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. All the Rage
    Like a ham-fisted high-concept public service announcement, directed with stagy deliberateness and written with tin-eared vernacular speechiness.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Performance
    The film progresses by what I imagine a series of electro‐shocks to be like, but a shock treatment administered not by a therapist but by a misprogrammed computer.
  3. Under Hellgate Bridge
    Sergio's urban melodrama Under Hellgate Bridge suggests the contemporary equivalent of any number of 1930's B movies.
  4. The Mad Songs of Fernanda Hussein
    Mr. Gianvito's approach cannot really be called critical, since criticism would require some cogent analysis of causes and events.
  5. What to Do in Case of Fire
    Its bone-deep willingness to do anything to entertain is exhausting.
  6. Shaft
    This may be the first movie that runs under two hours and yet has no attention span. Characters are abandoned and picked up; narrative threads dissolve before your very eyes.
  7. Prince of Central Park
    Remains a sadly earthbound thing, mired in a dismal realism that lies far from its natural environment.
  8. Boys and Girls
    The best thing that can be said about Boys and Girls is that it is studiously inoffensive.
  9. Sonny
    Emotionally incoherent.
  10. The Skulls
    Less interested in politics than in profitably flattering the suspicions and resentments of its intended teenage audience.
  11. The Gospel According to Philip K. Dick
    The documentary doesn't get near the prowess of its subject; it passes through your life like a minor daydream.
  12. Showtime
    Plays every convention twice, once as parody and once by the book, but the movie, trying to be two things at once, fails at both.
  13. Chuen jik sat sau
    Perhaps the directors are under the delusion that the dodging and leaping can make up for an ending that leaves the cast members of "Killer" adrift and nearly scratching their heads in puzzlement.
  14. The Four Feathers
    Such few assets aren't enough to alleviate the film's shallowness.
  15. Virus
    As long on adrenaline and special effects as it is short on genuine novelty and intellectual content.
  16. $pent
    By the end the most vivid figure on the screen is the lovable doggie who goes wherever dangling fingers are waiting to give the happy pooch a scratch.
  17. Better Living
    Feels like an early rehearsal for a play where all the movement is being coordinated but the underlying emotional notes have yet to be set.
  18. I Woke Up Early the Day I Died
    It's sad and misguided and boring.
  19. Men Cry Bullets
    A muddled film with John Waters aspirations.
  20. Just One Time
    Works hard at being charming, but comedy is best when it looks effortless.
  21. Smiling Fish & Goat on Fire
    Seems a little too desperate to be liked.
  22. The Simian Line
    Might be described as a muddy, cliché-ridden sudsfest that lurches uncertainly between comedy and soap opera without finding its emotional or visual footing.
  23. The Five Senses
    By interweaving several stories, the movie suffers from a peculiar multiplier effect: it deepens its shallowness.
  24. Lucky Break
    Mr. Cattaneo restricts himself to the smiling blandness that has become the stock in trade of British comedies made for export, turning in a film that is forced, familiar and thoroughly condescending.
  25. Terror Firmer
    Couldn't be more artless.
  26. My Boss's Daughter
    This muddled comedy of confusion feels as if it were a Farrelly brothers' comedy that has sat exposed to the elements long past its expiration date.
  27. Gossip
    If you're looking for a 90-minute post-teen soap opera with pretty people, ludicrous hairpin turns and a whopper of an ending, the movie will keep you mindlessly off balance.
  28. An Affair of Love
    Clearly, this is an affair to forget.
  29. Boys Life 3
    Pallid compared with the flaming id of television's "Will and Grace," the happy swizzle stick Jack, who's all appetites. When series television is more entertaining than a series of short independent films, that's something to worry about.
  30. The Era of Vampires
    Murky, third-rate martial-arts film.
  31. The Musketeer
    Dramatically as well as visually, The Musketeer conflicts with itself by trying to blend grand old- school costume drama and MTV- style rhythm and attitude into the same movie. The juxtapositions are often preposterous.
  32. Friends and Family
    Quickly collapses into an overloaded, slow-moving series of predictable jokes and forced situations.
  33. House of Fools
    Only adds to the sense that Mr. Konchalovsky has lost his artistic moorings. He has certainly lost his common sense.
  34. Samehada otoko to momojiri onna
    The emotional impact of Shark Skin Man is negligible.
  35. Southlander: Diary of a Desperate Musician
    This poorly acted, ramshackle tour of the lower echelons of the Los Angeles rock scene has the feel of a largely improvised home movie filmed without retakes, and its sense of humor could only be fully appreciated by struggling musicians.
  36. All Over the Guy
    Some kind of equality has been achieved when it is impossible to distinguish heterosexual clichés from homosexual ones.
  37. Snow Falling on Cedars
    Admirably high-minded and visually gorgeous but fatally anesthetized by its own grandiosity.
  38. American Adobo
    As the film loses its grip on its multiple stories, the title begins to suggest an overheated stew bubbling out of its pot. By the end of the film, the intersecting dramas and histrionic performances have spilled all over the floor, so to speak.
  39. Autumn in New York
    Flagrantly old-fashioned, triple-hankie tear-jerker.
  40. Pinocchio
    It's an oddity that will be avoided by millions of people, this new Pinocchio. Osama bin Laden could attend a showing in Times Square and be confident of remaining hidden.
  41. Martin Lawrence Live: Runteldat
    This picture is mostly a lump of run-of-the-mill profanity sprinkled with a few remarks so geared toward engendering audience sympathy that you might think he was running for office -- or trying to win over a probation officer.
  42. Red Planet
    A leaden, skimpily plotted space-age Outward Bound adventure with vague allegorical aspirations that remain entirely unrealized.
  43. Vertical Limit
    A shallow yet empty action extravaganza.
  44. I Dreamed of Africa
    Advance word of mouth has suggested that Ms. Basinger...turns in a performance comparable to Meryl Streep's in "Out of Africa." Would that it were so. Ms. Basinger certainly works hard at her role.
  45. Hart's War
    Wants to be everything and adds up to nothing. "War" is a film that tries to excel on several levels and falls flat on all of them.
  46. Two Weeks Notice
    Breezing along on gusts of stale air and perky inanities, Two Weeks Notice is a romantic comedy so vague and sadly undernourished that it makes one of Nora Ephron's low-cal strawberry sodas seem as tempting as a Philip Barry feast.
  47. Charlotte Gray
    The movie works so diligently to convey a spirit of heroic uplift and fails so completely that it feels like a tragic misfire.
  48. 102 Dalmatians
    May have had the unintended effect of obscuring the original it meant to honor.
  49. Bollywood/Hollywood
    Disappointingly shallow and not terribly funny romantic comedy.
  50. Bittersweet Motel
    Bland, unrevealing.
  51. An American Werewolf in Paris
    A slapdash, poorly acted, paint-by-numbers teen horror comedy, the sequel is too frenetically edited to build any suspense, and its special effects are strictly bargain basement.
  52. Hanging Up
    A chilly machine-tooled comedy.
  53. Under solen
    It has the melancholy mildew of both "Marty" and the 1940's weepie "The Enchanted Cottage."
  54. Snipes
    Mr. Jones, who recently starred in "Zig-Zag," a similarly striving, overwrought picture, is a disciplined and likable performer, and he bravely perseveres in the face of narrative absurdity and rampant overacting.
  55. All About the Benjamins
    This movie, a chaotic caper film at heart, wrecks its comic tone with some moments of gruesome violence.
  56. Green Dragon
    Loses its way in rhetorical excess and blatant sentimentality.
  57. Inspector Gadget
    In the end the elaborate gimmickry of Inspector Gadget cannot conceal its very ordinary storytelling.
  58. Under Suspicion
    Appears to be a somewhat sinister episode of "Nightline."
  59. Kill by Inches
    Should soon join Mr. Greenaway's last few efforts in obscurity.
  60. Kill Me Later
    The screenplay never begins to finds a workable balance between wit and adventure. And the performances in several smaller roles are so mechanical that they lend Kill Me Later the tone of a vanity production.
  61. Head of State
    The very confusion that has made him (Rock) so unpredictable and funny onstage makes this on-screen exploration of contemporary racial mythologies curiously tentative and unfocused.
  62. Luster
    Relentlessly bright and superficial, even when the subject turns to self-destruction.
  63. The Code
    Probably should have stayed on a shelf back in Paris.
  64. Head Over Heels
    Exists in a realm beyond sense, and induces in the viewer a trancelike state, leaving the mind free to ponder the mysteries of the universe.
  65. Kedma
    But for all its provocation, Kedma is an often dull, incoherent film, and its characters remain frustratingly sketchy
  66. Don't Tempt Me
    An unfocused, overplotted, painfully derivative comic fantasy.
  67. Enough
    In the end you have to wonder why the highly reputed director Michael Apted ("Coal Miner's Daughter") and the gifted screenwriter Nicholas Kazan ("Reversal of Fortune") chose to go slumming in territory like this. They must have been offered wads of money to do the dirty job.
    • The New York Times
  68. Along Came a Spider
    Overplotted, hollow thriller.
  69. Saudate for the Future
    Despite its sociological tidbits and flashes of musical vitality, Saudade do Futuro never goes anywhere.
  70. My Baby's Daddy
    Having established its premise and set in motion an overloaded plot, the picture lurches this way and that, evoking more restlessness than laughter and more boredom than pathos.
  71. Civil Brand
    Before Civil Brand erupts into over-the-top melodrama (which is pretty early), it shows some interest in its characters, and in its less screechy moments the dialogue has the rough, bantering ring of actual speech.
  72. The Professional
    Lacks the sexy elan of "La Femme Nikita" and suffers from infinitely worse culture shock. [18 Nov 1994, p.C18]
  73. So Close
    With the exception of some of the battles, which have the angry desperation of Mr. Yuen's inspired martial-arts choreography, Close is a nominal effort.
  74. See Spot Run
    The movie equivalent of a box of Froot Loops followed by a half-gallon Pepsi chaser.
  75. Mars Attacks!
    Just a parade of scattershot gags, more often weird than funny an dmost often just flat.
  76. The Majestic
    The most indolent waste of screen time since Andy Warhol's marathon shot of the Empire State Building.
  77. End of Days
    Two ridiculous blood-soaked hours.
  78. Rugrats Go Wild
    There is little here to hold the attention of anyone older than 9. For families in search of entertainment, it may be time to find Nemo again.
  79. The Big Hit
    A high-concept, low-reward hodgepodge that mingles elaborate stunts and shootouts with stereotypical ethnic humor.
  80. Torque
    By Monday, Torque will look like a period piece with its expiration date, January 2004, prominently displayed. The inevitable movie-inspired video game will appear more realistic.
  81. Ghosts of Mars
    Like a zombie picture directed by one of the undead.
  82. Double Parked
    A modest but engaging mixture of comedy and drama that derives most of its energy from the performance of Callie Thorne.
  83. Ash Wednesday
    This time Mr. Burns is trying something in the Martin Scorsese street-realist mode, but his self-regarding sentimentality trips him up again.
  84. Who Is Cletis Tout?
    This mistaken-identity picture is so film-culture referential that the final product is a ghost.
  85. Life or Something Like It
    The relentless upbeatness of Life or Something Like It wrecks the possibility of either real laughter or genuine pathos.
  86. The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra
    The question remains: why work so hard to make something deliberately bad, when the world is hardly running a shortage of mediocre movies?
  87. Summer School
    The film's only bright idea is a duo named Chain Saw (Cameron) and Dave (Riley), who love horror films and instigate grisly but imaginative practical jokes, like pretending to be attacked by bunnies when the class makes a field trip to a petting zoo.
  88. Orwell Rolls in His Grave
    Less a formal documentary than a rambling screed.
  89. Left Behind
    For all its intimations of fire and brimstone, the film isn't remotely frightening, and the high-school-level acting doesn't help.
  90. A Rumor of Angels
    As A Rumor of Angels reveals itself to be a sudsy tub of supernatural hokum, not even Ms. Redgrave's noblest efforts can redeem it from hopeless sentimentality.
  91. Angel Eyes
    The product is so synthetic it has only attitude where its heart ought to be.
  92. The Wedding Planner
    It's like watching two superbly conditioned rowers try to race a boat made of folded newspaper. Hard as they work, they just can't make it go any faster.
  93. Dead or Alive: Final
    The home-movie crudeness of Dead or Alive: Final indicates it was made on the cheap with minimal preparation.
  94. Wrong Turn
    Lazy would-be horror film.
  95. The Guru
    A grindingly conventional comedy that insists on tying up its subplots in pretty ribbons and bows.
  96. Jason X
    Even the imaginative gore can't hide the musty scent of Todd Farmer's screenplay.
  97. The Score
    I don't know how much The Score cost, but it's pretty close to worthless.
  98. Veronica Guerin
    The end titles and the ones that introduce Veronica Guerin...are the most informative parts of the film, and also the most powerful. What comes between them is a flat-footed, overwrought crusader-against-evil melodrama, in which Ms. Blanchett's formidable gifts as an actress are reduced to a haircut and an accent.
  99. Predator
    Alternately grisly and dull, with few surprises.
  100. The Ladies Man
    Has some funny, dirty-minded jokes, a few amusing cameos (including Julianne Moore in clown makeup) and a soundtrack loaded with juicy cuts of mid-70's vintage soul and funk.
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