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. Rumble Fish
    The stunning black-and-white cinematography in Francis Coppola's Rumble Fish functions rather like a cold compress, subduing a film that is otherwise all feverish extremes.
  2. Never Say Never Again
    As directed by Irvin Kershner, Never Say Never Again has noticeably more humor and character than the Bond films usually provide. It has a marvelous villain in Largo.
  3. Brainstorm
    However adversely it must have affected the morale of those involved in making Brainstorm, the death of Natalie Wood hasn't damaged the film. Her performance feels complete. Playing a more mature character than she had done before, Miss Wood brought hints of a greater sturdiness and depth to this role, which is pivotal but relatively small.
  4. The Big Chill
    The Big Chill represents the best of mainstream American film making. It's a reminder that the same people who turn out our megabuck fantasies are often capable of working even more effectively on the small, intimate scale of The Big Chill.
  5. Eddie and the Cruisers
    Vivid, full of conviction and more than a little foolish at times.
  6. Educating Rita
    The essentially two-character play has been opened up to the point that it includes a variety of settings and subordinate figures, but it never approaches anything lifelike.
  7. Revenge of the Ninja
    A sadistic, bloody, foul-mouthed action movie.
  8. Nightmares
    Nothing spoils a horror story faster than a stupid victim. And Nightmares, an anthology of four supposedly scary episodes, has plenty of those.
  9. Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence
    Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence is closer to a curiosity than to a triumph, though its conception is certainly ambitious.
  10. Strange Brew
    A movie that's barely there. The McKenzies are genial enough, and once in a while they're vaguely funny. But their film is so ephemeral that you may hardly be aware of watching it, even while it's going on.
  11. Fire and Ice
    The backgrounds and characters, though ambitiously executed, aren't particularly compatible, because there's nothing in Mr. Frazetta's steep phallic landscapes that speaks to Mr. Bakshi's overly sleek cavemen.
  12. Mr. Mom
    Mr. Mom would be funny if it had jokes. That's not so self-evident as it sounds, because it's not a claim that every failed comedy can make. The actors here, Mr. Keaton and Teri Garr, are likable and bright, and the situation has possibilities. Very little is made of them, except for such predictable developments as Jack's going to the supermarket with the kids in tow, and knocking over soup cans and fruit.
  13. Easy Money
    Easy Money is strictly for the easy laughers, or at least for those who find Rodney Dangerfield an irresistible card. Mr. Dangerfield has some funny moments here, but he also has a screen presence that's decidedly strange. He won't stand still, being given to constant jerking motions, and neither will he refrain from eye rolling and mugging at the slightest opportunity. Almost never, during the course of a very long 95 minutes, do these tics have anything to do with what is ostensibly going on.
  14. Mirror (1975)
    Mr. Tarkovsky appears so absorbed in grappling with his own demons that universality suffers. [17 Aug 1983, p.C14]
    • The New York Times
  15. Cujo
    As directed by Lewis Teague, Cujo is by no means a horror classic, but it's suspenseful and scary. The performances are simple and effective, particularly Miss Wallace's. And Danny Pintauro does a good job as the frightened child.
  16. Curse of the Pink Panther
    Not unfunny, and not really an offense to the memory of Inspector Clouseau, it's merely a movie with very little reason to exist.
  17. Smokey and the Bandit Part 3
    An interminable car chase punctuated by dumb stunts and even dumber dialogue, plus the well-worth-missing sight of Paul Williams in a dress.
  18. Risky Business
    Risky Business improves as it goes along.
  19. The Star Chamber
    It is a great disappointment, halfway into the movie, to find The Star Chamber so far off the track that its credibility almost entirely disappears...The Star Chamber has a well- meaning urgency, and it is an entertaining film even when it becomes so thoroughly misguided.
  20. National Lampoon's Vacation
    National Lampoon's Vacation, which is more controlled than other Lampoon movies have been, is careful not to stray too far from its target. The result is a confident humor and throwaway style that helps sustain the laughs - of which there are quite a few.
  21. Krull
    Krull is a gentle, pensive sci-fi adventure film that winds up a little too moody and melancholy for the Star Wars set, though that must be the audience at which it is aimed.
  22. Private School
    Movies like Private School usually make money, no matter how sleazy or derivative they happen to be.
  23. Jaws 3-D
    It's harmless but unsurprising...Without Steven Spielberg's timing or John Williams's music, the shark's periodic visits become feeding scenes rather than ferocious attacks. It's like watching someone make regular raids on a refrigerator in search of midnight snacks.
  24. Class
    The movie can't make up its mind whether it's a lighthearted comedy, set in what appears to be a posh New England-style prep school just outside Chicago, or a romantic drama about a teen-age boy who has a torrid affair with his roommate's mother. Either way it's pretty awful.
  25. Staying Alive
    This one is clumsy, mean spirited and amazingly unmusical.
  26. Son of the White Mare
    Son of the White Mare isn’t just old hat; the simultaneously geometric and fluid animation renders each mythic trope totally new.
  27. Stroker Ace
    The must-miss movie of the summer. It's a witless retread of the earlier, far funnier road-movie collaborations of Mr. Needham and Mr. Reynolds.
  28. Twilight Zone: The Movie
    The film, which opens today at the Sutton and other theaters, is composed of a prologue, written for the movie, plus four separate stories, each of them either based directly on a script from the television series or suggested by one. A lot of money and several lives might have been saved if the producers had just rereleased the original programs.
  29. Porky's II: The Next Day
    Once again, the proceedings have been directed with high energy and rapid pace by Bob Clark, and the results are slicker and more sophisticated than before. Refined sensibilities may understandably recoil from all this: high art is not among the aspirations of Porky's II. But lots of lowdown fun? Well, that's another matter.
  30. Yellowbeard
    What Yellowbeard establishes is that for even the funniest of performers, a good script may be as essential as pitching is to baseball.
  31. Superman III
    Anyone who has been following the ''Superman'' saga will find this installment enjoyable enough, but some of the magic is missing.
  32. Octopussy
    George MacDonald Fraser, Richard Maibaum and Michael G. Wilson are responsible for the story and screenplay, which was directed by John Glen, who does much better than he did with "For Your Eyes Only." However, the material is markedly better, and the budget seems noticeably larger. Peter Lamont's production design is both extravagant and funny.
  33. Trading Places
    It's a big, lavishly staged farce that aims to please even those who favor sophisticated screwball comedy, a genre to which it is greatly indebted.
  34. The Man with Two Brains
    This is Mr. Martin's movie, and he brings to it the ingeniously dopey presence that's become his trademark; he easily carries even the most dubious moments in the rather jumbled screenplay, which was written by Mr. Martin, Mr. Reiner and George Gipe. [03 Jun 1983]
    • The New York Times
  35. WarGames
    An entertaining movie that, like a video game once played, tends to disappear from one's memory bank as soon as it's finished.
  36. Psycho II
    Though Psycho II is essentially camp entertainment, Mr. Perkins plays Norman as legitimately as possible, and sometimes to real comic effect. His new Norman doesn't seem as much rehabilitated as reconstituted, but as what? That's the point of the film.
  37. Chained Heat
    The combination of the graphic if meaningless title, Miss Blair and the incomparably funny Miss Stevens is almost irresistible. I should have resisted more. [05 Jun 1983, p.19]
    • The New York Times
  38. Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi
    Return of the Jedi doesn't really end the trilogy as much as it brings it to a dead stop. The film...is by far the dimmest adventure of the lot.
  39. Blue Thunder
    The action sequences are what the film is all about, and these are remarkably well done, including a climactic, largely bloodless shootout among helicopters and jet fighters over Los Angeles.
  40. Breathless
    Breathless has a lot of mindless drive, but it's also funny. It's full of knowing quotes from other movies and from literature - William Faulkner in addition to Marvel Comics. It's less a film maker's journey of discovery than the film maker's testimony to his awareness of ''cinema,'' and sometimes it's just too much.
  41. Still Smokin
    With Still Smokin', Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong are scraping the bottom of their barrel and finding only bits and pieces of the characters and comedy routines that were so successful in their earlier films, including ''Up in Smoke,'' ''Nice Dreams'' and ''Cheech and Chong's Next Movie.'' [7 May 1983, p.16]
    • The New York Times
  42. Doctor Detroit
    Entertainingly slapdash.
  43. Valley Girl
    The characters and their jargon are occasionally amusing, but there's no action, no conflict, no overwhelming satire and nothing to jolt them out of their lethargy.
  44. The Hunger
    What makes The Hunger so much fun is its knowing stylishness, which Mr. Scott, who makes his theatrical film debut here, has brought to movies from a career in commercials and documentaries.
  45. Something Wicked This Way Comes
    Something Wicked This Way Comes, the Walt Disney production of Ray Bradbury's 1962 novel, begins on such an overworked Norman Rockwell note that there seems little chance that anything exciting or unexpected will happen. So it's a happy surprise when the film...turns into a lively, entertaining tale combining boyishness and grown-up horror in equal measure.
  46. Koyaanisqatsi
    Koyaanisqatsi is an oddball and - if one is willing to put up with a certain amount of solemn picturesqueness - entertaining trip.
  47. Flashdance
    With a score by Giorgio Moroder, and with ingenious costumes that are utterly au courant, Flashdance contains such dynamic dance scenes that it's a pity there's a story here to bog them down.
  48. Lone Wolf McQuade
    The plot, set in and around El Paso, is unimportant and nonstop, like an old-fashioned, Saturday afternoon serial, which isn't at all bad. Steve Carver, the director, understands that in such films action is content.
  49. Liquid Sky
    It's the overall resourcefulness of Mr. Tsukerman and his talented colleagues that gives Liquid Sky its high style. Visually bright and arresting, with a varied and insinuating electronic score, the film is full of eye-catching images.
  50. Losin' It
    Losin' It isn't without its likable moments, but it isn't overloaded with them, either.
  51. Screwballs
    Screwballs establishes that - in the absence of talent - teen-age prurience, old Thunderbirds, rock music and hula hoops do not add up to entertainment.
  52. Heart Like a Wheel
    Its story is unusual, but it's told in a style that is immediate and understandable, and that never opts for heroism at the expense of authenticity.
  53. The Meaning of Life
    Monty Python's the Meaning of Life is funny but, being unreasonable, I wish it were funny from start to finish.
  54. The Outsiders
    It is spectacularly out of touch, a laughably earnest attempt to impose heroic attitudes on some nice, small characters purloined from a ''young-adult'' novel by S.E. Hinton, the woman who wrote the novel on which ''Tex'' was based.
  55. The Black Stallion Returns
    It is funny, unpretentious and fast-paced. It has a kind of comicbook appreciation for direct action and no time whatsoever for mysticism or for scenery for its own sake, though most of it was shot in Morocco and is fun to look at.
  56. Bad Boys
    Bad Boys is a suspenseful movie, but it's also an extremely brutal one. It begins with someone's brains spattered on a wall, and ends with a particularly bloody battle. In between, there's a lot more of the same.
  57. Spring Break
    Each beer-guzzling marathon inevitably leads to one of those bathroom scenes that provide the film with just about its only jokes.
  58. 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.
  59. Wild Style
    Wild Style lacks a lot of the style of the people in it, but it never neutralizes their vitality.
    • 12 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    10 to Midnight
    The suspense generated in this most cheaply sensational recounting set in Los Angeles is episodic, rising at the time of the kill and receding into boredom at other times. The actors, directed by J. Lee Thompson, seem a reasonably competent crew, although in this raunchy, bloodstained, moralizing account there is not much opportunity to demonstrate. [13 Mar 1983, p.62]
    • The New York Times
  61. Say Amen, Somebody
    The music alone would be enough to make Say Amen, Somebody worth seeing. But it has warmth and friendliness, too, and some of its family scenes are as memorable as its songs.
  62. Tender Mercies
    Tender Mercies has a bleak handsomeness bordering on the arty, but it also has real delicacy and emotional power, both largely attributable to a fine performance by Robert Duvall.
  63. Gandhi
    Neither Mr. Attenborough nor John Briley, who wrote the screenplay, are particularly adventurous filmmakers. Yet in some ways their almost obsessively middle-brow approach—their fondness for the gestures of conventional biographical cinema—seems self-effacing in a fashion suitable to the subject. Since Roberto Rossellini is not around to examine Gandhi in a film that would itself reflect the rigorous self-denial of the man, this very ordinary style is probably best.
  64. The King of Comedy
    Though The King of Comedy seems less substantial than past De Niro-Scorsese collaborations, it's a funny, stinging film in which there's much to enjoy. Miss Abbott, Mr. De Niro, Mr. Lewis and the unforgettably alarming Sandra Bernhard (as a fan even crazier than Rupert, and one who looks like an enraged ostrich) deliver fine performances, and the film's satirical edge can indeed be cutting.
  65. The Pirates of Penzance
    The Pirates of Penzance has been made into a cheerful movie, but it isn't nearly as deft or distinctive here as it was on stage.
  66. Local Hero
    Local Hero is a funny movie, but it's more apt to induce chuckles than knee-slapping. Like Gregory's Girl, it demonstrates Mr. Forsyth's uncanny ability for making an audience sense that something magical is going on, even if that something isn't easily explained.
  67. Videodrome
    Though Videodrome finally grows grotesque and a little confused, it begins very well and sustains its cleverness for a long while.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Entity
    The Entity offers thrills in short staccato bursts and dull science in long bursts. If your thirst is for horror, it will not be slaked. If your taste runs to psychiatry, it will not be satisfied. If your fancy is for films that keep you riveted to your seat, you may find that you need a restraining belt by third-quarter time.
  69. Without a Trace
    Taken on its own terms, Without a Trace is a reasonably well made film, and it's certainly slick enough to hold an audience's attention. But its own terms are very, very limited.
  70. The Year of Living Dangerously
    Peter Weir’s The Year of Living Dangerously is a good, romantic melodrama that suffers more than most good, romantic melodramas in not being much better than it is.
  71. Coup de Torchon
    Coup de Torchon, which opens today at the Paris, has Mr. Tavernier's typical polish, which means it has much to recommend it. But however impressive the meticulousness and conviction on display here, or the performances Mr. Tavernier has elicited, Coup de Torchon seems strangely lacking in overall momentum and direction.
  72. Tootsie
    Tootsie is the best thing that's yet happened at this year end. It's a toot, a lark, a month in the country.
  73. Frances
    It contains too many show-down scenes, too much raw material that hasn't been refined, and more brutality than either the movie or the audience can make dramatic sense of. Yet it also contains a magnificent performance by Jessica Lange in the title role. Here is a performance so unfaltering, so tough, so intelligent and so humane that it seems as if Miss Lange is just now, at long last, making her motion picture debut.
  74. Trail of the Pink Panther
    The Trail of the Pink Panther is less a conventional comedy than an uproarious retrospective devoted to the particular achievements of the Edwards-Sellers collaboration. Some of the routines seem totally new to me, and others are familiar, but either way, most of them are huge fun, and a couple approach greatness.
  75. 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.
  76. The Verdict
    A solidly old-fashioned courtroom drama such as The Verdict could have gotten by with a serious, measured performance from its leading man, or it could have worked well with a dazzling movie-star turn. The fact that Paul Newman delivers both makes a clever, suspenseful, entertaining movie even better.
