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. Knock Off
    Knock Off runs breathlessly over land and water in familiar comic book fashion, offering more action than sense and next to nothing in the way of suspense, humor or romance.
  2. Dummy
    A mildly engaging addition to that curious sub-genre of American independent filmmaking, the whimsical comedy of Long Island alienation.
  3. Dopamine
    A wan, wistful Generation Y romance.
  4. Diamonds
    The only thing about the movie that isn't a transparent paste imitation is Douglas' hard, gleaming performance.
  5. The Emperor's Club
    Carefully sets itself up as an obvious, transparent morality play, and then just as deliberately refuses the easy payoff. This is both impressive and a little disingenuous: the film is in effect congratulating itself for refusing to offer a neat and tidy view of life without offering much else.
  6. Calendar Girls
    When the biggest compliment you can pay a picture is that it is professional and not smug, there's a little something missing, like invention.
  7. The Tic Code
    Like most movies that examine specific ailments, this gawky, occasionally touching film has the feel of a dramatized case history whose purpose is to educate as much as it is to tell a story.
  8. Woman on Top
    This would-be spicy film has been made blandly palatable.
  9. Like Mike
    The director's breezy steadiness keeps the movie from hitting us over the head -- well, not too hard, anyway, no small feat since the steroid-juiced sentimentality of the ending may force some to flee before the outtakes unspool under the credits.
  10. 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.
  11. Wild Wild West
    It cares far more about herding audiences into theaters than about what they hear or see.
  12. Italian for Beginners
    Despite its hip, off-center style and pointed de-glamorization of its singles, the movie adds up to little more than feel-good fluff.
  13. Antitrust
    The plot of Antitrust is intricate and uneven, overloaded with twists and not very jolting surprises.
  14. Dieu est grand, je suis toute petite
    If these two can figure out a way to love each other, maybe it isn't necessary for us to like them very much.
  15. Le divorce
    A thin and unsatisfying concoction that somehow manages to make one of the richest and most durable sources of culture-clash comedy into an occasion for dullness.
  16. El leyton
    Does a fine job of building up a sense of dread as its adulterous relationship gathers steam. So it's all the more disappointing when the movie ultimately collapses with a ridiculous comic ending that leaves you feeling almost as betrayed as its cuckolded husband.
  17. Prey for Rock & Roll
    If the movie is terrific on ambience and street language (the women call one another Dude), much of its melodramatic story involving a rape and payback feels forced.
  18. For da Love of Money
    A loose but often amusing collection of gags.
  19. Up at the Villa
    It reminds us that Italy is beautiful, that Fascism was a dreadful nuisance and that Sean Penn is a great actor, deserving of better vehicles than this vintage lemon.
  20. Ha-Chaverim Shel Yana
    No more than a sentimental little comedy.
  21. Lost in Space
    The film has energy even when it hasn't much sense, in a manner that will strike most non-cultists as exhausting.
  22. Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas
    To invoke the name of another underwhelming new film, Sinbad is legally bland.
  23. The Mummy Returns
    The noisome action sequences of The Mummy Returns are preferable to the quiet times, when the cast is limited to spouting dialogue that is a banal combination of exposition and homily.
  24. Hey Arnold! The Movie
    Blown up way past television-set size, the animated film's squiggly lines and rushed renditions are pale and blurry. This may be the first cartoon ever to look as if it were being shown on the projection television screen of a sports bar.
  25. With All Deliberate Speed
    Mr. Gilbert wants a movie with both a golden glow and a corrosive center, something he has not quite achieved here.
  26. Flesh for the Beast
    Fans of the genre -- or "gore hounds" as they are known in fandom -- will find plenty to enjoy in Mr. West's enthusiastic approach to his work.
  27. Godzilla
    Godzilla is so clumsily structured it feels as if it's two different movies stuck together with an absurd stomping finale glued onto the end.
  28. Kandahar
    Kandahar feels like a Magritte painting rendered in sand tones, and your eyes are drawn to the screen. There aren't enough of these moments, though, and Mr. Makhmalbaf lessens their power by repeating them.
  29. The Last Castle
    The movie is exuberant, strapping and obvious -- a problem drama suffering from a steroid overdose.
  30. A Midsummer Night's Dream
    A parade of incongruities, with performances ranging from the sublime to the you-know-what.
  31. Best Laid Plans
    Style overwhelms substance by default.
  32. Shooting Fish
    This aggressively whimsical fairy tale about a pair of grown-up orphans who rob from the rich to give to the poor (themselves!) and end up living happily ever after darts forward so quickly that several major plot turns are dispensed with in 10 or 15 seconds of babble.
  33. The Faculty
    This mediocre sci-fi horror film about an Ohio high school being taken over by thirsty space aliens intent on world domination breaks no new ground. But it has an engaging cast.
  34. Titus
    Makes the best possible argument for a cautionary drama that contemplates the absolute worst in us.
  35. Windtalkers
    We can only view Windtalkers with the same shaken detachment that characterizes Mr. Cage's Joe Enders, wishing that the codetalkers' real story, a little known and fascinating chunk of American history, had been given its true dramatic import.
  36. Saints and Sinners
    For an outside observer, Saints and Sinners doesn't make particularly compelling viewing, but Ms. Honor has given her subjects an excellent present on their big day: the ultimate wedding video.
  37. Agent Cody Banks
    This Frankenfilm comes lumbering out of the laboratory of the Danish director Harald Zwart, any trace of personality surgically removed and replaced by a fully road-tested cliché.
  38. What Women Want
    Starts with a great idea, but the movie's potential drops faster than the tech stocks on the Nasdaq.
  39. Cherish
    As a poky little character comedy, Cherish is enchanting in a small-scale way. But when Mr. Taylor tries to turn it into a genre thriller, Cherish deteriorates so quickly that it's unsettling -- but probably not in the way Mr. Taylor intended.
  40. Pokémon 3: The Movie
    All about bright colors and constant movement.
  41. Amy's Orgasm
    This movie is Ms. Davis's fourth film as a director, and she has a bright, chipper style that keeps things moving, while never quite managing to connect her wish-fulfilling characters to the human race. Like someone who smiles too much, Amy's Orgasm seems rather sad at heart.
  42. Evolution
    The movie itself evolves in reverse, starting life as a moderately clever grab bag of high-concept noodling and half-witty badinage before descending into the primordial ooze of explosions and elaborate lower- intestinal gags.
  43. Bride of the Wind
    For all the talk of artistic and amorous passion, the film is trapped in snobbish inertia; its idea of period drama amounts to a kind of highbrow name- dropping.
  44. The Fifth Element
    As a yammering, swishy talk show host, Chris Tucker is flat-out incomprehensible, while Mr. Oldman preens evilly enough to leave tooth marks on the scenery.
  45. Amen.
    In the end Amen is neither as moving nor as illuminating as it should be. It suffers especially when compared -- as is inevitable, given the closeness of their release dates -- with "The Pianist," Roman Polanski's movie about a Polish Jew during the Nazi occupation.
  46. The Statement
    As much as these wonderful actors invest their performances with psychological nuance, their efforts go mostly for naught in a movie that gives character development a distant back seat to the grinding mechanics of its formulaic plot.
  47. High Crimes
    For his part. Mr. Freeman shows himself, once again, incapable of giving a bad performance.
  48. Out of Time
    Although it is briskly directed and enjoyably stylized, the film is shallow -- but empty.
  49. Kissing Jessica Stein
    Amusing but extremely derivative.
  50. Seaside
    While she (Lopes-Curval) portrays the brittleness of their lives with lovely splashes of generosity, the lack of condescension doesn't change the fact that there's not much drama to be found in those very limitations; her characters don't do much beyond getting on one another's nerves.
  51. The Art of Amália
    Only twice does the film give a tantalizing glimpse at the personality behind the voice.
  52. Suicide Kings
    What hip means in this uneven comic suspense film is maintaining the ironically distanced tone of a deadpan ''Married to the Mob'' or a tongue-in-cheek Coen Brothers caper.
  53. The Bone Collector
    A cinematic game that might be called Urban Creep Show, New York-style.
  54. The Mummy
    This version of The Mummy has no pretenses to be anything other than a gaudy comic video game splashed onto the screen.
  55. Scream
    Wes Craven (of the 'Nightmare on Elm Street' films) is in the mood for parody.
  56. I Know What You Did Last Summer
    Though it flies in the face of credibility and becomes downright silly by its end, I Know What You Did Last Summer knows its way around the rules of the popular horror-film genre.
  57. Mr. Smith Gets a Hustler
    Instead of deepening the material, however, the narrative twists feel like purely formal interventions, intended to keep the film moving toward its foregone, heavily moralistic conclusion. Mr. Smith Gets a Hustler is faultlessly professional but finally slight.
  58. The Bread, My Sweet
    Pretty much of a mess, full of narrative gaps and characters who arbitrarily appear and disappear. But it is at least a sweet, good-natured mess, with none of the overcalculation and condescending cynicism the same material would almost certainly bring out in a Hollywood production.
  59. Word Wars
    The film demands patience with grainy photography, garage-band power chords and eye-straining alphabetic jumbles. It's neither easy viewing nor easy living: the game has worn these men down to a childlike state, which makes them ultimately compelling.
  60. xXx
    Action fans will watch their adrenaline levels redline, and those not at ease with this climax-after-climax style will white knuckle their way through to the end.
  61. Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
    Several love beads short of its predecessor. Intermittently hilarious comedy.
  62. Hannibal
    Hannibal, a silly though handsomely staged adaptation of the Thomas Harris novel directed by Ridley Scott, is a movie meant for the whole family -- the Manson family.
  63. Orange County
    The gags and subplots, rather than adding up to sustained hilarity, compete with each other.
  64. Kate & Leopold
    Has only the most tangential relation to reality, and therein lies its slender charm.
  65. Big Trouble
    The cast manages to maintain its dignity while sweat and dirt go flying around.
  66. Beloved
    Beloved works on its own but is much enhanced by familiarity with the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. In so ambitiously bringing this story to the screen, Ms. Winfrey underscores a favorite, invaluable credo: read the book.
  67. Katakuri-ke no kôfuku
    It's all very zany. Occasionally it is even madcap. You would almost be tempted to smile at times, albeit weakly, if it weren't for Mr. Miike's habit of pounding home every joke with exaggerated reaction shots.
  68. 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.
  69. The Independent
    It strings along its joke just long enough to keep from wearing out its welcome.
  70. Showboy
    The lesson of Showboy is how disturbingly easy it is for an audience to trust what it sees when confronted with a film posing as factual documentary.
  71. Bang Rajan
    No classic, but neither is it a joke.
  72. Daughters of the Sun
    With her shaved head and staring eyes, Aman actually looks as if she had been stripped entirely of her sexuality, like a Holocaust victim. What does seem certain is that a bootleg print of "Yentl" is still making its way through Iran's filmmaking underground, leaving a wide trail of influence behind it.
  73. Joe the King
    Dramatically Joe the King feels unglued, as if crucial sequences had been left on the cutting-room floor.
  74. Heat
    Its sensational looks pale beside storytelling weaknesses that expose the more soulless aspects of this cat-and-mouse crime tale.
  75. SLC Punk!
    Likable for its outlandishness, less so when it shows a self-important streak.
  76. The 6th Day
    Plays like something picked up at a vintage store; you can see all the greasy fingerprints from those who have handled it before.
  77. Girl, Interrupted
    A small, intense period piece with a tough-love attitude toward lazy, self-indulgent little girls flirting with madness.
  78. Raising Arizona
    Like "Blood Simple," it's full of technical expertise but has no life of its own... The direction is without decisive style. [11 Mar 1987, p.C24]
    • The New York Times
  79. Anger Management
    Undercooked, although it feels enough like a comedy for you to swallow it if you have to.
  80. Meet Joe Black
    With a too-many-cooks screenplay credited to Ron Osborn, Jeff Reno, Kevin Wade and Bo Goldman, it's so long that every character regrettably wears out his or her welcome.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    All I Wanna Do
    Surprisingly pleasant, thanks to smart, unstereotyped performances.
  82. Bad Boys II
    The best moments come when Mr. Smith and Mr. Lawrence are permitted to pause from their action-hero duties and run their funny, unpredictable mouths.
  83. The Holy Land
    A barbed reflection on the great divide between secular and ultra-Orthodox Judaism in Israeli culture. But its digressive screenplay lacks focus and momentum and is too oblique to connect many of the dots between its characters and their behavior.
  84. Soul Plane
    Not everyone will be thrilled by the movie, which is one long dirty (and occasionally very funny) joke.
  85. Billabong Odyssey
    With its emphasis on global positioning devices, Jet Skis and computer-designed surfboards, Mr. Boston's film is very much concerned with the stuff and very little with the spirit of professional surfing as practiced today.
  86. Solaris
    Retooled into a sleek pop fable that doesn't bother to connect all its dots, the movie aspires to fuse the mystical intellectual gamesmanship of "2001: A Space Odyssey" with the love-beyond-the-grave romantic schmaltz of "Titanic," without losing its cool. It's a tricky balancing act that doesn't quite come off.
  87. X-Men
    Clumsy when it should be light on its feet, the movie takes itself even more seriously than the comic book and its fans do, which is a superheroic achievement.
  88. The 13th Warrior
    Gives you the delirious thrill of ripping off your enemy's head and watching the blood gush by providing a ringside seat.
  89. Goyangileul butaghae
    As it abruptly crosscuts among the five friends, it fails to lend the characters' individual stories enough dramatic resonance to make us care about them.
  90. The Princess Diaries
    This is "Pretty Woman" for children.
  91. Virgin
    Ms. Kampmeier never brings her themes into tight focus. At one moment, the film is a detailed but familiar attack on smothering small towns and oppressive family structures; at another, it's a fable of feminist empowerment with an oddly fervent religious background.
  92. The Tigger Movie
    An adequate piece of children's entertainment, though it seems better suited for home viewing...than for the big screen.
  93. Fast Times at Ridgemont High
    There's a lot to make [Heckerling's] film likeable, but not much to hold it together.
  94. Storytelling
    The most pleasing paradox in Storytelling -- a determinedly paradoxical and, in spite of much of what I've said here, a genuinely pleasing movie -- is that it sets out to debunk this notion and ends up affirming it.
  95. 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.
  96. The Rage: Carrie 2
    Uninspired Update, Unintentional Laughs.
  97. Army of Darkness
    Taken on its own terms, "Army of Darkness" displays some ambition and wit, though not nearly enough to lend it broad appeal.
  98. Brothers in Arms
    Effective filmmaking, and at the moment, when a significant portion of this campaign is being fought in movie theaters, it's also effective politicking.
  99. Catch That Kid
    Mr. Freundlich's naturalistic sensibility gets in the way of the film's broad fantasy elements, turning what might have been a stylized romp like Robert Rodriguez's "Spy Kids" into something a little too real for comfort.
  100. Charlie's Angels
    It never pretends that it's anything more than trashy, cheesy fun. But even trash -- especially trash this expensive -- should at least be well made. Sure, it's easy on the eyes, but would a little brains be too much to ask?
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »