The New York Times' Scores

Select another publication »
For 20,280 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:
  1. Positive: 9,381 out of 20280
  2. Mixed: 8,435 out of 20280
  3. Negative: 2,464 out of 20280
20280 movie reviews
view
per page
  1. Star Trek: Generations
    "Generations" is predictably flabby and impenetrable in places, but it has enough pomp, spectacle and high-tech small talk to keep the franchise afloat. And in an age when much fancier futuristic effects can be found elsewhere, even its tackiness is a comfort.
  2. Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo
    Breakin' 2 slights dramatic matters to concentrate exclusively on dancing. The movie contains so much of it that it's exhausting even to watch, but at least the choreography isn't being executed by John Travolta.
  3. Barefoot in the Park
    Gene Saks, directing his first movie, has paced it so unevenly and allowed such glaring mismatches of scenic backgrounds and even of gag sequences that it looks as though his costly picture was made by people who didn't know their way around.
  4. Bunnylovr
    Bunnylovr, the first feature from Katarina Zhu, touches on various themes, none of which feels fully realized. Yet there is such a sweet symbiosis between Zhu’s intimate, easy directing style and her unselfconscious performance in the lead role — beautifully illuminated by Daisy Zhou’s gentle cinematography — that the movie’s aimlessness rarely grates.
  5. The Conspirator
    The few glimpses we catch of the Ford's Theater production of "Our American Cousin" are unfortunately the liveliest and most convincing moments in this well-meaning, misbegotten movie.
  6. The LEGO Ninjago Movie
    The Lego figures are rendered with playful rigor; their limited movements and expressions generate some amusing sight gags. But the physical world they inhabit is more of a generic digital-cartoon space than a snapped-together environment. And the themes they explore are tired, cynical, sub-Disney bromides about family reconciliation and self-discovery.
  7. Dallas 362
    Mr. Caan's debut film is not quite a whole thing, but it offers up enough promising fragments to make his sophomore effort worth watching for.
  8. American: The Bill Hicks Story
    An oddly sterile documentary inspired by a particularly fecund imagination, American: The Bill Hicks Story recounts a bright-burning life while leaving us mostly in the dark.
  9. The First Time
    Sure, you've seen this story before, but this version has a freshness nonetheless.
  10. The Prom
    The story unwinds with histrionics and homilies, jazz hands and twinkle toes, overly busy camerawork and hookless lung bursters.
  11. The Lion King
    The songs don’t have the pop or the splendor. The terror and wonder of the intra-pride battles are muted. There is a lot of professionalism but not much heart. It may be that the realism of the animals makes it hard to connect with them as characters, undermining the inspired anthropomorphism that has been the most enduring source of Disney magic.
  12. The Secret Life of Pets 2
    Too scattered narratively to cohere, and yet somehow still funny enough to justify its existence, The Secret Life of Pets 2 makes for an entertaining trifle.
  13. MirrorMask
    Astonishing and frustrating, the fusion of live action and computer animation created by the Jim Henson Company in MirrorMask is an example of too much lavished on too little.
  14. Frankie
    Huppert’s uncanny mixture of self-possession and wildness is never not interesting to watch, but when Frankie is off screen she takes the film’s life force with her.
  15. The Astronaut Farmer
    The opening shots, of Farmer on horseback in his space suit, hint at a strangeness that the rest of the movie never quite lives up to, but it does have a visual freshness that makes the bromides and clichés palatable.
  16. Tusk
    The result is so out there that you can imagine Mr. Smith and his collaborators rolling in the aisles at their own preposterousness. If you can find your inner 16-year-old, you might just join them.
  17. Harry Brown
    Mr. Caine is one of the few reasons to sit through Harry Brown, an exercise in art-house exploitation directed by Daniel Barber and tarted up with self-importance and a generally striking visual design.
  18. Screamers
    Part rockumentary, part howl of outrage, Screamers would have benefited from less concert film and more historical background.
  19. Invincible
    If Invincible is soft at the center, its visual grandeur and mostly full-blooded performances make it gripping, for this eminent German director has pulled off the tricky feat of elevating a true story into a larger-than-life allegory.
  20. All the Pretty Horses
    The movie, for all its prettiness, manages to be shallow and portentous at the same time.
  21. Evelyn
    Slight and dogged; its surprises are likable but minor.
  22. Fever Pitch
    Just because a first-person analysis of a sociocultural phenomenon is fascinating in print, it should not necessarily be turned into a movie.
  23. Hearts in Atlantis
    Mush, delivered with a trembling, quasi-biblical solemnity, is what emanates from Anthony Hopkins most of the time in Hearts in Atlantis, a nostalgic fiasco so shameless it makes movies like "Simon Birch" and "Frequency" seem as austere as the work of Robert Bresson.
