The New York Times' Scores

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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
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  1. The Tribes of Palos Verdes
    The Malloys’ filmmaking never rises to the level of the actors’ nuanced performances. The actors are energized, but the camera enervates.
  2. A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master
    Elm Street 4' does have an endless onslaught of astonishing, often grotesque special effects .Mr. Harlin only has to keep things moving, which he does with restless camera work, swirling high above Freddy and his victims. Freddy, who says I am eternal, seems to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, immune to directors and scripts.
  3. The Serpent and the Rainbow
    Mr. Craven's attempts at such effects are always gripping, but here they are sometimes overpowered by the complexity of the material. The search for the zombifying elixir, the influence of the Tontons Macoute, the fall of the Duvalier dictatorship and the mysterious powers of voodoo sometimes run together in a manner less provocative than confusing.
  4. Mayhem
    The director, Joe Lynch, concocts an uneven blend of video game setups and corporate satire.
  5. Beyond Skyline
    I did admire this movie’s near-lunatic genre-hopping.
  6. Ghost Stories
    Managing to feel at once painfully slow and bafflingly truncated, this creaky triptych of not-so-scary tales is a tame curiosity of movie nostalgia.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Distant Voices, Still Lives
    One of those dimly realized personal statements that ultimately says a lot less than the written program notes that accompany it.
  8. Maya Dardel
    For all the linguistic gymnastics, the film is hamstrung by its directors’ lack of visual imagination.
  9. Big Sonia
    Sonia is a powerful subject, but Big Sonia brings little perspective to her story.
  10. Homicide
    Homicide, which refers to metaphorical as well as literal murder, may be Mr. Mamet's most personal and deeply felt work. It's also his most blunt and despairing. Both "House of Games" and "Things Change" deal with conspiracies of some sort. Yet the scam that is the center of this film is unconvincing.
  11. The Neon Bible
    When a poetically inclined film fixates on the same image too often, it is a sign that the movie may have succumbed to its own dreamy esthetic. That is one of the problems of The Neon Bible, the English director Terence Davies's hallucinatory portrait of the American South half a century ago.
  12. Legend of the Mountain (1979)
    All these attractions are a necessary balm given that Ho turns out to be a deeply uninvolving character (Mr. Shih mostly smiles, grimaces or looks amazed), a wan placeholder for a character in a narratively thin film that runs over three very leisurely hours.
  13. No Stone Unturned
    What Mr. Gibney uncovers is grave and shocking and could make a viewer concerned for the safety of the filmmaker. But its presentation is flawed.
  14. The Rhythm Section
    The talented Morano, whose work on the TV series “The Handmaid’s Tale” shows a knack for shuddery grim realism, sometimes seems to want to subvert the espionage-action genre by bludgeoning the pleasure out of it.
  15. Captain Ron
    The scenery is pretty but the movie never makes one wish to be in it. Mr. Russell, a good, reliable actor, prompts a few smiles as the raffish, impossibly self-assured sailor who is always half tight. Mr. Short and Ms. Place also are attractive in spite of the dim material.
  16. 1492: Conquest of Paradise
    1492 is not a terrible film. Yet because it is without any guiding point of view, it is a lot less interesting than the elaborate physical production that has been given it. Only a very great writer could do justice to all the themes the Columbus story suggests. Ms. Bosch may be a very good researcher, but she's not a very great writer. She can't even squeeze in many relevant facts, much less define the relevance of those she does include.
  17. Perfect Blue
    With smarter dialogue, it might have made a fascinating film.
  18. Desolation
    Working a low body count and a slow burn, Desolation is a decent short film that’s been unwisely expanded to feature length.
  19. Freak Show
    Mr. Lawther is sympathetic and appealing as Billy, but Ms. Styler seems to mistake broad strokes for stylistic daring, and her colorful but diffuse movie never jells.
  20. Crocodile Dundee II
    Crocodile Dundee II has been attractively photographed, if unremarkably directed, and it aims for affable, low-key escapism just as the first film did. But the earlier one had novelty to keep it going, and this time the novelty has begun to wear thin, even if Mr. Hogan remains generally irresistible.
  21. The Strangers: Prey at Night
    Watching it with a demonstrative crowd in a Times Square theater proved to this former grindhouse devotee that sometimes you can go home again, at least momentarily.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Cotton Club
    The Cotton Club is not a complete disaster, but it's not a whole lot of fun. It just runs on and on at considerable length, doing obligatory things, being photographically fancy but demonstrating no special character, style or excitement.
  23. Sins of the Flesh
    No doubt subtleties have been lost in translation, but the film is best viewed as an overripe, noir-tinged tragedy.
  24. Big Time
    Clearly, the architect and the filmmaker are tight, which does not entirely benefit Big Time.
  25. 7 Days in Entebbe
    What should unfold like an unsettling chapter in a long, tragic story — or a tale of cruelty and heroism — feels more like an old TV show. Everybody is going through the motions.
  26. Life of the Party
    The zaniness is pretty low-key, and what we witness is less the explosion of pent-up energy than the gentle affirmation of exuberant kindness.
  27. 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.
  28. Overboard
    None of the proceedings are sidesplittingly funny, but they grow increasingly sweet-natured. The most remarkable aspect of this movie is its perhaps unwitting gentleness.
  29. The China Hustle
    In the case of The China Hustle, a documentary may simply be the wrong delivery mechanism for a byzantine exposé that cries out for detailed news reporting.
  30. Anatomy of a Male Ballet Dancer
    In retrospect, the sheer amount of gush in the movie, all the praise and feverish shouts of bravo, underscores the limits of affirmational documentaries. It is also a reminder that a movie’s meaning is made (and remade) by its viewers, not just its content.
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