The New York Times' Scores

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For 20,280 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: 9,381 out of 20280
  2. Mixed: 8,435 out of 20280
  3. Negative: 2,464 out of 20280
20280 movie reviews
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  1. Unstrung Heroes
    A warm, surprising, gently incandescent film that discreetly describes a family tragedy.
  2. Clockers
    Beyond its grit and nonchalance, this story has a resigned, reflective, hard-earned wisdom that's unusual in an American film about such familiarly lurid subject matter. It's even more unusual in a film by Spike Lee.
  3. To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar
    Though he and his co-stars tackle their roles with mischievous humor, Beeban Kidron's direction stays flat even when the actors are funny.
  4. Nadja
    It is refreshing to see so much style and life in the old undead tale, and to watch this strong cast with its perfect deadpan attitudes.
  5. Kids
    Mr. Clark's vision of these characters is so bleak and legitimately shocking that it makes almost any other portrait of American adolescence look like the picture of Dorian Gray...Kids is far too serious to be tarred as exploitation, and its extremism is both artful and devastatingly effective. Think of this not as cinema verite but as a new strain of post-apocalyptic science fiction, using hyperbole to magnify a kernel of terrible, undeniable truth.
  6. The Prophecy
    Angels have proliferated in popular culture in such profusion lately that maybe they needed a comeuppance. A few more movies like The Prophecy should stop the whole celestial bandwagon right in its tracks.
  7. Desperado
    Like "The Quick and the Dead," Desperado wavers uneasily between myth making and parody, so that too many scenes drag on long after they've lost their punch.
  8. The Brothers McMullen
    This modest, enormously likable film, about love and temptation and ties that bind, is about brotherhood most of all. [9 August 1995, p.C9]
  9. Mortal Kombat
    The movie's extensive martial arts sequences, in which combatants bounce off each other doing triple handsprings, suggest a slightly more earthbound version of the aerial ballets in Hong Kong action-adventure films.
  10. Hyenas
    Even done so lightly, the film still carries a sting.
  11. The Baby-Sitters Club
    The movie The Baby-Sitters Club offers the same comfort factor as the books, but suffers from a definite lack of excitement.
  12. The Usual Suspects
    Goes straight to cult status without quite touching one important base: the audience's emotions. This movie finally isn't anything move than an intricate feat of gamesmanship, but it's still quite something to see.
  13. Brian Wilson: I Just Wasn't Made for These Times
    I Just Wasn't Made for These Times, a documentary about Mr. Wilson that ought to fascinate anyone who's ever turned on a car radio in America, does more than induce this legendary rock recluse to speak for himself. . . . This film also illuminates the music itself and makes interesting, accessible sense of Mr. Wilson's very real genius.
  14. Dangerous Minds
    False and condescending films in this genre are nothing new, but Dangerous Minds steamrollers its way over some real talent.
  15. A Walk in the Clouds
    Here, instead, is Keanu Reeves in one of his off roles, sleepwalking dutifully but seeming to share the audience's bewilderment over how he wound up in this awkward, slow-moving story.
  16. A Kid in King Arthur's Court
    Sluggish and low-energy.
  17. Babe
    The movie maintains a refreshingly light touch in spinning a fable about individualism and conformity.
  18. Virtuosity
    If all of Virtuosity were as tightly controlled as that, it would exert a greater fascination than it finally does.
  19. River of Grass
    It is wonderful at conveying a sense of suffocating ennui. Too wonderful, since the story is so sketchily told and the dialogue is so fragmentary that it doesn't quite cohere. The characters remain hazy ciphers in the torpid atmosphere of a place you'll never want to visit.
  20. Something to Talk About
    It's rambling and unfocused, but still fresh enough to break the usual Hollywood mold.
  21. Waterworld
    It lacks the coherent fantasy of truly enveloping science fiction, preferring to concentrate on flashy, isolated stunts that say more about expense than expertise. [28 July 1995]
  22. The Net
    This paranoid fantasy is so resonant that it makes The Net an enjoyably creepy thriller, even though Irwin Winkler belongs to the nothing-is-too-obvious school of directing.
  23. Operation Dumbo Drop
    Operation Dumbo Drop is painlessly good-humored by any lights, but the viewers most likely to enjoy all this are those most easily driven to giggles by the idea of elephant poop.
  24. Living in Oblivion
    Wonderfully funny behind-the-scenes look at the perils of film making, no-budget style.
  25. Clueless
    Even if Clueless runs out of gas before it's over, most of it is as eye-catching and cheery as its star. [19 July 1995]
  26. The Indian in the Cupboard
    With its long silences washed over by banal, overused music, The Indian in the Cupboard is best watched for its ingenious tricks of scale and for an invitingly peaceful look. [14 July 1995, p.C3]
    • The New York Times
  27. Under Siege 2: Dark Territory
    Although Under Siege 2 isn't credible for a single moment, its director, Geoff Murphy, has done a smoothly efficient job of coordinating the action sequences.
  28. Nine Months
    Nine Months is slick, phony and uneven, but it's often raucously funny too. And Mr. Grant displays enough intelligence and sportsmanship to emerge from this ordeal as a major Hollywood star.
  29. 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.
  30. Apollo 13
    You can know every glitch that made this such a dangerous mission, and Apollo 13 will still have you by the throat.
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