  24. Facing Windows
    Despite its surreal touches and an improbable story that piles on the metaphors, the movie, which has a rich, honey-dripping score by Andrea Guerra, maintains a tone of refined heart-tugging realism.
  25. Cirque du Soleil: Journey of Man
    It conveys plenty of wonder while mostly avoiding any saccharine preachiness.
  26. Woman Thou Art Loosed
    Never backing off from big, emotional moments, but also fleshing out the necessary transitions between them, he has realized his finest movie. It's a renaissance for Mr. Schultz, who seems to be speaking with his own voice after all these years.
  27. Snatch.
    Mr. Ritchie seems to be stepping backward when he should be moving ahead.
  28. Secret Things
    There is no denying the force of Mr. Brisseau's bizarre imagination and the personal conviction he brings to it.
  29. Phar Lap
    The movie Phar Lap is as much of a crowd pleaser as the champion Australian race horse for whom it is named. In a gently rousing style that should appeal in equal measure to adults and children.
  30. Yugoslavia: The Avoidable War
    Does an impressive job of relating the complicated history of the war and of filling in the background.
  31. Room 314
    Like most films of this type, Room 314 demands a great deal from its performers, not all of whom withstand the intense scrutiny. Fortunately, the action is bookended by four of the best.
  32. Plastic Planet
    Does little but raise an alarm, then leave it jangling.
  33. Wild Horse, Wild Ride
    The first interactions between human and animal are fascinating, as the trainers often apply different approaches. As the horses learn to trust their trainers, connections grow into deep bonds.
  34. The Decent One
    The voice-over-driven readings and the illustrative footage — unwisely augmented with new sound effects — lack a fundamental filmic momentum.
  35. The Midnight Swim
    The pieces don’t entirely cohere, but Ms. Smith has a promising sensibility.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A Ballerina's Tale
    Mr. George chooses to avoid the more heart-wrenching aspects of Ms. Copeland’s tough upbringing, and his presentation of her remarkable comeback is remarkably low on suspense.
  37. Hard Labor
    The filmmakers, largely forgoing a soundtrack, skillfully manipulate stillness, silence and anomie to unsettling effect.
  38. Dreamland
    It’s a smart, understated sex comedy, a description that suggests a certain maturity. You’d never suspect it was the first feature from its director, Robert Schwartzman.
  39. The Osiris Child
    Given the audacity, gusto and hell-for-leather filmmaking on display, the prospect of subsequent installments does not seem unreasonable.
  40. Volunteers
    Take a healthy helping of Raiders of the Lost Ark, a dollop of The Bridge on the River Kwai, a dash of any Tarzan movie, a soupcon of Casablanca, a whiff of The Wizard of Oz and a stunt or two from a favorite Saturday serial, stir frenetically, and if you're lucky enough to have snappy dialogue by Ken Levine and David Isaacs, you may end up with as funny a movie as Volunteers.
  41. The Pink Panther
    There is one thing about this picture that is clever and joyous, at least. That is a cartooned pink panther that runs through the main titles at the start making mischief with the lettering, insistently getting in the way. He is so blithe and bumptious, so sweet and entirely lovable, that he's awfully hard to follow. It's questionable whether the picture does.
  42. Not as a Stranger
    It is loaded with hospital lore, coldly realistic and compelling, but also it is creeping with ponderous characters. With so much dissecting in his picture—and so much of it being good—it is too bad that Mr. Kramer couldn't have done a little on his characters.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The House That Dripped Blood
    Moves in many directions, but never too far from the mechanics of the high school play.
  44. On the Beach
    Mr. Kramer has brilliantly directed a strong and responsive cast, headed by Gregory Peck as the submarine commander and Ava Gardner as the worldly woman who craves his love. Miss Gardner is remarkably revealing of the pathos of a wasted life. Fred Astaire is also amazing as the cynical scientist, conveying in his self-effacing manner a piercing sense of the irony of his trade.
  45. Crossroads
    Unfortunately, the authentic music is betrayed by the final guitar competition, a kind of Karate Kid cacophony between Eugene and the devil's favorite, a punk rocker, in which souls are saved, but Mr. Cooder may have jeopardized his own.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Last Hard Men
    The Last Hard Men is not just a horse opera; it's practically Tristan and Isolde. Only the love-death relation isn't between a man and a woman but between a retired lawman and a halfbreed Navajo who is obsessed with the notion of killing him.
  47. I Am Here
    As inspiring as his chosen subject is, the director missed an opportunity to use the story to deepen our understanding of our own memories, trauma and forgiveness.
