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. Attachment
    The ticktock horror plotting muffles the romantic spark that brought Maja and Leah together in the first place — the thrill replaced by a lukewarm chill.
  2. Mother and Child
    You may not quite trust Mother and Child -- its soft spots and fuzzy edges give it away -- but you can believe just about everyone in it.
  3. The Apparition
    Mr. Lindon, who carries his powerful masculinity with canny reserve, is superb as a man inquiring into a faith he had previously thought had nothing to do with him. But Ms. Bellugi is a real find; she inhabits her character, who, even as she hides her secrets, is so genuinely beatific that you can hear it in her breathing.
  4. Examined Life
    A modest, intermittently engaging film.
  5. There Was Once...
    Ah, well. "There Was Once ...may feel like sober, do-gooder public television, but it has integrity, recording one specific town's slice of living history. Simple as that, it's a worthy document.
  6. The Vanishing
    While Jorgen Johansson’s windswept photography creates a credible sense of isolation (he filmed in part at the Mull of Galloway lighthouse), we sense the ominous rhythms of impending calamity.
  7. The Beautiful Country
    It is hard not to admire the independence and ambition of The Beautiful Country, even if the film does fall short of its epic intentions.
  8. Real Life
    The ending of Real Life is the most uproarious of a good many inspired moments.
  9. Disconnect
    The film ominously conveys a world of too much information but too little communication, where people have become slaves to glowing hand-held devices that were designed to make life easier but have made it busier and more complicated.
  10. The Damned
    Its tension weakens, and tediousness sets in, though that effectively evokes what the characters are experiencing. But a period of slog reduces the story’s immersive quality, slowing momentum. What’s best about the movie, though, is how it eventually picks back up and morphs into something a bit different from straight-ahead horror.
  11. Gretel & Hansel
    Essentially the story of a young woman coming into her power, Gretel & Hansel is quietly sinister, yet too underdeveloped to truly scare. Together, Jeremy Reed’s production design and Galo Olivares’s photography weave a chilly spell that’s regrettably undermined by the opacity of the storytelling.
  12. Goat
    The performances are conscientious and earnest.
  13. MaXXXine
    Darker, moodier and altogether nastier than its predecessors — “X” (2022) and, later that same year, “Pearl” — this hyperconfident feature is also funny, occasionally wistful and deeply empathetic toward its damaged, driven heroine.
  14. The Tic Code
    Like most movies that examine specific ailments, this gawky, occasionally touching film has the feel of a dramatized case history whose purpose is to educate as much as it is to tell a story.
  15. Frailty
    Paxton's Dad may be the most terrifying father to appear in a horror film since Jack Nicholson went crazily homicidal in "The Shining."
  16. 8 Women
    Indefensible, cynical, even grotesque; it is also pure -- that is to say innocent and uncorrupted -- fun.
  17. Joe the King
    Dramatically Joe the King feels unglued, as if crucial sequences had been left on the cutting-room floor.
  18. One Swallow Brought Spring
    A quiet, slow-moving tale, very much in tune with the gradual rhythms of traditional agricultural life.
  19. Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War
    Far more ambivalent and ambiguous film than Mr. Spielberg's. Both North and South are portrayed as brutal, abusive regimes that use their citizens as so much cannon fodder.
  20. The Shine of Day
    The Shine of Day pulls itself together with an ending that feels a bit ready-made for drawing out the parallels between its kindred performers. But the movie gratifyingly observes the openness that seems the base line for Philipp and Walter, and the glimmer of realization in a stage actor about the void that may lurk among his many liberating roles.
  21. Dementia
    It’s an assured, deftly acted movie that builds its creepiness slowly and keeps its secrets well hidden till the end.
  22. Pennies from Heaven
    Miss Peters is funny and charming lip-synching Helen Kane's I Want to Be Bad, and Mr. Martin is something of a revelation as a danceman. The movie, though, is not easy to respond to. It's chilly without being provocative in any intellectual way.
  23. Civil: Ben Crump
    “Civil” yields fewer insights than hoped. At times, the neat documentary feels nearly as tailored as Crump’s suits.
  24. Sleeping with Other People
    Ms. Headland has a concept for a latter-day screwball comedy — two romantically challenged friends whose hang-ups create a roadblock to coupledom — but she doesn’t have the jokes or the emotionally textured characters that can fill in that conceit.
  25. Soundtrack for a Revolution
    It’s the kind of film that will have audiences clapping and singing along. And why not? The images and stories may be familiar, but it’s history worth retelling.
  26. Dreams with Sharp Teeth
    Directed by Erik Nelson, Dreams recalls the career of a runty young geek who evolved into a world-famous artist -- and ladies' man.
  27. Wanted
    Things happen in Wanted, but no one cares. You could call that nihilism, but even nihilism requires commitment of a kind and this, by contrast, is a movie built on indifference.
  28. Casablanca Beats
    Hip-hop isn’t dead, the film energetically insists; it’s just been hiding in a Moroccan slum.
  29. Wes Craven's New Nightmare
    An ingenious, cathartic exercise in illusion and fear.
  30. Enola Holmes 2
    This time around, the director Harry Bradbeer and the screenwriter Jack Thorne forgo prolonged dialogue when Enola breaks the fourth wall, making more room for Brown’s intense looks and physical gestures to resonate.
  31. I Am Taraneh, I Am Fifteen Years Old
    Neither approves of nor condemns the choices made by its headstrong protagonist; rather, it quietly observes her transformation from naïve schoolgirl to wary but proud single mother.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fighting for Life
    Some of the most upsetting images are from a century and a half ago: Mathew Brady photos of the Battle of Antietam during the Civil War, the conflict that gave birth to modern battlefield surgery.
  33. The Goodbye Girl
    Exhuasting without being much fun.
  34. Ride or Die
    The movie gracefully captures the rhythms of intimacy, how it deepens quicker in stolen time. But even as they develop a kinship, the women themselves remain ciphers.
  35. Adoration
    A profound and provocative exploration of cultural inheritance, communications technology and the roots and morality of terrorism, the Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan nimbly wades into an ideological minefield without detonating an explosion.
  36. The King's Choice
    The King’s Choice maintains a sense of intrigue when it sticks to the king’s dealings with the government, but the movie drags when it moves outside of back rooms and deviates from setting up the Bräuer-Haakon showdown.
  37. Thunderball
    [Bond] also has a much better sense of humor than he has shown in his previous films. And this is the secret ingredient that makes Thunderball the best of the lot.
  38. Looking for Mr. Goodbar
    Miss Keaton, who continues to grow as an actress and film presence, is worth paying attention to in bits and pieces of the movie. She's too good to waste on the sort of material the movie provides, which is artificial without in anyway qualifying as a miracle fabric.
  39. Outbreak
    The effort to turn Outbreak into an action picture insures that little of it will be believable, regardless of how much scientific data has been woven into the story. The film's shallowness also contributes to the impression that no problem is too thorny to be solved by movie heroics.
  40. Road to Bali
    Quite simply, "Road to Bali" is a whoopingly hilarious film, full of pure crazy situations and deliciously discourteous gags, all played with evident relish and split-second timing by the team.
  41. The Listener
    For their part, Buscemi and Thompson utilize the complementary power of stillness and the close-up to create a portrait of a woman who hears so much and divulges so little.
  42. JCVD
    Some of this is affecting, some of it tedious, and the film's inconsistencies of tone are made more glaring by its peculiar look.
  43. Cop Land
    Everywhere the camera turns in this tense and volatile drama, it finds enough interest for a truckload of conventional Hollywood fare. Whatever its limitations, Cop Land has talent to burn.
  44. Girls Town
    In celebrating the solidarity of high school girls who refuse to live and die according to the Beverly Hills ideal, the movie raises a hoarse cheer for candor and spunky self-determination.
  45. Day of the Fight
    Day of the Fight is an unabashed genre picture that manages to be both the kind of movie they supposedly don’t make like they used to, and also something bracingly fresh. It’s anchored by the lead actor, Michael C. Pitt, here ferocious and heart-stabbingly vulnerable in equal proportion.
  46. Captain Marvel
    It’s pretty good fun, and could almost be described without sarcasm as a scrappy little picture, like most of Boden and Fleck’s other work.
  47. Ghosts of Cité Soleil
    In spite of occasional gestures in the direction of political or sociological context -- interviews with anti-Aristide activists, news images of battles beyond Cité Soleil -- Mr. Leth is not, in the end, much concerned with offering an analysis of the Haitian situation. Like Lele, he'd rather have a party with the thugs.
  48. Dolphin Tale
    Pitched awfully young, without a shred of the satire or subtlety that is generally found in films aimed at tweeners and above. That's not a bad thing; it just means accompanying grown-ups or older siblings will have to choke down a sizable dose of schmaltz with their fish milkshakes.
  49. A Better Life
    As is sometimes the case with movies that take on civil and political rights without force-feeding the audience,A Better Life" plays the human interest angle hard. It tries to put a lump in your throat and a tear on your cheek (it succeeds), pumping your emotions doubtless in an attempt to look nonpartisan.
