The New York Times' Scores

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For 20,269 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 20269
  2. Mixed: 8,428 out of 20269
  3. Negative: 2,464 out of 20269
20269 movie reviews
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  1. Flashpoint
    Mr. Tannen's strength is his ability to grab his audience's interest quickly and to hold on to it, even by the most superficial means. Even when the movie doesn't entirely make sense, it manages to be effective.
  2. Choose Me
    If the film sometimes gives the impression of too much talent in the service of too little, that talent is evident all the same.
  3. Oxford Blues
    The scenery, however, is handsome, and Miss Pays is indeed the sort of beauty who might have inspired Fitzgerald. But on the subject of credible motivation, Oxford Blues is likely to have left him depressed.
  4. Tightrope
    A suspenseful, involving detective drama with one of the screen's most durable tough-guy heroes, doing what he does best and still managing to show something new.
  5. Dreamscape
    An enjoyably half-baked movie, and if it were any less farfetched it would be less fun.
  6. Sheena: Queen of the Jungle
    Sheena is the perfect summer movie for anyone who's dissatisfied with the season's intentional comedies, and who doesn't believe in looking a gift horse in the mouth. Actually, it's more like gift zebra.
  7. Last Hurrah for Chivalry
    It's a rare entry into old-school swordplay for him, yet still centering on his themes of honor and betrayal -- with a not entirely successful attempt to blur those lines. "Chivalry" is still intense and watchable, nonetheless. [27 Jun 2003, p.E3]
    • The New York Times
  8. The Woman in Red
    Fortunately, most of the film is more appealing than its premise.
  9. Phar Lap
    The movie Phar Lap is as much of a crowd pleaser as the champion Australian race horse for whom it is named. In a gently rousing style that should appeal in equal measure to adults and children.
  10. Cloak & Dagger
    In addition to tossing in the occasional spy-movie homage (there's certainly a Hitchcock touch to Mr. Franklin's choice of villains), he has kept the story moving and the actors lively.
  11. Red Dawn
    Red Dawn may be rabidly inflammatory, but it isn't dull. Mr. Milius does know how to keep a story moving. He might well have turned this into a genuinely stirring war film, if he had not also made it so incorrigibly gung-ho. But the effectiveness of its chilling premise, from a story by Kevin Reynolds, is dissipated by wildly excessive directorial fervor at every turn.
  12. The Philadelphia Experiment
    It's a pleasant but fairly standard movie about a subject that's anything but.
  13. Grandview, U.S.A.
    Grandview, U.S.A. is slight, but it has a good enough cast to keep it watchable.
  14. The Bostonians
    The moral ambiguity of James's novel has been skillfully captured in the film, as has its remarkable modernity.
  15. Purple Rain
    Like many album covers, Purple Rain, though sometimes arresting to look at, is a cardboard come-on to the record it contains.
  16. Cheech & Chong's The Corsican Brothers
    There is a nonstop series of cheerfully low jokes that, as usual, are best when in very poor taste, about beautiful women, body functions and minorities, including homosexuals.
  17. Meatballs Part II
    Pallid writing, awkward acting, familiar situations and tired jokes make the morons, wimps and losers of Meatballs Part II easy to pass up.
  18. Stranger Than Paradise
    The film has no big scenes, and it takes a while to get the hang of it, but once you do, it's as funny as it is wise. The three lead performers are extremely good, never for a second betraying the film's consistently deadpan style.
  19. The NeverEnding Story
    The Neverending Story is a graceless, humorless fantasy for children, combining live actors and animated creatures in mostly imaginary settings.
  20. Revenge of the Nerds
    It is the absence of genuine comedy that exposes glaringly the film's fundamental attitude of condescension and scorn toward blacks and women, and a tendency toward stereotyping that clashes violently with its superficial message of tolerance, compassion and fair play.
  21. Best Defense
    It really isn't easy to make a movie as mind-bendingly bad as Best Defense. It takes hard work, a very great deal of money and people so talented that it matters when they fail with such utter lack of distinction.
  22. Electric Dreams
    In the failure of Electric Dreams to blend and balance its ingredients properly, plot elements are lost (the brick), credibility is overtaxed (the lovelorn computer), and what remains is high tech without being high art.
  23. The Muppets Take Manhattan
    This isn't to say that this particular extravaganza, directed by Frank Oz, is in the same super league as The Muppet Movie and The Great Muppet Caper. This may be only an impression, based on the fact that the past always looks greener than the present, but The Muppets Take Manhattan seems just a little less extraordinaire than the two other features. [13 July 1984, p.C10]
    • The New York Times
  24. The Last Starfighter
    Though it is occasionally talky, and though its plot takes a while to crank up, The Last Starfighter, directed by Nick Castle, is more often than not good-humored, bent on action and even touching. [13 July 1984, p.C5]
    • The New York Times
  25. Bachelor Party
    It takes much longer than might be expected for Bachelor Party...to degenerate into a mindless mob scene. Until it takes that turn for the worse, the movie is actually funny. That is, it's as funny as "Police Academy," which like this film was written by Neal Israel and Pat Proft. And it's certainly funnier than it has been made to look by its advertising campaign, which seems to feature the usual gang of suspects enjoying the usual sophomoric sex romp.
  26. Cannonball Run II
    The fact that Cannonball Run II isn't much good may not prevent it from becoming this summer's best- loved lowest-common-denominator comedy, if only because of the utter absence of any competition.
  27. Conan the Destroyer
    The special effects aren't bad, and there are fewer decapitations than in Conan the Barbarian. Mr. Fleischer seems to want this film to be funnier than was the first one, directed by John Milius, but Mr. Schwarzenegger, a body builder who can lift freight trains, can't easily get his tongue into his cheek.
  28. The Karate Kid
    When karate is not being treated as the latest excuse for an Impossible Dream success story, and when the film is able to find more in Daniel's martial-arts career than pure Rocky-esque competitiveness, The Karate Kid exhibits warmth and friendly, predictable humor, its greatest assets.
  29. Rhinestone
    Rhinestone isn't unrelievedly terrible. It is helped by a director, Bob Clark, who treats the material good- humoredly and takes it lightly, as well as by a funny supporting cast.
  30. Under the Volcano
    A film that is especially impressive for the courage, intelligence and restraint with which it tackles an impossible task...What it can do, and does to such a surprising degree, is to bring the characters to life and offer fleeting glimpses into the heart of Mr. Lowry's tragedy.
  31. Ghostbusters
    However good an idea it may have been to unleash Mr. Murray in an ''Exorcist''-like setting, this film hasn't gotten very far past the idea stage. Its jokes, characters and story line are as wispy as the ghosts themselves, and a good deal less substantial.
  32. Gremlins
    Gremlins is far more interested in showing off its knowledge of movie lore and making random jokes than in providing consistent entertainment. Unfortunately, it's funniest when being most nasty.
  33. Top Secret!
    Top Secret! comes nowhere near ''Airplane!'' but in its own cheerful, low-pressure way, it's about as amiable an entertainment as you will find this summer.
  34. Beat Street
    Designed for everybody who still hasn't had his or her fill of break dancing, or who doesn't yet understand that break dancing, rap singing and graffiti are legitimate expressions of the urban artistic impulse.
  35. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
    Leonard Nimoy, who directed this third installment, hasn't matched the playfulness and energy of ''Star Trek II,'' but he's way ahead of the first film, making up in earnestness what he lacks in style. That kind of conviction, while sometimes verging on undue self-importance, goes a long way toward making the material touching.
  36. Once Upon a Time in America
    It's a collection of occasionally vivid but mostly unfathomable incidents in which people are introduced and then disappear with the unexplained suddenness of victims of mob murders. [U.S. theatrical release]
  37. Streets of Fire
    For all its studied sultriness, the movie feels unsexy, perhaps because its inspiration is the kind of hard- hearted western that concentrates on manly combat while eschewing all sentiment.
  38. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
    Watching it is like spending a day at an amusement park, which is probably what Mr. Spielberg and his associates intended. It moves tirelessly from one ride or attraction to the next, only occasionally taking a minute out for a hot dog, and then going right on to the next unspeakable experience.
  39. The Element of Crime
    A film noir that's murky without being terribly mysterious.
  40. Firestarter
    A good, stylish mixture of the kind of hokey horror and science-fiction elements in which Mr. King specializes.
  41. The Natural
    Mr. Levinson, who both wrote and directed Diner, the small, exquisitely realized comedy about growing up aimless in Baltimore, here seems to be at the service of other people's decisions. Though entertaining in short stretches, The Natural has no recognizable character of its own.
  42. Sixteen Candles
    The movie is cheerful and light, showcasing Mr. Hughes's knack for remembering all those aspects of middle-class American adolescent behavior that anyone else might want to forget.
  43. Breakin'
    The film, directed by Joel Silberg in and around Los Angeles, employs a very small story that is meant to be functional but still interrupts the dancing far too often.
  44. The Bounty
    The movie seems to have been planned, written, acted, shot and edited by people who were constantly being overruled by other people. It's totally lifeless.
