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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    • 54 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Evil of Frankenstein
    With the pace held in smooth rein by the director, Freddie Francis, the picture begins to say something about superstition and hypocrisy. Then it simply goes hog-wild (monster gets drunk) and heads for the ash heap, along with Mr. Gushing and his barbecued menace. 
  2. The Summer Book
    Scanning the elder woman’s weathered visage and the grandchild’s open face as well as giving the island’s rocky, forested, mossy and watery environs their many close-ups, The Summer Book offers a loving portrait of budding and fading.
  3. Beatles '64
    Watching the band in the Plaza Hotel and fans in the streets, hoping to catch a glimpse of their idols, you can’t help but get swept up in a 60-year-old fervor.
  4. Winchester '73
    It is far from the mature outdoor drama that might be brilliantly filmed around a gun. It's just a frisky, fast-moving, funny Western in which a rifle is the apple of a cowboy's eye.
  5. Lake George
    It’s Coon’s charming performance of the eccentric victim-to-be that brings the film, written and directed by Jeffrey Reiner, into fuller focus as a crime comedy.
  6. The Black Sea
    Grounded by Harden’s natural and loosely charming performance, Khalid treats his nightmare scenario with an alternating sense of anxiety and buoyant, joshing can-do attitude.
  7. The Last Rifleman
    Corny, yes. But charming, too.
  8. Bogart: Life Comes in Flashes
    The documentary Bogart: Life Comes in Flashes is an official portrait that nevertheless offers some insights into how one of Hollywood’s most recognizable and irreplaceable star personas evolved.
  9. Meet John Doe
    With an excellent script by Mr. Riskin—overwritten in many spots, it is true—Mr. Capra has produced a film which is eloquent with affection for gentle people, for the plain, unimpressive little people who want reassurance and faith.
  10. How to Train Your Dragon
    To be sure, this new iteration is entertaining, bears a sense of heart and brings a tight script of fantasy and friendship to life.
  11. The Bad Guys 2
    The directors Pierre Perifel and JP Sans put the narrative across with a blithe bounciness, and the all-star voice actors play along nicely.
  12. Marked Woman
    Marked Woman could easily have become a maudlin piece. It totters every now and then on the brink of bathos and of melodramatic hokum. But invariably it is snatched back by Lloyd Bacon's direction or by the honesty of its players.
  13. Meeting with Pol Pot
    Panh powerfully interweaves real footage of starvation and mass death — sometimes projecting it behind the characters or matching it to Paul’s eyeline. He also brings back the main conceit of “The Missing Picture,” which used clay figurines to depict certain events.
  14. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
    The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes is comparatively mild Billy Wilder and rather daring Sherlock Holmes, not a perfect mix, perhaps, but a fond and entertaining one.
  15. 28 Years Later
    These nods at a past that’s by turns historic and romantically mythic, feed an undercurrent of tension that Boyle builds on, one kill at a time.
  16. The Gorge
    For all the elaborate weaponry, production design and (eventually) frantic action offered here, this movie crackles most as a lively pas de deux between Taylor-Joy and Teller, who commendably take their material seriously no matter how seriously ridiculous it gets.
  17. Novocaine
    The violent comedy works most of all through Quaid, who is natural and nimble in embodying the funny paradox of a nebbishy hero who just won’t go down.
  18. They Drive by Night
    For fanciers of hard-boiled cinema, They Drive By Night still offers an entertaining ride.
  19. 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.
  20. The Housemaid
    Borrowing on certain familiar erotic thriller tropes — let’s all point and stare at the cray-cray lady — it does some back flips and corkscrews appropriate for our time and lands with a cathartic smack.
  21. Night Call
    The film may be sticking to a familiar template, in which a regular Joe gets sucked into an underworld, but Blanchard’s snappy direction and the great mileage he gets out of the city’s nooks and crannies bumps it up the crime-action totem pole.
  22. Diane Warren: Relentless
    Even if you don’t care for Warren’s tunes, this movie is likely to make you a fan.
  23. Sommersby
    Though there is a near vaccuum at the center of the film, "Sommersby" is never boring, largely because of Ms. Foster's beautifully self-possessed presence.
  24. A Working Man
    It’s a satisfying cast all the way down.
  25. The Alto Knights
    While it’s inevitable that some, maybe many, viewers will find the dual role a distraction, those who hunger for De Niro in mobster mode will get more than their fill.
  26. Bad Shabbos
    This is, after all, a situational comedy, in which the laughs spring from reaction shots and line deliveries. Luckily, the actors prove up to the task.
  27. Choose Me
    If the film sometimes gives the impression of too much talent in the service of too little, that talent is evident all the same.
