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. Ladybird Ladybird
    Ladybird, Ladybird is a tough, utterly absorbing film even at moments when it seems to skirt some of the fine points of Maggie's difficulties.
  2. Higher Learning
    Higher Learning culminates in facile violence instead of the assurance that this film maker, in trying to explain forces that oppress his characters, has really done his homework.
  3. The Madness of King George
    The Madness of King George mixes the ebullience of Tom Jones with a pop-theatrical royal back-stabbing that is reminiscent of films like The Lion in Winter. That makes it a deft, mischievous, beautifully acted historical drama with exceptionally broad appeal.
  4. Ready to Wear (Prêt-à-Porter)
    This time Mr. Altman, such a stunningly intuitive portraitist when he truly plumbs the mysteries that guide his characters, works without inventiveness and with glaring nonchalance.
  5. I.Q.
    The nice thing about I.Q. is that its intelligence doesn't stop at the title. In a romantic comedy that mingles brilliant physicists with auto mechanics, everybody manages to seem smart.
  6. The Jungle Book
    If this version of The Jungle Book makes for a fable that is thinner than it might have been, the film is splendidly picturesque and moves along briskly.
  7. Death and the Maiden
    Mr. Polanski's brilliance with the camera turns Ariel Dorfman's well-meaning but pretentious play about human rights into a harrowing experience.
  8. Nell
    What's remarkable is how seldom it delivers. For all its technical brilliance, not even Ms. Foster's intense, accomplished performance in the title role holds much surprise.
  9. Street Fighter
    As Mr. Van Damme fumbles through his part, you are likely to find yourself staring at the big lump on the right side of his forehead and wondering how it got there.
  10. A Man of No Importance
    A Man of No Importance is a small film with far more charm than its premise might suggest. It is acted with great warmth and wit by an ideal cast.
  11. Mixed Nuts
    Staged as pure fluff without an ounce of ballast, Mixed Nuts succeeds only in getting its cast into Halloween-caliber crazy costumes by the time it's over.
  12. Little Women
    Ms. Armstrong instantly demonstrates that she has caught the essence of this book's sweetness and cast her film uncannily well, finding sparkling young actresses who are exactly right for their famous roles.
  13. Richie Rich
    If Richie Rich has the ingredients for a sweet-natured fantasy of ultimate childhood bounty, the movie, directed by Donald Petrie, lacks any sense of wonder. Its visual perspective is decidedly grown-up and demystified.
  14. Dumb and Dumber
    A movie that knows much better than to try to make sense. It is essentially a strung-together series of gags, most of them thought up by Lloyd, an inveterate practical joker.
  15. Disclosure
    The storytelling of Disclosure is too forced and polemical to be on a par with better Crichton tales like "Jurassic Park." This time, it's the author who's the dinosaur.
  16. Cobb
    As a film maker who has his own love-hate romance with the sports world, Mr. Shelton is naturally drawn to his writer's uneasy relationship to Cobb. And at its best, this film explores the edgy compromises that link these two, while at worst it dramatizes the relationship broadly and histrionically.
  17. Trapped in Paradise
    Since Trapped in Paradise assembles three actors as amusing as Nicolas Cage, Dana Carvey and Jon Lovitz, it's a minor holiday miracle that this homey comedy barely elicits even a chuckle.
  18. Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle
    Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle has its flaws, but it also has a heartfelt grasp of what set Dorothy Parker apart from her fellow revelers and makes her so emblematic a figure even today.
  19. Three Colors: Red
    Red succeeds so stirringly that it also bestows some much-needed magic upon its predecessors, "Blue" and "White." The first film's chic emptiness and the second's relative drabness are suddenly made much rosier by the seductive glow of Red.
  20. Junior
    Proceeds efficiently but never quite lives up to its own potential as a sight gag.
  21. Love and a .45
    In any case, Love and a .45 is too mean-spirited to be funny, and it winds up nastily derivative rather than clever.
  22. The Professional
    Lacks the sexy elan of "La Femme Nikita" and suffers from infinitely worse culture shock. [18 Nov 1994, p.C18]
  23. Star Trek: Generations
    "Generations" is predictably flabby and impenetrable in places, but it has enough pomp, spectacle and high-tech small talk to keep the franchise afloat. And in an age when much fancier futuristic effects can be found elsewhere, even its tackiness is a comfort.
  24. Benny's Video (1992)
    What gives the film a chilly authenticity is the creepy performance of Arno Frisch in the title role. Cool and unsmiling, with a dark inscrutable gaze, his Benny is the apotheosis of what the author George W. S. Trow has called the cold child, or an unfeeling young person whose detachment and short attention span have been molded by television.
  25. The Swan Princess
    Loosely based on the legend that inspired "Swan Lake," and blatantly borrowing the formula of Disney's "Beauty and the Beast," this animated musical turns out to be funny and enchanting on its own. Directed by Richard Rich, who started an animation company after 14 years at Disney, "The Swan Princess" makes first-rate copying seem like a good idea.
  26. Heavenly Creatures
    Stylish and eerily compelling before it overplays its campy excesses, Heavenly Creatures does have a feverish intensity to recommend it.
  27. Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles
    His sumptuous film is as strange and mesmerizing as it is imaginatively ghastly. It's a sophisticated, spookily intense rendering of Ms. Rice's story.
  28. 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.
  29. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
    This is a bland, no-fault Frankenstein for the 90's, short on villainy but loaded with the tragically misunderstood.
  30. Double Dragon
    Although these scene-setting futuristic details have some humorous promise, "Double Dragon," the movie they embellish, is an incoherent children's adventure based on a popular video game.
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