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. Eric Larue
    As “Eric LaRue” starts barreling toward an upsetting conclusion, you start to wonder about everything that’s happened earlier in the movie, about what went unsaid and now refuses to stay quiet.
  2. Happy Clothes: A Film About Patricia Field
    There’s just a lot here. But with a subject like Field, the mild chaos feels pleasantly appropriate.
  3. The Graduates
    Peterson’s script is frustratingly single-note and occasionally bends toward unearned sentimentality. Still, The Graduates feels true to its milieu; its emotional clarity impressive given the loaded subject matter and the film’s subdued style.
  4. 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.
  5. Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget
    When the source material was so fun, the cover is bound to be enjoyable, and this one is, even if it sags a little around the two-thirds mark. There’s punning, and contraptions, and ducks that shoot lasers out of their eyes. It’s a good time.
  6. The League
    This history has surely been well-covered elsewhere, but The League recounts it movingly.
  7. Here. Is. Better.
    The documentary, directed by Jack Youngelson, is about the slow, difficult work of reaching out, opening up and eventually finding a glimmer of hope, day by day.
  8. As Far as I Can Walk
    Exceptionally well-crafted and anchored by moving performances from Koma and Mensah-Offei, the film is, in one sense, a great work about that basic human desire to long for something better, and the heartbreak that often comes with it.
  9. Something Wicked This Way Comes
    Something Wicked This Way Comes, the Walt Disney production of Ray Bradbury's 1962 novel, begins on such an overworked Norman Rockwell note that there seems little chance that anything exciting or unexpected will happen. So it's a happy surprise when the film...turns into a lively, entertaining tale combining boyishness and grown-up horror in equal measure.
  10. Tokyo Pop
    You don't have to be a fan of rock music to get a kick out of Tokyo Pop, a wedding of American and Japanese youth cultures as seen through a fun-house mirror.
  11. The Line
    If the movie’s portrayal of rivalrous (and homoerotic) hypermasculinity doesn’t always seem original, it is nevertheless realized with seriousness and vigor.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Care Bears Movie
    This endearing movie's mottoes are: never stop caring. And: the best way to make friends is to be a friend yourself.
  13. The Five Demands
    Schiller and Weiss’s direction is utilitarian, cutting together talking-head interviews with montages of the occupation set to era-appropriate protest songs. But to its credit, the lack of flashiness puts the students’ struggles for racial justice front and center, and ultimately serves to highlight a less-remembered aspect of the countercultural student movement.
  14. Fremont
    Jalali maintains a mysterious ambiguity, but Wali Zada conveys what matters.
  15. Quiz Lady
    Quiz Lady, a mostly winning comedy directed by Jessica Yu, is elevated most of all on the shoulders of Oh’s delightful and nuanced performance.
  16. The Unknown Country
    The film’s gentle detours into the real-life stories remind us that it is the people met on the road that so often make the trip memorable.
  17. My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock
    Cousins’s attuned eye and ear keep us interested afresh in the Hitchcock magic.
  18. Unknown: Cave of Bones
    As the team unearths evidence, the documentary offers a ripe window into the process of scientific discovery.
  19. While We Watched
    The documentary is less an inspiring tale than a sobering wake-up call.
  20. Saw X
    The traps are disgusting; the plot, so self-serious its absurd (and knowingly so). And unlike the sundry sequels before it (by the third “Saw,” any pretense of ingenuity had been hacked off), this one manages to make you feel something beyond gross-out adrenaline — assuming you have affection for the franchise’s mainstays.
  21. Jules
    Underneath its ridiculous framing and outer-space high jinks, “Jules” is full to the brim with empathy for its elderly characters and their desire for personal agency.
  22. Bella!
    [Abzug's] never-say-die advocacy still inspires, but the film also illustrates the merciless challenges of electoral endurance even for the fiercest fighter.
  23. Good News
    Even though an oldtimer may view this Good News with mocking eyes—may mutter that, back in 1927, which is the advertised date of its events, the goal-posts were set on the goal-line and the huddle was an undeveloped freak—the pleasures of reminiscence which the picture affords are worthwhile. As for the untraditioned youngsters—especially the Lawford-Allyson fans—the stars and the dancing activity should adequately satisfy.
  24. North Circular
    Not all the material is equally striking, but the film has an original and at times disarming approach to bearing witness.
  25. El Agua
    El Agua succeeds as a portrait of the village’s traditions, both manual and cultural, brought to life by a largely nonprofessional cast (including Pamies, a striking discovery).
  26. Rustin
    Every so often an actor so dominates a movie that its success largely hinges on his every word and gesture. That’s the case with Colman Domingo’s galvanic title performance in Rustin.
  27. Invisible Beauty
    At times, the film is hampered by the sheer amount of information there is to condense from across a 50-year career, but Hardison is never less than a fascinating subject — an artist whose medium is industrial disruption.
  28. Charm Circle
    Uri and Raya (who have disarmingly direct affects) show a mix of insight and innocence that also feels like a faithful rendering of the vulnerability within a relationship.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Grand Hotel
    In all, the picture adheres faithfully to the original and while it undoubtedly lacks the life and depth and color of the play, by means of excellent characterizations it keeps the audience on the qui vive.
  30. Reinventing Elvis: The '68 Comeback
    If today Presley really needs a sales pitch, this movie is a good one.
  31. Untold: Hall of Shame
    With compelling verve, “Hall of Shame,” from the director Bryan Storkel, tells the story of Conte’s ignominious rise and fall.
  32. All Up in the Biz
    All Up in the Biz, a new documentary directed by Sacha Jenkins, is a cogent, affectionate and largely apt tribute to Markie, the D.J. and rapper who was known as a gifted beatboxer.
  33. The Imaginary
    The movie falters periodically under the weight of its own dream logic, which can be hard to follow or flimsily constructed as the story gains momentum. But it’s mostly easy to move past those flaws in a work of such rich magical realism and heart.
  34. We Kill for Love
    There’s something tough to resist about how “We Kill for Love” rescues works from the shadows.
  35. June Zero
    The shifting story, written by Paltrow and Tom Shoval, complicates the act of commemoration and dwells on the moral quandaries and uncomfortable resonances that result from the events.
  36. What Happens Later
    While it’s unlikely to join the rom-com pantheon, its charming leads and humorous truths do invoke the spirit of Ephron, to whom the film is dedicated. It’s a worthy tribute to her, delivered by perhaps the most qualified person to create one.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Night They Raided Minsky's
    Unlike "Funny Girl," the screenplay is rich, not in stereotypes (mothers, accents), but in anecdotes, and there is a wonderful confrontation between Jason Robards, as a slick, sleazy burlesque entertainer, and the owner of a restaurant, "a man from principle," over an order of bagels, which are thrown, one by one, to the floor, with rage and elegance.
  38. The Mission
    The most barbed aspect of the movie, a National Geographic release, is its acknowledgment of the role that National Geographic itself has played in exoticizing groups like the North Sentinelese.
  39. Office Race
    Office Race, a ribald comedy from Jared Lapidus about an inveterate deadbeat reluctantly training for a marathon, understands one of the great unspoken truths about running: that it is a miserable, arduous, soul-destroying pastime, and also deeply, profoundly rewarding.
  40. Thanksgiving
    [Roth] knows his stuff and he’s very adept at serving up both gross-outs and real leap-from-your-seat moments.
  41. Godzilla Minus One
    The heroic arc is creaky, but despite the chintzy clichés about Godzilla movies, this one keeps bringing blockbuster brio to heel with a sometimes heavy heart.
  42. When Evil Lurks
    This is a dark and timely parable about what happens when trust — among community members, within families, between a government and its people — disintegrates.
  43. Woman of the Hour
    As a drama, Woman of the Hour is effective and infuriating.
  44. Wicked Little Letters
    The movie is full of goofy side characters and one-liners, yet elevated occasionally to genuine complexity by Colman and Buckley, who are consistently the best thing about any movie they’re in.
  45. They Shot the Piano Player
    Javier Mariscal and Fernando Trueba’s They Shot the Piano Player is an astoundingly vibrant animated project, fitting for its subject matter.
  46. Sorry/Not Sorry
    An earnest and frustrating documentary.
  47. Lift
    Petersen’s bare-bones, on-the-ground production works well for a story like this, highlighting how vital these small workshops in homeless shelters and community centers can be.
  48. The Saint of Second Chances
    The movie was directed by Morgan Neville (“20 Feet From Stardom”) and Jeff Malmberg (“Marwencol”), and is a tad more fanciful than their prior work. But fancy is a good fit for the Veecks, it turns out.
  49. Inspector Sun
    While sometimes grating, the film is always appealing, with pleasing details, down to its Art Deco end titles.
  50. The Featherweight
    Kolodny handles his movie-as-documentary conceit with subtle flair and finesse. For a subgenre as crowded with movies as boxing has weight classes, The Featherweight isn’t a knockout. But it does land more than a glancing blow.
  51. Shoshana
    This isn’t so much a film about geopolitics or even history as it is about two lovers torn between passion and obligation.
  52. 26.2 to Life
    Yoo was granted exceptional access to San Quentin, and when she depicts the mundane qualities of life there — inmates working odd jobs, writing letters, passing the time alone in their cells — the movie gains some of the penetrating clarity of one of Frederick Wiseman’s films.
  53. Carlos
    This controlled documentary captivates as a soulful personal history, even if it doesn’t exactly transcend.
  54. The Toxic Avenger
    The outrageous violence, a core allure of the original, remains, but the gross-out is situated in a more colorfully pulpy universe and has a more smartly self-conscious touch to its comedy.
  55. She Is Conann
    It’s more of a fever dream than an actual story, offering a queer counternarrative to the macho vision of the legendary warrior that is as hypnotic as it is gnarly.
  56. Stamped from the Beginning
    In a film brimming with visual gestures, these mini portraits of anti-racists are among its most memorable.
  57. Fackham Hall
    Sending up costumey, upstairs-downstairs tropes, the movie seldom lets five seconds pass without a wisecrack, pratfall or sight gag, sometimes all three stacked on top of each other.
  58. The Convert
    The real star of this Kiwi western is the setting. The lush forests and stark, black sand beaches, shot in locations near those used in “The Piano,” help make The Convert more than a message movie.
  59. Dancing in the Dust
    Dancing in the Dust shows Farhadi’s early confidence with using framing and cutting to create tension and parallels — skills that would serve him later.
  60. Yellow Door: '90s Lo-fi Film Club
    The doc mostly amounts to a sweet nostalgia trip about a niche group of obsessive young people. It’s also an ode to young adulthood itself: For most of the group, latching on to cinema was simply a means of finding a community, and themselves.
  61. Powaqqatsi
    Powaqqatsi, which is the second part of a planned trilogy, reaffirms Mr. Reggio's diligence and sincerity, though it does not signficantly advance his achievement.
  62. Ex-Husbands
    Pritzker directs genuine performances and has an ear for conversations with the ring of everyday emotion.
  63. Plan C
    At times, all of the secrecy and legal caution can make it hard to understand the complex logistics of getting a legal abortion in the United States. But the risks involved are bracingly apparent, and the documentary benefits from its attempts to capture Plan C’s high-stakes operation in progress.
  64. The Accidental Getaway Driver
    Despite comic touches, the story stays in the shadows of heart-to-heart talks and ruminations, with contemplative cinematography that sets faces like gems in the darkness and conjures heady visions of Long in Vietnam.
  65. The Queen of My Dreams
    Kaur acts as an amiable anchor, gamely embodying a mother and a daughter across time periods.
  66. Werner Herzog - Radical Dreamer
    The movie also provides a smart primer on the “New German Cinema” Herzog helped bring into being during the 1960s.
  67. No Accident
    Jacobson’s account does the necessary work of restating the facts and showing that people can be held accountable for fomenting this kind of terror and harm.
  68. The Stones and Brian Jones
    [Broomfield’s] announcer-like voice-over and sometimes dishy interviews might evoke a “Behind the Music” exposé, but he seems most like a fan with a rueful sympathy for his devil of a subject.
  69. The Family Plan
    This is pretty routine material, but it’s been realized with charm and enthusiasm: The director, Simon Cellan Jones, maintains a good handle on the comic-thriller tone and shoots the action with wit and creativity.
  70. You Were My First Boyfriend
    Despite its title, You Were My First Boyfriend is at its most effective when Aldarondo moves beyond teen lust and into the more complicated aspects of her upbringing.
  71. Tatami
    The mounting tensions of these moving parts — and steely performances by Mandi and Amir — make for an engrossing thriller fueled by female rage.
  72. David Holmes: The Boy Who Lived
    “The Boy Who Lived” provides an unusual behind-the-scenes portrait of how life goes on after movies are made.
  73. Cypher
    A cunning experiment in cross-genre filmmaking, Cypher is all fun, games and hagiography until it’s not, effectively deceiving at every conspiratorial turn.
  74. South to Black Power
    In a nice bit of journalistic even-handedness, several of Blow’s interviewees are not entirely convinced by his thesis, or they believe there are other paths to political gains.
  75. Immediate Family
    Tedesco is the son of the West Coast guitar great Tommy Tedesco, and he clearly has a knack for getting musicians to open up. The band members.
  76. Our Son
    A simple yet engaging melodrama.
  77. Kung Fu Panda 4
    Once again starring Jack Black as the gullible martial arts master Po, the animated film melds together wisecracking comedy and sprightly action sequences with a message of kindness, inner peace and self-discovery.
