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. Frogs
    Frogs, which is not to be confused with The Birds for an instant, is an end-of-the-world junk movie, photographed rather prettily in Florida and acted by Milland as if he were sight-reading random passages from the dictionary.
  2. The Miracle of the Little Prince
    The Miracle of the Little Prince seems to have been made from the supposition that too many discussions of grammar or syntax might bore viewers. Even so, the platitudes are worse. A stronger movie might have dug more deeply into the languages it wishes to save.
  3. An Officer and a Spy
    An Officer and a Spy is well-crafted; Polanski’s movies generally are. Its contribution to cinema’s role in historical storytelling, though, seems largely as an allegory about Polanski.
  4. The Great White Hope
    The Great White Hope is one of those liberal, well-meaning, fervently uncontroversial works that pretend to tackle contemporary problems by finding analogies at a safe remove in history.
  5. Cyrano, My Love
    As the camera circles swirling skirts and sweeps through elegant cafes, the director, Alexis Michalik, whisks up a whirlwind of soapy declarations and backstage chaos. For many viewers, that will be enough, with enjoyment in direct proportion to tolerance for theatrical farce and hyper-romantic dialogue — and a lead character who is less engaging than either.
  6. Fade to Black
    The trouble with Fade to Black is that it's supposed to be a thriller. It's much more amusing than it is scary, although the killings are gory enough to be borderline vile. [17 Oct 1980, p.C5]
    • The New York Times
  7. Fire and Ice
    The backgrounds and characters, though ambitiously executed, aren't particularly compatible, because there's nothing in Mr. Frazetta's steep phallic landscapes that speaks to Mr. Bakshi's overly sleek cavemen.
  8. The Hand That Rocks the Cradle
    Though Mr. Hanson ("Bad Influence," "The Bedroom Window") is a slick movie maker, he is not an especially persuasive one here.
  9. Moonlight Sonata: Deafness in Three Movements
    The film’s deaf subjects feel creatively and philosophically shortchanged.
  10. Redistribution
    If evacuating cinema means engaging with the medium’s properties in only the silliest ways — mismatching subtitles with images and voices with speakers — Price certainly does that.
  11. Guns Akimbo
    A satire of overamped gamer culture that is itself too overamped to be much fun, Guns Akimbo takes a while before it stops showing off its virtuosity — shots that turn cartwheels, frantic cutting, an onslaught of graphics — and finds a groove.
  12. Lord of the Flies
    A curiously flat and fragmentary visualization of the original.
  13. Lord of the Flies
    As directed by Harry Hook, the new Lord of the Flies offers much spectacle for the eye and almost nothing to keep the mind from wandering.
    • The New York Times
  14. Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer
    The various excuses made for The Enquirer’s ethics undermine Landsman’s efforts to portray the paper as splashy, all-American fun.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Killers
    Donald Siegel, a talented director, is too handicapped by his limited means to do much with the fragments of plot about a fall guy involved with a mail robbery, a devious redhead and double-crosses following in predictable sequence. His actors seem dispirited by the script.
  16. The Times of Bill Cunningham
    This talking-head footage is a promising start that ultimately leads to a less than illuminating documentary.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Cincinnati Kid
    A respectably packaged drama of a young card sharp, played by Steve McQueen, with a capable enough cast, that pungently projects the machinations and back-room temperatures of the side-street professional gambling world and little else.
  18. Cry-Baby
    What it doesn't have, unfortunately, is enough true conviction to rise above novelty status. Nor does it really have a plot.
  19. Série Noire
    Serie Noire,' adapted by Mr. Corneau and Georges Perec from ''A Hell of a Woman'' by the late Jim Thompson, takes itself much too seriously, as is the way with humorless French adapters of American fiction of this sort.
  20. The Time Machine
    The drama, for all its invention, is creaky and a bit passé. (Apparently there has still been no contact with other planets in 800,000 A. D.) And the mood, while delicately wistful, is not so flippant or droll as it might be in a fiction as fanciful and flighty as this one naturally is.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    13 Ghosts
    It's too bad Mr. Castle, in serving up his ghosts, didn't simply have some cartoonists draw, 'em on in full view.
  22. 6 Underground
    When it comes to turning up action to 11, Bay is incorrigible. Not just with sound and fury; there are genuinely eccentric innovations here. There’s certainly not a whole lot of recognizable humanity, but hey, that’s why there’s “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.”
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    House of Usher
    Under the low-budget circumstances, Vincent Price and Myrna Fahey should not be blamed for portraying the decadent Ushers with arch affectation, nor Mark Damon held to account for the traces of Brooklynese that creep into his stiffly costumed impersonation of the mystified interloper.
  24. The Gentlemen
    The point is cleverness and looking cool, though, mostly the movie is about Ritchie’s own conspicuous pleasure directing famous actors having a lark, trading insults, making mischief. There’s not much else, which depending on your mood and the laxity of your ethical qualms, might be enough.
  25. The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again
    As cheerful and painless as not going to the dentist.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Shaggy D.A.
    As the sequel to "The Shaggy Dog," Walt Disney's 1959 moneymaker, The Shaggy D.A. is a farce with all the witless energy of an unrestrained Great Dane puppy and, thankfully, a cast and director who generally avoid taking themselves or the free-wheeling plot seriously.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Barefoot Executive
    In this genial but strained and arch frolic, the one real joke is not only "in" but it wears thin and even frantic.
  28. Escape to Witch Mountain
    Escape to Witch Mountain is a Walt Disney production for children who will watch absolutely anything that moves...It's not very scary, but neither is it very exciting.
  29. Kinetta
    Time hasn’t made it more than a cryptic curiosity. Dialogue is sparse, and it takes some time for the threesome’s dynamic to come into focus, to the extent that it ever does.
  30. The Sandlot
    Nothing about his modest coming-of-age comedy demands anything like this awestruck approach.
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