  48. Godard Mon Amour
    For hard-core Godardians, Godard Mon Amour will be an indispensable hate-watch. For the Godard-ambivalent, the critical outrage of the partisans will provide its own kind of amusement. But you don’t need to have strong feelings about Godard to notice the off flavors in this airy, brightly colored macaron.
  49. The Missing
    Nearly 50 years after John Ford's "Searchers" we have arrived at a point in film history when the movie industry can offer a less sophisticated version of the same material.
  50. Romance & Cigarettes
    There is more raw vitality pumping through Romance & Cigarettes, John Turturro’s passionate ode to the sensual pulse of life in a working-class neighborhood of Queens, than in a dozen perky high school musicals. This is a movie in which a dirty mind is a good thing. Call it “The Singing Id.” Prudes, be forewarned.
  51. Liberal Arts
    The harder Mr. Radnor strains to make you love his alter ego, the more resistant you become.
  52. The Good Liar
    The real good liar is whoever convinced Mirren and McKellen to class up such thin and arbitrary material.
  53. Hours
    Mr. Walker is convincing as a man battling grief, exhaustion and, occasionally, an intruding outside world where lawlessness has taken hold.
  54. Everyday
    Moment by moment, it all adds up. The scenes of the family huddling and hugging, greeting and parting, and reaffirming primal bonds are quietly moving.
  55. The Last Samurai
    Most watchable during the majestic brutality of the battle sequences. This is not only because of the handsome staging, but also because the keywords sacrifice and honor are evoked with verve and simplicity, more so than in the "exchange of idea" chats between Algren and Katsumoto, which sound like statements being read into the Congressional Record by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
  56. Baby Mama
    The film never comes fully to term, as it were: the visual style is sitcom functional, and even the zippiest jokes fall flat because of poor timing. But, much like the prickly, talented Ms. Fey, it pulls you in with a provocative and, at least in current American movies, unusual mix of female intelligence, awkwardness and chilled-to-the-bone mean.
  57. Hostel
    Hostel is motivated by an adolescent urge to shock. And while it's true that no civilized person will remain unscathed by the film's relentless bigotry - this is one of the most misogynistic films ever made - Mr. Roth's gory spectacles are too calculated to deliver the transgressive jolts they so obviously seek.
  58. The Duelist
    The clichéd story line pursues turgidity with a relentless determination.
  59. 5 Flights Up
    5 Flights Up would be nothing without its stars, whose humanity warms up a movie that otherwise portrays New Yorkers as coldblooded, slightly crazy, hypercompetitive sharks.
  60. Anesthesia
    Lacking epic pretensions and modest in scale, running under 90 minutes, Anesthesia is really closer in spirit to Rodrigo García’s delicate 2005 gem, “Nine Lives.” And it doesn’t waste a word or an image.
  61. Song to Song
    There is...much to admire in Song to Song and much to argue with, including its ideas about pleasure and women. So go, fall into its embrace, resist its charms, argue. This may not be a film to love, but it is a film to see.
  62. Noise
    The movie, whose cacophonous soundtrack, when turned up, conjures your worst nightmare of sirens, car alarms, jackhammers and sundry aural assaults, is a one-trick film that rapidly wears out its welcome.
  63. The New Romantic
    Mirroring its green protagonist, The New Romantic presents an image of sophistication while playing with ideas that are out of its depth.
  64. Mayhem!
    A mood board of mashing, slashing, snapping and splintering, this feature, directed by Xavier Gens, is revenge-movie cliché ground down to the studs.
  65. The Eyes of Tammy Faye
    The Bakkers were many things to many people: appalling, inspiring, laughable, sad. This movie succeeds in making them dull.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Pride
    The movie serves up the expected ratio of setbacks to triumphs and closes with video footage of the real Jim Ellis. But when sinewy young idealists glide through water to the tune of "I'll Take You There," the heart still leaps.
  67. The Institute
    The Institute stumbles between documentary and exploratory simulation, at once confusing and pedantic.
  68. National Lampoon's Vacation
    National Lampoon's Vacation, which is more controlled than other Lampoon movies have been, is careful not to stray too far from its target. The result is a confident humor and throwaway style that helps sustain the laughs - of which there are quite a few.
  69. Outrageous Fortune
    It works because Miss Midler and Miss Long are hilarious, both separately and together. Another thing that works is Leslie Dixon's screenplay, which has energy, wit and a supreme confidence that's just this side of bluster.
  70. The D Train
    For long stretches, The D Train serves as a commodious vehicle for Mr. Black, who, like the best comic performers, never seems remotely concerned about going too big or risking the audience’s love. He’s a showboat if every so often, more of a steamroller, capable of flattening everyone and everything in his way. Yet he is also adept at conveying emotional and psychological fragility.