  77. Best Friends
    Even when Best Friends isn't working uproariously as a comedy, there's an element of original, offbeat humor that keeps it promising.
  78. 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.
  79. Airplane II: The Sequel
    Even though most of the gags are too familiar or too dumb to be hilarious, Airplane II is too good-natured to be a serious irritant.
  80. The Toy
    My mind wasn't simply wandering during the film - it was ricocheting between the screen and the exit sign.
  81. 48 Hrs.
    Walter Hill, the director of such beautiful but stilted tough guy movies as ''The Warriors'' and ''The Long Riders,'' has attempted something very different in 48 Hours a male-buddy action film that's positively witty and warm-hearted compared with his other work.
  82. Sophie's Choice
    Thanks in large part to Miss Streep's bravura performance, it's a film that casts a powerful, uninterrupted spell.
  83. Smithereens
    Eventually, it becomes clear that neither Wren nor the movie is going anywhere, since the character never becomes any more thoughtful or less selfish than she was to begin with, and since her bouncing between Paul and Eric has become both predictable and strained. But before it runs out of steam, Smithereens is ragged, funny and eccentric. It has as much life as the indefatigable Wren, and that's plenty.
  84. The Last Unicorn
    Features a cast that would do any live-action film proud, a visual style noticeably different from that of other children's fare, and a story filled with genuine sweetness and mystery.
  85. Still of the Night
    A velvety-smooth looking romantic mystery melodrama that has far less to do with life than with other movies. It's clever but chilly in the way of something with a mechanical heart.
  86. Ashes and Embers
    The film's concerns emerge as heartfelt even when they aren't clearly expressed. On those occasions when clarity prevails the style becomes emphatic and tough, but at other times it tends to preach and to wander.
  87. The Slumber Party Massacre
    The fact that Miss Brown and Miss Jones have obviously tried to inject a little satire and innovation into the genre just makes the ultimate vulgarity of their film all the more disappointing.
  88. Creepshow
    The best things about Creepshow are its carefully simulated comic-book tackiness and the gusto with which some good actors assume silly positions. Horror film purists may object to the levity even though failed, as a lot of it is.
  89. Alone in the Dark
    Unobjectionable even when it doesn't work, and certainly amusing when it does.
  90. Five Days One Summer
    Most of the movie is simply about mountain climbing, something that is undoubtedly more thrilling to attempt than it is to watch.
  91. The Man from Snowy River
    To appreciate it fully, however, one must have a completely uncritical fondness for Kirk Douglas as he acts his heart out in two roles; for picturesque landscapes; for silly plots, and for dialogue that leans heavily on aphorisms too homespun to be repeated in a big-city newspaper.
  92. First Blood
    It's a film with a number of strengths, not the least of them its fierce, agile, hollow-eyed hero.
  93. Halloween III: Season of the Witch
    Mr. Wallace clearly has a fondness for the cliches he is parodying and he does it with style.
  94. Stalker
    Stalker offers the eye so little that it might well have made a better novel, or short story, than a nearly three-hour-long film.
  95. 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.
  96. Let's Spend the Night Together
    The classiest of concert movies, even if that sounds as if it ought to be a contradiction in terms. As photographed by Gerald Feil and Caleb Deschanel (of ''The Black Stallion''), it looks glorious, particularly in the opening sequences at an outdoor arena.
  97. My Favorite Year
    A funny and good-natured comedy that marks the directing debut of Richard Benjamin. Mr. Benjamin works in a steady, affable style that is occasionally inspired, always snappy and never less than amusing.
  98. 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.
    • 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.
  100. Hammett
    Hammett, the first major American movie by Wim Wenders, isn't quite the mess one might expect, considering the length of time it's been in production and the number of people who seem to have contributed to it. It's not ever boring, but heaven only knows what it's supposed to be about or why it was made. One answer would serve both questions.
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