The New York Times' Scores

For 20,269 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:
20269 movie reviews
  1. Likeable stars with little frisson, Elwes and Shields are also saddled with a formulaic script.
  2. Magic abounds in A Boy Called Christmas, Netflix’s first prestige holiday movie of the season, but pulsing through this winning adventure tale is something even stronger: the immersive power of storytelling.
  3. When it isn’t fawning over roller rinks, “Goonies” posters, and Casio watches, 8 Bit Christmas (streaming on HBO Max) is a warm and refreshingly earnest holiday comedy.
  4. The confessions and tensions are commonplace, but The Humans is never less than high on the terrible power of the mundane.
  5. Hamaguchi’s touch — delicate, precise, restrained, gentle — overwhelms in increments. His reserve is essential to his visual and narrative approach but also feels like a worldview.
  6. The only surprise is that Roberts shuns cheap jump scare surprises in favor of well-crafted suspense scenes that play out like a game of three card monte. There’s delight in cinematographer Maxime Alexandre and editor Dev Singh’s slow-building visual gags.
  7. The Madrigal family members belong even when they’re not conjuring roses or transforming the weather. And even with these fantastic feats of wizardry, the Madrigals, with all of their relatable family dynamics, are believably loving, funny and flawed.
  8. For all that abundance, something is missing. A lot of things, really, but mostly a strong idea and a credible reason for existing.
  9. Out of the fractured family documentary, what emerges finally is a drama of self-realization.
  10. This Is Not a War Story, which Lugacy also directed, is a naturalistic, chat-heavy narrative that captures the difficulties wrought by the unimaginable trauma individuals face as they attempt to forge connections and find peace after war.
  11. There is a contagious thrill to the movie’s portrait of its subject’s achievements, especially his whirlwind romance with the Israeli supermodel Tami Ben Ami. But when it comes to Perry’s moments of struggle, Aulcie trips up.
  12. Though Nestor’s understated performance is powerful at times, one leaves the film not fully satisfied, wanting for a stronger arc.
  13. C’mon C’mon is a nice movie about characters who are so nice that I almost feel bad for not being nicely disposed toward them or this movie, even with Joaquin Phoenix as the guy and Gaby Hoffmann as the sister.
  14. This is a fundamentally — and I would say marvelously — old-fashioned entertainment, a sports drama that is also an appealing, socially alert story of perseverance and the up-by-the-bootstraps pursuit of excellence.
  15. Andy Greskoviak’s script lampoons corporate apathy and retail-work ennui with the same swiftness as his voracious zombies. Unfortunately, Black Friday also tries to make viewers root for its characters, who are mostly delightful because they are such wildly mediocre people.
  16. To judge Greene’s experiment, not least because of its visible salutary effects, feels like intruding on private breakthroughs. But the discomfiting power of Procession comes from its ability to show and, to all appearances, facilitate them.
  17. Without sacrificing comedic buoyancy, Malik and her ensemble make palpable a community that is vibrant and claustrophobic.
  18. Miranda’s devotion to his idol keeps him from expanding the musical’s myopic fretting into a universal story of sacrifice and resolve. Garfield at least gives Larson an endearing vulnerability.
  19. The film succeeds in presenting an on-the-ground view of what it felt like to be inside a hospital in the spring of 2020. It was harrowing, death was everywhere and there was no end in sight.
  20. Shooting in the summer of 2020, Jude and his team were clearly constrained by the realities of Covid-19, but they also succeeded in turning a bad situation to creative advantage, facing the awfulness and absurdity of the present with wit, indignation and a saving touch of tenderness.
  21. Utterly baffling, yet never less than intriguing, Zeros and Ones lingers in the mind. Even after you think you’ve brushed it off, its chilly tendrils continue to cling.
  22. Anyone who has seen one of these movies can just take over for the characters and guess their lines as easily as the three cousins can swap clothes and accents to impersonate one another.
  23. The film swings back and forth from scenes of pastoral bliss to brutality, generating a narrative that, while unfocused, is nevertheless anchored by the tender and wounded performances by its adolescent cast.
  24. Perhaps no one documentary can do justice to Parks. But “Choice of Weapons” ends up streamlining his complexity, and its wind-down looks past his other audiovisual output.
  25. The landscape can go only so far in expressing Toichi’s mind-set, and the movie turns hokey when it dramatizes Toichi’s inner thoughts.
  26. The lack of labeling only raises questions, slightly marring what otherwise plays like a thorough, outraged exposé.
  27. Goulet’s sleek, lo-fi world-building — decrepit gray cityscapes; fields covered with smoke-spewing factories — is more compelling than her storytelling, which grows increasingly predictable as Niska and the vigilantes plan a raid on Waseese’s academy. Yet the film’s use of clichés can also be thrillingly subversive at times.
  28. A portrait of modern girlhood, this documentary ultimately becomes a bleak look at the normalization of sexual abuse among the very victimized young women.
  29. Pleasing, exasperating, poignant and coy, “What Do We See” is a loose, exceedingly leisurely meander through a series of momentous and banal moments that take place during an amble through the Georgian city of Kutaisi.
  30. The cumulative effect of so much enlightened sitting around is that the movie doesn’t move. There is a lack of action, both visually and emotionally.

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