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
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Omega Man
    Peppered with some sharp, even amusing dialogue, the story temporarily shelves the heavy allegory and slips into good, slam-bang suspense. But it doesn't last.
  2. Five Seasons: The Gardens of Piet Oudolf
    "Five Seasons” is least dull when capturing the artist at his most spontaneous, showing his joy, for instance, at seeing Texas wildflowers. But the director Thomas Piper, whose credits include another documentary that deals with the High Line and a film about the artist Sol LeWitt, never finds a way to convey the excitement of his subject’s innovations.
  3. The Devil's Doorway
    This smart but uneven horror movie has little interest in fun.
  4. The Black Cauldron
    This is the 25th full-length animated feature from Walt Disney studios, and professionally put together as it is, many of the ingredients may seem programmed to those who have seen some of the others.
  5. The Dark Crystal
    The Dark Crystal aims, I think, to be a sort of Muppet Paradise Lost but winds up as watered down J.R.R. Tolkien.
  6. Class of 1984
    Class of 1984 is sort of crudely funny. The movie's idea of punk culture is also picturesque. But it quickly gets worse and worse until it achieves a degree of awfulness that, though rare, isn't much fun.
  7. Nobody's Fool
    If the movie’s looseness lets in an excess of dead air, “Nobody’s Fool” is still dotted with pleasures besides those Haddish brings.
  8. The Love Bug
    Such a vulnerable movie that if it were a little less sappy, one might feel compelled to protect it, as if it were someone under 7 or over 65 -- that portion of the public for which it is intended.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Magnum Force
    The movie is a muddle of morality.
  10. The Karate Kid Part III
    With its sluggish script and unaging characters, The Karate Kid Part III has the rote sense of film makers trying to crank out another moneymaker.
  11. Elizabeth Harvest
    Mr. Gutierrez keeps the viewer in the same state of confusion as Elizabeth, but each surprise, paradoxically, makes the movie less and less surprising as a whole.
  12. Ernest Saves Christmas
    The best that can be said for the film is that it leaves Ernest behind now and then to focus on Santa, who is played by Douglas Seale with sweetness, sincerity and an amazing amount of dignity, considering his surroundings.
  13. Ernest Goes to Jail
    Ernest Goes to Jail so resembles a high-spirited cartoon that it is likely to be more amusing to children and less painfully obnoxious for parents than its predecessors.
  14. Ernest Rides Again
    The movie knows its audience, which is roughly between the ages of 5 and 13 and enjoys inane, goofy slapstick that seldom lets up.
  15. Muppets from Space
    Instead of sending up their cinematic sources, the creators of Muppets From Space rely too much on this spent screen fuel. Frenetic movement and loud music overwhelm warmth and compassion, and the balance of character, plot, irreverent humor and innate decency that made some of the earlier Muppet movies so welcome is lost.
  16. Casino Royale
    If it were stopped at the end of an hour and 40 minutes instead of at the end of 2 hours and 10 minutes, it might be a terminally satisfying entertainment instead of the wearying one it is.
  17. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze
    If the Turtles insist on remaining a mainstream box-office attraction, at least they've now had the decency to make a mainstream movie.
  18. Angel Heart
    Mr. Parker is an eclectic film maker. He seems to have no readily identifiable obsessions that define supposedly more serious directors. He's a very able technician who needs a good screenplay, which is what's missing here.
  19. Cielo
    Ms. McAlpine’s purple musings in voice-over (“the stars tell me to go on a journey in this desert”), and the decision not to identify subjects formally until the closing credits, give the film an unnecessary fuzziness.
  20. Shine
    A big heart and a blunt plot run through Shine, a movie whose story is there mostly just to usher in a dance sequence or an earnest speech.
  21. Jungle 2 Jungle
    Jungle 2 Jungle' still finds time to appreciate Mr. Allen's easy way with a child actor, an audience or a heavily tranquilized pet cat.
  22. Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy
    The Kids in the Hall's first feature isn't anything more than a sloppy showcase for the group's costume-changing tricks, but sometimes its sheer chutzpah can be amusing. Just as often, flashes of complete plot incoherence or atrocious taste spoil the effect.
  23. Father of the Year
    I admit, I laughed. I was also charmed by Bridgit Mendler as Meredith, Ben’s feisty hometown love interest.
  24. Pure Luck
    Martin Short can do anything, it seems, except find the right movies to star in.
  25. McHale's Navy
    Leaky PT boat of a comedy, descended from the television series.
  26. Love Affair
    Cary Grant's shoes aren't fillable, but Mr. Beatty could have come closer if Love Affair had given him half a chance.
  27. The Wild Boys
    It’s hard to untangle the film’s many bizarre indulgences, which at times seem intended to titillate as much as disturb, and yet somehow do neither. It’s all a bit too ludicrous to be sensuous or unsettling, or ultimately all that insightful.
  28. Life Stinks
    Even more dispiriting than the film's silly moments are its pious ones. Only at rare moments does Life Stinks offer much in the way of surprise or grace.
  29. The Indian in the Cupboard
    With its long silences washed over by banal, overused music, The Indian in the Cupboard is best watched for its ingenious tricks of scale and for an invitingly peaceful look. [14 July 1995, p.C3]
    • The New York Times
  30. Of Unknown Origin
    The comic possibilities of this are generally ignored in Brian Taggert's screenplay and the direction of George P. Cosmatos, which features about as many shots from the point of view of the rat as of Bart Hughes.
  31. Forever Mine
    Everyone on screen is relentlessly gloomy, as if parched for a drop of wit, which isn't forthcoming.
    • 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.
  33. Paper Moon
    Peter Bogdanovich and his screenwriter, Alvin Sargent, who adapted Joe David Brown's novel, have set out to make a bittersweet comedy that is both in the style of thirties movies and about the thirties. They evoke the time (1936) and the place (rural Kansas and Missouri) so convincingly that their rather sweet formula story seems completely inadequate, even fraudulent.
  34. Bayou Caviar
    Like a boxer who doesn’t know when to quit, Bayou Caviar goes on a bit long, then rallies — in this case with an agreeably cynical closing image.
  35. The Lords of Flatbush
    This study of the growing pains of the leather jacket‐bobby soxer Brooklyn high school set of 1957 is, by turns, cheerful, confused, juvenile and never fully realized.
  36. Gleaming the Cube
    Gleaming the Cube (the title refers to achieving the skateboarding equivalent of cosmic bliss) has an intrigue plot that is unremarkable, and it doesn't do anything terribly novel with the relationship between Brian and the policeman (Steven Bauer) who helps investigate the case. It becomes somewhat more interesting in exploring the Vietnamese community of Orange County, Calif., especially in its tinier details.
  37. The Little Drummer Girl
    What the film demonstrates most obviously is that when there is this much plot on the screen, there isn't time for actors to develop anything much in the way of plausibility of characterization.
  38. Young Guns II
    Young Guns II concentrates principally on the drawing power of the post-adolescent heartthrobs in its cast. This approach has its appeal in limited doses, but it makes for a western that's smaller than life.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Shootist
    Mr. Siegel's lack of form and fidelity to his own story means that as the movie proceeds, even those things that are charming turn to lead.
  40. Trouble
    Trouble makes a whole lot of noise without saying very much. The direction is wooden and the cinematography dull, leaving the solid cast (including Julia Stiles as a daffy clerk and Jim Parrack as her knuckle-dragging boyfriend) to shoulder the weight.
  41. King of Thieves
    For all its flaws — and they are legion — King of Thieves wraps you in a fuzzy blanket of familiarity.
  42. Shampoo
    In Shampoo Ashby shows that he has a good memory for a couple of decades of cinematic clichés. He gives us an unnecessary motor race and some obligatory slow motion, but he misses most of the opportunities offered him.
  43. Lookin' to Get Out
    Lookin' to Get Out is not as bad as Mr. Ashby's Second Hand Hearts though, like that film, it is a showcase in which excellent actors are allowed to make fools of themselves.
  44. The Public
    Most egregiously, Gabrielle Union plays a TV news reporter determined to portray the protest as a hostage situation. At the film’s nadir, Stuart, on the phone with her during a broadcast, stops making his case and begins quoting from “The Grapes of Wrath.”
  45. Dragged Across Concrete
    The movie is generally watchable, even at its slowest and ugliest, simply because the actors are solid even when their characters are repellent.
  46. The Lonely Guy
    If you can get past the movie's aimlessness and its visual drabness, it has its share of isolated laughs.
  47. Instant Family
    Instant Family isn’t a hellish movie, although it is very much a Hollywood one.
  48. The Stranger
    The whole thing becomes a routine and mechanical cat-and-rat chase, with the outcome completely apparent, despite a few bright and clever twists.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Wolf Man
    The wolf man is left without a paw to stand on; without any build-up either by the scriptwriter or director, he is sent onstage, where he, looks a lot less terrifying and not nearly as funny as Mr. Disney's big, bad wolf.
  50. The Westerner
    If some one could just have decided who should carry the ball, instead of letting it pass from one to the other, The Westerner might have been a bang-up, dandy film. And that, we are sorry to say, it isn't. The trouble, as indicated, is that the picture has no core.
  51. Rope
    At all events, the picture takes on a dull tone as it goes and finally ends in a fizzle which is forecast almost from the start.
  52. Torn Curtain
    In these times, with James Bonds cutting capers and pallid spies coming in out of the cold, Mr. Hitchcock will have to give us something a good bit brighter to keep us amused.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Amityville II: The Possession
    The new movie starts out eerily enough but soon manages even to make sensation, blood, sex and suspense become a monotonous way of life. After a while, one doesn't really care what happens to this family of five who had problems when they moved in and whom we never do get to know very well.
  54. Child's Play 2
    Vicious as Chucky is, it's hard to be scared by anything that kicks its little feet helplessly every time it flings itself upon a full-sized human target.
  55. High Road to China
    Miss Armstrong, who was seen as the second, prettier wife in Alan Alda's ''The Four Seasons,'' is the best thing in the film, though even she seems to be a cross between Julie Andrews and Carol Burnett. Mr. Selleck is, indeed, a handsome actor, but his good looks here have no individual personality, which may be the script's fault.
  56. The Return of the Living Dead
    Though certainly not for the squeamish, the film is by no means the ultimate horror movie it aspires to be. The volume of stagy gore quickly reaches a point of diminishing returns. And rather than trying to sustain a mood of grim suspense, the writer-director Dan O'Bannon has conceived this cinematic cousin of Night of the Living Dead as a mordant punk comedy.
  57. Return of the Living Dead III
    Return of the Living Dead 3 has more visual than dramatic flair, with the actors most memorable for their sharply-lit cheekbones and upstaged regularly by the macabre special effects.
  58. Happy Death Day 2U
    Jessica Rothe as Tree is still an appealing presence. But the film is overstuffed with unfunny self-parodying gore slapstick, half-felt sentimentality and semi-meta sci-fi.
  59. Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation
    Its own efforts to be tongue-in-cheek, as with a backwoods gunman who quotes Emerson and Machiavelli, fall seriously flat. But should anyone have the patience to look closely, the two leading players do show signs of what would soon make them famous.
  60. A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child
    Though the film hints at psychological intrigue, it never moves beyond the limits of its genre.
  61. Scaffolding
    Rife with heavy-handed metaphors — and discussions of metaphors, as befits a movie about a young man studying literature — Scaffolding seems somewhat torn when it comes to telegraphing its own intentions. Its ambiguities of character take a back seat to a trite upshot.
  62. Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II
    Hello Mary Lou has nothing much to do with the original "Prom Night" (1980), except that it's somewhat more entertaining if female nudity, bizarre violence and comically deadpan special effects amuse you...Bruce Pittman, the director, and Ron Oliver, who wrote the screenplay, have constructed the movie as if it were a gourmet banquet for toddlers. From the first course to the last, it's all ice cream.
  63. The Mule
    The story shifts and lumbers toward redemption that Earl doesn’t earn and that sentimentalizes a movie that is never especially good and often teasingly offensive but also fitfully entertaining and willfully perverse.
  64. Body Snatchers
    With its homogenized flavor, this Body Snatchers seems like a movie made BY pod people, FOR pod people.
  65. Don't Go
    It falls on the performances to add subtle touches to the narrative’s broad strokes. George is admirably warm as the earthbound Hazel, and Dorff suggests the selfishness of his character’s selfless desperation.
  66. The Clovehitch Killer
    With its achingly slow build and understated performances, The Clovehitch Killer strains to surmount its lack of urgency.
  67. King Kong
    It's a series of big, foolish but entertaining spectacle scenes.
  68. Godzilla 1985
    Though special-effects experts in Japan and around the world have vastly improved their craft in the last 30 years, you wouldn't know it from this film.
  69. Mobile Homes
    This is an atmospheric, well-acted film that leaves us mostly cold.
  70. The Invisibles
    Hearing from these survivors is vitally important. But by smushing together two distinct styles of narrative, The Invisibles risks draining the power from both.
  71. The Best of Enemies
    Rather than illuminating the politics of the present by examining the struggles of the past, Bissell lurches from folksy comedy to clattering melodrama, producing the opposite of enlightenment. To quote an old protest song: When will we ever learn?
  72. A Dog's Way Home
    As ridiculous as it gets, and that’s plenty, A Dog’s Way Home manages to serve up a one- to two-hankie finale, depending on the extent of your dog-person-ness.
  73. Impulso
    The movie’s challenge is to bottle her spontaneity, which is clearly thrilling to behold in person but less dynamic in a medium that requires every move to be selected in advance, without the suspenseful bond that an artist shares with a live audience. Belmonte gets caught between two modes of nonfiction filmmaking.
  74. Escape Room
    There are intimations of “Tales From the Crypt,” “Final Destination,” “The Game,” and other older, better films here; this movie never catches a fire like any of those did, and even its twist coda feels dreary and pro forma.
  75. Oliver & Company
    It's not that Oliver and Company is not up to par. It actively denies its own unique heritage. [18 Nov 1988, p.C8]
    • The New York Times
  76. The Dark
    Mina and Alex seem less like teenagers and more like case studies with traumas rather than personalities. The horror genre can be a pipeline into the dark corners of the psyche, but the impact of The Dark is more clinical than cathartic.
  77. Trust Machine: The Story of Blockchain
    A hodgepodge of boosterish arguments for blockchain technology, Trust Machine: The Story of Blockchain, directed by Alex Winter (Bill of “Bill & Ted” fame), is not always a model of clarity, but it does a decent job of explaining the basic concept.
  78. Foreign Land
    In place of some kind of discovery there is mostly lamentation. That may be a valid response to events in Israel, but it’s not always a good way to engage a viewer.
  79. 9 Fingers
    Some striking scenes notwithstanding, this movie doesn’t achieve the delirium it aspires to. It’s often flat and tame, and obvious in the wrong ways.
  80. The Rescuers Down Under
    The mice themselves are enjoyably dowdy, comfortable throwbacks to a time before earth-shattering conquests were the sine qua non of children's entertainment. The film's action sequences, on the other hand, provide the dizzying heights and spectacular exploits to which live-action audiences are by now well accustomed, and they seem derivative despite the ingenuity of the animators.
  81. The Intruder
    More silly than scary. This doesn’t seem to be entirely intentional, and it isn’t altogether unwelcome.
  82. Isn't It Romantic
    The film’s reliance on conventions even as it snickers at them gives it the faint air of a con.
  83. Postcards from London
    The film’s elegant compositions themselves are painterly, with the actors carefully posed; and the atmosphere is theatrical, with crisp line readings and sparsely populated frames. Those elements, plus a meandering story line, may not make for a particularly involving narrative experience. But it sure is nice to look at.
  84. Of Fathers and Sons
    Of Fathers and Sons is ultimately more impressive for its access than it is revealing of drives or beliefs. If Derki’s goal was to capture what causes ideology to spread, he and his camera look without seeing.
  85. Bird Box
    The squelching of promise is not my worst (cinematic) fear, per se. But it’s still disappointing.
  86. The Hunchback of Notre Dame
    The latest and most uncertain of Disney's animated efforts, with its manic mood swings and cloying, none-too-cuddly hero.
  87. Rough Cut
    To watch it is to try to put together the pieces from three different jigsaw puzzles. Not everything fits. [19 June 1980, p.19]
    • The New York Times
  88. Asher
    Unfortunately the pace is so relaxed as to be meandering; and Jay Zaretsky’s screenplay is cliché-packed.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Nickelodeon
    Nickelodeon is two hours and two minutes of impersonations.Some of them are very good impersonations—deft and funny—but they lack a life to string them together.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Silent Rage
    [Norris] is a kind of whitebread Bruce Lee, with no screen presence to speak of, but nothing terribly offensive working against him, either. He is just sort of there...Silent Rage may be trying to say something here about wealthy technicians and the popular culture, but then the psychopath or Mr. Norris appear and the thought gets lost.
  91. Six Pack
    If you've never seen anyone wear a gold chain with a sweatshirt, then by all means go see Kenny Rogers in Six Pack. If that is not your idea of originality, the good-natured but none-too-interesting Six Pack won't strike you as anything new.
  92. The End
    This is half-heartedly satiric material that's been directed by Mr. Reynolds as if it were broad, knock-about comedy sometimes and, at other times, as if it were meant to evoke pathos, which it never does.
  93. The Wanderers
    Makes mincemeat of an excellent novel.
  94. Las Sandinistas!
    For a movie trying to push back at popular perceptions of history, ¡Las Sandinistas! could stand to be more lucid.
  95. The Frighteners
    The actors can't keep the film's mood from verging on hysteria as the story roams all over the map.
  96. Vision Quest
    Movies are not like people who, if they're basically nice and decent, can be liked even if they're not very stimulating company. Movies of that order wear one down. They demand attention without giving much in return - amiability is not enough. This is Vision Quest.
  97. Dumplin'
    Kristin Hahn’s script gives Will sassy lines and too many tears, but the filmmakers never give this character a real, searching, complex inner life. They give her problems to solve, hurdles to clear. They turn emotional complexity into affirmations and a potentially transformational character into a you-go-girl cliché.
  98. Youngblood
    Youngblood seems chiefly designed as a vehicle for Mr. Lowe, and Mr. Lowe seems well able to handle more demanding material. But once the film descends into the usual platitudes about doing one's best and making the grade, it begins to seem aimless.
  99. The Sun Is Also a Star
    The story and its trappings feel a little generic, the dialogue studiously bland and the characters and their problems curiously weightless, in spite of gestures in the direction of real-world issues.
  100. Shaft
    You occasionally sense the presence of an interesting movie struggling to get out of this hyperactive action comedy — or even just a better Tim Story action comedy, something like “Ride Along” or “Ride Along 2.”
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »