canonical: https://jentic.com/apis/nytimes.com/movie-reviews-api # Nytimes Movie Reviews API The New York Times Movie Reviews API exposes the NYT film criticism archive through three GET endpoints. Agents can search reviews by keyword, filter by Critics' Pick status, opening date, or publication date, and look up the roster of NYT film critics with their bio and profile image. Each review record includes the film title, MPAA rating, byline, headline, summary short, link to the full review, and an opening-date flag, supporting film discovery, recommendation, and editorial integrations. ## For AI agents Search NYT movie reviews by keyword, filter Critics' Picks, and look up NYT film critic profiles. ## Scope Does not provide full review text, box office data, or streaming availability - use for NYT movie review metadata, Critics' Picks, and critic roster only. ## Capabilities - Search NYT movie reviews by free-text keyword across title and headline - Filter to NYT Critics' Pick reviews using the critics-pick query parameter - Restrict reviews by opening date or publication date range - Retrieve the roster of NYT film critics with bio and image - Look up a single NYT film critic by reviewer name - Page through long review result sets via the offset parameter ## Use cases ### Movie Recommendation Feed Build a recommendation feed that surfaces NYT Critics' Picks released within a chosen window. The /reviews/search.json endpoint accepts a critics-pick=Y filter alongside opening-date or publication-date ranges, returning ranked review records with summary short, MPAA rating, and a link to the full NYT review. Example prompt: Call /reviews/search.json?critics-pick=Y&opening-date=2024-01-01;2024-12-31 and return film titles with MPAA rating, summary short, and review URL. ### Film Detail Enrichment Enrich a film detail page with its NYT review when one exists. The search endpoint accepts a query parameter against title, returning the most relevant NYT review with byline, headline, summary short, and full URL. Useful for streaming guides, cinema sites, and entertainment news pages. Example prompt: Call /reviews/search.json?query=Oppenheimer and return the byline, headline, summary short, and review URL of the matching review. ### Critic Profile Browser Build a critics directory listing every active NYT film critic with bio, headshot image, and link to that critic's reviews. The /critics/{resource-type}.json endpoint with resource-type=full returns the roster, while resource-type set to a critic name returns a single profile. Example prompt: Call /critics/full.json and return each critic's name, bio paragraph, and seo_name for profile-page slugs. ### Agent-Driven Movie Lookup via Jentic An AI movie recommendation agent uses Jentic to find NYT reviews at runtime when a user asks about a film's critical reception. Jentic returns the matching /reviews/search.json operation, the agent loads the schema and executes the call without manually wiring auth or query parameters. Example prompt: Search Jentic for 'search NYT movie reviews', load the /reviews/search.json operation, and execute it with query='Killers of the Flower Moon'. ## Key endpoints | Method | Path | Description | | --- | --- | --- | | GET | /reviews/search.json | Search NYT movie reviews by keyword, date, or Critics' Pick | | GET | /reviews/{resource-type}.json | Get reviews scoped to a resource type or critic | | GET | /critics/{resource-type}.json | Look up NYT film critics individually or as a roster | ## Key resources - **Movie Reviews** — Searchable NYT film reviews filterable by query, opening date, publication date, and Critics' Pick status. - **Reviews by Resource Type** — Pre-built review lists by resource type such as picks, all, or by reviewer name. - **Critics** — Roster of NYT film critics with bio, image, and seo_name. ## Why Jentic - **Setup:** Wiring the NYT Movie Reviews API by hand means registering for an NYT developer key, threading it into the api-key query parameter on every request, and coding your own retry and rate-limit handling against api.nytimes.com. Through Jentic you install once, import the Movie Reviews API from the API Directory, store the key once, and your agent calls it. - **Permission scoping:** This API is read-only movie review lookups, so scope it by operation rather than by resource: limit the agent to the operations it needs, such as searching reviews or listing Critics' Picks and the critic roster, and leave everything else out of the allowed set. You choose which operations it may call, so nothing beyond review retrieval runs unless you add it. - **Credential handling:** Your NYT api-key is stored once, encrypted, by your own Jentic One instance and injected into the api-key query parameter at execution time. It never enters the agent's prompt, logs, or context. - **Discovery method:** Agents search Jentic by intent such as 'search NYT movie reviews' or 'find NYT Critics Picks', and Jentic returns the matching Movie Reviews operation with its input schema so the agent calls /reviews/search.json without reading the date-range syntax in the NYT docs. ## Related APIs - **NYT Books API** — Sister NYT API for book reviews and Best Sellers alongside film criticism. - **NYT Top Stories API** — Includes the Movies section front alongside review-level data. - **NYT Semantic API** — Resolves film titles and director names to NYT controlled-vocabulary tags. ## FAQ ### What authentication does the NYT Movie Reviews API use? Authentication is an API key sent as the api-key query parameter on every endpoint. Provision a key at developer.nytimes.com. Through Jentic the credential is held in the vault and injected at execution time, so the agent never sees the raw key. ### How do I find only NYT Critics' Picks? Call GET /reviews/search.json with critics-pick=Y. Combine it with opening-date or publication-date ranges in the format YYYY-MM-DD;YYYY-MM-DD to scope to recent releases. The response returns review records with summary short, byline, headline, and the full review URL. ### What are the rate limits for the NYT Movie Reviews API? NYT enforces 500 requests per day and 5 requests per minute per API key, shared across all NYT developer APIs. Cache critic rosters since they change rarely and cache search results for the publication week to stay well within the limit. ### How do I look up reviews by a specific NYT critic through Jentic? Search Jentic for 'get NYT movie reviews by critic', load the /reviews/{resource-type}.json operation, and execute it with resource-type set to the critic's seo_name returned by /critics/full.json. The response returns that critic's reviews. ### Is the NYT Movie Reviews API free to use? Yes. NYT offers the Movie Reviews service at no cost on the developer portal for non-commercial use within published rate limits. Commercial or high-volume use requires direct contact with the NYT licensing team. ### Can I retrieve full review text through this API? No. The API returns review metadata, byline, headline, and a summary short, but not the full critic text. To display the full review, use the link field to direct readers to nytimes.com where the article is hosted. ### Can I limit what my agent is allowed to do with the NYT Movie Reviews API? Yes. Because you run Jentic One yourself, your own rules decide which operations and credentials the agent may use, and this read-only API is best scoped by operation. You can allow only the calls the agent needs, such as searching reviews on /reviews/search.json, listing Critics' Picks, or looking up the NYT critic roster on /critics/full.json, and leave every other operation out of the allowed set. Nothing beyond the review and critic lookups you permit will run, and the stored api-key is injected at execution time so the agent never sees it.