The New York Times' Scores

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For 20,271 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: 9,377 out of 20271
  2. Mixed: 8,430 out of 20271
  3. Negative: 2,464 out of 20271
20271 movie reviews
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  1. The Wife
    The Wife pulls off the not inconsiderable feat of spinning a fundamentally literary premise into an intelligent screen drama that unfolds with real juice and suspense.
  2. Alpha
    Mr. Hughes, who for many years cocreated films with his twin brother, Allen, and here makes his solo feature debut, is a sharp and engaged visual storyteller. It’s a pleasure to see him working in expansive wide-screen, a fitting format for his chops.
  3. Juliet, Naked
    Mr. Peretz and the screenwriters (Evgenia Peretz, the director’s sister, is credited along with Tamara Jenkins and Jim Taylor) find an amiable farcical groove, and the actors embrace the ridiculousness of the circumstances without overdoing it.
  4. Cielo
    Ms. McAlpine’s purple musings in voice-over (“the stars tell me to go on a journey in this desert”), and the decision not to identify subjects formally until the closing credits, give the film an unnecessary fuzziness.
  5. Crazy Rich Asians
    Without betraying any overt nostalgia, Crazy Rich Asians casts a fond eye backward as well as Eastward, conjuring a world defined by hierarchies and prescribed roles in a way that evokes classic novels and films.
  6. How It Ends
    it’s a surprisingly O.K. addition to the genre.
  7. The Swan
    Director Asa Helga Hjorleifsdottir never displays the passion that her characters suggest in their stories. If her film ever diverged from its ubiquitous images of misty mountains or its plodding piano score, perhaps its characters’ incessant mythmaking would convey deeper mysteries, inner worlds that are not visible to the eye.
  8. Slender Man
    The most perfunctory horror picture I’ve seen in some time.
  9. Madeline's Madeline
    if Madeline’s Madeline is sometimes unconvincing and frequently unnerving, it is never uninteresting. In its final moments it ascends into heady, almost visionary territory, like a balloon caught in a sudden updraft, and becomes a singular and strange experience.
  10. BlacKkKlansman
    BlacKkKlansman is a furious, funny, blunt and brilliant confrontation with the truth. It’s an alarm clock ringing in the midst of a historical nightmare, and also a symphony, the rare piece of political popular art that works in all three dimensions.
  11. Elizabeth Harvest
    Mr. Gutierrez keeps the viewer in the same state of confusion as Elizabeth, but each surprise, paradoxically, makes the movie less and less surprising as a whole.
  12. Skate Kitchen
    The movie’s disinclination to judge doesn’t deprive it of a point of view. Skate Kitchen is unfailingly compassionate to, and genuinely appreciative of, the people it chronicles.
  13. Dog Days
    On the whole, this picture, which could just as well be titled “Dog, Actually,” is sweeter-than-average treacle.
  14. BuyBust
    Wrapping a political-corruption yarn in a blanket of bullets and blood, the Filipino director and co-writer, Erik Matti, slides visual and textual jokes into the mayhem in ways both sly and blatant.
  15. A Prayer Before Dawn
    Mr. Sauvaire’s approach may not be for everyone, but his skill and audacity are invigorating — and, strangely, liberating.
  16. The Meg
    Unlike “Sharknado,” The Meg doesn’t seem to know how dumb it is.
  17. The Week Of
    While the movie is ultimately more of the same old same old, it is at least not as appallingly sexist and culturally insensitive as “The Ridiculous Six,” Mr. Sandler’s dreaded 2015 Netflix Original western “spoof.”
  18. Father of the Year
    I admit, I laughed. I was also charmed by Bridgit Mendler as Meredith, Ben’s feisty hometown love interest.
  19. Like Father
    Directed by Lauren Miller Rogen, it’s a predictable comedy of reconciliation. But it boasts substantial pleasures, largely on account of the performers.
  20. Christopher Robin
    The contemporary in-jokes are kept to a minimum (O.K., Tigger says “let’s bounce”), and the movie as a whole feels pleasingly old-fashioned.
  21. Milla
    Milla is a major achievement, a film that is at once as delicate as it is strong, a fitting testament to motherhood, to survival.
  22. Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood
    Mr. Tyrnauer surreptitiously hoses away the layers of dirt to reveal the fragility of his subject’s anything-goes hedonism.
  23. King Cohen: The Wild World of Filmmaker Larry Cohen
    Directed by Steve Mitchell, it’s as conventional as Mr. Cohen’s movies are not. Which is O.K. While the filmmaker himself is more interested in telling colorful anecdotes than dredging up the portions of his psyche that inspire him, the anecdotes are colorful indeed.
  24. Never Goin' Back
    By rights, Never Goin’ Back should be a chore to sit through. The jokes are dated, the behavior tasteless and the setups tired. Yet the movie has a ramshackle charm that’s due entirely to its vivacious leads, whose mutual devotion and easy, unlabeled sexuality feels endearingly innocent.
  25. The Miseducation of Cameron Post
    Satire and outrage are easier approaches than the tact and empathy Ms. Akhavan deploys. The Miseducation of Cameron Post, confident in its beliefs and curious about what makes its characters tick, is more interested in listening than in preaching.
  26. Night Comes On
    The actress Jordana Spiro directed Night Comes On and wrote the script with Angelica Nwandu, a spoken-word poet and creator of the incisive gossip website The Shade Room. Ms. Nwandu is also a former client of the foster care system. The result of their partnership is a film that balances penetrating clarity with compassion.
  27. Cocote
    This is a straightforward story that Mr. de Los Santos Arias, making his fictional feature debut, tells in an ever-changing style, shooting in color and black and white. He also alternates the shape of the frame, mostly toggling between a boxy frame and the wider one most mainstream movies are shown in. Whatever effect was hoped for, this viewer just saw affectation.
  28. Gavagai
    This is a high-minded and carefully composed film about, among other things, the inability of words in any language to satisfactorily communicate states of being. There are pleasures and intellectual provocations to be had here. But its attempted effects fall flat a little too often.
  29. The Darkest Minds
    The director, Jennifer Yuh Nelson (“Kung Fu Panda 2,” “Kung Fu Panda 3”), keeps the pace fast and the exposition flowing; the movie is almost comfortingly watchable. In her first live-action feature, she shows a flair for natural light and doesn’t lean too heavily on effects.
  30. The Spy Who Dumped Me
    Ms. McKinnon is too inventive to make the character a standard, zany rom-com sidekick. There is no real precedent for her highly disciplined comic anarchy, but Ms. McKinnon reminds me a little of Peter Sellers in her command of voice, face and body and her ability to turn every scene into a popcorn popper of verbal and physical surprise.
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