The New York Times' Scores

Select another publication »
For 20,324 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: 9,408 out of 20324
  2. Mixed: 8,449 out of 20324
  3. Negative: 2,467 out of 20324
20324 movie reviews
view
per page
  1. The Pulitzer at 100
    Although produced independently, this documentary, directed by Kirk Simon, plays as if the Pulitzers were presenting an award to themselves.
  2. Muppet Treasure Island
    In this sendup of Treasure Island, there are no compelling heroes or villains, and the suspense is minimal. Most of the fun lies in watching the Muppets defuse the swashbuckling tale of its scariness by superimposing their own precociously verbal identities onto their characters.
  3. First Kill
    The movie, directed by Steven C. Miller, doesn’t hold a lot of surprises, but there is worse terror-in-the-woods fare out there — rather a lot of it, in fact.
  4. The Fog
    The Fog is constructed of random diversions. There are too many story lines, which necessitate so much cross-cutting that no one sequence can ever build to a decent climax. The movie looks quite pretty but prettiness of this sort is beside the point in such a film.
  5. Moscow Never Sleeps
    Absent fathers and mothers, building bridges with children — Moscow Never Sleeps could easily have unfolded in a much darker register. That it doesn’t is both refreshing and deflating.
  6. City Slickers
    A comedy that's cheery, earnest, harmless and almost totally lacking in bite. City Slickers ambles along lackadaisically, incorporating birth, death, casual wisecracks and a running gag about two ice-cream moguls who pride themselves on knowing the right flavor for any occasion. Each of these things seems to be given equal weight.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. Adventures in Babysitting
    To be fair, ''Adventures in Baby-Sitting'' is determinedly cute, and its pep may well be appreciated by anyone with a frame of reference as narrow as the film makers' own. It's clear from the film's opening moments that pep is all that matters here anyhow.
  10. Hearing Is Believing
    Certainly the journey of Rachel Flowers, a blind musician and composer, is impressive, but Hearing Is Believing, a documentary about her, doesn’t put enough effort into giving her tale depth and context.
  11. Dark Star
    There are some funny routines here, though Mr. Carpenter doesn't seem to have cared much about integrating or sustaining them. Mr. Carpenter makes his amateurishness unmistakable, especially when it comes to the film's four actors. Only one of them can act even crudely (fortunately, his is the largest role). The other three, neither photogenic nor particularly extroverted, look like well-meaning fraternity brothers helping out a pal with his class project.
  12. Sleepwalkers
    The movie is filled with felines. It seems that the only things that Sleepwalkers fear are cats, which would like to tear them to pieces. That's why the Brady front yard teems with them. They are waiting for a denouement that, when it arrives, is anticlimactic.
  13. Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press
    Just because Nobody Speak has a timely message doesn’t make it an ideal messenger.
  14. Can't Stop, Won't Stop: A Bad Boy Story
    What “Can’t Stop” mostly leaves you with is a sense of Mr. Combs’s success.
  15. White Boy Rick
    Squint and you can sometimes make out the bigger, more complex stories in White Boy Rick, including those of a great city violently brought low; of fragile communities left to fail and rot; and of a legal system that seems permanently broken. Too often, though, the movie traffics in genre clichés and the usual suspects.
  16. Peggy Sue Got Married
    Most of the time, Peggy Sue Got Married is either underdeveloped or simply not thought through. The way the film gets Peggy Sue into and out of the past is no less lame than the explanation for Bobby Ewing's recent resurrection in "Dallas." So much key information is missing or left uncertified or undramatized that the film appears to have been edited by termites.
  17. Escape from L.A.
    Escape From L.A., which the director wrote with Mr. Russell and Debra Hill, is much too giddy to make sense as a politically astute pop fable. As amusing as some of its notions may be, none are developed into sustained running jokes. [09 Aug 1996, p.C5]
    • The New York Times
  18. Brave New Jersey
    The film’s narrative simplicity can be charming or frustrating, depending on your feelings about awkward dialogue and overreacting actors.
  19. Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace
    Darting around a futuristic Los Angeles on motor scooters that can fly, these plucky whiz kids are so indomitably cheery that they seem more mechanical than the demented cyber-messiah who tries to destroy them. At least he has a temper.
  20. School Daze
    Neither this anger nor Mr. Lee's daring is ever given free rein. Instead of a sharp satire or even an "Animal House" variation (since fraternity life is central to its story), School Daze is a collection of musical numbers, dramatic episodes, attempts at parody and cinematic wild cards, bound together only loosely by Mr. Lee's prevailing sense of outrage.
  21. Goldfinger
    What they give us in Goldfinger is an excess of science-fiction fun, a mess of mechanical melodrama, and a minimum of bedroom farce...It is good fun, all right, fast and furious, racing hither and yon about the world as Double-Oh Seven pursues the intrigues of a mysterious financier named Goldfinger.
  22. Heartburn
    Unhappily, the movie begins to show signs of wear even before the marriage does.
  23. Roman J. Israel, Esq.
    It offers tonal whiplash for viewers, with several potentially great ideas that don’t settle into a coherent whole.
  24. The Day of the Jackal
    The details are minutely observed and, to me, just a bit boring.
  25. The Reagan Show
    Reagan’s legacy remains a live and contentious issue. His name is still routinely invoked, on the left and the right, with reverence and rage. The Reagan Show helps attach a face to the name, but it doesn’t accomplish much more than that.
  26. 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.
  27. Jumpin' Jack Flash
    The idea is funnier than the execution. Miss Goldberg is only funny when she is being foul-mouthed, which seems rude since no one else is allowed to respond in kind or degree.
  28. Chaplin
    Chaplin is to serious biography, even to Mr. Attenborough's Gandhi, what unfortified cornflakes are to real food. It's slick packaging around what is mostly warm air.
  29. Rising Sun
    The film's mysteriousness is not profound. Anybody who hasn't guessed the killer's identity after 30 minutes should be forced to watch Rising Sun three times a day until Christmas.
  30. Spartacus
    It is a spotty, uneven drama in which the entire opening phase representing the basic-training program in a gladiatorial school is lively, exciting and expressive, no matter how true to history it is, and the middle phase is pretentious and tedious, because it is concerned with the dull strife of politics.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »