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. Advocate
    Provocative as the film is, it doesn’t fully reconcile Tsemel’s contradictions, if such a thing were even possible or desirable.
  2. The Vast of Night
    The actors add some filigree to their genre types, but are consistently upstaged by the superb, supple camerawork. With the cinematographer Miguel Ioann Littin Menz, Patterson turns the camera into an uneasily embodied presence and when it takes flight so does the movie.
  3. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It
    “The Devil Made Me Do It” is an excellently spooky work of fiction. It would be even better if it privileged ghoulishness over gospel.
  4. Black Widow
    Comes on with the seductiveness of an expensive perfume that inevitably evaporates before the night is over. However, though it promises more than it can ever deliver, this classy-looking melodrama is soothing, in the way that luxe can be, as well as redeemingly funny, in part, at least, for not becoming mired in its own darker possibilities.
  5. The Social Dilemma
    The Social Dilemma is remarkably effective in sounding the alarm about the incursion of data mining and manipulative technology into our social lives and beyond.
  6. Whirlybird
    Drawing on an amazing video stockpile from the 1980s and ’90s, Whirlybird is an editing feat.
  7. The Woman Who Loves Giraffes
    Blessed with a trove of 16-millimeter film footage captured during this yearlong adventure, the director, Alison Reid, uses it as the foundation for a far-ranging story of scientific discovery, sexual discrimination and environmental alarm.
  8. One Eight Seven
    Genuinely disturbing in its vision of fearless students and powerless teachers locked in struggle.
  9. Respect
    Respect succeeds in doing exactly what is expected of it. You may argue with this or that filmmaking choice and regret its overly smooth edges, but it does give you a sense of Franklin as a historical figure, a crossover success story and a full-throttle, fur-draped diva.
  10. Morbius
    Morbius is a ghoulish, suitably downbeat tale of madness, hubris, suffering and weird science set in a world that offers little solace. And while most of it is as predictably familiar as expected, it does something unusual for a movie like this: It entertains you, rather than bludgeons you into submission.
  11. Stargirl
    Stargirl was published twenty years ago, and its age occasionally shows in this adaptation; some of the story beats and character qualities (particularly those of the rather precious title character) have congealed into cliché. But Hart (who wrote the screenplay with Kristin Hahn and Jordan Horowitz) is such an enchanting filmmaker, her storytelling style so warm and welcoming, that those concerns fade.
  12. The Photograph
    The sparks fly fast and persuasively — Rae and Stanfield make sense right away — and you’re soon cozying up with the couple while they share stories and increasingly heated looks in a dimly lit restaurant. The writer-director Stella Meghie understands that you want to see these two beautiful people get together, and she smoothly delivers on your own romantic (and romance genre) longings.
  13. Spenser Confidential
    The prospect of spending more time with this crew is not a bad one.
  14. José
    The film delicately depicts the hardship of being gay in a Catholic culture and the pressure for machismo in a crime-ridden country.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
    A fast, dense, friendly children's musical, with something of the joys of singing together on a team bus on the way to a game.
  16. Suburbia
    Probably the best teen-agers-in-revolt movie since Jonathan Kaplan's Over the Edge.
  17. Two of Us
    Through the use of symbolic peepholes, eavesdropping and dark rooms that provide cover for whispered assurances of devotion, Two of Us succeeds as a stealthy depiction of lesbian erotics, one that mirrors the inhibitions of a generation.
  18. Vivarium
    There’s a consistent inventiveness — and grim humor — to this treatment of a seemingly well-worn theme.
  19. Shirley
    Moss, brazen and witty and seeming to push herself to the very edge of control, is a galvanizing presence, convincingly wild even as she’s trapped in a hothouse of sometimes dubious ideas.
  20. The Nest
    If Durkin’s writing doesn’t always match his formal flair, The Nest has a bracing economy, cramming a lot into tight quarters.
  21. Big Business
    Big Business, which, though it never quite delivers the boffo payoff, is a most cheerful, very breezy summer farce, played to the hilt by two splendidly comic performers.
  22. Bad Hair
    Despite the potentially heavy (or heavy-handed) material, Bad Hair is self-consciously and pleasingly campy, and it delivers a new cinematic monster: the sew-in weave.
  23. Black Bear
    The movie plays like a well-crafted game, one with stable rules and safeties, perfectly enjoyable but limited. The director and the performers circle ideas about how intimacy can be manipulated to satisfy artistic ambitions, but the experiment feels easy to leave behind.
  24. Boys State
    By eliding the Legion’s history and focusing on winning personalities, the filmmakers have made an engaging movie about some kids who — as their jokes give way to debates, stratagems and even shocks — already seem to be drafting their own more interesting sequel.
  25. Us Kids
    Us Kids skillfully handles a sensitive subject and prudently connects the Parkland students’ stories to those of Black students whose experiences with gun violence rarely garner similar national attention.
  26. Lucky Grandma
    The director Sasie Sealy’s feature debut has style and keenly observed visual humor. Each scene is paced as perfectly as a punchline.
  27. Falling in Love
    At the very least, a warmly old-fashioned soap opera with several significant new twists. And for all its flaws, Falling in Love is one of those ordinary-seeming modern films that present unremarkable characters in the throes of all-too-familiar contemporary crises. When films in this genre succeed fully and realistically in mirroring the audience's concerns, they aren't ordinary at all. [09 Dec 1984, p.21]
    • The New York Times
  28. Tesla
    You might not learn everything there is to know about Tesla — that’s what the internet is for — but you will nonetheless feel illuminated by his presence.
  29. Streetwalkin'
    Streetwalkin' isn't exactly full of surprises. But it certainly moves.
  30. The Wretched
    Blessed with shivery setups and freaky effects — here, skin-crawling is literal — The Wretched transforms common familial anxieties into flesh, albeit crepey and creeping.
  31. Untouchable
    A respectable and all-too-real introduction to a chilling chapter of a Hollywood horror story.
  32. Paris Is Burning
    Miss Livingston's interviews reveal a way of living that is both highly structured and self-protective.
  33. Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind
    Lightfoot is frank about sizing up that work — the movie opens with him expressing disdain for the sexism of his early hit “For Lovin’ Me” — and he’s refreshingly up-to-date in his perspectives about today’s music.
  34. The Flamingo Kid
    Even if The Flamingo Kid comes out of sit-com country, the character and the performance effortlessly rise above their origins.
  35. After Yang
    With eyebrow flicks, tiny physical modulations and shifts in pitch, Farrell movingly turns a shadow into a recognizable person, while also bringing much-needed humor to the movie.
  36. The Souvenir: Part II
    Hogg’s filmmaking presents its own forceful draw and is the reason I watched Souvenir Part II again.
  37. Fool for Love
    Fool for Love has several exceptional things going for it, namely the performances by Mr. Shepard as Eddie, Kim Basinger as May and Harry Dean Stanton as the Old Man.
  38. Working Man
    An unconventional labor story, the movie doesn’t bask in the triumph of rebellion; instead, it’s an introspective portrait of men for whom working is a replacement for living.
  39. My Life as a Dog
    The trouble with My Life as a Dog is that too often it imposes an alien sensibility upon the boy, requiring that he behave in a way that adults can too easily identify as charming. My Life as a Dog is a movie with a split point of view.
  40. Changing the Game
    Changing the Game could have gone further, analyzing how fairness in sports is a myth to begin with. But the movie isn’t interested in rewriting the rules; it would rather introduce us to the brave young people who are.
  41. Uncorked
    While the characters interact against the backdrop of varying degrees of racism and socioeconomic stressors, they are not defined by them. In other words, they are ordinary but no less noteworthy.
  42. Dreamscape
    An enjoyably half-baked movie, and if it were any less farfetched it would be less fun.
  43. Why Don't You Just Die!
    Sokolov’s debut feature is a clever, bloody as hell, often hilarious virtuoso exercise in excruciating harm-doing among mendacious people.
  44. 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.
  45. The Last Vermeer
    The film moves from detective story to courtroom drama with nicely sketched character studies as a bonus.
  46. Last and First Men
    Johannsson’s stark, uncompromising passion project is always striking to the eye even in moments when the narrative lulls.
  47. Minyan
    The film allows its societies to speak through gestures, whether it is the passing of personal possessions after a death or the brush of bodies behind a bar, and its portrait of both Jewishness and queerness is richer for it.
  48. Siberia
    I can’t think of other actors at his level who could keep a sense of true north in a nonlinear story like this, from bear scene to sex scene to earnest confrontations, amid quotations from St. Augustine and Nietzsche.
  49. Charlatan
    Often as thorny as its subject but also oddly fascinated by his near-magical abilities, “Charlatan” is a temporary cure for the common biopic.
  50. A Soldier's Story
    Mr. Jewison, filming mainly at Fort Chaffee, Ark., has opened up the play by using such interiors as the bar where the troops hang out and exteriors on and around the base. But perhaps most commendably, he has let Mr. Fuller's drama speak for itself, applying the skills of a film maker to polish the facets that lent such substance to the drama.
  51. Micki + Maude
    The director, the star and the writer make a fine team in this often riotous tale.
  52. Protocol
    Protocol is a breezy, not entirely unpredictable comedy that was made to order for the gifted Goldie Hawn by Buck Henry, the writer, Herb Ross, the director, and Miss Hawn herself, who is the film's executive producer. [21 Dec 1984, p.C25]
    • The New York Times
  53. Mona Lisa
    NEIL JORDAN'S Mona Lisa is classy kitsch. It's as smooth and distinctive (and, ultimately, as insubstantial) as the old Nat (King) Cole recording of the song, which gives the film its title and a lot of its mood. It's also got high style, so you needn't hate yourself for liking it.
  54. Sublet
    Though far from the gold standard of “brief encounter” dramas like Andrew Haigh’s “Weekend,” Sublet nevertheless wins you over with its subtle charm and its mellow depiction of two men forging an unexpected connection.
  55. Alone in the Dark
    Unobjectionable even when it doesn't work, and certainly amusing when it does.
  56. The Dog Doc
    For audiences who don’t mind being jealous of sick dogs, The Dog Doc is a thought-provoking look at what is missing from modern medicine — for animals and for people.
  57. Gorky Park
    On the whole, Mr. Apted's approach to the material is archly effective, making for a crisp, intricate thriller, well able to hold an audience's interest.
  58. Tough Guys
    The director, Jeff Kanew, does not have as steady a hand as the old-timers. What he does have is sense enough to let our memories of all those Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas movies work on us.
  59. Inside Moves
    It's a modest and sentimental movie, but also one that, on its own terms, accomplishes what it means to.
  60. The Great Santini
    Mr. Duvall, Miss Danner and Mr. O'Keefe are the main reasons you should see The Great Santini. They play together with the kind of ease and self-assurance that, in a movie, is as exhilarating as it is rare.
  61. The Platform
    A gnarly mash-up of midnight movie and social commentary, the picture is overly overt but undeniably effective, delivering genre jolts and broad messaging in equal measure.
  62. The Secret Garden
    In a year defined by surprise, the predictability of The Secret Garden — a new film adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s beloved 1911 novel — proves more charming than tedious.
  63. 52 Pick-Up
    ELMORE LEONARD'S thrillers leap so easily to the screen that it's astounding so few of them have gotten there. Even with the kind of slapdash, unsightly production that's been given 52 Pick-Up, Mr. Leonard's stories make terrific, unself-conscious B-movies of the sort that are more and more rare.
  64. Family Plot
    A witty, relaxed lark. It's a movie to raise your spirits even as it dabbles in phony ones.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bombshell
    Although there are moments when the comedy is too rambunctious and scenes which are not precisely convincing, it is for the most part a merry, fast-paced diversion.
  66. Swing Time
    The plot is never permitted to weigh upon the shoulders of the cast; of comedy there is a generous portion; of romance the lightest sprinkling; of dancing, in solo, duet and ensemble, a brisk and debonair allotment.
  67. The Main Event
    The Main Event is a light comedy that takes the joys of a real WWE match — the escapism, the performance — and gives them a kid-centric spin. Karas balances the movie’s clowning with a human story, while showing empathy for childhood growing pains.
  68. Kubrick by Kubrick
    Most of Kubrick’s 13 features have been analyzed exhaustively already, and Kubrick by Kubrick doesn’t offer much that will surprise even mild obsessives. Still, it is interesting to hear Kubrick express ideas that run counter to conventional wisdom.
  69. Circus of Books
    The remembrances are the movie’s heart — not a family secret, but a community’s pride.
  70. A Good Woman Is Hard to Find
    While the movie barrels toward a final act that’s more feminist fantasy than credible conclusion, Bolger’s phenomenal performance locks us tightly on Sarah’s side.
  71. The Infiltrators
    Jumping between wildly dissimilar styles makes for an occasionally jarring film. Yet despite this awkwardness, the movie works.
  72. All Day and a Night
    Choice, for many, is an illusion. This message repeats itself throughout the film, and while at times it feels clumsy, it is never tedious. Sanders especially shines among a formidable cast, and in his portrayal, excellently reflects on the herculean task his character faces.
  73. A Secret Love
    It is a compliment that A Secret Love, which runs under an hour and a half, could stand to be longer, with an expanded portrait of Terry and Pat’s early life as a couple.
  74. The Golden Voyage of Sinbad
    Children who revel in clean-cut heroes, villains given to spells and incantations and the kind of special effects that breathe life into mandrake root, ships' figure-heads, centaurs, griffins and statues of Kali (always a deity beloved of evil forces) will probably find it a happy concoction for passing a rainy afternoon.
  75. 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.
  76. You Don't Nomi
    If not revelatory, You Don’t Nomi is likely to persuade viewers that “Showgirls” is more than a “bare-butted bore,” as Janet Maslin wrote in The New York Times 25 years ago.
  77. An American Pickle
    Pickles can be comfort food. Not too filling, good for the digestion, noisy and a little sloppy rather than artful or exquisite or challenging. This one, as I’ve said, isn’t bad, and even allows a soupçon of profundity into its formula.
  78. 2040
    Although the odds of implementing all these ideas might seem steep, “2040” is a rare climate documentary with an optimistic message.
  79. Inmate #1: The Rise of Danny Trejo
    There are a lot of laughs in his Hollywood redemption story, which also reveals Trejo’s hard-won gentleness.
  80. Father Soldier Son
    Like life, it sometimes skips years, only to land on an evening that feels like an epoch.
  81. Thieves Like Us
    Thieves Like Us is such an engaging, sharply observed account of a long-lost time, and of some of the people who briefly inhabited it, that I hope it doesn't get confused with other films that seem, superficially anyway, to have covered the same territory.
  82. Poison Ivy
    A B movie with a vengeance, one that offers a wickedly feminine (though hardly feminist) view of nominally happy family life and its failings.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Grey Gardens
    There is no doubt about the artistr and devotion that the Maysles have used in recording the life in Grey Gardens." There is no reason to doubt them when they say they love and admire the Beales. But the moviegoer will still feel like an exploiter. To watch Grey Gardens is to take part in a kind of carnival of attention with two willing but vulnerable people who had established themselves, for better or worse, in the habit of not being looked at. And what happens when the carnival moves on?
  84. Kate Nash: Underestimate the Girl
    It is endearing in its frankness: a profile of a star after her return from the firmament.
  85. The Outpost
    The Outpost evolves from what initially feels like a collection of war-movie commonplaces, highlighting crude-talking soldiers in a bad situation, into something more complex and illuminating.
  86. I'm No Longer Here
    Frías de la Parra is thoughtful and precise in conveying the cultural identity of these young people, and their spirit pulses through the story.
  87. Seahorse: The Dad Who Gave Birth
    "Seahorse” is the sort of documentary that gains its interest less from its technique than from its subject, and from the fact that the filmmaker was present at the right time. Articulate, reflective and unhesitant about getting personal, McConnell makes for a complicated character study.
  88. I Will Make You Mine
    The movie accumulates a rueful nostalgia. Soft black-and-white cinematography (by Bill Otto and Carl Nenzen Loven) and low-key humor help offset the limitations of its partly crowd-funded budget, as does the naturalism of the partly improvised performances
  89. Ursula von Rydingsvard: Into Her Own
    This documentary portrait of the formidable sculptor Ursula von Rydingsvard is, by dint of its brevity, more tantalizing than satiating. But it’s still a welcome cinematic account of her work.
  90. Street Fighting Men
    What makes the movie compelling, then, are not so much the stories that ebb and rise from despair to hope, like the tides, but the portraits of the people living them.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Strike Up the Band
    When they take the rugs off the floor and the youngsters begin moving, Strike Up the Band is spanking good entertainment.
  92. For All Mankind
    What emerges is an amazingly fresh visual immersion in space, and a film that works far better when dealing with inanimate objects than with humans.
  93. For They Know Not What They Do
    Its success comes from interrogating the cultural assumption that there is no space for a range of sexual orientations and gender identities within religious communities.
  94. The Awful Truth
    Awfully unimportant, but it is also one of the more laughable screen comedies of 1937.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    An Angel at My Table
    For all of the casual brutality of the hospital scenes, An Angel at My Table seems a very gentle film about a woman of such a passionate nature.
  96. Nobody Knows I'm Here
    Not all the misdirection is elegant, but the film’s tenderness flowers in a lovely, unexpected final shot.
  97. Irma Vep
    A minor but witty entry on the exceptionally strong slate of French films at the New York Film Festival this year.
  98. My Father the Spy
    My Father the Spy doesn’t have a tidy point to make, but it succeeds at bringing a turbulent reminiscence to life.
  99. Tortilla Flat
    Tortilla Flatt is really a little idyll which turns its back on a workaday world. But it is filled with solid humor and compassion—and that is pleasant, even for folks who have to work.
  100. If God Is Willing and da Creek Don't Rise
    It was created under different circumstances and it is, perhaps inevitably, a less powerful work than “When the Levees Broke,” more diffuse in its storytelling and more uncertain in its point of view.
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