  78. The Shrouds
    A dry macabre humor has long run through Cronenberg’s work, and the uncertainty behind some of his intentions here creates thought-provoking ambiguity.
  79. Bird
    There’s a wealth of lovely performances in Bird, including Adams, who holds the film together by slowly taking on tenderness as it progresses. But the two poles of the movie are Rogowski and Keoghan, who radiate precisely opposite energies.
  80. Death of a Unicorn
    Here, at least, the performers — who include Téa Leoni as Odell’s wife, the very funny Will Poulter as the Leopold son and Anthony Carrigan as a put-upon servant — have the kinds of ductile faces, rubber-band moves and vocal dexterity that can keep even sluggish material moving.
  81. The Idea of You
    More than once, I was struck by how authentically 40 Solène seemed to me — a woman capable of making her own decisions, even ones she thinks might be ill-advised — and how weirdly rare it is to see that kind of character in a movie.
  82. The Legend of Ochi
    The Legend of Ochi is light on story — you kind of know what’s going to happen all the time — and that, coupled with occasionally garbled dialogue, makes it easy to zone out at times. But in its place it serves up a nourishing banquet for the senses.
  83. Rebel Ridge
    Sticking within the bounds of reality does make for a heck of a good slow-speed car chase. Those craving flashier, bullet-spraying butt-kickery will have to hope for a more gonzo sequel.
  84. Sasquatch Sunset
    Surrender to its shaggy rhythms and you’ll find this sometimes tiresome portrait of a family of mythical beasts is not without intelligence and a strangely mesmeric intent.
  85. Handling the Undead
    There are times when the film veers too near the maudlin for comfort, but it always finds its way back to something spare and meaningful.
  86. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
    To a degree and certainly by studio-sequel design, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice has a cozy familiarity. If the manic edginess of Keaton’s original performance suggested that his character had ingested way too much caffeine, though probably something a great deal stronger, he now seems more like a super-eccentric uncle — only, you know, dead.
  87. Kill
    Manipulative to the max (one upsetting murder is almost pornographically protracted), Kill is dizzyingly impressive and punishingly vicious.
  88. Players
    It’s as much a story of love among friends as it is of any couple, and a handful of good gags and great performances keep the whole thing steaming along.
  89. Ponyboi
    Gallo’s star-making turn pushes back against this version of hypermasculinity, reshaping genre conventions that have privileged rigid gender binaries. Watching Gallo carve out space for Ponyboi is its own kind of powerful assertion.
  90. Suncoast
    With commendable wit and zero self-pity, Chinn sketches the daily surreality of her teenage analogue.
  91. Power
    The point isn’t the data, but the spider-web nature of the argument; seemingly disparate things (labor strikes, slave patrols, the removal of Indigenous Americans from their land) are drawn together in “Power,” which becomes an act of pattern recognition. It is not easy viewing, but it’s a strong introduction to a topic that seems freshly relevant every day.
  92. Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story
    Reeve’s bond with his fellow actor Robin Williams also makes up one of the documentary’s meatiest threads, adding depth to the character study.
  93. Seeking Mavis Beacon
    Seeking Mavis Beacon still goes down smoothly, at least until its conclusion; while other films tie up too neatly, this one could use a bow at all. It helps that Jones and Ross are clever and likable guides.
  94. The Greatest Night in Pop
    While the making of the song was partially detailed in its long-form video, there’s plenty of new, engaging, and sometimes eyebrow-raising anecdotal material here.
  95. Out of My Mind
    The director, Amber Sealey, and the strong cast keep things grounded, though, honoring the serious undercurrents while having some fun.
  96. Black Box Diaries
    The movie’s intimacy is appealing; on occasion, it can be claustrophobic. Black Box Diaries is, at heart, a first-person account, and while it’s successful on those terms, it’s finally more emotionally engaging than intellectually satisfying.
  97. June
    The bare facts of Carter Cash’s story are such that the filmmakers would have had to really mess up to not produce a movie that entertains and moves a viewer to tears. “June,” rest assured, does the job well.
  98. Your Monster
    Your Monster, while falling short of the Critic’s Pick status that Jacob vociferously covets for his show, has its charms, namely the backstage intrigue, onstage songs by the Lazours (of the current Off Broadway musical “We Live in Cairo”), and a disarming lead in Barrera.
  99. Rob Peace
    All told, the movie delivers a well-earned emotional gut punch that refreshingly does not come from perpetuating the physical and systemic violence it aims to shed light upon.
  100. As We Speak: Rap Music on Trial
    “As We Speak” makes a powerful case for the necessity of being free to make art, and for public awareness that art rarely qualifies as legal evidence.
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