  50. Hot Shots! Part Deux
    Deliciously silly.
  51. How to Survive a Pandemic
    The message — that science cannot succeed without a politics of solidarity — is important, but the film ends on a note of uncertainty that feels defeatist rather than urgent.
  52. The Notorious Bettie Page
    Principally a work of gorgeous surfaces, shot mostly in silvery black-and-white film by the cinematographer Mott Hupfel, with an occasional splash of saturated color.
  53. Rental Family
    A movie that’s at once disappointingly superficial and utterly charming.
  54. Unstoppable
    William Goldenberg’s feature directing debut comes to life more often as a conventional family drama than as a conventional sports movie.
  55. A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
    A gentle, pleasantly unrushed piece of moviemaking. There’s a tonic simplicity to how it gets the job done, and if the film comes off as fairly conventional stuff, it nevertheless succeeds on its own modest, middlebrow terms.
  56. undertone
    It’s a properly scary movie, the kind that merits watching in a theater with a good sound system (or headphones in a dark room, at home). And “Undertone” provides terrific evidence of what a filmmaker can do even under constraint. The most powerful tool in an artist’s toolbox just might be the audience’s imagination.
  57. Clockwatchers
    Clockwatchers gets many of the details of office life eerily right: the arrogant, smarmy male executives who affect a patronizing jocularity with secretaries whose names they can never remember; the iron-fisted boss who huffs windily about everyone in the company being a "family"; the petty tyrant who doles out pencils as though they were gold bullion.
  58. Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist
    There are many words that you can use to describe Ms. Westwood (born 1941), an early punk rock tastemaker and merchandizer turned global couture brand. Boring certainly is not one of them. And as the movie jumps from past to present, from street to palace, from the Sex Pistols to Queen Elizabeth II, Ms. Westwood’s claim sounds increasingly strange and borderline ridiculous.
  59. Pooh's Heffalump Movie
    Adorable.
  60. The Innkeepers
    Luke and Claire are guilty, above all, of being dumb and bored. Even their interest in the ghost that may dwell in the dark corners of the Pedlar seems tepid and lacking in conviction. The movie, clever and rigorous though it is, feels that way too.
  61. That Man: Peter Berlin
    One of the enduring icons of gay male eroticism, the phenomenon known as Peter Berlin is explored, explained, ogled and interviewed in the superb documentary That Man: Peter Berlin.
  62. Sister Helen
    Using a fly-on-the-wall camera technique that suggests the cinéma vérité documentaries of Frederick Wiseman, Ms. Cammisa and Mr. Fruchtman vividly capture the dynamic of tenderness and rage that characterizes Sister Helen's relationship with the 21 men who live under her roof.
  63. Northfork
    There is nothing quite like this movie, and I'm not altogether sure there is much more to it than its lovely peculiarity. But at a moment when so many films strive to be obvious and interchangeable as possible, it is gratifying to find one that is puzzling, subtle and handmade.
  64. One Hour Photo
    Unfortunately One Hour Photo turns everyone but the central character into a cutout.
  65. Father and Son
    Like a dream within a dream. Its images and emotions are vivid, disquieting and also hermetic, and while it may frustrate your desire for clear storytelling and psychological transparency, it has an intensity that surpasses understanding.
  66. Beavis and Butt-Head Do America
    Nastily amusing
  67. Dark Touch
    That space between reality and mirage is where Ms. de Van’s strength, and this movie’s true horror, lies.
  68. Confess, Fletch
    Getting peeved at Mottola and Hamm’s easygoing efforts would be like getting mad at a cat for sleeping too much.
  69. Quartet
    A sincere but sloppy piece of work. Mr. Hoffman dotes on his cast of first-rate British actors of a certain age - and invites us to savor their energy and professionalism. This is not difficult, though the efforts of these fine actors might have yielded greater delight if they had been given more to do.
  70. Adam
    Adam is a movie that tackles big ideas about queerness and comes out looking confused — making it an experience that frustrates even as it tries to endear.
  71. Prometheus
    The virtuosity on display makes the weakness of the story all the more frustrating. I'll avoid spoilers here, but Prometheus kind of spoils itself with twists and reversals that pull the movie away from its lofty, mind-blowing potential.
  72. Orgasm Inc.
    Explores the link between female sexuality and corporate profits with a style that's as entertaining as it is revelatory.
  73. 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.
  74. New York, New York
    It's not that the movie runs out of steam long before it has gone on for two hours and 33 minutes, but that we have figured it out and become increasingly dumbfounded.
