The New York Times' Scores

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For 20,335 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: 9,412 out of 20335
  2. Mixed: 8,455 out of 20335
  3. Negative: 2,468 out of 20335
20335 movie reviews
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  1. Strung
    Strung doesn’t exactly unravel, but it delivers more of the pleasures of a near-camp mash up than the emotional stakes of a psychological thriller.
  2. In the Hand of Dante
    Nothing can stop this overlong and disastrously ill-judged project from flying off the rails.
  3. Drunken Noodles
    Drunken Noodles is at its best when it drifts into flights of fancy that subvert expectations.
  4. Bouchra
    Stories of family hurt have a way of working you over, and Bouchra has its moments. Yet the more the filmmakers focus on the mother-daughter relationship, all while also embracing narrative self-reflexivity, the more drearily familiar — and toothless — this movie becomes.
  5. Little Brother
    “This is crude humor,” André ad libs in the end credits gag reel. It sure is, throughout, but the good-natured performers commit to their bits so much one can’t help but smile.
  6. Lucky Strike
    The World War II movie Lucky Strike is part survival thriller and part throwback hymn to military heroism. It’s quite possible to appreciate the kill-or-be-killed action, starring Scott Eastwood as a man caught behind enemy lines, even as its Greatest Generation patriotism feels preserved in amber from another era in cinema and history.
  7. The Invite
    For the most part, it’s a romp, rhythmically enjoyable and cleverly directed, with subtle flourishes that build out the characters’ quirks and anxieties.
  8. Couture
    Like tulle that tears at the faintest touch, “Couture” offers a gauzy glimpse into the world of high fashion. Precious little occurs, and what does is tinged with sentimentality and stretched gossamer thin.
  9. Romería
    The slowly-building drama between Marina and her extended family plays with lovely (if somewhat generic) naturalism. But as these tensions subtly reveal the enduring stigma of her parents’ disease — with Marina representing an uncomfortable reminder of that past — a separate, thrilling experiment plays out that eventually dives into spectral fantasy.
  10. Supergirl
    That this movie never matches the brilliance of Miller’s goes without saying, despite the heavy-metal clanging. That Alcock manages to rise above the fray with a performance that never feels like borrowed goods is at once a surprise and a gift.
  11. jackass: best and last
    A regrettable portion of Jackass: Best and Last is simply regurgitated material. (There’s even a special credit for a “best of” cinematographer, presumably because such a large percentage of this film has been seen before.) Far too much of the movie consists of the guys playing the tape and reminiscing about their favorite exploding portable toilets.
  12. The Devil Queen (1974)
    De Fontoura, 86, has an assured hand for both hand-to-hand combat and queer aesthetics. (Ângelo de Aquino’s high femme costumes are scandalous.) But the more character-driven scenes drag, at times stopping the film’s pleasures cold with slack dialogue. Still, Gonçalves — a rageful, heartbreaking gangster — and the film he dominates are must-sees for fans of under-the-radar queer movie history.
  13. Never Change!
    It’s not just that the jokes fail. It’s that Reynolds’s hollow script doesn’t seem to know what it wants to say with them. The few bits of comedy that do land offer genuine insight into the collision of past and present.
  14. Voicemails for Isabelle
    The appealing Zoey Deutch is the best reason to watch Voicemails for Isabelle. Written and directed by Leah McKendrick (who also plays a small, amusing role), the movie begins as a tear-jerker and morphs into a rom-com with poignant notes.
  15. Color Book
    Daniels, an actor skilled at delivering hushed poignancy, shares a sincere rapport with Catlett, who furthers the film’s organic tenor with weary eyes that plead for one’s time and grace. His and Daniels’s steady work makes Color Book deserving of both.
  16. The Death of Robin Hood
    It is the sort of film to which you want to apply the word “visionary,” which is to say that it’s clear the filmmaker had a vision and stuck to it admirably. Nothing in the movie is easy or comforting. Little about it even feels like a gesture toward those enamored of other Robin Hood tales.
  17. Leviticus
    We know from innumerable slashers that when a character is alone, trouble is around the corner. But “Leviticus,” with its gloomy, isolated setting and dogmatic parents, manages to turn this vulnerability into an existential issue, too. To make matters worse, the only glimmers of human warmth our boys receive are from each other — and that opens yet another can of worms.
  18. Maddie's Secret
    Brimming with style and spirit up to the final scene, Maddie’s Secret is among the most daring movies I’ve seen this year. That it simultaneously guarantees a giddy good time is a minor miracle.
  19. Rose of Nevada
    From a perspective of pure atmosphere, this is arguably the most mesmerizing film of the year thus far.
  20. Unidentified
    While decently absorbing, Unidentified eventually goes way more Hollywood than either of those films, with a plot that defies logic (raising issues of both structure and perspective) and undermines the movie’s message — unless the pulpy swerve is itself intended as a kind of statement.
  21. Toy Story 5
    It’s fine, pretty and amusing, but if no one’s heart seems in it, perhaps it’s time to make way for other toys.
  22. Girls Like Girls
    Kiyoko didn’t come by her fan-given nickname, Lesbian Jesus, for nothing. Like Kiyoko’s videos, the movie wants to create space for romantic deliverance.
  23. The Gas Station Attendant
    Murthy’s story as a child of immigrants is not particularly unique. But her film is engrossing because of the rich tapestry of sources she draws on.
  24. Honeyjoon
    These delicate mood-shifts are the film’s strength, sanding over (to an extent) the clunkiness of its themes to achieve a special balance: Honeyjoon is both a mourning movie, and a horny one.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    I Am Frankelda
    I Am Frankelda can feel overstuffed with plotlines at times, but like a plastic jack-o’-lantern bucket overflowing with candy: bright, beautiful, spooky — and ultimately, a treat.
  26. O Horizon
    Sometimes it’s clear why a bad movie didn’t work: half-baked premise, poorly cast actors, janky editing, insufficient budget. Sometimes it’s less clear what happened. O Horizon is the second kind of bad movie, with a bonus element: Its existence gets more baffling as you realize what it really is.
  27. Promised Sky
    There is much to be said for [Sehiri's] unsensationalistic approach, and for its specificity of detail, even if splitting the narrative three ways means that each of these stories feels shortchanged.
  28. Stop! That! Train!
    With the same kind of sweetness and heightened stylization that he brought to “Hairspray,” the director Adam Shankman balances jokes for an in-crowd with the pleasures of spoofs like “Airplane!” and “Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar,” plus the appeal of seeing Joel McHale in a harness (one of the better star cameos, which also include Sarah Michelle Gellar and Charo).
  29. The Furious
    The Furious is a rousing piece of spectacle.
  30. Disclosure Day
    Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day is one of those movies that sweeps you up from the start and rarely lets you down.
  31. Earth, Wind & Fire (To Be Celestial vs. That's the Weight of the World)
    Thompson uses archival footage, contemporary interviews, and better-than-decent animation to construct a story that’s as much about White’s legacy — one that’s crucial to Thompson the musician — as it is about White himself. The Questlove-White connection helps the movie go deeper than a portrait by a nonmusician might have.
  32. Another World
    Through intricate 2-D hand-drawn animation and its overall commitment to tonal abstraction, the film manages to make Gudo’s journey sing.
  33. Jinsei
    An often miraculous and occasionally exasperating Japanese anime film.
  34. The Currents
    Instead of an exercise in alienation, Mumenthaler and her star, Isabel Aimé Gonzalez Sola, create a far richer search for self that effortlessly blends the psychological, existential and sociological.
  35. Carolina Caroline
    Like an acoustic ballad — say, Jason Isbell’s “Cover Me Up” that receives an auspicious needle drop — Carolina Caroline doesn’t seem all that remarkable until you hush and take in the lyrics. Suddenly, you’re swept up in big feelings.
  36. The Little Sister
    There is a tender exuberance to “The Little Sister,” which renders Fatima’s development from an uncertain, sullen high school student into a more confident young woman as just one step on a journey.
  37. She's the He
    McCarthy’s direction is assured and lively, so clearly a homage to the films, like “She’s the Man,” that inspired this one. Some flaws, such as actors past their teenage years that would never pass as high school students, just feel like part of the movie’s detachment from reality.
  38. Underland
    This is that rare movie that could do with a longer running time, which would, perhaps, give it greater depth.
  39. México 86
    One need look no further than “Marty Supreme” to see how Mexico 86 might have complicated the audience’s sympathies, but this straightforward crowd-pleaser doesn’t wish to see beyond Martín’s charm.
  40. Scary Movie
    The only welcome and consistent source of delight is whenever Hall gets to pop up onscreen, to squeal or beam in a way that is always funny, and enough to briefly take you out of the bit she’s trapped in.
  41. Office Romance
    Writers Goldstein and Joe Kelly (his “Ted Lasso”/”Shrinking” colleague) attempt to cram a streaming season’s worth of character zigs — Jodie Whittaker plays Daniel’s incarcerated sister, Amy Sedaris appears as a too-kind hotel housekeeper — into a two-hour film. Alas, the landing isn’t smooth.
  42. Masters of the Universe
    The self-mockery is good-natured rather than disdainful, a joke even the most earnest fans of the old cartoon can appreciate. (One hopes.)
  43. With Hasan in Gaza
    While there is value in any documentary evidence of this time and place, Aljafari’s allusive approach seems ill-matched with the urgency of his subject matter.
  44. Propeller One-Way Night Coach
    For all its paeans to flight (as well as a father’s celebration of his daughter’s big-screen possibilities), “Propeller” doesn’t soar, but it does reach a comfortable cruising altitude.
  45. The Last Viking
    Jensen’s story of a flinty ex-convict (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) and his brother (Mads Mikkelsen) seeking buried treasure while evading a criminal heavy (Nicolas Bro) feels disjointed and elusive, though not without its charms.
  46. Forastera
    Forastera is an exquisitely deconstructed ghost story, a muted mystery that beguiles while remaining deeply grounded in its evocative setting.
  47. Miss You, Love You
    Janney veers from fury to reflection to tearfulness so vigorously it’s as if she knows that heavy lifting is required to take this story off the page.
  48. The Breadwinner
    Written by Bargatze with Dan Lagana and directed by Eric Appel (of “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story”), “The Breadwinner” will be familiar to anyone who’s heard of the 1983 film “Mr. Mom,” but the accents are very 21st century.
  49. Pressure
    It’s strange to find yourself briefly comforted, when the invasion eventually arrives, by the spectacle of war and bloodshed, if only because an actual conflict is occurring. It’s the standard stuff of war movies, as men charge the beaches of Normandy, but at least we’ve moved on from the weather reports.
  50. Power Ballad
    There are some promising themes in “Power Ballad” — the soulful joys of collaboration, the precarity of celebrity, the evils of the music industry — but the movie never develops them. Instead, the director John Carney, who wrote the script with Peter McDonald, keeps everything nice and insistently light, gesturing at complexities rather than delving into them.
  51. Backrooms
    Ambiguity is key to this style of horror, where space and atmosphere do most of the heavy lifting, and though the story isn’t over-explained, mind you, it’s filled out enough to break its own uncanny spell.
  52. Ask E. Jean
    Carroll is a phenomenally compelling subject, and her magnetic, joyful presence at the center of the film holds it together.
  53. Ladies First
    The easy feminism of winks and role reversals quickly wears thin.
  54. Tuner
    It’s a little silly, and yet, watching Woodall finally let loose then snap back into his sly and sexy cool, you can’t help but be lulled into the melody.
  55. Saccharine
    The supernatural elements — angry ghosts and sunken places — feel like forced metaphors next to Hana’s real-life horrors, and, worse, they diminish the film’s compelling specificity.
  56. Manas
    This is an upsetting film with an abrupt ending, but the feeling of despondence it imposes upon the audience is part of the point.
  57. Everybody to Kenmure Street
    Everybody to Kenmure Street is an exceptional documentary, both in the story it tells and in the way it tells it, about what happened that day.
