The New York Times' Scores

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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
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  1. Oh, God! You Devil
    The material is extremely slight, but at least it's benign.
  2. Looking for Mr. Goodbar
    Miss Keaton, who continues to grow as an actress and film presence, is worth paying attention to in bits and pieces of the movie. She's too good to waste on the sort of material the movie provides, which is artificial without in anyway qualifying as a miracle fabric.
  3. The Final Countdown
    The footage dealing with the mechanics of the Nimitz is, in fact, interesting, and there is one quite comic sequence in which several of the Nimitz's jet fighters take on two, totally baffled World War II-vintage Japanese Zeros. As an entertainment film, though, the movie is utter nonsense. [01 Aug 1980, p.C3]
    • The New York Times
  4. Avicii: True Stories
    The director, Levan Tsikurishvili, never reconciles the movie’s competing impulses. It’s part promotional video, part backstage doc and — in retrospect — part tragedy.
  5. Stay Hungry
    Stay Hungry, the new film directed by Bob Rafelson (Five Easy Pieces and The King of Marvin Gardens), isn't all bad. It just seems that way when it pretends to be more eccentric than it is and to have more on its mind than it actually does.
  6. Bitter Melon
    Although the first hour of Bitter Melon is a spiky and absorbing story of repressed feelings, the movie grinds to a halt in its final third as the characters talk things out, which might be helpful in life but in drama tends to belabor the obvious, as well as offer an easy exit.
  7. Split Image
    The shrill, melodramatic quality of the film's final sections, so unlike its calmly controlled beginning, suggests that no one connected with Split Image really knew which way this story was heading.
  8. Rust Creek
    Corfield is fine in a role that gives her little opportunity to do more than run and fight, but a woman this empowered removes the question mark from her survival — and the tension from the movie.
  9. The Wolf Hour
    The result is a sometimes punishingly theatrical experiment that teeters on the verge of surreality, transfixing us with the promise of something terrible lurking just beyond those ratty curtains.
  10. Lifeguard
    As a film, Lifeguard is romantic twaddle, but as sociology it's a spontaneous assault on a very American way of life.
  11. Silver Streak
    The sort of comedy that leaves you exhausted, though not from laughing.
  12. The Return of Swamp Thing
    The movie is based on characters that originally appeared in DC Comics, and means to be funnier than it ever is. It almost achieves its comic goal in one scene in which Swamp Thing and Heather Locklear, as Mr. Jourdan's innocent stepdaughter, attempt to consummate a love that cannot be. The film is otherwise composed entirely of special effects that alternate with whimsy.
  13. Action Jackson
    Crashing through are several raffish characters whose acting doesn't get in the way of the stunts.
  14. Mo' Better Blues
    From characters to camera angles, this story of a self-absorbed jazz trumpeter is one long cliche, the kind that might make his most loyal admirers wince and wonder, Spike, what happened?
  15. Death Hunt
    Nothing in Death Hunt makes a great deal of sense, though the scenery is rugged and the snowscapes beautiful.
  16. Bad Seeds
    There’s some fun in watching Wael con his students into learning — while also teaching them the art of the con — but the film . . . can’t keep the sentiment at bay for long.
  17. The Doom Generation
    Sledgehammer direction, heavy irony and the easiest imaginable targets hardly show talent off to good advantage.
  18. Nowhere
    If it weren't so overpopulated and desperate to shock, Nowhere might have succeeded as a maliciously cheery satire of Hollywood brats overdosing on the very concept of Hollywood. But the movie is so hectically paced that it doesn't have time to develop its characters or to flesh out the tales it sets in motion. Even comic books are better at telling stories.
  19. Head Office
    Has a droll tone that sets it well above comedy's lowest common denominator. But it also has a bloodlessness that keeps it from being funny very often.
  20. East of Eden
    In short, there is energy and intensity but little clarity and emotion in this film. It is like a great, green iceberg: mammoth and imposing but very cold.
  21. The Mission
    A singularly lumpy sort of movie. The film's most riveting sequence comes at the very beginning, when we see a crucified Jesuit missionary being tossed - cross and all - into the river and carried over the spectacular Iguassu Falls. Nothing that follows, including more pretty scenery and quaint costumes, comes close to equaling the drama of that one sequence - about a character who remains forever anonymous.
  22. Rolling Thunder
    The movie has some good things, but in the way it has been directed by John Flynn it moves so easily and sort of foolishly toward its violent climax that all the tension within Charlie has long since escaped the film.
  23. Little
    Little is overly protective of its characters and its audience; it’s soothing rather than sharp. That’s most likely because of an anxious concern for grown-up sensitivities. Smart 13-year-olds are likely to roll their eyes as well as laugh.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Apple Dumpling Gang
    Walt Disney started by making movies in which animated drawings played the parts of people or animals who stood for people. Later he turned to making movies in which people or animals play the parts of animated drawings. They bound, they double-take, they simper when moved and quack when angry. Their disasters—crashes, plunges through space, explosions—are weightless. The Apple Dumpling Gang is a fair example.
  25. Midway
    Midway solemnly cross-cuts between the war councils, chart rooms and communications offices on the American side and those on the Japanese side, with characters, who often have to be identified by subtitles, laboriously trying to give us all of the exposition necessary to make the battle coherent. There's no way to act such roles.
  26. Once Bitten
    Once Bitten affects a glossy, sophisticated look that does little to upgrade the film's adolescent humor. As directed by Howard Storm, it has a lot more stylishness than wit. Miss Hutton looks great in black, but her predatory vampire grows tiresome very quickly, as do all the Bloody Mary jokes.
  27. Girls Just Want to Have Fun
    Helen Hunt is a real scene-stealer as a girl who wears things like toy dinosaurs in her hair, in keeping with the film's relentlessly silly mood. The audience at the National Theater seemed giddy enough in its own right.
  28. Satisfaction
    Satisfaction is a typical, low-budget summer movie, where everyone has a hot romance, a good body and an expensive haircut.
  29. That Was Then... This Is Now
    Manages to be both prissy and prurient at the same time, as well as goofily romantic and nasty. To this extent, I suppose, it is an accurate reflection of Miss Hinton's sentimental fiction about earnest, inarticulate young readers.
  30. Honkytonk Man
    Only charm and sentimentality could have brought the requisite magic to Clint Eastwood's Honkytonk Man; unfortunately, this well-intentioned but weak film hasn't nearly enough of either.
  31. Saint Judy
    While the viewer can intuit that Hanish has a strong clear story to tell, the director too often tricks things up.
  32. Tolkien
    Tolkien manages several scenes of credible emotional delicacy.
  33. Paddleton
    Paddleton is so keyed into its protagonists’ various idiosyncrasies that it seems hesitant to grapple with its own central tension.
  34. Marked for Death
    As directed by Dwight H. Little, Marked for Death lacks much visual interest or suspense.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Kelly's Heroes
    Not without its problems. But it is very largely without viable solutions to them. Not without resources—it is full of resources, natural and mostly untapped—but with out that resourcefulness necessary to persuade us that comedy, any comedy, is worth the time of day.
  36. The White Crow
    The problem is that while there are dance performances scattered throughout The White Crow, as well as interludes with a sweaty Rudy practicing and striving, the offstage scenes tend to feel like filler, the bits stuck between the barre and the theater.
  37. Under Siege 2: Dark Territory
    Although Under Siege 2 isn't credible for a single moment, its director, Geoff Murphy, has done a smoothly efficient job of coordinating the action sequences.
  38. Knives Out
    Johnson’s own sleight of hand is estimable, even if his effort to add politics into the crowded mix rings hollow. The machine is what matters here, and he has clearly had such a good time engineering it that it’s hard not to feel bad when you don’t laugh along with him.
  39. Out for Justice
    It really would be unfair to take such a narrow view of Mr. Seagal's appeal. In fact, he combines street-smart swagger and a flair for wisecracks with a martial arts background and the pampered look of a Hollywood eminence, all of which makes for a lively mix. [13 Apr 1991, p.12]
    • The New York Times
  40. The Hole in the Ground
    In a film where the central horror is the otherworldly absence of personality, the intended fear is undermined by the presence of a mother and son whose flawlessness is itself unnerving.
  41. Joseph Pulitzer: Voice of the People
    While there are amazing anecdotes here, there is little to catch the eye or ear.
  42. The Highwaymen
    This isn’t an especially good movie — it’s too long, too drenched in Thomas Newman’s cloyingly eclectic score, too full of speechifying and self-regard — but it is a coherent one, with the courage of its vengeful, murderous, politically terrifying convictions.
  43. Wine Country
    The comedy is situational and confessional, the flat one-liners mixed in with more memorable physical comedy. The scripted lines rarely zing, sing or sting (some seem improvised), but when the performers fall down or screw up their faces, you get to watch them fill in their characters with something like real feeling.
  44. Adam
    Adam is a movie that tackles big ideas about queerness and comes out looking confused — making it an experience that frustrates even as it tries to endear.
  45. Big Time Adolescence
    Despite some moments of tenderness and easy chemistry between Zeke and Mo, “Big Time Adolescence” doesn’t have enough heart or humor to save it from becoming just another movie about white dudes bro-ing out.
  46. Brittany Runs A Marathon
    Bell imbues Brittany with humanity and wit, but all too frequently she is working within the framework of a story that seems hellbent on robbing her character of joy.
  47. Cold Case Hammarskjöld
    Cold Case Hammarskjold is finally poised unsatisfyingly between an explosive exposé and a self-conscious put-on. Even a full acceptance of its assertions doesn’t do much to illuminate Hammarskjold’s death.
  48. Monos
    It’s frustrating to see such a sophisticated cinematic apparatus used in the service of such muddled half-ideas.
  49. Official Secrets
    The director Gavin Hood, who wrote the script with Sara Bernstein and Gregory Bernstein, fits the pieces together coherently, no small thing given the complications. But the characters are malnourished and Hood’s attempts to build suspense often fall flat because he leans hard on genre conventions, on dark shadows, ominous music and abrupt sounds straight from a horror flick.
  50. The Report
    However crucial and opportune in its truth-seeking and depictions of political trickery (Burns could hardly have known his film would plop into theaters alongside the impeachment hearings for President Trump), The Report is too often dramatically frozen, its emotions stubbornly internal.
  51. The Lodge
    Despite its visual flair and unrelentingly taut atmosphere, The Lodge is more successful in sustaining unease — like the eerie, unexplained shots of a spooky dollhouse — than in building a convincing narrative
  52. The Sound of Silence
    The Sound of Silence wants to be heard, but, in the end, doesn’t have much to say.
  53. The King of Staten Island
    The King of Staten Island is one of those 10-block-radius life slices whose smallness and intimacy ought to be a virtue. But the movie seems afraid of itself.
  54. Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse
    Jordan makes a sturdy enough action hero, but the character as portrayed doesn’t give him any contours to play.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Road Games
    Jamie Lee Curtis plays the jiggly hitchhiker he picks up, which is one reason he calls her Hitch. Another reason, according to a pretentious statement by the director, Richard Franklin, is to pay tribute to Alfred Hitchcock, who should be twirling.
  56. Holiday
    Because Eklof’s approach is formally very clean, showing some genuine, intriguing detachment, I’m apt to prefer it to Seidl’s work. But not by much.
  57. Zorro: The Gay Blade
    Zorro, the Gay Blade, which was directed by Peter Medak (''The Ruling Class'' and ''The Changeling'') and written by Hal Dresner, has some of the slapdash bounce of Bob Hope's long-ago Paramount comedies. Though it doesn't have the authoritative timing and leering presence of Mr. Hope, it has its own careless charm and an appealing tolerance for jokes that aren't wildly funny.[24 July 1981, p.16]
    • The New York Times
  58. The Racers
    It is something for racing fans to see. But the business that passes for a story in between and among the racing scenes is depressingly unoriginal and banal.
  59. Ma
    The movie ties itself up in knots as it tries to be provocative without giving offense, and offering more complacency and comfort than terror.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Speedway
    This is after all, just another Presley movie — which makes no great use at all of one of the most talented, important and durable performers of our time.
  61. Piranhas
    In its reliance on a conventional narrative through-line, it’s more reminiscent of “The Public Enemy” than “Goodfellas” in spite of its stylings of contemporary cinematic realism.
  62. Temblores
    Bustamante renders the film’s distinct milieus with extraordinary texture. The sanitized and soulless spaces of Pablo and his family form an evocative contrast with the lively, bustling bars and streets frequented by Francisco. But this emphasis on sensory detail comes at the cost of the big picture.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Ferrante Fever
    It’s an anodyne fan flick that casts only furtive glances in Ferrante’s direction, as if the filmmaker, Giacomo Durzi, were a reverential subject who doesn’t dare to make eye contact with the queen.
  64. Airport 1975
    A silly, jumbo-size sequel to the original film adaptation of Arthur Hailey's Airport.
  65. The Cowboys
    So flecked with minor dishonesties that you come to recognize it as a sort of Formica Western, something that amounts to a parody of the real thing.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Way of the Dragon
    Unlike its predecessor, Enter the Dragon, which was praised as a well-made movie, this picture is dreadfully slow and feeble whenever the cast isn't fighting. So you yearn for each battle, just as you wait impatiently for the songs or dances in a tedious musical.
  67. Straw Dogs
    It is an intelligent movie, but interesting only in the context of his other works.
  68. Mary, Queen of Scots
    Because both Miss Redgrave and Miss. Jackson possess identifiable intelligence, Mary, Queen of Scots is not as difficult to sit through as some bad movies I can think of. It's just solemn, well-groomed and dumb.
  69. Fiddler on the Roof
    They want to show us everything, to give us our money's worth. In so doing, they've not just opened up the play, they've let most of the life out of it.
  70. Willard
    Willard, which is otherwise a dull movie of no major consequence, is a rather astonishing footnote to a major urban problem.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Lawman
    A potent but curiously exasperating Western.
  72. The Day Shall Come
    A circular firing-squad of full-on crazy, Chris Morris’s The Day Shall Come barges into American counterterrorism tactics with sledgehammer satire and a numbingly repetitive plot.
  73. Two Plains & a Fancy
    The mode of humor is close to cliquish anticomedy, and viewers not attuned to it may feel like there’s a joke they’re missing.
  74. Olympic Dreams
    Compared to the drama of the competition, the story and its characters always feel slight, an excuse to hang out among Olympians rather than a movie that builds upon (or for that matter critiques) its surroundings.
  75. Run This Town
    The movie never quite reconciles its assorted perspectives into a coherent point of view.
  76. Get Duked!
    The scenery is pretty and the actors appealing enough to almost excuse the thinness of the material.
  77. Children of the Sea
    Children of the Sea finds plenty of beauty and purpose in the watery depths but doesn’t provide enough grounding first: It’s all too easy to get lost 20,000 leagues under the sea.
  78. Total Dhamaal
    The moral seems as tacked on as the villain. But it’s a sweet thought and not entirely out of keeping with a movie that for all its crassness, comic and commercial, is basically good-spirited.
  79. Tigerland
    Tigerland falls into a common trap of advocacy documentaries, which is to inform on an urgent issue — preserving a species — without a particularly urgent cinematic narrative to match it.
  80. Storm Boy
    Storm Boy tries to present itself as a modern fable, where the lessons learned relate directly to present-day concerns over the environment, industrialization and the marginalization of indigenous cultures. But these themes come across as didactic rather than moving.
  81. The Legend of Cocaine Island
    The director (2014’s “Little Hope Was Arson”) can lay it on thick with the comic scene setups and James Bond-like soundtrack. Then again, this underlines the silliness of Rodney Hyden’s odyssey.
  82. Wall
    Imperiously wringing his hands at both sides of the conflict, Hare never brings his observations together in a satisfying conclusion (not that any was likely, in just 80 minutes).
  83. Lady and the Tramp
    The movie is middle-of-the-road rather than bad — hard to hate and harder to love.
  84. Kalank
    This kind of fantasy-spectacle is Mr. Varman’s forte, not storytelling. When the singing and dancing and action stop, which is less often than you might think, so does “Kalank.”
  85. Loro
    In some ways Berlusconi, a media mogul and cruise-ship crooner in earlier phases of his career, a creature of appetite and excess, is Sorrentino’s ideal subject. But the overlap in their sensibilities turns Loro into a blurry, distracted, sentimental portrait.
  86. I Trapped the Devil
    By seesawing between bland normalcy and hellishness, Lobo denies his audience the immersive horror that his film’s best images promise.
  87. Nureyev
    Nureyev, directed by the brother-and-sister team of Jacqui Morris and David Morris, suffers from a common documentary-film problem: great story, not-so-great storytelling.
  88. The Kill Team
    While the leads are credible, the filmmaking (including a hacky score) adds a sheen of macho familiarity to a narrative that was eerily matter-of-fact in doc form.
  89. Lost Transmissions
    The movie’s strongest feature is its depiction of a male-female friendship that matter-of-factly abjures any romantic component. Temple and Pegg, when their characters aren’t falling apart (and even sometimes when they are), convey intelligence and mutual regard with refreshing straightforwardness.
  90. Stray Dolls
    Despite its sense of dead-end desperation, Stray Dolls is made worthwhile by the richness of Shane Sigler’s nighttime cinematography and the consistent empathy of its tone. Sinha, herself a first-generation immigrant, isn’t about to judge anyone for reaching.
  91. Swallow
    Given how nauseating it is to watch Hunter perform increasingly perilous acts of self-harm in her prison of a mansion, neither the payoff nor the psychology behind her actions makes Swallow an illuminating enough addition to the woman-on-the-verge-of-a-nervous-breakdown genre.
  92. Plus One
    Every minute Erskine isn’t on screen is a minute wasted.
  93. Trial by Fire
    Expertly acted throughout...the movie’s raw facts are sufficient to rouse viewer indignation. But the material arguably calls for a more proactively provocative approach.
  94. Q Ball
    As a sales pitch for an undeniably popular program, Q Ball (filmed in 2018) builds a crescendo of hope and good will. Anyone seeking a more substantive conversation on life beyond the basket, however, will have to look elsewhere.
  95. Judy
    Mostly, Judy offers the familiar spectacle of one star playing another. Zellweger’s performance is credible, with agitated flutters and filigreed touches, though it leans hard on Judy’s tremulous fragility, as if she were a panicked hummingbird. The take is also cautious, too comfortable; it never makes you flinch or look away.
  96. 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.
  97. Matthias & Maxime
    This exploration of suppressed homoerotic longing would be infinitely more moving if the pair had even a smidgen of sexual chemistry.
  98. Bull
    While Silverstein’s commitment to authenticity is admirable (she spent years visiting backyard rodeos across Texas, talking with the participants), her narrative is too tamped-down and languorous to catch hold.
  99. On a Magical Night
    Despite the fantastic premise and the ostensibly comedic bits of business Honoré strews throughout (pay attention to the changing marquee of the cinema on the street where both Maria’s apartment and the hotel are), the movie’s treatment of its themes still too often lists toward a near-ponderous solemnity.
  100. Port Authority
    Bloom is an alluring actress, especially when playing more subtle dramatic beats. While she’s unable to elevate a rote script, Bloom, and her character, understand how to catch the gaze of an audience in a way that the camera does not.
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