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. Becoming Who I Was
    The filmmakers rarely delve into the spiritual aspects of the story, but that’s O.K. You don’t have to believe in Padma and Urgain’s religion to believe in them.
  2. Everything Else (Todo Lo Demás)
    A low-key character study whose gently repetitive rhythms mask an unusually keen sense of nuance and subtlety.
  3. Strangers on the Earth
    The sensations that Strangers on the Earth means to evoke are not well suited to the cinematic medium, at least not to a documentary that barely runs more than an hour and a half.
  4. Overboard
    None of the proceedings are sidesplittingly funny, but they grow increasingly sweet-natured. The most remarkable aspect of this movie is its perhaps unwitting gentleness.
  5. The Guardians
    The Guardians is a historical drama that doesn’t lose itself in decorative period detail, a beautifully photographed chronicle of rural existence that refrains from picturesque sentimentality and grinding misery, the usual modes for this kind of film.
  6. The Desert Bride
    A road movie of sorts, it steers clear of melodrama or sentimentality, but it also never risks hitting anything.
  7. Racer and the Jailbird
    The two leads are sensational, but the movie, drained of its life force and stuffed with confusing plot complications — like a shoehorned-in undercover agent and some mysterious Albanians — never recovers.
  8. RBG
    Directed by Betsy West and Julie Cohen, the film is a jaunty assemblage of interviews, public appearances and archival material, organized to illuminate its subject’s temperament and her accomplishments so far.
  9. Angels Wear White
    The moral rot and callous corruption depicted in Angels Wear White has a particularly bracing effect in part because, cultural specifics aside, the inhumanity on display is hardly alien.
  10. Son of Bigfoot
    The Son of Bigfoot, an English-language production from Belgium, more or less does what it sets out to do, which is to offer enough visual activity and bromides to keep the very young interested. To all others: There is no Bigfoot; there’s nothing to see here.
  11. Ray Meets Helen
    Ray Meets Helen has a wistful, whimsical sophistication that has all but disappeared from movies. Filled with imaginative visuals populated by the ghosts of the gone and hopes for the future, the movie is wonderfully, magically humane.
  12. The Cleanse
    The Cleanse” embarks on an allegorical journey with only the vaguest notion of a destination. As a result, the movie feels frustratingly repetitive — a single joke repeated ad nauseam.
  13. The 12th Man
    The reward of Mr. Zwart’s attention to the unique details of this historical account is that Jan’s path to safety frequently shocks, offering scenes of defiance that are unfamiliar or unexpected. In a familiar genre, The 12th Man preserves the element of surprise by understanding its terrain.
  14. Tully
    Tully isn’t really interested in the sustaining joys of female bonding. It has a message to deliver, which is as sincere and decent as it is obvious: Mothers need help, sometimes serious help. Which is why it’s strange that as Marlo very visibly sinks into postpartum depression — you can see Ms. Theron pulling Marlo deeper and deeper inside — the movie pretends that her burden is somehow too hidden for anyone to notice.
  15. Bad Samaritan
    The Bad Samaritan director, Dean Devlin, handles the proceedings like Adrian Lyne (who directed “Fatal Attraction”) on HGH supplements (and divested of over a third of Mr. Lyne’s visual elegance, such as it is).
  16. Cold Water (1994)
    Mr. Assayas succeeded in making a young person’s film when he was on the cusp of turning 40. He has said that he wanted Cold Water to feel like a movie from 1972. It doesn’t really, but, perhaps more remarkably, it’s so fresh it could have been made now.
  17. Duck Butter
    [Ms. Shawkat] and Mr. Arteta, a sensitive observer of life’s everyday churn (his credits include “Beatriz at Dinner”), do some lovely work in a movie that reminds you that sometimes all you need in realist fiction is a glimpse into another person’s being — but with heart and intelligence, good craft and technique.
  18. The Rachel Divide
    Basic sympathy is where the usefulness of The Rachel Divide ends. Ms. Brownson hasn’t figured out how to construct a movie around a figure who essentially owes her fame to the obfuscation of her past. Anything Ms. Dolezal says has to be taken with such a large grain of salt that it’s not clear why it’s worth listening.
  19. The Test & The Art of Thinking
    It’s a film that doggedly questions an exam that affects the futures of millions and feeds the fortunes of several big industries. Someone else — the schools — needs to supply some good answers.
  20. The Escape of Prisoner 614
    A pastiche of western tropes too tongue-in-cheek to sell its dramatic intentions, but just sincere enough to smother any intimations of parody, The Escape of Prisoner 614 never commits to a consistent tone. Or even a consistent setting, really.
  21. Modern Life Is Rubbish
    Britpop is a musical genre I had neutral feelings toward before sitting through Modern Life Is Rubbish, a uselessly nostalgic movie named after Blur’s 1993 album. After it, I wondered whether I had been too generous.
  22. The House of Tomorrow
    Working from Peter Bognanni’s 2010 novel, the writer and director, Peter Livolsi, has created a painfully quirky tale that’s so contrived you can almost hear the gears of the plot grinding.
  23. Love & Bananas
    This film is, in many respects, a plain picture, but also a cleareyed, direct, fat-free one that has something to say and says it affectingly.
  24. In the Last Days of the City
    Whether In the Last Days of the City ultimately comes together as a feature is open to debate, but this is a film of beauty and skill.
  25. Rogers Park
    The screenwriter, Carlos Treviño, crafts frank dialogue and the director, Kyle Henry, films the scenes with an eye for the intimate, dividend-paying gesture. The superb actors, given opportunities to go for broke, make each one count, and make the movie worth watching.
  26. Supercon
    Supercon offers lip service to fan culture, yet it is difficult to imagine who would enjoy watching this ill-conceived satire. Directed by Zak Knutson, who also contributed to the screenplay, the movie is careless with its setting, callous toward its characters and crass about its audience.
  27. Kings
    The first English-language film from the Turkish-French director Deniz Gamze Ergüven (her 2015 movie “Mustang” was a foreign language Oscar nominee) is well-acted across the board, and contains more than a few outstanding, unpredictable scenes. But in tying its story to this particular moment in American history, the movie bites off more than it can coherently chew.
  28. Ava
    Lurching relentlessly from one conflict to another, the movie distills its emotions — and maintains its momentum — in conversations of remarkably controlled intensity.
  29. Mrs. Hyde
    Whenever the movie tries to say something insightful about racial integration — or education, or any number of issues — it backs off or bogs down. It’s so tonally and ideologically unfocused that its ideas just slip away.
  30. Let the Sunshine In
    Ms. Binoche, effortlessly charismatic and ruthlessly unvain, has no investment in the character’s likability. She and Ms. Denis could not care less what you think of her. Let the Sunshine In commits itself to taking Isabelle on her own terms. The challenge, for her and for the audience, is to figure out what those terms are.
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