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. The Crucible
    Handsome and impassioned, vigorously staged by the director of ''The Madness of King George,'' this ''Crucible'' is a reminder of the play's wide reach, which goes well beyond witch trials in any century. As adapted gamely by the playwright into a screenplay that takes advantage of scenic backgrounds and photogenic stars, ''The Crucible'' now speaks to subtler forms of dishonesty and opportunism than it did before.
  2. The Inspection
    The metamorphosis that Bratton explores, and that Pope embodies — the way Ellis both changes and remains ever faithful to himself — is subtle, bittersweet and beautiful.
  3. Witness for the Prosecution
    For a courtroom melodrama pegged to a single plot device--a device that, of course, everybody promises not to reveal--the Arthur Hornblow Jr. film production of the Agatha Christie play "Witness for the Prosecution" comes off extraordinarily well. This results mainly from Billy Wilder's splendid staging of some splintering courtroom scenes and a first-rate theatrical performance by Charles Laughton in the defense-attorney role.
  4. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
    The movie’s bifurcated shape isn’t novel, but Poitras’s marshaling of all this information is exceptionally graceful. She has an abundance of fantastic material at her disposal — including a generous selection of Goldin’s artwork — but what makes the movie work so well is how Poitras seamlessly uses the different sections of Goldin’s life to weave a coherent portrait of the artist.
  5. The Eternal Daughter
    Hogg’s greatest stroke in The Eternal Daughter is her casting of Swinton in both lead roles. Swinton is a wonderful chameleon and while she can go as big and showy as any Oscar contender, she is also a brilliant miniaturist.
  6. Dos Estaciones
    At once specific and expansive, Dos Estaciones can be described several ways: as a drama, a character study, a meditative exploration of the ravages of globalization. At the same time, part of the movie’s pleasure is how it avoids facile categorization.
  7. The Sea Wolf
    The Sea Wolf is a triumph of studio filmmaking. [22 Oct 2017, p.11]
    • The New York Times
  8. The African Desperate
    Drawn from Syms’s own experiences as a visual artist, The African Desperate is less an art-school parody as it is a portrait of existential incongruity, where contempt mingles with deep affection.
  9. Dry Ground Burning
    Pimenta and Queirós invent a world in which Brazilian women at the very bottom of the social totem pole take matters into their own hands. They do so without an ounce of fear or self-pity — and in killer style to boot.
  10. Monica
    Both Lysette and Clarkson are naturally magnetic actors, and they don’t waste the attention they’re given on excess sentimentality.
  11. Master Gardener
    Part of the kick of “Master Gardener” is that the writer-director Paul Schrader manages to pull off this improbable movie. It shouldn’t work and, even after seeing it twice, I don’t think that it entirely does, which only makes it more fascinating and strengthens its power.
  12. Queens of the Qing Dynasty
    McKenzie doesn’t rely on the usual uplifting messaging and strained empowerment arc to humanize An and Star . . . Their friendship remains mysterious, yet the film, as if by witchcraft, makes their connection feel palpable and true.
  13. Elemental
    The staggering design ambition balances out the plot’s affecting, relatable ordinariness.
  14. Saint Omer
    An intellectually charged, emotionally wrenching story about the inability of storytelling — literary, legal or cinematic — to do justice to the violence and strangeness of human experience.
  15. Emily
    Building on a series of oppositions — nature and culture, realism and romance, duty and freedom — O’Connor brings Emily the myth to vibrant life, persuasively suggesting that this ostensibly strange and cloistered genius came into being not despite her contradictions but through them.
  16. Other People's Children
    Zlotowski is telling a story about a specific woman. She’s also telling a complex, bruising, much larger and quietly self-aware story about both the messiness of life and the fragility of bodies that exist in the real world, not just in fantasies.
  17. Terra Femme
    Stephens’s ideas and presentation make for a dense, continually absorbing hour.
  18. Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me
    An honest portrait study of stardom and mental illness, the film offers a hopeful catharsis: How, when we reveal our hardest truths, we can heal together.
  19. My Imaginary Country
    While this is a first-person documentary, with the director providing voice-over narration, it expresses a poignant humility and a patient willingness to listen.
  20. What We Leave Behind
    What We Leave Behind insists upon power in stillness, and the poignancy in staying — and leaving.
  21. Medusa Deluxe
    At a time when too many movies feel cautious and constrained, Medusa Deluxe is gloriously uninhibited and gaudily diverting.
  22. Piggy
    Pereda, who also wrote the script, is not afraid of psychological and moral ambiguity: It’s obvious that she is on Sara’s side — the bullying scenes are much harder to watch than the bloody ones — but she also knows that shame, guilt and secrecy fester into messy situations and messy people.
  23. Intervista
    A magical mixture of recollection, parody, memoir, satire, self-examination and joyous fantasy.
  24. There There
    The writer-director, Andrew Bujalski, zeros in on the delicate dances and negotiations between the people in these two-handers, which percolate with sly humor, decency, curiosity and sheer nerve.
  25. Last Flight Home
    “Last Flight” is at once a memorial to Eli, the last of that generation of the family to die, and — almost incidentally — a philosophical argument about how death can be faced well.
  26. Sepa: Nuestro Señor de los milagros
    It’s a provocative addition to the literature of incarceration.
  27. Challengers
    One of the other pleasures of Challengers is that despite some tears, tightened jaws and its fussy chronology, the movie isn’t trying to say anything important, which is a relief. It wants to engage and entertain you, and it does that very nicely.
  28. The Quiet Girl
    Although The Quiet Girl — Ireland’s entry for the best international feature Oscar — is not holiday fare, there may not be a movie more expressive of the season’s benevolent ethos than this hushed work about kith and kindness.
  29. Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb
    “Turn Every Page” is one step away from turning into a Herzogian monument to obsession or plunging into crazed psychodrama. Instead, it is merely a great profile, filled with wit, affection and detailed stories of how the books came to be.
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