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. Stay Hungry
    Stay Hungry, the new film directed by Bob Rafelson (Five Easy Pieces and The King of Marvin Gardens), isn't all bad. It just seems that way when it pretends to be more eccentric than it is and to have more on its mind than it actually does.
  2. Bitter Melon
    Although the first hour of Bitter Melon is a spiky and absorbing story of repressed feelings, the movie grinds to a halt in its final third as the characters talk things out, which might be helpful in life but in drama tends to belabor the obvious, as well as offer an easy exit.
  3. Split Image
    The shrill, melodramatic quality of the film's final sections, so unlike its calmly controlled beginning, suggests that no one connected with Split Image really knew which way this story was heading.
  4. Rust Creek
    Corfield is fine in a role that gives her little opportunity to do more than run and fight, but a woman this empowered removes the question mark from her survival — and the tension from the movie.
  5. The Wolf Hour
    The result is a sometimes punishingly theatrical experiment that teeters on the verge of surreality, transfixing us with the promise of something terrible lurking just beyond those ratty curtains.
  6. Lifeguard
    As a film, Lifeguard is romantic twaddle, but as sociology it's a spontaneous assault on a very American way of life.
  7. Silver Streak
    The sort of comedy that leaves you exhausted, though not from laughing.
  8. The Return of Swamp Thing
    The movie is based on characters that originally appeared in DC Comics, and means to be funnier than it ever is. It almost achieves its comic goal in one scene in which Swamp Thing and Heather Locklear, as Mr. Jourdan's innocent stepdaughter, attempt to consummate a love that cannot be. The film is otherwise composed entirely of special effects that alternate with whimsy.
  9. Action Jackson
    Crashing through are several raffish characters whose acting doesn't get in the way of the stunts.
  10. Mo' Better Blues
    From characters to camera angles, this story of a self-absorbed jazz trumpeter is one long cliche, the kind that might make his most loyal admirers wince and wonder, Spike, what happened?
  11. Death Hunt
    Nothing in Death Hunt makes a great deal of sense, though the scenery is rugged and the snowscapes beautiful.
  12. Bad Seeds
    There’s some fun in watching Wael con his students into learning — while also teaching them the art of the con — but the film . . . can’t keep the sentiment at bay for long.
  13. The Doom Generation
    Sledgehammer direction, heavy irony and the easiest imaginable targets hardly show talent off to good advantage.
  14. Nowhere
    If it weren't so overpopulated and desperate to shock, Nowhere might have succeeded as a maliciously cheery satire of Hollywood brats overdosing on the very concept of Hollywood. But the movie is so hectically paced that it doesn't have time to develop its characters or to flesh out the tales it sets in motion. Even comic books are better at telling stories.
  15. Head Office
    Has a droll tone that sets it well above comedy's lowest common denominator. But it also has a bloodlessness that keeps it from being funny very often.
  16. East of Eden
    In short, there is energy and intensity but little clarity and emotion in this film. It is like a great, green iceberg: mammoth and imposing but very cold.
  17. The Mission
    A singularly lumpy sort of movie. The film's most riveting sequence comes at the very beginning, when we see a crucified Jesuit missionary being tossed - cross and all - into the river and carried over the spectacular Iguassu Falls. Nothing that follows, including more pretty scenery and quaint costumes, comes close to equaling the drama of that one sequence - about a character who remains forever anonymous.
  18. Rolling Thunder
    The movie has some good things, but in the way it has been directed by John Flynn it moves so easily and sort of foolishly toward its violent climax that all the tension within Charlie has long since escaped the film.
  19. Little
    Little is overly protective of its characters and its audience; it’s soothing rather than sharp. That’s most likely because of an anxious concern for grown-up sensitivities. Smart 13-year-olds are likely to roll their eyes as well as laugh.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Apple Dumpling Gang
    Walt Disney started by making movies in which animated drawings played the parts of people or animals who stood for people. Later he turned to making movies in which people or animals play the parts of animated drawings. They bound, they double-take, they simper when moved and quack when angry. Their disasters—crashes, plunges through space, explosions—are weightless. The Apple Dumpling Gang is a fair example.
  21. Midway
    Midway solemnly cross-cuts between the war councils, chart rooms and communications offices on the American side and those on the Japanese side, with characters, who often have to be identified by subtitles, laboriously trying to give us all of the exposition necessary to make the battle coherent. There's no way to act such roles.
  22. Once Bitten
    Once Bitten affects a glossy, sophisticated look that does little to upgrade the film's adolescent humor. As directed by Howard Storm, it has a lot more stylishness than wit. Miss Hutton looks great in black, but her predatory vampire grows tiresome very quickly, as do all the Bloody Mary jokes.
  23. Girls Just Want to Have Fun
    Helen Hunt is a real scene-stealer as a girl who wears things like toy dinosaurs in her hair, in keeping with the film's relentlessly silly mood. The audience at the National Theater seemed giddy enough in its own right.
  24. Satisfaction
    Satisfaction is a typical, low-budget summer movie, where everyone has a hot romance, a good body and an expensive haircut.
  25. That Was Then... This Is Now
    Manages to be both prissy and prurient at the same time, as well as goofily romantic and nasty. To this extent, I suppose, it is an accurate reflection of Miss Hinton's sentimental fiction about earnest, inarticulate young readers.
  26. Honkytonk Man
    Only charm and sentimentality could have brought the requisite magic to Clint Eastwood's Honkytonk Man; unfortunately, this well-intentioned but weak film hasn't nearly enough of either.
  27. Saint Judy
    While the viewer can intuit that Hanish has a strong clear story to tell, the director too often tricks things up.
  28. Tolkien
    Tolkien manages several scenes of credible emotional delicacy.
  29. Paddleton
    Paddleton is so keyed into its protagonists’ various idiosyncrasies that it seems hesitant to grapple with its own central tension.
  30. Marked for Death
    As directed by Dwight H. Little, Marked for Death lacks much visual interest or suspense.
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