The New York Times' Scores

For 20,268 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 4.4 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:
20268 movie reviews
  1. The spy-versus-spy scenario set out by the screenwriter Ward Parry isn’t going to give the maestro Mick Harron (“Slow Horses”) any sleepless nights. But as a vehicle for Statham’s bone-breaking escapades, it’ll do. And the story avoids some of the expected clichés.
  2. The action in The Wrecking Crew is so good, its fights so brisk and its car chases so lively, that it makes you wish its muscular leads, Jason Momoa and Dave Bautista, had starred in more decent action movies.
  3. The documentary tries to heighten the stakes of Talankin’s story by casting his efforts under a pall of danger, dread or distress. But these bids for drama are far less persuasive than the horrifying raw footage Talankin captures, such as one scene in which young students are coached to march down a hallway, as if preparing for battle.
  4. Delving into company archives, the director (whose grandfather, the animator Ub Iwerks, was a crucial contributor to early Disney films) has composed an official story, but one that wisely avoids “why this matters” talking-head commentary. Disneyland Handcrafted is instead an immersive bit of time travel.
  5. A depressing, downbeat thriller that hustles from one violent act to the next with only the flimsiest of narrative throughlines, the latest from the French Canadian director Maxime Giroux is an unfortunate misfire.
  6. What does work about H Is for Hawk (aside from Mabel, whose presence is enough to recommend the film) is its refusal to make grief facile or tidy, or to proclaim that healing must look the same for everyone.
  7. “Return” cranks the chaos factor up several gears. Maybe that’s a logical shift for a franchise about a creepy New England town that jostles its visitors around multiple planes of reality. Though, here, it’s not as fun as that sounds.
  8. A witless, thrill-free hodgepodge of shinily packaged action-thriller clichés.
  9. Though Seeds is a lyrical portrait of a way of life, it also harbors an urgency that’s very much of our moment.
  10. Damon is the only one keeping his head above water, mostly because he’s the only one given the space to make decisions and navigate different dynamics. Everyone else is trapped in a kiddie game of cops and robbers.
  11. Give Bhala Lough credit: His film simultaneously illustrates the deficiencies of generative A.I. and the dangers of investing in it emotionally, while remaining annoying and self-amused in a distinctly human way.
  12. The lumbersome conspiracy-building in the front half, paired with flashy visuals and some performances fitting for a crude stoner comedy, make this a bleary experience overall.
  13. The intrigue is far-fetched and surprising — this is one movie you can’t write in your head — and delivered with increasing winks and charm.
  14. While some institutions are legitimate, Shuffle, a shocking and confounding new documentary directed by Benjamin Flaherty, lays out in painstaking detail the collusion between moneymaking rehab treatment centers, double-dealing insurance entities and predatory social-media “scouts” who make sure cash flows into corporate pockets while the sick and suffering never get well.
  15. Here is a movie whose atavistic excursion through time transfixes, even as its psychology remains as fuzzy as a photograph smeared by motion.
  16. This dazzling first feature from the Thai filmmaker Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke uses the frame of a sad-sweet sex comedy to weave together political allegory, supernatural mystery and more than one tender love story. And he does this with such skill and bravado that you never see the seams.
  17. By narrowing the scope and condensing the logic of the action, this film undermines the excitement of the story, so even the day of an alien apocalypse starts to get tedious. That’s a great misfortune given the movie’s funky style.
  18. DaCosta’s talents as a director are a terrific, confident match for this material.
  19. Occasionally cute and almost instantly forgettable, “People,” tidily directed by Brett Haley, offers less-than-witty dialogue.
  20. In depicting scenes of dispossession and fraught encounters with soldiers, the filmmaker offers a saga of trauma that has antecedents in dramas set during previous mass conflicts like Apartheid as well as in the Jim Crow South. If that strikes you as pointed, it is.
  21. When Dead Man’s Wire ends with footage of the real Kiritsis and Hall, it is hard not to conclude that a much crazier, livelier film could have been made.
  22. Kramer quietly but forcefully recognizes that the conflict cannot continue as it has.
  23. While the lead actors are clearly committed, the movie gives them little to do besides exchange verbal invective.
  24. There’s something smarter between the lines about the way technology warps our (self-) perception, but maybe that’s giving too much credit to a film so giddy about its warping. That’s not totally bad: Some films are like dreams whose meanings never materialize.
  25. Because of the ensemble structure, each tale is interrupted by another, so “Young Mothers” lacks some of the suspense that powers many of the Dardennes’ other films. Yet that slower pace allows a tenderness to develop, and the tension between the girls’ youth and newfound maternal instincts to emerge.
  26. The most arresting way that Diaz telegraphs, though, is through the sheer beauty of his images. The movie is often visually intoxicating, at moments gasp-out-loud ravishing, especially in its presentation of the natural world, which can have a soft visual quality that deepens the sense of otherworldliness.
  27. Ric Roman Waugh’s movie is a notable step up from the first film. The Garritys’ traversal across the treacherous North Atlantic Ocean and dashes past marauding bandits in Europe make for real human stakes.
  28. Like any decent soap, The Mother and the Bear is powered by human dramas that are contrived, silly and ultimately a little weird. But what actually happens belie what is in execution a relatively sedate story about the spoken frictions and unspoken secrets between mother and daughter, father and son.
  29. We Bury the Dead is most haunting when it gestures at a world dazed with trauma and explores a path to personal closure through collective efforts.
  30. As with the play (and its 1967 film adaptation), the sexual politics here are messy. What isn’t is the filmmakers’ bold dive into the archives of the nascent Black Arts Movement for a throughline.

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