A.O. Scott, The New York Times
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For 1,280 reviews, this critic has graded:
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48% higher than the average critic
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2% same as the average critic
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50% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 2 points higher than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
A.O. Scott's Scores
- Movies
| Average review score: | 61 |
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| Highest review score: |
Critic Score
100
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| Lowest review score: |
Critic Score
0
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Score distribution:
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Positive: 643 out of 1280
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Mixed: 467 out of 1280
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Negative: 170 out of 1280
1,280
movie reviews
- By critic score
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A.O. Scott 90
There are no simple answers or obvious conclusions to be gleaned from this movie, which, like its soundtrack, is both sad and vibrant, meandering and formally sure-footed. It is an exciting debut, and a film that, without exaggeration or false modesty, finds interest and feeling in the world just as it is. -
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A.O. Scott 90
It is a deeply personal piece of art that never descends into the confessional or the therapeutic, and a work of social and literary criticism that never lectures or hectors, but rather, with melancholy, tenderness and wit, manages to sing. -
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A.O. Scott 90
Coraline lingers in an atmosphere that is creepy, wonderfully strange and full of feeling. -
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A.O. Scott 90
Might be described as an epic landscape film, a sweetly comic coming-of-age story or a lyrical work of social realism. But the setting -- a windswept, sparely populated steppe in southern Kazakhstan -- gives the movie a mood that sometimes feels closer to that of science fiction. -
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A.O. Scott 90
Mr. Toback's film, partly because it restricts itself to Mr. Tyson's point of view, offers a rare and vivid study in the complexity of a single suffering, raging soul. It is not an entirely trustworthy movie, but it does feel profoundly honest. -
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A.O. Scott 90
Soul Power, as aptly and succinctly titled a movie as I have ever seen, takes you to a place where the discipline that produces great popular art is indistinguishable from the ecstasy that art creates. -
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A.O. Scott 90
Nimble and self-assured as Mr. Daniels’s direction may be, he could not make you believe in “Precious” unless you were able to believe in Precious herself. You will. -
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A.O. Scott 90
A sharply written, fast-talking, almost dementedly articulate satire on modern statecraft. -
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A.O. Scott 90
Lorna's Silence is engrossing and powerful, which may be just another way of saying it's a film by the Dardenne brothers. If it falls a bit short of the standards of their best work, that is only because it is not quite a masterpiece. -
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A.O. Scott 90
Beeswax, at first glance a modest, ragged slice of contemporary life, turns out to be a remarkably subtle, even elegant movie. -
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A.O. Scott 90
A show not simply preserved by Mr. Lee’s camera, but brought, somehow, to its fullest, strangest, most electrifying realization. -
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A.O. Scott 90
In some ways his (Anderson) most fully realized and satisfying film. Once you adjust to its stop-and-start rhythms and its scruffy looks, you can appreciate its wit, its beauty and the sly gravity of its emotional undercurrents. -
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A.O. Scott 90
The story is at once hilarious and horrific, its significance both self-evident and opaque. The same could be said of most of the Coen brothers’ movies, in which human existence and the attempt to find meaning in it are equally futile, if also sometimes a lot of fun. (For us, at least.) -
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A.O. Scott 90
Ahead of us lie many more documentaries similar in tone and spirit to this one. We can hope that at least a few of them are as intelligently and artfully made. -
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A.O. Scott 90
Ms. Campion, with her restless camera movements and off-center close-ups, films history in the present tense, and her wild vitality makes this movie romantic in every possible sense of the word. -
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A.O. Scott 90
Bronson invites you to admire its protagonist as a pure, muscular embodiment of anarchy. And perhaps you will, but you may also be glad that he’s still behind bars. -
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A.O. Scott 90
No movie can convey the truth of war to those of us who have not lived through it, but The Messenger, precisely by acknowledging just how hard it is to live with that truth, manages to bring it at least partway home. -
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A.O. Scott 90
Mr. Herzog’s film is a pulpy, glorious mess. Its maniacal unpredictability is such a blast that it reminds you just how tidy and dull most crime thrillers are these days. -
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A.O. Scott 90
Broken Embraces leaves the viewer in a contradictory state, a mixture of devastation and euphoria, amusement and dismay that deserves its own clinical designation. Call it Almodóvaria, a syndrome from which some of us are more than happy to suffer. -
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A.O. Scott 90
Art is a fairy tale we choose to believe in, and this movie, a fiction confected about real people, is too good not to be true. -
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A.O. Scott 90
The contradictions of adolescence have rarely been conveyed with such authenticity and force. -
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A.O. Scott 90
One of the pleasures of Ajami, a tough and in many ways unsparing movie, is its deep immersion in the beats and melodies of everyday life in Jaffa and beyond. -
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A.O. Scott 90
Its scrupulous, humane sympathy gives this small, sorrowful film a glow of insight and a pulse of genuine, openhearted curiosity. -
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A.O. Scott 90
Ms. Abt provides an unusually honest, compassionate and challenging view of contemporary youth, neither sugarcoated nor prurient. -
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A.O. Scott 90
It is only fitting that a movie concerned with the power and beauty of drawing -- the almost sacred magic of color and line -- should be so gorgeously and intricately drawn. -
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A.O. Scott 90
It is the funniest and saddest movie Mr. Baumbach has made so far, and also the riskiest. -
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A.O. Scott 90
By the time the final measure of rough cosmic justice is meted out, The Square has completed a tour of moral squalor that is suspenseful, invigorating and sometimes harshly funny. -
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A.O. Scott 90
The film is careful to avoid explicit political statement, but its reticence makes its critique of the Iranian regime all the more devastating. -
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A.O. Scott 90
A sharp, small-scale comedy of male misbehavior that turns out to be one of this dreary spring’s pleasant cinematic surprises. -
