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. Chinese Portrait
    Its primary interest lies in the tension between candid moments and shots that appear artfully composed.
  2. VFW
    Essentially a geezers-fight-back siege movie (Tom Williamson plays the sole young veteran), VFW is riotously scuzzy and warmly partial to its rusty heroes.
  3. Once Were Warriors
    A brutally effective family drama. Rough around the edges and crudely obvious at times, it still presents a raw, disturbing story of domestic strife.
  4. John Lewis: Good Trouble
    Although the film uses a conventional format, it makes an urgent argument: that a new wave of voter suppression has threatened the rights that Lewis labored to secure.
  5. Malice
    Though light of weight, it hugs the road around every hairpin curve in its cruel and twisty narrative.
  6. White Palace
    No more convincing on screen than it was on the page. But it is greatly helped by the presence of Mr. Spader, who was apparently born to play life-denying, icy-veined young heroes, and especially Ms. Sarandon, who has made a career out of coaxing such characters out of their buttoned-down ways.
  7. Advocate
    Provocative as the film is, it doesn’t fully reconcile Tsemel’s contradictions, if such a thing were even possible or desirable.
  8. 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.
  9. 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.
  10. 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.
  11. 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.
  12. Whirlybird
    Drawing on an amazing video stockpile from the 1980s and ’90s, Whirlybird is an editing feat.
  13. 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.
  14. One Eight Seven
    Genuinely disturbing in its vision of fearless students and powerless teachers locked in struggle.
  15. 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.
  16. 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.
  17. 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.
  18. 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.
  19. Spenser Confidential
    The prospect of spending more time with this crew is not a bad one.
  20. 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.
  22. Suburbia
    Probably the best teen-agers-in-revolt movie since Jonathan Kaplan's Over the Edge.
  23. 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.
  24. Vivarium
    There’s a consistent inventiveness — and grim humor — to this treatment of a seemingly well-worn theme.
  25. 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.
  26. 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.
  27. 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.
  28. 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.
  29. 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.
  30. 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.
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