The New York Times' Scores

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For 20,271 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: 9,377 out of 20271
  2. Mixed: 8,430 out of 20271
  3. Negative: 2,464 out of 20271
20271 movie reviews
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  1. Billy Madison
    It succeeds as a reasonably smart no-brainer. If you've ever had a yen to relive the third grade, this must be the next best thing.
  2. The Quick and the Dead
    Ms. Stone's presence nicely underscores the genre-bending tactics of Sam Raimi, the cult director now doing his best to reinvent the B-movie in a spirit of self-referential glee. Mr. Raimi is limited by a sketch mentality, which means his jokes tend to be over long before his films end. But his tastes for visual mischief and crazy, ill-advised homage can still make for sly, sporadic fun.
  3. Shallow Grave
    A sky-high level of misanthropy overwhelms his film in ways that prove more sour than droll, despite the presence of skillful actors and a bizarrely enveloping plot.
  4. Boys on the Side
    What matters more is that Ms. Goldberg, along with her co-stars Mary-Louise Parker and Drew Barrymore, is so sharp, funny and wholehearted that this film creates an unexpected groundswell of real emotion.
  5. In the Mouth of Madness
    In the Mouth of Madness has enough menace and novelty to please fans of Mr. Carpenter's horror films (among them The Fog, Christine and Halloween) without the wider interest of an enchanting parable like Starman, which he also directed. Still, this is a film with the temerity to think big, if only for the magnitude of the wickedness it invokes.
  6. The Secret of Roan Inish
    What prevents "The Secret of Roan Inish" from evaporating into cuteness or from being smothered in mystical overkill is the director's firmly human perspective.
  7. Before Sunrise
    What Mr. Linklater does best here is to come up with conversational gambits that have just the right fancifulness to suit this situation.
  8. Highlander: The Final Dimension
    An incoherent mess.
  9. Legends of the Fall
    These are performances that lost too much in the editing room, smothered by music and overshadowed by a picture-postcard vision of the American West.
  10. Nobody's Fool
    If Nobody's Fool is often heartbreaking in its sense of loss, it is also hopeful in the strength of its emotions and the sheer beauty of its performances.
  11. Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight
    What "Tales From the Crypt" does best is sustain a look and tone that bring a comic-book's broad strokes into the realm of a live-action movie without seeming too mannered or arty. The film's gooey monsters with their electric green eyes and ferocious voracity are among the more convincing zombie demons to be found in a recent horror film.
  12. Ladybird Ladybird
    Ladybird, Ladybird is a tough, utterly absorbing film even at moments when it seems to skirt some of the fine points of Maggie's difficulties.
  13. Higher Learning
    Higher Learning culminates in facile violence instead of the assurance that this film maker, in trying to explain forces that oppress his characters, has really done his homework.
  14. The Madness of King George
    The Madness of King George mixes the ebullience of Tom Jones with a pop-theatrical royal back-stabbing that is reminiscent of films like The Lion in Winter. That makes it a deft, mischievous, beautifully acted historical drama with exceptionally broad appeal.
  15. Ready to Wear (Prêt-à-Porter)
    This time Mr. Altman, such a stunningly intuitive portraitist when he truly plumbs the mysteries that guide his characters, works without inventiveness and with glaring nonchalance.
  16. I.Q.
    The nice thing about I.Q. is that its intelligence doesn't stop at the title. In a romantic comedy that mingles brilliant physicists with auto mechanics, everybody manages to seem smart.
  17. The Jungle Book
    If this version of The Jungle Book makes for a fable that is thinner than it might have been, the film is splendidly picturesque and moves along briskly.
  18. Death and the Maiden
    Mr. Polanski's brilliance with the camera turns Ariel Dorfman's well-meaning but pretentious play about human rights into a harrowing experience.
  19. Nell
    What's remarkable is how seldom it delivers. For all its technical brilliance, not even Ms. Foster's intense, accomplished performance in the title role holds much surprise.
  20. Street Fighter
    As Mr. Van Damme fumbles through his part, you are likely to find yourself staring at the big lump on the right side of his forehead and wondering how it got there.
  21. A Man of No Importance
    A Man of No Importance is a small film with far more charm than its premise might suggest. It is acted with great warmth and wit by an ideal cast.
  22. Mixed Nuts
    Staged as pure fluff without an ounce of ballast, Mixed Nuts succeeds only in getting its cast into Halloween-caliber crazy costumes by the time it's over.
  23. Little Women
    Ms. Armstrong instantly demonstrates that she has caught the essence of this book's sweetness and cast her film uncannily well, finding sparkling young actresses who are exactly right for their famous roles.
  24. Richie Rich
    If Richie Rich has the ingredients for a sweet-natured fantasy of ultimate childhood bounty, the movie, directed by Donald Petrie, lacks any sense of wonder. Its visual perspective is decidedly grown-up and demystified.
  25. Dumb and Dumber
    A movie that knows much better than to try to make sense. It is essentially a strung-together series of gags, most of them thought up by Lloyd, an inveterate practical joker.
  26. Disclosure
    The storytelling of Disclosure is too forced and polemical to be on a par with better Crichton tales like "Jurassic Park." This time, it's the author who's the dinosaur.
  27. Cobb
    As a film maker who has his own love-hate romance with the sports world, Mr. Shelton is naturally drawn to his writer's uneasy relationship to Cobb. And at its best, this film explores the edgy compromises that link these two, while at worst it dramatizes the relationship broadly and histrionically.
  28. Trapped in Paradise
    Since Trapped in Paradise assembles three actors as amusing as Nicolas Cage, Dana Carvey and Jon Lovitz, it's a minor holiday miracle that this homey comedy barely elicits even a chuckle.
  29. Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle
    Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle has its flaws, but it also has a heartfelt grasp of what set Dorothy Parker apart from her fellow revelers and makes her so emblematic a figure even today.
  30. Three Colors: Red
    Red succeeds so stirringly that it also bestows some much-needed magic upon its predecessors, "Blue" and "White." The first film's chic emptiness and the second's relative drabness are suddenly made much rosier by the seductive glow of Red.
  31. Junior
    Proceeds efficiently but never quite lives up to its own potential as a sight gag.
  32. Love and a .45
    In any case, Love and a .45 is too mean-spirited to be funny, and it winds up nastily derivative rather than clever.
  33. The Professional
    Lacks the sexy elan of "La Femme Nikita" and suffers from infinitely worse culture shock. [18 Nov 1994, p.C18]
  34. 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.
  35. Benny's Video (1992)
    What gives the film a chilly authenticity is the creepy performance of Arno Frisch in the title role. Cool and unsmiling, with a dark inscrutable gaze, his Benny is the apotheosis of what the author George W. S. Trow has called the cold child, or an unfeeling young person whose detachment and short attention span have been molded by television.
  36. The Swan Princess
    Loosely based on the legend that inspired "Swan Lake," and blatantly borrowing the formula of Disney's "Beauty and the Beast," this animated musical turns out to be funny and enchanting on its own. Directed by Richard Rich, who started an animation company after 14 years at Disney, "The Swan Princess" makes first-rate copying seem like a good idea.
  37. Heavenly Creatures
    Stylish and eerily compelling before it overplays its campy excesses, Heavenly Creatures does have a feverish intensity to recommend it.
  38. Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles
    His sumptuous film is as strange and mesmerizing as it is imaginatively ghastly. It's a sophisticated, spookily intense rendering of Ms. Rice's story.
  39. Oleanna
    Mr. Mamet can be a first-rate film maker, and in works like House of Games and Homicide he trusts language as much as he relies on small, subtle camera movements. Here both the language and Mr. Mamet's film making let him down.
  40. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
    This is a bland, no-fault Frankenstein for the 90's, short on villainy but loaded with the tragically misunderstood.
  41. Double Dragon
    Although these scene-setting futuristic details have some humorous promise, "Double Dragon," the movie they embellish, is an incoherent children's adventure based on a popular video game.
  42. Stargate
    Stargate is a clever adventure that should find its audience.
  43. The Last Seduction
    A devilishly entertaining crime story with a heroine who must be seen to be believed, is as satisfying an ensemble piece as Red Rock West.
  44. 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.
  45. Clerks
    [Smith] also has an uncommonly sure sense of deadpan comic timing.
  46. Pulp Fiction
    A triumphant, cleverly disorienting journey through a demimonde that springs entirely from Mr. Tarantino's ripe imagination, a landscape of danger, shock, hilarity, and vibrant local color. Nothing is predictable or familiar within this irresistably bizarre world. You don't merely enter a theater to see Pulp Fiction; you go down a rabbit hole.
  47. Hoop Dreams
    Hoop Dreams affirms the role of film as a medium for exploring social issues. And like any important documentary, this one raises crucial questions beyond what is on screen.
  48. Wes Craven's New Nightmare
    An ingenious, cathartic exercise in illusion and fear.
  49. 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.
  50. See How They Fall
    The script, which he wrote with Alain Le Henry, is as confusing and tiresome as the direction. What is meant to be a touching, comic relationship between Marx and Johnny is simply flat.
  51. Dear Diary
    As both a skillful director and a lovable oddball, [Moretti] commands interest. It's easy to follow him anywhere.
  52. The River Wild
    [Hanson] does another deft job of conveying a heroine's secret anxieties, at least during the first half of his story.
  53. Ed Wood
    If Ed Wood has a major failing, it's the lack of momentum. Wood's career had nowhere to go, and to some extent the film has the same problem.
  54. Timecop
    Years of tireless persistence have begun to work in Mr. Van Damme's favor. It's hard not to enjoy his energy, even if his acting gifts still leave a lot to be desired. The fact is that he looks good, behaves affably and kicks with gusto, which is quite enough to satisfy the demands of Timecop.
  55. The New Age
    What sustains The New Age through these falterings are its edgy stars, its lively unpredictability, and the essential seriousness of Mr. Tolkin's thoughts. Even when working in an atypically upbeat mode, in a film that never dares follow its dark prophecy to the bitter end, he sustains a disturbing frankness. [16 Sept 1994, p.C5]
    • The New York Times
  56. Quiz Show
    A supremely elegant and thoughtful parable.
  57. The Next Karate Kid
    The Next Karate Kid doesn't even try to achieve surface credibility. Under the patient ministrations of Miyagi, Julie metamorphoses from an angry tomboy into a loving, disciplined beauty in a matter of weeks. [10 Sep 1994, p.14]
    • The New York Times
  58. What Happened Was...
    In performance, as in the rest of this film, Mr. Noonan only haltingly captures what he seeks.
  59. Arizona Dream
    Arizona Dream is enjoyably adrift, a wildly off-the-wall reverie. It's more than a fish out of water.
  60. Fresh
    Fresh features delicate and sympathetic work from both Mr. Esposito and Mr. Jackson, whose fine characterizations say a lot about the originality of this film's vision.
  61. The Shawshank Redemption
    There are times when The Shawshank Redemption comes dangerously close to sounding one of those "triumph of the spirit" notes. But most of it is eloquently restrained.
  62. Killing Zoe
    Mr. Avary's debut feature, fiercely ambitious but way out of control, is an orgiastically violent exercise in hand-me-down nihilism, much more firmly rooted in cinematic posturing than in real pain.
  63. Natural Born Killers
    Natural Born Killers never digs deep enough. Mr. Stone's vision is impassioned, alarming, visually inventive, characteristically overpowering. But it's no match for the awful truth.
  64. Color of Night
    The enthusiastically nutty Color of Night has the single-mindedness of a bad dream, and about as much reliance on everyday logic.
  65. The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
    The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert presents a defiant culture clash in generous, warmly entertaining ways.
  66. Airheads
    The idea has anarchic possibilities, but the film itself is awfully tame.
  67. The Little Rascals
    The main trouble is that The Little Rascals is caught in a time warp, lost between the ingenuous ragamuffins of the early talkies and the more willfully streetwise children of today. So even working the title into the screenplay becomes a strain.
  68. Clear and Present Danger
    Another fast, gripping spy story with some good tricks up its sleeve.
  69. Eat Drink Man Woman
    Its thoughts about its characters don't go much deeper than the bottom of a soup bowl, but those thoughts are still expressed with affection, wit and an abundance of fascinating cooking tips.
  70. The Mask
    An astonishingly lazy and perfunctory effort that does little to realize his (Carrey) comic potential.
  71. Barcelona
    Barcelona, like "Metropolitan," indulges in long, hair-splitting discussions without resorting to broad gags or worrying about wearing out its welcome.
  72. It Could Happen to You
    The other miracle is that the two stars of It Could Happen to You keep it sailing over a script that is often as predictable and flat as the movie's new title.
  73. North
    North, a playful modern fable about a boy in search of new parents, doesn't always work, but much of it is clever in amusingly unpredictable ways.
  74. The Client
    The Client, with a fast, no-nonsense pace and three winning performances, is the movie that most clearly echoes the simple, vigorous Grisham style.
  75. True Lies
    Much of the appeal of True Lies comes from the smooth grafting of battle-of-the-sexes comedy onto a high-tech action picture.
  76. Spanking the Monkey
    It is also the sort of astonishingly fresh and self-assured work that can make a reputation.
  77. Angels in the Outfield
    A big dripping scoop of marshmallow sentiment topped with whipped-cream spirituality. [15 July 1994, p.C10]
    • The New York Times
  78. Forrest Gump
    Has the elements of an emotionally gripping story. Yet is feels less like a romance than like a coffee-table book celebrating the magic of special effect. [6 July 1994, p. C9]
  79. The Shadow
    Style is almost everything here, and it's a tough call whether the star is handsomer than the sets.
  80. That's Entertainment! III
    With the best material used up, That's Entertainment! III cleverly focuses on outtakes, unfinished numbers and behind-the-scenes glimpses of the old musicals. This results in a lively and funny compilation of curiosities suggesting what might have been.
  81. Little Big League
    The scenes on the ballfield have a credibility that is unusual in a baseball film. Adding to the realism are the appearances of a number of major league players as the Twins' opponents. The glow and cleancut innocence of these scenes evokes the magic of the game as seen through the eyes of a youthful fan.
  82. Wyatt Earp
    Yet a film that tries so hard to offer intelligent entertainment too often forgets to entertain. The famous showdown in Tombstone...one of the most famous scenes in all of Western legend is anti-climactic.
  83. Getting Even with Dad
    Both Mr. Danson and Mr. Culkin make the film's predictable ending far more effective than it might have been. They are warm without being sappy. It's too bad that the audience, parents and children, are likely to have grown restless long before then.
  84. The Lion King
    More so than the exuberant movie miracles that came before it, this latest animated juggernaut has the feeling of a clever, predictable product. To its great advantage, it has been contrived with a spirited, animal-loving prettiness no child will resist.
  85. Speed
    This film's dialogue isn't much more literate than a bus schedule, but its plotting is smart and breathless enough to make up for that.
  86. Three Colors: White
    Throughout, White is filled with exquisite scenes that don't press too hard...and those moments are all the richer for their understatement.
  87. City Slickers II: The Legend of Curly's Gold
    This sequel has no real purpose beyond the obvious one of following up a hit, although the original film was just as casual at times. Both of them rely on Billy Crystal's breezy, dependably funny screen presence to hold the interest, even when not much around him is up to par. Both also count on the irascible Jack Palance, even though Mr. Palance's Curly was dead and buried when the first film was over.
  88. Renaissance Man
    Inherently condescending, and finally awash in warm-bath sentimentality, this setup never goes out of style.
  89. Fear of a Black Hat
    Flattering the daylights out of Rob Reiner and his Spinal Tap crew, Rusty Cundieff turns Fear of a Black Hat into an unapologetic Spinal Tap imitation. And there's no point in faulting Mr. Cundieff for such derivativeness, because Fear of a Black Hat is too savvy and cheerful to warrant complaints.
  90. The Flintstones
    The greatest lost opportunity in The Flintstones is that its writers (more than 30) are so faithful to the 60's television series that they failed to add enough updated pop-culture references. The few included are among the film's best jokes.
  91. Beverly Hills Cop III
    Beverly Hills Cop III is a generic action movie, an Eddie Murphy film with only a trace of Eddie Murphy.
  92. Little Buddha
    Little Buddha displays a deliberate innocence that suits its subject, even if it contrasts so markedly with much of Mr. Bertolucci's moodier, more unsettling work.
  93. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
    One of the many problems with Gus Van Sant's tortured, worked-over Even Cowgirls Get the Blues is that Sissy Hankshaw talks like a novel, and a dated one at that.
  94. Maverick
    Fast, funny, full of straight-ahead action and tongue-in-cheek jokes, Maverick is Lethal Weapon meets Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. That combination won't win any prizes for originality, but it works like a movie mogul's dream and sets the summer-film season off to an unbeatable start.
  95. Crooklyn
    Messy as the semiautobiographical Crooklyn often is, it succeeds in becoming a touching and generous family portrait, a film that exposes welcome new aspects of this director's talent.
  96. The Crow
    It is a dark, lurid revenge fantasy and not the breakthrough, star-making movie some people have claimed. But it is a genre film of a high order, stylish and smooth.
  97. Being Human
    Set against lovely verdant scenery but structured as a series of rambling vignettes, the stories in Being Human don't entirely mesh.
  98. Kika
    Kika" is actually one of this film maker's more buoyant recent efforts, a sly, rambunctious satire that moves along merrily until it collapses -- as many Almodovar films finally do -- under the weight of its own clutter.
  99. 3 Ninjas Kick Back
    A hectic free-for-all with no point at all.
  100. Dream Lover
    The whole film has the intensity of a dream, and Mr. Kazan selects his fantasy elements with great care.
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