  45. Hardbodies
    This isn't the kind of sexy California beach film that lulls you into a pleasant stupor. It's the kind that makes you wish for a biblical plague.
  46. Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter
    While not exactly an actress picture, The Final Chapter takes pains to make its characters a little more personable than the horror- movie norm. This is unfortunate, since there is nothing to do during the second half of the film but watch them die.
  47. Suburbia
    Probably the best teen-agers-in-revolt movie since Jonathan Kaplan's Over the Edge.
  48. Swing Shift
    Mr Demme has a special talent for locating the humor and pathos within the commonplace experiences of American life.
  49. Iceman
    Having been handed a script that, at its best moments, is a wan though benign reminder of the original version of The Thing, Mr. Schepisi seems uncertain whether to distract the audience's attention by decor or to send up the cliches of a certain kind of science-fiction. Unfortunately, he plays it straight most of the time. [16 May 1984, p.17]
    • The New York Times
  50. Moscow on the Hudson
    It seems unfinished, not yet thought through. Even the title doesn't quite fit, since the New York City that Vladimir discovers is far more densely populated by Southern blacks, Latin Americans, Western Europeans, Orientals and Indians from India than by Russians. It sounds as if it were one of those titles around which a screenplay was eventually composed.
  51. Where the Boys Are
    Dumb, vulgar and mostly humorless.
  52. Romancing the Stone
    An elaborately produced, mostly charmless adventure-comedy that intends to make fun of a kind of romantic fiction that's one step removed from what the movie is all about.
  53. Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes
    Greystoke is one of the most thoroughly enjoyable films of its kind I've ever seen.
  54. Police Academy
    The movie plows through one outrageous sequence to the next with the momentum of a freight train.
  55. L'Argent
    It goes beyond the impartiality of journalism. It has the manner of an official report on the spiritual state of a civilization for which there is no hope.
  56. Racing with the Moon
    Racing With the Moon demonstrates such intelligence and wit that the result is an unexpected pleasure.
  57. Tank
    Tank is as immediately forgettable as a lesser, made-for-television movie.
  58. The Ice Pirates
    A busy, bewildering, exceedingly jokey science-fiction film that looks like a Star Wars spinoff made in an underdeveloped galaxy.
  59. Splash
    Splash could have been shorter, but it probably couldn't have been much sweeter. Only purists will quibble with the blissfully happy ending, which has the lovers swimming through a shimmering underwater paradise that is supposed to be the bottom of the East River.
  60. Children of the Corn
    For those who take Mr. King seriously, this is high-proof King corn, which is to say it has a kick to it even though it hasn't much taste.
  61. The Hotel New Hampshire
    Like the novel, the movie means to be trendy but it is out of touch, though not exactly out of date. It has no recognizable center of interest, no anchor for our attention. It's a series of whoopee-cushion gags...More than anything else, The Hotel New Hampshire is exhausting.
  62. Repo Man
    The real thing. It's a sneakily rude, truly zany farce that treats its lunatic characters with a solemnity that perfectly matches the way in which they see themselves.
  63. This Is Spinal Tap
    ''It's such a fine line between stupid and . . . '' ''And clever,'' muse the band members collectively. It certainly is- and the delightful This Is Spinal Tap stays on the right side of that line.
  64. Against All Odds
    Against All Odds is so lively and enjoyable on its own terms that its genre problems, while real, are easily overlooked. Mr. Hackford's brand of glossy, romantic escapism doesn't have to work as an homage. It has a vitality of its own.
  65. Harry & Son
    A big-screen blowup of the sort of "I love you, Pop" television play that littered the small screen 25 years ago.
  66. Footloose
    Christopher Penn very nearly steals the movie as Ren's hayseed friend, and the two share a musical scene (to Deniece Williams's ''Let's Hear It for the Boy'') that's almost as sensational as the opening credits.
  67. Lassiter
    Even by the standards of escapist entertainment, little of Lassiter seems to matter.
  68. Unfaithfully Yours
    Miss Kinski is a major problem. She's a beauty, all right, but she appears to have no flair whatever for comedy of this sort, or maybe of any sort.
  69. Reckless
    Contrived and cliched as it turns out to be, Reckless has enough vitality to carry it for a while, although it never stops recalling other films.
  70. El Norte
    Not exactly a great film, but it's a very good one that, through the devices of fiction, manages to provoke a number of healthily contradictory feelings about the world we all inhabit at the moment.
  71. Broadway Danny Rose
    Broadway Danny Rose proceeds so sweetly and so illogically that it seems to have been spun, not constructed. Mr. Allen works with such speed and confidence these days that a brief, swift film like this one can have all the texture and substance of his more complicated work.
  72. The Lonely Guy
    If you can get past the movie's aimlessness and its visual drabness, it has its share of isolated laughs.
  73. Hot Dog... The Movie
    It's a beach party movie, marginally better than the average, with snow taking the place of surf.
  74. Nostalghia
    Loveliness, I'm afraid, is really what this movie is all about.
  75. Yentl
    The best thing about Yentl is its earnestness. It may resemble a vanity production from afar (or at close range, too, for that matter), but even at its kitschiest it seems to be heartfelt. That goes a long way, though not far enough, toward saving the film from its own built-in difficulties.
  76. Two of a Kind
    The results are so disastrous that absolutely no one is shown off to good advantage, with the possible exception of the hairdressers involved.
  77. Uncommon Valor
    Action fans may well find Uncommon Valor enjoyably familiar, but for others it will smack of war movie dej a-vu, despite the new angle provided by its concern for American soldiers missing in action in Vietnam.
  78. The Keep
    The movie makes no sense as either melodrama or metaphysics, so that its expensive special effects go up in smoke. Literally.
  79. To Be or Not to Be
    Smashingly funny...This To Be or Not to Be scarcely misses a comic beat right from the opening sequence.
  80. D.C. Cab
    D.C. CAB is a musical mob scene, a raucous, crowded movie that's fun as long as it stays wildly busy, and a lot less interesting when it wastes time on plot or conversation. There's a lot of talent in the large cast, and Joel Schumacher, the director, generally keeps things bustling.
  81. Gorky Park
    On the whole, Mr. Apted's approach to the material is archly effective, making for a crisp, intricate thriller, well able to hold an audience's interest.
  82. Silkwood
    Silkwood is a very moving work about the raising of the consciousness of one woman of independence, guts and sensitivity.
  83. Scarface
    Scarface is the most stylish and provocative - and maybe the most vicious - serious film about the American underworld since Francis Ford Coppola's "Godfather."
  84. Christine
    The early parts of the film are engaging and well acted, creating a believable high school atmosphere. Unfortunately, the later part of the film is slow in developing, and it unfolds in predictable ways. The special effects are good, the performances are nicely deadpan, and the score is clever. But Christine herself is something of a bust.
  85. Sudden Impact
    The screenplay is ridiculous, and Mr. Eastwood's direction of it primitive, which is surprising because he has shown himself capable in such films as ''The Outlaw Josey Wales'' and ''The Gauntlet.''
  86. 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.
  87. Terms of Endearment
    Terms of Endearment is a funny, touching, beautifully acted film that covers more territory than it can easily manage.
  88. A Christmas Story
    Though Mr. Billingsley, Mr. Gavin, Miss Dillon and the actress who plays Ralphie's school teacher are all very able, they are less funny than actors in a television situation comedy that one has chosen to watch with the sound turned off.
  89. Amityville 3-D
    The third in a 3-D series, as in Jaws 3-D or now Amityville 3-D, simply isn't a good idea. Once the first two films in a series have exhausted most opportunities for action, the third is liable to average half a dozen exposition scenes for every eventful episode. And 3-D exposition is the stuff of which headaches are made.
  90. Star 80
    Make no mistake about it: Miss Hemingway, a beauty who looks a lot like Miss Stratten, is not giving an impersonation but a true performance, as fully realized as the somewhat limited circumstances allow. There is an alertness, humor and intelligence to her work that immediately identifies her as one of our best young film actresses, someone who reinvents character in her own image rather than simply miming it.
  91. Born in Flames
    Born in Flames, while inventive, is also much too diffuse and overcrowded. Only those who already share Miss Borden's ideas are apt to find her film persuasive.
  92. Testament
    Miss Littman, who directed and was co-producer of Testament, gives its individual scenes a very realistic air, even if the film's overall conception is sometimes strained.
  93. Possession
    It's a movie that contains a certain amount of unseemly gore and makes no sense whatsoever.
  94. The Dead Zone
    A well-acted drama more eerie than terrifying, more rooted in the occult than in sheer horror.
  95. All the Right Moves
    A well-made but sugar-coated working-class fable about a football star.
  96. The Right Stuff
    THE RIGHT STUFF, Philip Kaufman's rousing, funny screen adaptation of Tom Wolfe's book about Project Mercury and America's first astronauts, is probably the brightest and the best rookie/cadet movie ever made, though the rookies and cadets are seasoned pilots and officers.
  97. Under Fire
    Under Fire, which was written by Ron Shelton and Clayton Frohman, from a story by Mr. Frohman, means well but it is fatally confused.
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