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 Music of Silence
    This blah trudge from cradle to stage will be catnip to his fans and Ambien to everyone else.
  2. The Cage Fighter
    The Cage Fighter is not riveting from moment to moment, but Mr. Unay allows the movie’s themes to click into place beautifully toward the end.
  3. Before We Vanish
    Mr. Kurosawa, a prolific and skilled genre master, spins this parable with a light, nimble touch, punctuating heavy passages of exposition with punchy, modest action sequences and snatches of incongruously bouncy music.
  4. In the Intense Now
    Those dreading 50th-anniversary greatest-hits medleys will find solace, enlightenment and surprise in João Moreira Salles’s In the Intense Now, a bittersweet, ruminative documentary essay composed of footage from the era accompanied by thoughtful, disarmingly personal voice-over narration.
  5. Padmaavat
    Mr. Bhansali is painting with a broad brush.
  6. The Opera House
    To its credit, The Opera House, directed by Susan Froemke, only sometimes plays like a fund-raising tool.
  7. Shot in the Dark
    This director isn’t afraid of silence, and he’s prepared to let a quiet moment speak for itself. Attentive viewing is required, and rewarded.
  8. The Last Family
    The tragedies in this family’s life are nearly constant, but Mr. Matuszynski approaches them with a tone that’s matter-of-fact while also partaking in the particular wry irony that has been a hallmark of Polish cinema since the early 1960s.
  9. Like Me
    With little more than the superficial psychology of shallow characters to guide the movie’s squeamish images, Like Me irritates, but it proves unable to provoke more than mild gut reactions.
  10. Please Stand By
    Despite [Fanning's] commitment to the role — and the generally fine supporting performances — this timorous tale sidesteps uncomfortable realities in favor of soothing whimsy and preordained uplift.
  11. West of the Jordan River
    Through interviews with Israeli politicians, and Palestinians and Israelis in the West Bank, West of the Jordan River gives voice to peace-seeking residents on both sides of the conflict.
  12. The Clapper
    Mashing limp romance and artless satire into a ludicrously contrived plot, The Clapper lurches from one mirthlessly eccentric scene to another.
  13. Have a Nice Day
    Leisurely and deliberate, intelligent and casually cruel, Have a Nice Day is a stone-cold gangster thriller whose violence unfolds in passionless bursts.
  14. Maze Runner: The Death Cure
    The director, Wes Ball, knows how to move his camera around a futuristic medical compound, and the filmmaking brio — especially the sights of Earth’s last city, shot in Cape Town — mitigates the eye rolls prompted by the plot.
  15. Forever My Girl
    The director, Bethany Ashton Wolf, who adapted the screenplay from, yes, a romance novel by Heidi McLaughlin, can concoct some Hallmark-greeting-card-quality shots, but has little flair for piecing them together. The lead actors are very pretty.
  16. Tall: The American Skyscraper and Louis Sullivan
    The film is useful in part because it is so frankly argumentative. The critical appreciation of art is always advanced more effectively by partisanship than by neutrality.
  17. The Banishment
    The first two-thirds are an extraordinary slow burn that provides ample time to admire Mr. Zvyagintsev’s talent with the wide frame. The movie is marred by an unsatisfying resolution, which has a coyness better suited to literature.
  18. Mama Africa: Miriam Makeba
    Like many biographical documentaries, it resembles a lengthy highlight reel of crucial events from its subject’s life, without much in the way of style or perspective.
  19. Den of Thieves
    The film is generous with action and twists, even if some don’t track. For January, a month Hollywood reserves for dogs, this is an admirably weird movie.
  20. A Ciambra
    Mr. Carpignano has a shrewd sense not only of the character’s psychology, but also of the audience’s expectations, and our tendency to confuse realism with magical thinking.
  21. 12 Strong
    For devotees of cinematic blowouts and dedicated students of screen masculinity (like me), 12 Strong is premium, Grade A catnip. Directed by the newcomer Nicolai Fuglsig, it is generally watchable, if unsurprisingly easier on the eyes than on the ears or brain.
  22. The Road Movie
    The camera offers no protection; it only provides a witness. Fortunately for audiences, it’s more pleasurable to witness anarchy than it is to experience it.
  23. Mary and The Witch's Flower
    The spell Mr. Yonebayashi casts is effective, but also ephemeral. It’s minor magic.
  24. Mom and Dad
    Mr. Taylor offers up nothing but glitchy editing and bad vibes.
  25. Kangaroo
    This film isn’t always pretty, but its message is necessary.
  26. The Final Year
    In the final half-hour, things start picking up, not just because of the impending surprise victory of Donald J. Trump and the way these players react to it.
  27. Small Town Crime
    The Nelmses don’t make enough of their more intriguing ideas (Mike’s familial history) and end up right where you expect they would, bang bang. But Mr. Hawkes keeps you tethered, whether he’s navigating the movie’s uneven tones or peeling down one of cinema’s lonely highways in a muscle car so lovingly shot it deserves a co-star credit.
  28. Beuys
    Even if you don’t need Beuys justified or explained to you, the movie is an exhilarating portrait of a unique truth-teller.
  29. Proud Mary
    Ms. Henson, ever simmering, takes Mary’s moral conundrum very seriously. Her expressive eyes and nuanced body language work well for the character; she can put across a major change in attitude just by shifting a hip. The script, though, doesn’t give her a whole lot of material with which to credibly enact her character’s crisis.
  30. What Lies Upstream
    Is “What Lies Upstream” persuasive in all respects? No. Will it make you think twice about what’s gone unnoticed in your tap water? Absolutely.
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