  58. I Love Boosters
    Too many elements of Riley’s sophomore feature hang like excess fabric from what would otherwise be a stunning, smart ensemble.
  59. Passenger
    A demon won’t take no for an answer in Andre Ovredal’s tense but confounding supernatural thriller.
  60. Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu
    As its return to the IMAX — I mean, silver — screen, the saga could do worse than this movie. With their main guy’s face behind metal, that’s a more than respectable showing.
  61. Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan: Ghost War
    The director, Andrew Bernstein, keeps the globe-trotting plot, which Krasinski formulated with the screenwriter Noah Oppenheim (“A House of Dynamite”), galloping along until a final reckoning back where all the nastiness started.
  62. Been Here Stay Here
    Time is slipping away for Tangier Island, just like its shoreline. Been Here Stay Here beautifully captures what it is right now, then asks us to consider what will probably be lost soon.
  63. In the Grey
    These days, Ritchie’s films are all about fabulous looking people causing a ruckus and blowing a lot of stuff up and taking out less good-looking bad guys in the bargain. “In the Grey” not only delivers these goods but goes into copious detail about just how Sid and Bronco get their ruckus up to speed.
  64. Is God Is
    Is God Is asks us to pay heed — in ways subtle and bold — to its comedy and anguish. It demands, without seeming to, that we watch to see, really see.
  65. The Wizard of the Kremlin
    It’s a useful framework for understanding leaders around the world, and Baranov is the ideal cipher, someone who intimately understands how easily people’s minds are swayed and molded.
  66. Agatha's Almanac
    While not everything that Bock does is equally fascinating — a director’s personal connection to a subject can be both an advantage and a hindrance — a fair amount of it is endearing, even inspiring.
  67. Decorado
    Vázquez’s deadpan directorial style, which occasionally swerves into grim spoofs of Looney Tunes-style antics, perfectly suits the animated dystopia.
  68. LifeHack
    By putting us inside the internet, Corrigan makes their insular world feel uncomfortably close to ours.
  69. Magic Hour
    A crafty reveal does not a clever film make, and even at a merciful 80 minutes, the device eventually feels more tired than the sullen Erin, who soldiers on through her suffering.
  70. Obsession
    Barker shows real promise as a horror storyteller; his instincts about when to hold back and when to plunge the knife are scalpel sharp. If only the sexual politics at play in Obsession didn’t feel so callow.
  71. The A List: 15 Stories from Asian and Pacific Diasporas
    Shorn of any larger narratives or showy touches, the film spotlights each subject telling, in brief, the individual histories and struggles of their lives.
  72. Remarkably Bright Creatures
    While being cynical about a wise-octopus movie is probably unfair, being bored by it isn’t great, either.
  73. Blue Film
    I left this movie with an exhilarated kind of heaviness. Here is a work of art that wants to know what makes us us. There’s no caution. I don’t sense any compromise, either. Nor do I detect judgment. We’re being trusted with these souls, entrusted with them.
  74. 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.
  75. Silent Friend
    Plenty of things happen, but Silent Friend isn’t traditionally plot-driven. It’s a film of sprawling ideas that float around like pollen, with some particles creating marvelous blooms. Others drift off aimlessly.
  76. The Sheep Detectives
    Not only is The Sheep Detectives delightful, but it’s funny and emotionally complex and, dare I say, unusually deferential toward the noble sheep, frequently cast as brain-dead losers in cinema’s barnyards (Shaun notwithstanding).
  77. Billie Eilish - Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour (Live in 3D)
    In some ways, the movie is a bizarre Venn diagram of aesthetic and emotional interests: a totally immersive experience into the power of Eilish’s music, and a test film for Cameron to play with his latest gadgets.
  78. Our Land (Nuestra Tierra)
    Drawing attention to the filming technology, Martel implicitly reminds us that Chocobar’s case only came to trial because it was filmed and uploaded to the internet in the first place.