  28. The Accountant 2
    All that counts in The Accountant 2 is that it’s adroitly paced, unburdened by narrative logic (there are almost as many coincidences as corpses) and buoyed by its well-synced, charismatic leads.
  29. East of Wall
    Narrative beats aren’t what make East of Wall worth watching. That would be the people — particularly Porshia and her jubilant pals, whose skills in the saddle leave a lasting impression.
  30. Plainclothes
    While the writer-director Carmen Emmi’s evocative debut relies on a nostalgically textured aesthetic that sometimes seems to mask its thin narrative, the heat builds in unexpected ways, ultimately igniting through the quiet agony of living as someone you’re not.
  31. Last Days
    Last Days manages to be thoroughly disquieting without overtly judging its subject.
  32. Magic Farm
    Ingeniously simmering under the folly is a health crisis that has afflicted the agricultural area for decades. This is the film’s joke: If the crew could only get their heads out of their rears, they would uncover a gonzo documentary gold mine.
  33. Twinless
    Despite its charms, and it is frequently charming, Twinless also succumbs to some of the issues that tend to plague movies of this type, the small and clever dark comedy about young people having big feelings.
  34. Mr. Nobody Against Putin
    The documentary tries to heighten the stakes of Talankin’s story by casting his efforts under a pall of danger, dread or distress. But these bids for drama are far less persuasive than the horrifying raw footage Talankin captures, such as one scene in which young students are coached to march down a hallway, as if preparing for battle.
  35. Speak.
    The lens through which the movie views these kids is objective and balanced, but there’s an empathy at work that makes the viewer understand what each of the subjects is going through.
  36. It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley
    Most artist documentaries attempt but rarely get to a true and palpable essence of their subjects, but it’s this sense of his earnestly tender nature, pieced together from loved ones and old archive interviews of Buckley, that leaves an impression.
  37. OBEX
    There’s something smarter between the lines about the way technology warps our (self-) perception, but maybe that’s giving too much credit to a film so giddy about its warping. That’s not totally bad: Some films are like dreams whose meanings never materialize.
  38. Two Women
    Ultimately, Two Women is less a message movie than a featherweight comedy, gesturing at big ideas about sexual politics before settling in as an amusingly mischievous diversion.
  39. Sally
    Sally, a welcome but unadventurous documentary about the astronaut Sally Ride (who died in 2012), wraps a risk-taking personality inside a risk-averse package.
  40. Paying for It
    Paying for It keeps its narrative tight, perhaps overly simple. There’s space to savor the retro intimacy, amplified by the film’s striking primary colors and lo-fi rock soundtrack. Lee — while only gesturing toward the complexities of open arrangements — captures Chester and Sonny in a fleeting time that feels soft, but not shy.
  41. The Rule of Jenny Pen
    The director remains near-merciless in his approach, never shying away from showing his vulnerable characters (and the tormentor played with twisted relish by Lithgow is, ultimately, as unprotected as any of the others) in states of utter abjection.
  42. The Fishing Place
    Tregenza is the kind of authentic independent who’s always worth seeking out; when he is behind the camera, he holds you rapt from the get-go.
  43. Smurfs
    It’s refreshing to see children’s animation makers use surrealism, instead of winking pop-culture references, to charm adults.
  44. Neptune's Daughter
    It has some quite clever popular music, Ricardo Montalban to make Latin love—and it has, above all, Red Skelton and Betty Garrett to play the buffoons.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    One Way Passage
    In its uncouth, brusque and implausible fashion "One Way Passage," a pictorial comedy drama which arrived at the Warners' Strand last night, offers quite a satisfactory entertainment.
  46. Notes on Displacement
    In its form, Notes on Displacement mirrors the terrifying, dangerous journey it chronicles.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Window
    The striking force and terrifying impact of this RKO melodrama is chiefly due to Bobby's brilliant acting, for the whole effect would have been lost were there any suspicion of doubt about the credibility of this pivotal character.
  48. Living the Land
    The film tracks about a year in Chuang’s life in a sober, sociological style of long takes and smooth pans. The story feels loose, intentionally directionless, at first, but as it winds toward the cooler months, its collection of small details builds up to big-picture revelations about the imminent rise of China as a global superpower.
  49. O'Dessa
    Is a cliché turned on its head still a cliché? “O’Dessa” will keep you wondering, and that counts for something.
  50. Cheech and Chong's Last Movie
    The documentary doesn’t quite cover everything — their collaborations with Joni Mitchell and Martin Scorsese go unmentioned, for example. This is still a rollicking account that will make even non-herbally-inclined viewers root for the fellows.