  75. Paper Clips
    Inspiring, but also, as a film, a little tedious, without enough narrative or exploration to justify its feature length.
  76. Bonjour Tristesse
    A work of image and mood, Bonjour Tristesse captures the mythopoetic wonder of an adolescent summer, and the effect is trancelike.
  77. Fast Color
    Moody and strange, Fast Color has a solemnity that haunts almost every frame.
  78. Doing Time, Doing Vipassana
    As inspiring as it is, Doing Time, Doing Vipassana is too sweet for its own good; it plays like a spiritual infomercial.
  79. Goon
    Behind the film's brass knuckles are tender fingers. Why else would Goon use music from Puccini's "Turandot" to underscore critical dramatic moments?
  80. Mimosas
    At best ambiguous and at worst unfathomable, Mimosas, the sophomore feature from the Spanish director Oliver Laxe, merges harsh reality and offbeat mysticism into a reflection on the tug between our higher powers and baser instincts.
  81. Slash
    For a movie about proud outcasts, Slash is a little square.
  82. Meet Me in the Bathroom
    There are revealing glimpses into the early work of artists who would morph into entities that were slicker and ostensibly cooler.
  83. Princesas
    A maudlin melodrama about prostitutes in Madrid, Princesas is not, alas, the new film by Pedro Almodóvar, but a dilution of his manner by the writer-director Fernando León de Aranoa.
  84. Always Be My Maybe
    Always Be My Maybe feels a lot like a movie propped up by a stunt, a high-gloss romantic comedy so mired in triteness and unconvincing emotions that its main recommendation is the appealing diversity of its cast.
  85. The Lost Bus
    Greengrass knows how to shoot and cut, but The Lost Bus is at once too high-minded and too exploitative to work. However skilled the cinematography and editing, there is no saving a movie predicated on looming death with badly written characters and such a frustratingly narrow point of view.
  86. The New Boy
    Thornton, who briefly attended a Christian boarding school when he was a child, brings a textured perspective to this story of cultural violence and white guilt.
  87. The Queen of My Dreams
    Kaur acts as an amiable anchor, gamely embodying a mother and a daughter across time periods.
  88. The French Lieutenant's Woman
    The film's beauty is dazzling. It stands with—or perhaps a little ahead of—Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon and Roman Polanski's Tess, but it also must be conceded, quickly and without too stern a reproach, that there is less to The French Lieutenant's Woman than meets the dazzled eye.
  89. The Party
    It’s the tension between Sellers’s inane tact and the general tastelessness of his surroundings that gives the movie its zing.
  90. Teenage
    A lot of intriguing ideas are floated in Teenage... But the film takes a point of view that leaves all of them underdeveloped.
  91. The Patience Stone
    Mr. Rahimi opens up an entire world inside the couple’s modest house, filling its few rooms with enough air, sharp words and slow-boiling intrigue that the walls never feel as if they’re closing in on you.
  92. The Truth About Cats & Dogs
    Ms. Garofalo, in a lovely, winning performance, gives Abby lots of heart while also making defensive snappishness a big part of her charm.
  93. Jean Gentil
    The filmmakers have no patience for details, either basic or telling. Their elliptical method starts to seem lazy, and Jean's plight, a journey from bad to bad, starts to seem a stacked deck. Through it all Mr. Genty holds your attention with his sober dignity. Too bad the filmmakers frequently let that slip into pathos.
  94. Soft in the Head
    From a dramatic standpoint, the movie can be unconvincing... From a formal standpoint, though, the movie impresses, maintaining a sense of anxiety through tight shots and a sound design that favors overlapping voices and constant clatter.
  95. Renoir
    The movie, like its subject, refuses to stir up unnecessary melodrama. There are many small conflicts and psychological undercurrents, but the closest thing to a narrative theme is the effect Andrée has on the Renoir household.
  96. Straight Time
    Straight Time is not a movie to raise the spirits. It is so cool it would leave a chill were it not done with such precision and control that we remain fascinated by a rat, in spite of ourselves.
  97. Grateful Dawg
    Quite simply a treat for the ear.
  98. The Other Lamb
    Existing outside of time and place, The Other Lamb is a gorgeous revenge fable with an excess of atmosphere and zero subtlety — a mallet wrapped in gauze and girlish laughter.
  99. Big Bad Wolves
    Is there a point? All the filmmakers seem interested in is the ugliness of the main Israeli characters.
  100. I Dream in Another Language
    The story is not without interest, and it touches on a couple of worthwhile themes: cultural erasure and the way religious and provincial prejudices can suppress love. But its treatment of these subjects is perhaps undercut by its conventionality.
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