  79. Swapped
    Pelage and plumage noticeably lack the tactile quality of a Pixar extravaganza, but the animation gets a pass for the movie’s purposes — namely, to impart a message that communities should trust each other, whether they’re covered in rotely-rendered feathers or fur.
  80. Departures
    Departures is still tender and winsome, with graphic-novel-style animation lightening the load, but is ultimately punishing in tone. It lives by a truth that might ring familiar for gay men particularly: Humor that cuts deep is a form of survival.
  81. One Spoon of Chocolate
    An empty muddle of social commentary with little intensity.
  82. Animal Farm
    There’s a reasonably OK movie somewhere inside Animal Farm, but it’s drowning in ideological confusion, which wouldn’t be such a big deal — one rarely asks children’s cartoons featuring talking pigs to be wellsprings of thoughtful political theorizing — except that this is “Animal Farm.”
  83. Two Pianos
    Looking for rational behavior, especially in a crucial flashback, is pointless. To the extent that Two Pianos coheres, it is in a way that might be described as musical.
  84. That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime the Movie: Tears of the Azure Sea
    It’s honestly easier to feel more invested in these characters (or to have a reference point for the understatement of Rimuru’s role) if you’ve been hanging out with the show for one or more seasons. But it’s a diverting dip in the anime sea.
  85. Deep Water
    This picture is not as ridiculous as a “Sharknado” movie — Harlin is out to make a genuine nail-biter, and he largely succeeds, maintaining interest even as the two-hour mark approaches. But it’s not enough to make you genuinely afraid to go into the ocean this summer.
  86. Hokum
    Reveling in misdirection and a teasing duality . . . Hokum profits from Colm Hogan’s insinuating camera as it noses through gloomy corridors and a terrifying dumbwaiter shaft, hinting at what lurks on the other side of the frame.
  87. 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.
  88. Bernstein's Wall
    While his celebrity has largely faded, Bernstein’s Wall makes the case that his charge to artists to lead the way in culture is timeless, and more vital than ever.
  89. Apex
    This Netflix thriller is a fun-enough time that is elevated by the performances of predator and prey.
  90. Desert Warrior
    Rather than extend the epic sweep of this picture into the cosmic ineffable, he just wants the viewer bouncing along and rooting for its female hero. And the film succeeds admirably in this respect.
  91. Fuze
    Despite a plot (by Ben Hopkins) bursting with double- and triple- crosses, the movie feels programmatic, its characters bland cogs in a Rube Goldberg machine.
  92. Omaha
    I was left befuddled about the movie’s message and, indeed, what I was supposed to make of the whole thing. That’s frustrating, and it’s not the sort of feeling you want to have when leaving a movie like this; it overwhelms whatever impression the rest of the movie might have left.
  93. I Swear
    Jones has turned a life into a hackneyed survivor’s story with cartoon villains, cardboard saints, pretty scenery, mewling piano notes and expedient, drama-goosing epiphanies.
  94. Over Your Dead Body
    Intentionally juvenile humor can have a way of breaking down even the stoniest viewer with the right levels of sincerity and self-awareness, but the film (a remake of the Norwegian thriller “The Trip”) is too slick and giddy about its own crudity to nurture these elements.
  95. Two Seasons, Two Strangers
    Li, carrying a camera she has inherited, appears to search for inspiration in her surroundings, too. Whatever elusive quality she is seeking, Miyake has found something like it. His film gently balances tidiness and looseness, connection and alienation and artifice and the natural world.
  96. 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.
  97. Michael
    Here, what we are left with is a string of musical set pieces, like a greatest hits album, performed ably by the stars — in his debut role, Jaafar Jackson dances like he is possessed by his uncle’s talent — but strung together in repetitive false-note ways that are insulting both to audience and subject.
  98. Everyone Is Lying to You for Money
    Even if you’re confused or mystified by the whole concept of cryptocurrency, the movie is a pretty solid introduction to how it works. More important, it explains why people got into it in the first place.
  99. Balls Up
    There are slapstick foibles, sight gags about rubbers, and many, many vulgar jokes — some good for a laugh, though I doubt the film’s Oscar prospects.
  100. 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.
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