The New York Times' Scores

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For 20,313 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: 9,401 out of 20313
  2. Mixed: 8,446 out of 20313
  3. Negative: 2,466 out of 20313
20313 movie reviews
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  1. Uptown Girls
    Fatally true to the hypocritical values of its niche market. While pretending to teach a lesson in compassion, it wallows in the perks of privilege.
  2. Buffalo Soldiers
    Sloppy when it should be incisive, indulgent when it should be astringent, and ultimately unsure of what it is mocking and in what spirit.
  3. Rape Me
    Ms. Depentes and Ms. Thi -- push such chic amoralism to its logical conclusion, composing a numbing alternation of pornographic scenarios and brutal killings. The result is like something you'd see momentarily unscrambled on a hotel television set, but with better music and a little more of a story line.
  4. Joe Somebody
    Continually squanders its opportunities for hilarity.
  5. Chill Factor
    A mechanically efficient chase-by-numbers movie.
  6. Maestro
    A passionate but messy, often inarticulate home movie.
  7. Abandon
    A thriller wrapped in heavy-duty gauze to muffle the chills.
  8. Passionada
    As Passionada ambles toward a formulaic fairy-tale ending, it exudes such giddy self-assurance that you wish you could believe in it.
  9. Love Stinks
    A one-dimensional comedy that mostly falls flat.
  10. Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron
    As it stands, "Spirit" provides neither the profound human touch of the great Disney animation of the past, nor the dazzling, high-tech fun of present-day digital cartooning.
  11. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers
    In this film, suspense and psychological horror have given way to superhuman strength and resilience...The one effectively handled scene is the last, which promises a sequel with a feminist twist.
  12. R2PC: Road to Park City
    The intentionally self-conscious style of R2PC is a little hard to take sometimes because the movie is trying too hard to be funny.
  13. Blood: The Last Vampire
    Much more effective at evoking a paranoid mood than at telling a coherent story, and the jerky action sequences are among the film's weaker visual elements.
  14. The Middle of the World
    Wants to be both a realistic family drama and a mythical odyssey but lacks the substance to be much more than a vignette.
  15. Good Boy!
    As children's film premises go, this is a cute one, but the execution is a failure.
  16. Teaching Mrs. Tingle
    Newly benign and noticeably clumsier than the hits (Williamson) has written.
  17. Love Forbidden
    A model French psychological drama in which very little action occurs but feelings and intuitions are documented with precision and discretion.
  18. Wonder Boys
    With so much going for it, how could the movie be such a dud?
  19. Where the Heart Is
    No-Good Men, Foolish Choices and Birth on the Floor of a Wal-Mart.
  20. Bull Durham
    Dialogue that strains to be colorful, indiscriminately piled-on pop songs, plot developments that aren't followed through on, and minor aspects of motivation that are never known.
  21. Hey, Happy!
    The film feels too formulaic and too familiar to produce the transgressive thrills of early underground work.
  22. The Santa Clause 2
    Captures the true spirit of the holiday. It's mildly sentimental, unabashedly consumerist (with anything-but-subliminal advertisements for McDonald's hamburgers and Nestlé candy tucked inside), studiously inoffensive and completely disposable.
  23. Enigma
    The mystery of Enigma is how a rich historical subject, combined with so much first-rate talent -- a highly capable (if not always exciting) director, a fine English cast, a script by Tom Stoppard -- could have yielded such a flat, plodding picture.
  24. The Grey Zone
    Certainly an honorable film. But honorable is not always watchable.
  25. Planet of the Apes
    When Mr. Burton's "Planet" fixes on being entertaining...it succeeds. But the picture states its social points so bluntly that it becomes slow-witted and condescending; it treats the audience as pets.
  26. Lake Placid
    Trouble is, while not trading quips, the characters actually go through the motions of being scared of the croc, menaced by the croc and so on. And since even the gator horror satire is old hat (remember ''Alligator?''), there's no remaining way to make this interesting.
  27. Beetlejuice
    Elaborate as this sounds, there really isn't much plot here, only a parade of arbitrary visual tricks to hold the film together.
  28. Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde
    A movie for people who somehow managed to miss the point of the first picture.
  29. Committed
    Comedy, like marriage, takes more work than this.
  30. K-PAX
    It's hard to watch these two actors plow through the nonsense of K- Pax without feeling that a terrific opportunity has been squandered.
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