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. Flesh and Blood
    A dreary pileup of hard-luck monologues and run-down locations, Mark Webber’s Flesh and Blood straddles the line between fact and fiction with exhausting earnestness and a fatal dearth of narrative.
  2. Along for the Ride
    As moving as Mr. de la Manitou’s testimony sometimes is, this movie too often feels like a credulity-straining attempt at hagiography.
  3. Permanent
    As the parents, Mr. Wilson and Ms. Arquette seem just about as tired as the characters they’re playing. As Auralie, Ms. McLean is appealing and fresh-faced and could do well in a better coming-of-age movie in a few years.
  4. Total Eclipse
    Unfortunately, the mad romanticism of Rimbaud's exploits has been made to look preposterous here, despite a cast that should have been magnetic in its own right. Total Eclipse clumsily exaggerates both these characters, from the moment when Rimbaud begins savoring experience in a laughably over-the-top poetic manner.
  5. Oleanna
    Mr. Mamet can be a first-rate film maker, and in works like House of Games and Homicide he trusts language as much as he relies on small, subtle camera movements. Here both the language and Mr. Mamet's film making let him down.
  6. Drawing Home
    A mild film, Drawing Home could use an electrical charge, or an undercurrent of urgency. The pacing is uneven, and the movie feels slow in spots and too long overall, even though it lacks detail that would have enriched it. An internet search offers a fuller idea about the real lives of the subjects.
  7. Out to Sea
    Frankly geriatric, and made without a single gunfight or explosion, the weak but genial romp Out to Sea supplies touristy scenery, familiar players and enough rumba scenes for 10 weddings. Everything about the film is as intentionally dated as its gag about Normandy.
  8. Devil's Gate
    It’s not good, but it could pass muster among midnight-movie enthusiasts or curious stoners.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Hellraiser
    Mr. Barker is no more successful in making the big leap from literature to film than Norman Mailer. He's cast his film with singularly uninteresting actors, though the special effects aren't bad - only damp.
  10. Bullet Head
    Is Bullet Head good? In truth, it’s drab, derivative and more than slightly silly, but it’s tough to dislike like a movie that proceeds as if the 1990s cycle of Quentin Tarantino knockoffs never ended and that uses the prospect of gory canine violence in service of loud and persistent pro-dog cheerleading.
  11. The Bounty
    The movie seems to have been planned, written, acted, shot and edited by people who were constantly being overruled by other people. It's totally lifeless.
  12. Acts of Violence
    This dopey action thriller harks back to grindhouse pictures of the ’70s and ’80s, although it’s too tasteful, if that’s the word, to consistently exploit the more lurid implications of its sensationalist scenario.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Barbarella
    The movie, written by Terry Southern and seven other writers and based upon a comic strip, rapidly becomes a special kind of mess. All the gadgetry of science fiction—which is not really science fiction, since it has no poetry or logic—is turned to all kinds of jokes, which are not jokes, but hard-breathing, sadistic thrashings, mainly at the expense of Barbarella, and of women.
  14. Please Stand By
    Despite [Fanning's] commitment to the role — and the generally fine supporting performances — this timorous tale sidesteps uncomfortable realities in favor of soothing whimsy and preordained uplift.
  15. Encino Man
    When Stoney explains that Milk Duds belong to one of the four major food groups, the dairy group, that's about as funny as things get. For a film that prides itself on throwing around Pauly-isms like fully (meaning yes), and grindage (food), Encino Man is surprisingly not buff (cool).
  16. Light Sleeper
    At its best, Light Sleeper is merely theoretical. Most of the time, though, it is artificial and laughably unbelievable. Even the dark, gritty Manhattan locations don't add authenticity.
  17. What They Had
    Programmatic and groaningly trite, What They Had, the debut feature from Elizabeth Chomko, would be impossible to swallow without its star-studded cast. Even so, it requires all their considerable skills to stop this soapy family drama from sliding into complete banality.
  18. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
    Though the new Robin Hood observes all of the classic confrontations that keep the tale alive, the film winds up as a mixture of listless adventure, wispy comedy and what is meant to pass for social realism.
  19. Species
    The director, Roger Donaldson, best known for the Kevin Costner thriller No Way Out, keeps the film moving. But there is only so much suspense he can generate from this stock story and familiar-looking special effects. Species may work best for viewers who don't like to be too scared by horror movies; it's reassuringly familiar.
  20. Along With the Gods: The Two Worlds
    Story clarity and emotional depth tend to evaporate amid the visual pyrotechnics.
  21. Nostalgia
    A soggy string of Hallmark moments designed to interrogate the value of the objects we cherish, the movie is front-loaded with major stars and squelching with sentiment.
  22. Death Wish 3
    There is not a moment of credibility in the movie and the ending is sheer chaos, and anticlimactic at that. Mr. Winner runs out of imagination before Mr. Bronson runs out of ammunition. But that should not detract from its appeal. Along with the pleasure of seeing predators get their due, fans of the Death Wish series may also count on the usual vivid and noisy nature of their disposal and the imperturbability of the disposer.
  23. My Art
    My Art invests far too much in the conceit. (The re-creations look like unfunny “Airplane!” parodies.) Part of the problem is that Ms. Simmons has surrounded herself with more interesting actors, including a scene-stealing Parker Posey.
  24. Son of the Pink Panther
    As the movie accelerates out of control into a series of frantically intercut scenes that lack basic continuity, the fun turns into a collection of abrupt non sequiturs.
  25. Not as a Stranger
    It is loaded with hospital lore, coldly realistic and compelling, but also it is creeping with ponderous characters. With so much dissecting in his picture—and so much of it being good—it is too bad that Mr. Kramer couldn't have done a little on his characters.
  26. The Last Movie Star
    The director Adam Rifkin wrote this showcase for Mr. Reynolds, who, like Vic, was a college football player. The Last Movie Star effectively allows the ever-assured actor to score a touchdown on an empty field.
  27. Allure
    The filmmakers seem less concerned with telling a story than in convincing the audience (and maybe themselves) that they can handle this provocative and potentially exploitive material they’ve contrived with what’s conventionally considered “appropriate” sensitivity.
  28. Outlaw King
    Mackenzie does nice, tight work now and again, mostly in more intimate sequences, but too many scenes drag, and his fetishistization of violence proves numbing.
  29. Sunset
    While Nemes’s near-subjective technique can generate genuine tension, it more often yields anxious tedium.
  30. Suspiria
    As the first hour of Suspiria grinds into the second and beyond (the movie runs 152 minutes), it grows ever more distended and yet more hollow. Unlike Argento, who seemed content to deliver a nastily updated fairy tale in 90 or so minutes, Guadagnino continues casting about for meaning, which perhaps explains why he keeps adding more stuff, more mayhem, more dances.
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