  51. Nobody 2
    Like many sequels, this one ramps up everything, including the body count. The fight sequences here are well-staged, shot and cut, more elaborate than in the earlier movie and at times gleefully grisly, with skewered and barbecued flesh.
  52. Spinal Tap II: The End Continues
    It’s almost always pleasant to hang out with old friends, particularly when no one overstays their welcome. The good news about “Spinal Tap II” is that everyone involved seems to have understood the assignment, which makes for a genial 83 minutes of soft jokes and jowls.
  53. Miracle Mile
    As Harry and Julie, Mr. Edwards and Ms. Winningham make an unusually refreshing pair.
  54. We Bury the Dead
    We Bury the Dead is most haunting when it gestures at a world dazed with trauma and explores a path to personal closure through collective efforts.
  55. 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.
  56. Fantasy Life
    For a movie about two people going through a wobbly patch, Fantasy Life glides with a sneaky storytelling ease.
  57. LifeHack
    By putting us inside the internet, Corrigan makes their insular world feel uncomfortably close to ours.
  58. Secret Mall Apartment
    Secret Mall Apartment makes a compelling case that the project reverberates through the lives of the artists, and maybe even the city, to this day. Art doesn’t have to be in a museum to be valuable; it doesn’t have to be own-able, repeatable or even make sense to everyone. If it changes a few lives, then it’s changed the world.
  59. Materialists
    Is heterosexual romance doomed, is the romantic comedy? Those questions swirl with light, teasing provocation in Celine Song’s “Materialists,” a seductive, smartly refreshed addition to an impossibly, perhaps irredeemably old-fashioned genre that was once a Hollywood staple.
  60. Thank You Very Much
    Comedy was not really his subject. Laughter wasn’t either. Instead, a few interviewees suggest, it was time — a part of existence we normally take for granted. Kaufman had a preternatural ability to remain unperturbed by time passing, even when his audience became disgruntled, hostile or upset.
  61. Summer of 69
    Fortunately, Summer of 69 is a two-hander, and Fineman brings comic chops and genuine feeling to playing the tutor with a heart of gold.
  62. Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience
    The best pieces portray combat as such a heightened sensory experience that it demands to be written about, and they suggest that war can turn ordinary men who wouldn’t think of keeping diaries into latter-day Hemingways.
  63. Ghost Trail
    The cat-and-mouse game, which involves Hamid tracking his suspect throughout campus, plays out in a relatively low-key manner, with the film relying on Bessa (and eventually, an eerie Barhom) to deepen the survivor’s dilemma.
  64. The Naked Gun
    Taken individually, a lot of the jokes might not work, but when you’re in a blizzard you don’t notice each snowflake.
  65. Invention
    Invention is committed to finding its own wavelength.
  66. Dangerous Animals
    This is a horror movie about horror movies made by people who seem to have spent more time observing horror movies than the real world. Making this work requires wit, the right tone and a ruthless sense of pace. Byrne manages all three with a sure hand.
  67. Pets
    It’s a sweet-tempered film that celebrates the animals we love and seems to have a secondary purpose, too: to convince viewers to support and even develop a love for animal rescue.
  68. Fallen
    With the warmly engaging presence of Mr. Washington to keep it at least half-credible, and with a brooding and literate noir screenplay by Nicholas Kazan, ''Fallen'' was directed by Gregory Hoblit with the same dark intensity of his earlier feature ''Primal Fear.''
  69. Weapons
    Weapons may not be about anything much other than Cregger’s talent, but the guy knows how to slither under your skin — and stay there.
  70. Predator: Badlands
    In the end, what is most surprising about Predator: Badlands is also the most obvious, which is that filmmaking matters even to formulaic, apparently indestructible franchises.
  71. Mountainhead
    Still, what Mountainhead lacks in depth, it makes up for in satirical daring. Armstrong’s hallmarks are present: a brutal sense of interpersonal power dynamics, a flair for creative profanity, an abiding belief that the worst people will succeed.
  72. Drop Dead City
    It’s an evenhanded and surprisingly entertaining account of how things got so bad, who was to blame, the way it was fixed (to some degree) and what New York inevitably lost in the process.
  73. Northern Lights
    When the film's focus is on labor history, remembered or recreated, it is extremely moving. Fortunately this is most of the time.
  74. Now You See Me: Now You Don't
    It’s all jocular and surface-level, but it’s also not trying to be anything more than old-fashioned blockbuster entertainment — neither overly serious nor, on occasion, allergic to a bit of sentimentality.
  75. Left-Handed Girl
    Expressive visuals and evocative scenes, including one involving an overactive meerkat, make Left-Handed Girl a memorable family affair. It’s only when the film introduces one too many social realist tropes . . . that the melodrama grows unwieldy.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Farmer's Wife
    It is a lethargic affair with ingenuous fun. It has been nicely directed with a keen eye for the sunlight and shadows over the winding country roads, and the indoor scenes are always correct as to furnishings.
