The New York Times' Scores

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For 20,335 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: 9,412 out of 20335
  2. Mixed: 8,455 out of 20335
  3. Negative: 2,468 out of 20335
20335 movie reviews
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  1. Take Care of My Cat
    As it abruptly crosscuts among the five friends, it fails to lend the characters' individual stories enough dramatic resonance to make us care about them.
  2. The Princess Diaries
    This is "Pretty Woman" for children.
  3. Virgin
    Ms. Kampmeier never brings her themes into tight focus. At one moment, the film is a detailed but familiar attack on smothering small towns and oppressive family structures; at another, it's a fable of feminist empowerment with an oddly fervent religious background.
  4. The Tigger Movie
    An adequate piece of children's entertainment, though it seems better suited for home viewing...than for the big screen.
  5. Fast Times at Ridgemont High
    There's a lot to make [Heckerling's] film likeable, but not much to hold it together.
  6. Storytelling
    The most pleasing paradox in Storytelling -- a determinedly paradoxical and, in spite of much of what I've said here, a genuinely pleasing movie -- is that it sets out to debunk this notion and ends up affirming it.
  7. Nijinsky: The Diaries of Vaslav Nijinsky
    Watching Paul Cox's impressionistic film based on the diaries of that legendary dancer and choreographer, it is impossible not to contemplate with a shudder the shadowy line between art, ecstasy and psychosis.
  8. The Rage: Carrie 2
    Uninspired Update, Unintentional Laughs.
  9. Army of Darkness
    Taken on its own terms, "Army of Darkness" displays some ambition and wit, though not nearly enough to lend it broad appeal.
  10. Brothers in Arms
    Effective filmmaking, and at the moment, when a significant portion of this campaign is being fought in movie theaters, it's also effective politicking.
  11. Catch That Kid
    Mr. Freundlich's naturalistic sensibility gets in the way of the film's broad fantasy elements, turning what might have been a stylized romp like Robert Rodriguez's "Spy Kids" into something a little too real for comfort.
  12. Charlie's Angels
    It never pretends that it's anything more than trashy, cheesy fun. But even trash -- especially trash this expensive -- should at least be well made. Sure, it's easy on the eyes, but would a little brains be too much to ask?
  13. Sex and Lucia
    Both refreshing and confusing, the film equivalent of an ice cream headache.
  14. Prisoner of Paradise
    Seems to just drift to a close rather than pronounce an end. This can be a result of wrestling with a daunting subject and not being up to its demands.
  15. The Whole Nine Yards
    Underwhelming, amusing only in fits and starts.
  16. Radio
    Mr. Harris's coach is not a flashy role. But the actor, who effortlessly embodies an all-American ideal of strength and decency, drains as much of the syrup from his character as any actor could hope.
  17. Ravenous
    A potentially strong cast makes its way in deadly earnest through material that's often better suited to a Monty Python skit.
  18. House of 1000 Corpses
    As much as film buffs might enjoy recognizing references to "Motel Hell" and other drive-in classics, Mr. Zombie's encyclopedic approach to the genre results in a crowded, frenzied film in which no single idea is developed to a satisfying payoff.
  19. Incantato
    The film serves up all the splendor of Bologna, and then an ending that is baloney.
  20. Backdraft
    While Mr. Howard ably maintains a strong forward momentum, Backdraft often feels directionless beneath its overlay of frantic activity. One clear story line would have been worth more than a series of subplots and tangents.
  21. The Shape of Things
    Unfortunately, these actors are subject to Mr. LaBute's usual dramatic method, which is to cobble together a preposterous moral outrage and then wave it in front of our faces, asking us to believe that it is a window, or even a mirror.
  22. Evil Dead II
    Its ideal audience would be full of Three Stooges fans with streaks for grotesque humor. [13 Mar 1987, p.C18]
    • The New York Times
  23. Marci X
    This is the kind of comedy in which the characters are construction-paper cutouts whose abrupt changes of heart are dictated entirely by the preposterous plot and not by psychological or social reality.
  24. Conspiracy Theory
    The only sneaky scheme at work here is the one that inflates a hollow plot to fill 2 1/4 hours while banishing skepticism with endless close-ups of big, beautiful movie-star eyes.
  25. Breakin' All the Rules
    The actor's (Jamie Foxx) deft touch lends the flighty story of mistaken identities and romantic mix-ups among mostly African-American characters in Los Angeles the kind of saucy bounce that Cary Grant lent to similar roles six decades ago.
  26. Brother Bear
    This opulent movie, with gorgeous rainbow animation, is heavy on message but light on humor.
  27. The Exorcist
    The care that Mr. Friedkin and Mr. Blatty have taken with the physical production, and with the rhythm of the narrative, which achieves a certain momentum through a lot of fancy, splintery crosscutting, is obviously intended to persuade us to suspend belief. But to what end? To marvel at the extent to which audiences will go to escape boredom by shock and insult.
  28. Black Hawk Down
    Sitting through the accomplished but meaningless Black Hawk Down is like being trapped in an action film version of "Groundhog Day," condemned to sit through the same carnage over and over.
  29. Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism
    Outfoxed will inevitably be discussed in the same breath (or with the same hyperventilating rage) as Michael Moore's ''Fahrenheit 9/11,'' but it lacks both the showmanship and the scope of that incendiary film.
  30. Love Don't Cost a Thing
    The cast is uniformly high spirited and attractive, and Ms. Beyer's direction, apart from a few over-weighted Wellesian camera angles, is functional.
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