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 Dream Team
    There's nothing dreadfully wrong with The Dream Team, Howard Zieff's new comedy, except that it's not funny too much of the time. On those occasions when it is funny, the humor less often prompts laughter than mute appreciation of the talents of the principal performers - Michael Keaton, Christopher Lloyd and Peter Boyle.
  2. The Week Of
    While the movie is ultimately more of the same old same old, it is at least not as appallingly sexist and culturally insensitive as “The Ridiculous Six,” Mr. Sandler’s dreaded 2015 Netflix Original western “spoof.”
  3. Tango & Cash
    Tango and Cash is loaded with sweating, straining, smashing and grunting, with bulging-bicep shots and sadistic special effects. Watery electrocution sequences are a particular favorite, since these mean wet clothes, shooting sparks, writhing bodies and other current staples of high style. Images like these are so all-important in Tango and Cash that the idea of storytelling has virtually been annihilated.
  4. Submission
    The satire is cautious and the emotions restrained, so that what should be a swirl of lust, ambition, recrimination and bureaucratic absurdity rises only to genteel, nervous laughter and mild discomfort.
  5. The Fly II
    The Fly II is competent but hardly clever. The only respect in which it matches Mr. Cronenberg's Fly is in its sheer repulsiveness, since this film degenerates into a series of slime-ridden, glop-oozing special effects in its final half hour.
  6. K-9
    K-9 doesn't have a shred of credibility. And Mr. Belushi, despite some rough edges, lacks a strong enough macho growl to make Dooley seem like a police dog in human clothing. But with its surefire dog tricks and breezy pacing, K-9 is at least mildly diverting.
  7. Firefox
    Firefox is only slightly more suspenseful than it is plausible. It's a James Bond movie without girls, a Superman movie without a sense of humor.
  8. Police Academy 3: Back in Training
    The plot, which more or less prompts the gags without interfering with them, has something to do with a competition between the two police academies to see which one will survive a state-decreed budget cut. It's perfectly serviceable.
  9. Swamp Thing
    Wes Craven's Swamp Thing wants desperately to be funny and, from time to time, it is. However, you might wish it would trust the audience to discover the humor for itself.
  10. My Science Project
    A cheerful teen-age adventure film that in its snappier moments resembles a far less clever and less expensive Back to the Future. Despite a plot that has few interesting twists and a shoestring budget, the film glimmers with moments of drollery.
  11. The Manhattan Project
    Mr. Brickman, who directed the film and wrote the screenplay (with Thomas Baum), has a real gift for eccentric comedy and characters. The Manhattan Project, with its vaguely populist leanings, isn't crazy enough. Mr. Brickman fails to make big issues comprehensible. He just makes them small.
  12. Three Fugitives
    This comedy has the earmarks of humor and even a few genuine laughs, but it also has a prefabricated, automatic-pilot feeling.
  13. The Forgiven
    When the movie can stay out of its own way, it delivers some powerful scenes, including one in which Blomfeld faces down a would-be assassin (Nandiphile Mbeshu, superb) in a prison shower room. But beyond that, the movie offers conventional gratifications and no surprises.
  14. Ramen Heads
    Over-narrated and self-serious, this documentary allows its good intentions to pave the way to a tepid tale.
  15. The Nun
    The franchise has proved to be a reliable if variably elegant “boo” machine; the same applies here. Specters and hallucinations appear without consistent narrative logic. Characters veer off separately when teamwork might reduce brushes with demons or death.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Drowning Pool
    This second time around for Harper is a lackluster workout despite its colorful settings, occasional tension and a cast that includes Joanne Woodward (Mrs. Newman). As a convoluted caper it generates action rather than character and surface mystery rather than meaning.
  17. Harper
    The action is swift and the mystery fetching in this handsomely made color film. But eventually it seems a bit too obvious, imitative, old-fashioned and, worst of all, stale.
  18. Kings
    The first English-language film from the Turkish-French director Deniz Gamze Ergüven (her 2015 movie “Mustang” was a foreign language Oscar nominee) is well-acted across the board, and contains more than a few outstanding, unpredictable scenes. But in tying its story to this particular moment in American history, the movie bites off more than it can coherently chew.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Hawmps!
    Hawmps is a long march on light provisions. Based on a tiny historical curiosity—an experimental use of camels by the United States cavalry in Texas in the mid-19th century—it should have been a nice small movie. Instead it stretches into an underpopulated two hours and five minutes.
  20. Sadie
    Lynskey and Schloss are well matched as mother and daughter, and Griffiths builds a relationship between them as this far-from-innocent teenager navigates her world. That rough journey is worth watching even when this film falls short.
  21. Yardie
    John Conroy’s cinematography hustles and heaves, straining to inject a vitality that the story too often lacks. Yet whether in the kaleidoscopic warmth of Jamaica or the gray chill of London, Yardie’s sunlight-filled songs will make your toes twitch.
  22. Sister Act
    Sister Act was screened on Wednesday night for an audience of 300 nuns who found a lot of it funny, especially a closing gag about the Pope. Secular audiences aren't likely to be so charitable.
  23. The Hanoi Hilton
    An earnest but clumsy tribute to the heroism of the American servicemen - mostly officers - who were captured and held prisoner by North Vietnam during the long, desperate undeclared war we now refer to simply as Vietnam.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Cat o' Nine Tails
    Only blindly abject devotees of the whodunit should discover catnip in The Cat O'Nine Tails. Any simple souls who expect large dollops of probability and authentic excitement are cautioned that they're in short supply in the concoction of slayings and sleuthing that is dished up here.
  25. My Neighbor Totoro
    When My Neighbor Totoro, which was written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, is dispensing enchantment, it can be very charming. Too much of the film, however, is taken up with stiff, mechanical chitchat.
  26. 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.
  27. Night Shift
    This is a halfway funny movie, one that's got loads of good gags in its first half and nothing but trouble in its second.
  28. 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.
  29. The Seagull
    The cast is great. The play is great. But this is still a bad movie, because it has no clear or coherent idea of how to be one.
    • 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.
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