The New York Times' Scores

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For 20,313 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: 9,401 out of 20313
  2. Mixed: 8,446 out of 20313
  3. Negative: 2,466 out of 20313
20313 movie reviews
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  1. The Seagull's Laughter
    Mr. Gudmundsson has created a sleek, light and entertaining work, with a few contrasting pockets of darkness and mystery.
  2. I Capture the Castle
    The evident affection that the filmmakers bear toward Smith's novel, and toward the odd, spirited people who inhabit it, gives the film a modest, hardworking appeal.
  3. Muriel's Wedding
    Muriel's Wedding runs into trouble when it looks for poignancy too openly, working better at giddy moments than in its occasional sad ones. Most of the time, Mr. Hogan keeps his story light and surprising.
  4. The Sea Is Watching
    Fortunately, Mr. Kumai, who himself has shown no aversion to baroque melodrama, leans here toward a plain and direct style that is tasteful and intelligent, a boon, given the predictability of the story. He understands the difference between pitiable and pitiful.
  5. Croupier
    Clive Owen conveys a sharp, cynical intelligence that rolls off the screen in waves whenever he widens his glittering blue eyes.
  6. Chinatown
    Mr. Polanski and Mr. Towne attempted nothing so witty and entertaining, being content instead to make a competently stylish, more or less thirites-ish movie that continually made me wish I were back seeing "The Maltese Falcon" or "The Big Sleep." Others may not be as finicky. [21 June 1974]
    • The New York Times
  7. The Ignorant Fairies
    The acting is impeccable, and the intentions are serious and noble, but the affection it elicits stops short of love, and its coziness never risks true intimacy.
  8. Duplex
    A refreshingly mean-spirited gothic real estate comedy.
  9. Pi
    As smart as it is, Pi is awfully hard to watch. Filmed with hand-held cameras in splotchy black-and-white and crudely edited, it has the style and attitude of a no-budget midnight movie.
  10. Slums of Beverly Hills
    Ms. Jenkins, who makes her writing and directing debut with wit and confidence, keeps the small surprises frequent and the coming-of-age perspective sharp.
  11. Stepmom
    To its credit, the film doesn't sugarcoat its women too monstrously, and it lets real conflicts and opinions occasionally creep in.
  12. Brokedown Palace
    Brokedown Palace is good enough so that you wish it were better.
  13. An Ideal Husband
    Life at the top has rarely looked or sounded more fabulously elegant.
  14. Trekkies
    It is probably hopeless in the presence of Trekkies to do anything but sit back -- amused, bemused and astonished -- and watch the devotions of fans of the various incarnations of "Star Trek."
  15. Varsity Blues
    A paint-by-numbers story that offers no surprises and a hero and villain etched in white and black with few shades of gray.
  16. American Pie 2
    The "American Pie" movies succeed where many other comedies aimed at the youth market falter: they manage to be both lewd and sweet, exploiting the natural prurience of young people while implicitly comforting their raging anxieties.
  17. Amistad
    Dwarfed by the enormity of what it means to illustrate, the diffuse Amistad divides its energies among many concerns: the pain and strangeness of the captives' experience, the Presidential election in which they become a factor, the stirrings of civil war, and the great many bewhiskered abolitionists and legal representatives who argue about their fate.
  18. The Newton Boys
    If Mr. Linklater is not entirely at ease with action sequences (or with the obligatory having-fun montage once the brothers become successful), he still makes this (after ''Before Sunrise'' and ''Suburbia'') another admirable directorial stretch.
  19. Bolivia
    This film, Mr. Caetano's feature-length directorial debut, has an emotional integrity that's concise and direct.
  20. Borstal Boy
    A likable rites-of-passage memory piece doused in period nostalgia, including the prominent use of vintage Movietone newsreels to mark the events of World War II.
  21. One True Thing
    Bluntly, poignantly believable.
  22. U.S. Marshals
    A movie that knows how to pace its audience. Watching it is like going for a long and satisfying jog.
  23. The X Files
    Though both stars are sometimes eclipsed when the film strains for big action episodes, Mr. Duchovny sustains enough cool, deadpan intellect and suppressed passion to give the story a center. Ms. Armstrong has the harsher, more restrictive role, but she plays it with familiar hardboiled glamour.
  24. Psycho
    It remains the most structurally elegant and sneakily playful of thrillers. At least some things never change.
  25. The Prince of Egypt
    A well-made work with much to recommend it, even if its worthiness is not the brightest flare on the movie horizon this season.
  26. Groove
    The film's seductive lack of pretension will make a fan of you.
  27. Secret Lives: Hidden Children and Their Rescuers During WWII
    Ms. Slesin sums up the complicated feelings of Secret Lives with one well-chosen phrase: what these people are suffering from, she says, is the "trauma of gratitude." Her film is as complex and moving as that formulation.
  28. The Company
    Enjoyably lithe and droll yet somehow almost water-soluble; it seems to dissolve onscreen.
  29. Dogtown and Z-Boys
    As this taut, viscerally propulsive insider's history of the sport in its early years skids and leaps forward with a jaunty visual panache, it is impossible not to be seduced by its hard-edged vision of an endless teenage summer.
  30. The Real Blonde
    A lively, well-constructed film with a large and appealing cast.
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