New York Daily News' Scores

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For 6,911 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 42% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 55% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 8.2 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 57
Highest review score: 100 Fruitvale Station
Lowest review score: 0 The Fourth Kind
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2,885 out of 6911
  2. Mixed: 2,801 out of 6911
  3. Negative: 1,225 out of 6911
6911 movie reviews
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  1. Under Suspicion
    There is undeniable pleasure in watching these pros at work, but the murky depths of the soul can make for a dreary two hours.
  2. Save the Last Dance
    It's about as routine a movie as they come, but it features plenty of endorphin-releasing hip-hop choreography as Derek teaches Sara to get jiggy with it.
  3. Kingdom Come
    The cartoonish characters and outsize performances don't make a smooth transition from stage to screen.
  4. Pokémon Heroes
    Clearly, interest has waned - both because children grow up and because they move on. It might be time for the folks behind this particular fad to do the same.
  5. In Her Shoes
    A bungled mess that spends an hour creating two characters whose lives are about as believable as a successful ambush set by Wile E. Coyote for the Roadrunner.
  6. The Center of the World
    It's only when he (Wang) slows down and allows the characters to connect emotionally that his movie's unflinching honesty takes your breath away.
  7. Our Brand Is Crisis
    Clintonistas may want to look away when Carville and his colleagues lay out their political philosophy for Lozada, or, as he's affectionately known, "Gani." It's pragmatic in a way that defies the needs of the impoverished majority of Bolivians.
  8. Dungeons & Dragons
    The special effects work fine for minor acts of magic, but the climactic aerial dragon fight is lame, and most of the performances are at the level of high school plays.
  9. Eye of the Beholder
    Truly weird and unworkable thriller.
  10. Bean
    Nevertheless, Bean has been a huge hit in Europe, where it opened last summer, and it may contain enough laughs to work here. Well enough, one hopes, to produce a funnier, sharper, better crafted "Bean 2." [07Nov1997 Pg.63]
    • New York Daily News
    • 33 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Chill Factor
    Most of the action revolves around Ulrich's character, and the center cannot hold our interest.
  12. Anger Management
    Has hell frozen over? Not only is Jack Nicholson starring in a buddy movie alongside Adam Sandler, but of the two, Sandler's low-key approach is preferable.
  13. First Sunday
    Though Ice Cube and Morgan should make an ideal team, neither seems particularly comfortable grappling with Talbert's amateurish script. Most of the laughs, in fact, come from the strong supporting cast, led by a high-energy Williams and the unflappable Devine.
  14. Shattered Glass
    It irks the ink out of me to see Lane exalted as a hero for doing what any responsible editor would do, then being paid to consult on his own canonization.
  15. The Legend of Leigh Bowery
    Some consider Leigh Bowery a visionary performance artist. Others will see a selfindulgent narcissist. You may want to decide for yourself.
  16. Home on the Range
    An intended throwback to the halcyon days of colorful studio cartoons, more in the Chuck Jones style than Disney, and the animation of its characters and Western motif is fine. But the writing of co-directors Will Finn and John Sanford and their characterizations are embarrassingly bad.
  17. Steamboy
    The weak story and bland hero are no match for the increasingly exciting visuals, while the score by Steve Jablonsky should be on exhibit in the Hall of Lead.
  18. Wild West Comedy Show: 30 Days & 30 Nights - Hollywood to the Heartland
    Wild West Show would have really been something if Vaughn had taken a few of his fellow Frat Packers with him - say, Will Ferrell, Jack Black, Ben Stiller and Steve Carell - instead of the struggling unknowns.
  19. Water Lilies
    With no adults to add melodrama, the sweet Water Lilies depends on the emotion in its young performers' faces to move forward.
  20. The Missing
    It's a big snooze because we can't take the main characters seriously.
  21. The Terminal
    Manages to entertain, and yet, like so many flat-footed attempts at waving the flag, it feels disingenuous and dogmatic.
  22. Little Black Book
    A screechy chick-flick relationship comedy with a lot of things working for and against it - mostly against it.
  23. Dallas 362
    Clearly, Caan's major influence is Quentin Tarantino, though he manages only a weak imitation. But give him credit for casting Kelly Lynch and Jeff Goldblum and letting them go.
  24. Ararat
    Only two hours long but it may take your mind another day to get through it. Egoyan has stuffed a lot into this personal and strenuously opaque film, which perhaps explains why its over-plotted, elliptical structure seems so onerous.
  25. Francis Ford Coppola Presents: The Legend of Suriyothai
    Yukol has spread a huge canvas, gloriously costumed and photographed, but the staging and acting are often awkward and the saga is simply too dense for good drama.
  26. Igor
    Sparky voice performances and heart make up for this family film's theft of Tim Burton's sensibility.
  27. A Man's Gotta Do
    This amiable, off-kilter Australian comedy pits parental manipulation against adolescent pride, with generally amusing results.
  28. White Hotel
    Well-meaning but frustratingly unfocused documentary.
  29. Lonesome Jim
    Buscemi's latest, Lonesome Jim, written by James C. Strouse, asks you to spend 91 minutes with a 30-year-old slacker and would-be writer who has the DNA of a sloth. "Slowsome Jim" is more like it.
  30. Signs
    Shyamalan has learned from his idol (Spielberg) how to manipulate audience emotion through the intimacy of an ordinary family that is "contacted." But he is even more shameless about it.
  31. The Ninth Day
    Earnest but ambling drama.
  32. Scotland, Pa.
    As Shakespeare adaptations go, Scotland, PA. is just a McNugget, but the actors help sustain the satiric tone right up until McBeth's lady finally gets that stain out the old-fashioned way, with a cleaver.
    • New York Daily News
  33. This Filthy World
    Tossing off one-liners about drugs and porn to a New York audience, even Waters sounds a little bored.
  34. City by the Sea
    The changes are meant to make it easier for audiences to accept Vincent's loyalty to Angelo and Joey, but they blunt the genetic mystery that made McAlary's story so compelling in the first place.
  35. The Basket
    You have no idea how determined director Rich Cowan is to suck the last drop of sap out of this tree.
  36. Brother Bear
    Though Brother Bear is as beautiful as any of Disney's hand-drawn features, the gang-written script is deadly flat.
  37. Storytelling
    Solondz's refusal to frame his dark, misanthropic impulses with an overriding point-of-view seems a cheap copout for a film whose title proposes that it's about the storytelling process.
  38. I Trust You to Kill Me
    More vanity project than full-fledged film, Manu Boyer's modest chronicle is best left to diehard Kiefer Sutherland fans.
  39. Mr. Bean's Vacation
    There are certain elements in life that you either have a taste for, or you don't. Like coffee. Cats. And Mr. Bean.
  40. Bless the Child
    Should have sold its soul for a little help in the script department.
  41. Lucky Break
    Without the surprise, realism, audacity and upstart cheekiness -- pun intended -- that made "The Full Monty's" blue-collar strippers so irresistible.
    • New York Daily News
  42. Festival in Cannes
    The best of the lot are Greta Scacchi, as an actress trying to peddle her first screenplay (with herself attached as director), and Ron Silver.
    • New York Daily News
  43. A Life Less Ordinary
    This aggressively "sincere" movie is without a single authentically lived moment a sense exaggerated by Brian Tufano's overcomposed cinematography, which imitates the glossy hollowness of fashion photographs. [24Oct1997 Pg 51]
    • New York Daily News
  44. Woman on Top
    Gets the proportions all wrong -- too much magic, not enough realism.
  45. Pipe Dream
    Stocked with an impressively high-quality collection of New York actors. Unfortunately, in asking them all to play such unlikable characters, Walsh flushes too much of that talent down the drain.
  46. The Code
    Interestingly, though, the actor who plays Yanis is a dead ringer (despite the scowl) for Adam Sandler. That's surely an effect director Manuel Boursinhac didn't intend.
  47. Diamond Men
    If you're going to make a movie about men talking, shouldn't they have something important to say?
    • New York Daily News
  48. Don't Ask Don't Tell
    This sci-fi spoof is desperately bidding for cult-classic status. It falls far short of that goal, but with so many jokes flying wildly around, it does hit its targets every once in a while.
  49. My Life Without Me
    It's hard to take this movie seriously. It's the cinematic equivalent of dotting your i's with a big heart, a very youngish view of life and death in which everything is too neatly wrapped up with a bow.
  50. Intimacy
    Some people will want to call it pornography. In one respect, it's the opposite.
  51. Condo Painting
    The film is otherwise a self-indulgent lark.
  52. La Mujer de Mi Hermano
    Mexican soap opera star Bárbara Mori may be the most beautiful woman to grace an American screen this year, and female viewers may feel similarly about her male co-stars Christian Meier and Manolo Cardona. But a telenovela with three gorgeous actors is still a telenovela.
  53. Reign of Fire
    Clearly, nobody's going to win any awards for this, but maybe Bale and McConaughey knew what they were doing after all. The music is loud, the action is fierce and the bodies are buff.
    • New York Daily News
  54. 10th & Wolf
    At this late date, filmmakers who draw inspiration from the Mafia had better have a whole new angle to offer. Otherwise, they'll end up with a movie like 10th & Wolf.
  55. My Fellow Americans
    Playing a pair of antagonistic one-term Presidents thrown together in a flimsy chase plot, Jack Lemmon and James Garner trade insults that aren't exactly in Lincoln's league.
  56. Head of State
    A tepid amalgam of other, similarly themed movies.
  57. Dear Wendy
    Dear Wendy is absurd to the point of comic parody. Bloody as it is, it has no access to viewers' emotions, and its message - play with fire and you get burned - is too obvious to be provocative.
  58. Murder on the Orient Express
    The new Murder on the Orient Express isn’t a whodunit. It’s a why’d-they-do-it. Why make a new version of a perfectly good old movie if you’re not going to do anything new?
  59. Introducing the Dwights
    If you find a movie with a more annoying central performance than the one given by Brenda Blethyn in Cherie Nowlan's Introducing the Dwights, keep it to yourself.
  60. Easy Virtue
    We could all use a little more Noel Coward in our lives. But the fizz falls flat in Stephan Elliot's adaptation of a lesser-known play, which, while blithe enough, has little spirit to speak of.
  61. La Moustache
    Have Marc's friends tricked him with a conspiracy of silence, or was that mustache a growth only in his mind? The filmmaker has said there is no intended meaning to any of this, so search for it for your own amusement.
  62. The Ultimate Gift
    This drama from Fox Faith Movies has a mercifully light hand in selling its Christian-values themes, but its plodding story about a spoiled young scion who must complete 12 tasks assigned him by his late grandfather is still a slog.
  63. An Amazing Couple
    Given the grim events, the buoyantly goofy An Amazing Couple has the effect of laughing gas pumped through the vents in a funeral hall.
  64. Cherish
    As it is, while Tunney is undeniably lovely to look at, she's just not that much fun to be around. And for 100 minutes, she's all we've got.
    • New York Daily News
  65. Don't Tempt Me
    A stylish comedy low on amusement but high on sensuality.
  66. Echoes
    Intriguing almost in spite of itself.
  67. Casa de los babys
    It's too big an ensemble to provide enough back story for each player. But Sayles doesn't give his characters easily digestible labels, like "kook" or "pathetic loser."
  68. Chain Reaction
    Chain Reaction never develops a sense of mounting energy. The action sequences are thinly conceived and too spread out by dramatic filler (mainly involving the crises of conscience of Morgan Freeman, as the project's enigmatic chief fund-raiser) to create much momentum. [2 Aug 1996, p.45]
    • New York Daily News
  69. Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie
    Beyond its baby-sitting capabilities, Power Rangers doesn't morph into anything special. It hasn't a single fresh idea.
  70. The Animal
    Judging by the audience reaction -- there is apparently something funny about the idea of a man trying to hump a goat in heat.
  71. Flightplan
    The plot is contingent on everything going perfectly in ways no one can possibly predict, right down to the most outlandish happenstance of timing and human behavior.
  72. Random Hearts
    This ponderous romantic melodrama...passes like a day behind bars.
  73. The Three Marias
    Abranches intends for a religious parable by way of Greek tragedy, but the film drowns in a morass of portentous signs and poetic symbols.
  74. Live by Night
    Although Affleck's been a decent director - capturing real local color in "Gone Baby Gone" and "The Town," building tension nicely in "Argo" - his work here is dim and dull. Live by Night may be about rum, but the pacing is like molasses.
  75. Knight and Day
    Despite its impressive pedigree and unshakable assurance, Knight and Day is nothing more or less than an average popcorn flick.
  76. Segunda piel
    So sudsy it should have been rinsed off before being allowed into theaters.
  77. Below
    The story offers an interesting twist, but the only really spooky part is when a Benny Goodman record insists on playing without human aid. More scares, please.
  78. Come Undone
    There isn't much here besides two self-absorbed kids.
  79. Jarhead
    The movie has some of the washed-out look of David O. Russell's excellent "Three Kings," but none of the edge. That's part of the point - that nothing leads to anything, at least not in this particular war.
  80. Chunhyangdyun
    A feast for the eyes. But not, alas, for the ears.
  81. Dr. Dolittle
    An on-again, arf-again comedy. [26 June 1998, p. 54]
    • New York Daily News
  82. Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed
    The good news is the script for Scooby-Doo 2 is marginally better and the eternally irritating Scrappy-Doo is nowhere to be seen.
  83. Beauty Shop
    The story and humor are so tame the movie barely merits No More Tears.
  84. Russian Doll
    Baldly superficial, it probably should have been given a less demanding metaphor to live up to.
  85. Don't Tell
    The script and the performances are all fine, but it's very slow going.
  86. Returning Mickey Stern
    As earnest as it is awkward, the film has so much spirit, it's hard to dismiss entirely, even at its considerable worst.
  87. Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones
    The overall effect of Lucas' digital mania has been detrimental to the saga. Where the first trilogy was mythological fantasy, the second is pure cartoon. The sad truth is, the more three-dimensional they look, the more two-dimensional they are.
    • New York Daily News
  88. Head in the Clouds
    Charlize Theron's Gilda in Head in the Clouds invites comparison to Rita Hayworth in 1946's "Gilda," which adds a touch of the ludicrous to this already strained material set in wartime France.
  89. September Tapes
    The results are often exciting and, except for occa­sional overacting by Calil, feels authentic. But the whole notion of exploiting a war and its victims to shoot a commercial feature is reprehensible.
  90. Teaching Mrs. Tingle
    Very much a freshman effort, lacking focus, edge.
  91. Ben-Hur
    All the flash and sizzle of modern movie effects can't make up for a once spectacular tale that feels not just scaled-down, but shrunk.
  92. First Daughter
    There are plot holes you can fly Air Force One through.
  93. Abschied - Brechts letzter Sommer
    A sad, almost morbid -- and cinematically inert -- eulogy to a complex man whose own genius was dampened by arrogance and politics.
  94. Ice from the Sun
    Stanze is to be congratulated on raising the bar for horror avant-garde filmmaking on a shoestring.
  95. Unknown
    It all comes together at the end, logically and with a twist. But it's not a game that allows the audience to play along. When the story is controlled by whatever memories the writer and director choose to put in the characters' heads, you're always on the outside looking in.
  96. Amandla! A Revolution in Four Part Harmony
    The film itself is a bit on the talking-head side, evoking none of the passion and anguish that are the music's trademarks.
  97. Secret Window
    It's a slight story to begin with, and the movie teeters on camp with its jokey filler material -- the typical King stuff including colorful locals, small puns and asides and a faint whiff of the supernatural.
  98. The Final Cut
    Can't cope with its own weirdness.
  99. Punks
    At its best when it embraces its true identity, as frivolous fun.
  100. Better Housekeeping
    Gives cinema vérité texture to a fictional story of trailer-trash dysfunction (minus the trailer).
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