamond Tongues may settle for being a softer-hearted film than its most cynical scenes portend. But it has a palpable affection for Toronto’s cultural scene and for Ms. Goldstein.
  88. A Hologram for the King
    It takes an actor with the finesse of Tom Hanks to turn a story of confusion, perplexity, frustration and panic into an agreeably uncomfortable comedy.
  89. Juice
    The film winds up taking a clear anticrime stance, and Mr. Epps ably conveys Q's trepidation about his friends' behavior. But Juice also revels in the flash, irreverence and tough-guy posturing to which the film's violence can ultimately be traced.
  90. Bopha!
    Bopha! is so firmly grounded in physical reality (it was shot in Zimbabwe), in the looks and passions of its characters, even in its music, that its deliberate progress from one obligatory scene to the next still carries surprising emotional weight.
  91. Snowtime!
    It is aimed at younger children and includes pretty songs, but it doesn’t soft-pedal anything. Its low-key story is about friendship, but it’s also about loss, which should leave pint-size viewers with plenty to think about.
  92. Blade Runner 2049
    Mr. Villeneuve’s film, by contrast, is a carefully engineered narrative puzzle, and its power dissipates as the pieces snap into place. As sumptuous and surprising as it is from one scene to the next, it lacks the creative excess, the intriguing opacity and the haunting residue of its predecessor.
  93. Backtrack
    The film is part psychological thriller, part horror movie, and the horror elements deliver some solid frights. Mr. Brody isn’t asked to stretch much, but he does his usual thing adroitly.
  94. Echo Park
    An understated and often charming film.
  95. Valley of Love
    This movie is finally only about Isabelle Huppert and Gérard Depardieu, and that’s enough.
  96. Going in Style
    It’s strictly comfort food, 99 percent predictable, though the 1 percent that isn’t — you’ll know it when you see it — is deftly executed.
  97. My Sex Life... or How I Got Into an Argument
    Both Paul and the film would seem maddening if they weren't so passionately sincere, and if Paul did not gaze at the film's many beautiful young actresses with such an amazed, seductive gleam in his eye.
  98. A Beautiful Planet
    It’s appealing to adults and accessible to younger viewers. And it delivers an environmental message that is strong and serious while remaining encouraging and optimistic. That’s important to hear. The rest is just amazing to watch.
  99. Holy Hell
    Mr. Allen has made an engrossing and tense documentary, though his insider knowledge is sometimes a hindrance.
  100. Patriots Day
    My reservations about such pictures in general were not put to rest by Patriots Day, but this film’s real merits are not easily dismissed either.
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