  71. Old Goats
    The root of the movie’s appeal is less the scripted story than watching three game oldsters.
  72. Milk and Honey
    Milk and Honey is the kind of nightmare-in-a-box you might expect if Neil LaBute remade Martin Scorsese's "After Hours" on a shoestring.
  73. CyberWorld
    Unabashed, and often quite diverting, technological overkill.
  74. Baby Boy
    Jody's story is told with so much heart -- and his character is acted with such a winning combination of playfulness, vulnerability and sexual dynamism by Mr. Gibson -- that you can forgive the occasionally incoherent storytelling, the overwrought moments and the haphazard, unconvincing excursions into dream and fantasy.
  75. Nijinsky: The Diaries of Vaslav Nijinsky
    Watching Paul Cox's impressionistic film based on the diaries of that legendary dancer and choreographer, it is impossible not to contemplate with a shudder the shadowy line between art, ecstasy and psychosis.
  76. Road Trip
    Bad taste is timeless. And sometimes it can be so funny that you can't help laughing.
  77. Tigerland
    Beneath the rough vérité exterior beats the same slick, corny heart.
  78. Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
    Nobody eviscerates the scary depths of male narcissism with such ferocity, and it is a huge relief to find Mr. Stiller flexing his oiled, low-comedy triceps with such vengeful glee.
  79. Kindred
    A derivative, irritating thriller.
  80. The Joneses
    As the shills reveal their souls, the movie turns into an exercise in the very phoniness it initially set out to expose. And since you’ve already paid for the ticket, you might end up feeling cheated.
  81. Ichi the Killer
    The direction occasionally rises to the level of marginal competence, but for most of the film it is hard to tell who is chasing who or why.
  82. The Adam Project
    Blissfully under two hours, The Adam Project is no modern classic. But it does benefit from an affecting finale that pays special attention to Adam’s strained relationship with his father.
  83. They Live
    Mr. Carpenter has directed the film with B-movie bluntness, but with none of the requisite snap. And his screenplay (written under the pseudonym Frank Armitage) makes the principals sound even more tongue-tied than they have to. [4 Nov 1988, p.C8]
    • The New York Times
  84. Slanted
    It is no fun for a viewer to scoff at a film that purports to speak to pain that is real for many. But “Slanted” doesn’t actually have any interest in contending with those experiences seriously, instead using its palely observed traumas as a launchpad for a pastiche of other punchier genre films.
  85. Home
    A charming concoction with positive messages for younger children about conquering fears, understanding outsiders and knowing yourself.
  86. Along for the Ride
    Such a breezy, Instagram-friendly adaptation feels like a betrayal to Dessen’s original, neurotic protagonist, who has a more difficult journey from self-induced solitude to romance.
  87. Idlewild
    The joint doesn't jump in the musical Idlewild; it just twitches and stumbles. As much a missed opportunity as a terrible tease.
  88. Snakehead
    Wu plays Dai Mah with a no-frills abandon that often makes her feel like the film’s protagonist, but even her performance can’t overcome the narrative missteps.
  89. Gun Hill Road
    A strangely bifurcated film, Gun Hill Road comes to life only when focused on Michael, and Ms. Santana (who was just beginning her own gender transition when she won the role) holds the screen like a pro.
  90. Hellraiser
    As an ambitious allegory for the chaos and torment of addiction, Hellraiser works mainly because of A’zion, who gives her scattered character a deeply human desperation.
  91. Hamilton
    To call Hamilton minimalist filmmaking is an understatement. Without plot or incident, and with only the flimsiest of characterizations, the movie operates primarily on the level of suggestion and insinuation.
  92. Surviving Picasso
    Freed from the slavishness of most authorized biography, the film makers try bold strokes.
  93. The People vs. George Lucas
    Frenetic, paper-thin but entertaining documentary.
  94. The 33
    With the help of some solid performances and James Horner’s heart-squeezing, throat-constricting score (one of the last he composed before his death in June), The 33 holds your attention and pushes the required buttons.
  95. The Great Gatsby
    Less a conventional movie adaptation than a splashy, trashy opera, a wayward, lavishly theatrical celebration of the emotional and material extravagance that Fitzgerald surveyed with fascinated ambivalence.
  96. The Package
    The Package is a feeble attempt to keep the old-fashioned cold-war thriller alive in this era of glasnost...Mr. Davis has directed what may be the worst movie Gene Hackman has ever made.
  97. Ping Pong Playa
    A bright, nimble diversion, a quick-witted picture that's fast on its feet.
  98. I Am Ali
    There’s so much great vintage footage of Ali... and he’s so charismatic, it would be hard to watch the movie and not take something from it.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »