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. Boiling Point
    Boiling Point is a barely tepid police story co-starring Wesley Snipes and Dennis Hopper, cast respectively as a hard-boiled detective and a wily con man. Since the material (written and directed by James B. Harris, from a novel by Gerald Petievich) offers not one shred of surprise, it's understandable that neither actor seems to believe anything he has to say.
  2. This Boy's Life
    The film recreates Toby and Caroline's aimlessness, but without appearing to understand it enough to make it as moving and important as it ought to be.
  3. Indecent Proposal
    Mr. Lyne's films may not cast any new light on the human condition, but they do keep you glued to the screen.
  4. The Sandlot
    Nothing about his modest coming-of-age comedy demands anything like this awestruck approach.
  5. The Crush
    Never succeeds in becoming either torrid or scary. It does generate a few chuckles in its depiction of what are supposedly the workings of a chic and hard-hitting magazine...The Crush is for the most part grindingly predictable and mechanically played.
  6. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III
    This Ninja Turtles tale is less violent and more scenic than its predecessors, since it gets the title characters out of the sewer and transports them back to feudal Japan.
  7. Point of No Return
    Once the story settles down to wondering whether Maggie/Claudia can find happiness in romantic love, it becomes noticeably less interesting. Ms. Fonda sometimes verges on the mechanical in mouthing her character's nobler sentiments (the film also relies heavily on Nina Simone records to express its heroine's feelings), but that is to be expected. At heart, this woman is little more than a laboratory specimen with great legs, so it's miraculous to find an actress breathing life into her at all.
  8. Just Another Girl on the I.R.T.
    Just Another Girl on the IRT means to be instructive about teen-age pregnancies, but what it's saying is none too coherent.
  9. CB4
    Made in the shadow of Wayne's World, CB4 is another Saturday Night Live-related music parody, this time skewering rap instead of heavy metal. Desperately uneven, it works best as a string of sketches about the title band, three guys who were born Albert (Chris Rock), Otis (Deezer D) and Euripides (Allen Payne) until they realized it might be more profitable to rename themselves MC Gusto, Stab Master Arson and Dead Mike.
  10. Fire in the Sky
    Fire in the Sky treats the story with cautious, unimaginative, quite boring politeness.
  11. Mad Dog and Glory
    The great satisfaction of Mad Dog and Glory is watching Mr. De Niro and Mr. Murray play against type with such invigorating ease. Each is the other's straight man, a relationship that is hilariously set up in the initial encounter of the cop and the hoodlum.
  12. Swing Kids
    Swing Kids looks good and moves quickly at first; later on, mired in familiar-feeling moments, it flounders
  13. Amos & Andrew
    Mr. Frye's initial conceits are good ones, but the film's humor somehow gets sopped up by the spongy writing and direction. The characters are fuzzily realized. The dialogue is lame and the continuity so shaky that one entire subplot sinks in confusion.
  14. El mariachi
    Mythic pulp has its allure, and it also has its limitations. El Mariachi displays no real emotion except a profound appreciation for the genre film making that has inspired it, and a delight in manipulating the elements of such stories.
  15. Falling Down
    Falling Down is the most interesting, all-out commercial American film of the year to date, and one that will function much like a Rorschach test to expose the secrets of those who watch it.
  16. Army of Darkness
    Taken on its own terms, "Army of Darkness" displays some ambition and wit, though not nearly enough to lend it broad appeal.
  17. Groundhog Day
    That glimmer of recognition is what makes Groundhog Day a particularly witty and resonant comedy, even when its jokes are more apt to prompt gentle giggles than rolling in the aisles.
  18. Dead Alive
    Because all of this looks blatantly unreal, and because the timing of the shock effects is so haphazard, Dead Alive isn't especially scary or repulsive. Nor is it very funny. Long before it's over, the half-hour-plus bloodbath that is the climax of the film has become an interminable bore. [12 Feb 1993, p.C16]
    • The New York Times
  19. Strictly Ballroom
    Baz Luhrmann's Australian film Strictly Ballroom is, in short, pure corn. But it's corn that has been overlaid with a buoyant veneer of spangles and marabou, and with a tireless sense of fun.
  20. Untamed Heart
    Untamed Heart is to the mind what freshly discarded chewing gum is to the sole of a shoe: an irritant that slows movement without any real danger of stopping it.
  21. The Vanishing
    The new film is twice as busy as its quiet predecessor, and perhaps half as interesting (which still places it several notches above run-of-the-mill studio fare).
  22. Loaded Weapon 1
    Watching Loaded Weapon 1 is like playing Trivial Pursuit with experts. It's exhausting.
  23. Sommersby
    Though there is a near vaccuum at the center of the film, "Sommersby" is never boring, largely because of Ms. Foster's beautifully self-possessed presence.
  24. Sniper
    As written, directed and played, Miller is as much of a nonentity as Beckett. Their initial enmity and subsequent reconciliation have no more dramatic impact than the battle scenes, which look as if they were planned by amateurs. The two central characters remain as vague as their targets, who are briefly seen at a distance through gun sights.
  25. Aspen Extreme
    Patrick Hasburgh, who makes his feature-film debut as the writer and director of Aspen Extreme, is a ski enthusiast and former instructor who still knows more about skiing than about movies. Even though it runs close to two hours, "Aspen Extreme" remains sort of stretched out and dramatically undeveloped.
  26. Damage
    Not even a film maker of Mr. Malle's intelligence and taste can make this stilted story add up. The only ingredient that can make sense of "Damage" is the obvious one: outright eroticism, of the sort that presumably got the film its original NC-17 rating.
  27. The Oak
    Though Nela's is a spiritual journey, Mr. Pintilie dramatizes it in the bitter ways of social satire. The movie has the tempo of cabaret theater. It is wildly grotesque, shocking and sometimes very funny. The details are vivid.
  28. Body of Evidence
    Body of Evidence ranks with the Edsel. It's not going anywhere. As a movie, it looks as if it wanted to be Basic Instinct, though it winds up more like Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS.
  29. Man Bites Dog
    A grisly sick joke of a film that some will find funny, others simply appalling. On one level, it is an in-joke about movie making, since one reason given for Ben's rampage is the need to steal enough money to make the documentary. On another level, the film satirizes real-life television shows that purport to take viewers into the thick of the action. It suggests how profoundly the presence of the camera affects events, and thumbs its nose at the very notion of documentary objectivity.
  30. Alive
    Alive remains remarkably colorless, despite its difficult subject and the harrowing adventure it describes.
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