  77. My Robot Sophia
    The film skirts gimmicks to go in a more tricky and unsettling direction. It’s an almost soulful portrait of the artist under capitalism, rather than another exposé on robotics and artificial intelligence.
  78. Little Buddha
    Little Buddha displays a deliberate innocence that suits its subject, even if it contrasts so markedly with much of Mr. Bertolucci's moodier, more unsettling work.
  79. Jay Kelly
    Inevitably, the results do not quite cohere narratively or tonally. But the film still has a strange, old-fashioned charm. You can’t really imagine anyone other than Clooney playing Jay, but Sandler is equally good; he brings a pathos to Ron, a man who has perhaps loved not wisely but too well.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Manxman
    The British silent pictorial translation of Sir Hall Caine's novel, "The Manxman," is filled with enchanting scenes and the story itself is quite well told.
  81. The Paradine Case
    Call it a mystery melodrama...Call it a courtroom tragi-romance or a husband-wife problem play. Call it, indeed, a social satire and you won't be entirely wrong. For it's all of these things rolled together in one fitfully intriguing tale, smoothly told through a cultivated camera.
  82. Amrum
    To Akin’s credit, the film isn’t tastelessly sentimental (see “Jojo Rabbit”), and it depicts Nanning’s awakening with the kind of subtlety and restraint that suggests his moral education will continue evolving after the end of the movie.
  83. The Last Rodeo
    The story’s conventional beats (the get-back-in-shape montage, the bad news delivered at a critical moment) cohere into a wholesome journey of long-delayed healing. The inclusion of the wonderful Mykelti Williamson, as Joe’s longtime friend and rodeo partner, injects a buddy-movie vibe that anchors the action in riding bouts that are smoothly thrilling without being punishing.
  84. Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere
    The great surprise of Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere — a solid, very likable, very affecting drama about an anguished period in the life of the young Bruce Springsteen — is that it doesn’t shy away from soul-deep pain.
  85. Eagles of the Republic
    Saleh’s tangled plotting has more verve than his pacing or visual sense. But the movie’s portrait of collaboration can’t help but induce a shudder.
  86. The Devil Wears Prada 2
    Like the first movie, the second is a sleek diversion with brittle and sharp laughs, truckloads of couture threads and lashings of light drama.
  87. 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.
  88. The Thursday Murder Club
    Aiding their investigations is an underappreciated policewoman appealingly played by Naomi Ackie. The proceedings are marshaled with affection by the director Chris Columbus.
  89. The Home
    It seesaws between creepy and dippy, although it pulls no punches in its indictment of the American elder care system.
  90. Straw
    The ending is perhaps too twisting for its own good. But Henson — so deeply committed to her character’s emotional cratering — still makes us care.
  91. Manny & Lo
    It's the kind of story that leaves viewers with a warm glow.
  92. Shanghai Blues
    “Blues,” playing now in a 40th anniversary restoration, is a constant charmer. Watching it is a buoyant experience even when the humor is a bit tasteless, including a bit involving mistaken sex partners during a blackout.
  93. The Last Twins
    Here, heroism is presented less as a feat of preternatural bravery than a series of choices made by someone who simply refused to give up his humanity.
  94. Titan: The OceanGate Disaster
    Directed by Mark Monroe, the film wisely does not linger in the lurid details of the Titan’s catastrophic end, and instead uses an investigative framing that sketches the company’s origins and use of carbon fiber while chronicling a series of problematic dives leading up to its final plunge.
  95. Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything
    By those standards, Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything is disappointing, and more of a puff piece than I suspect Walters herself would have wanted. Yet seen through a different lens, it’s also fascinating — a rather thrilling history of television journalism, as seen through Walters’s life.
  96. Videoheaven
    The observations range from the incisive to the grandiose, and at nearly three hours, Videoheaven could stand a tighter edit.
  97. Shari & Lamb Chop
    Shari & Lamb Chop is a charming introduction to a remarkable artist and the characters she created, which have endured across generations because they reflect the playfulness at the heart of their creator.
  98. La Grazia
    It’s enjoyable to be back in Sorrentino’s richly detailed and stylized universe, with all its enchantments and individualized, warm-blooded characters.
  99. Hoppers
    It’s a fable, really, with a science-nerd edge and some charming animal friends. You could do a whole lot worse at the movies.
  100. Mortal Kombat II
    The spectacle — its eardrum-shattering, eye-popping pyrotechnics, with the violence framed against all manner of phantasmagoric computer-generated backdrops — is its own reward.
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