The New York Times' Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. The Indian Runner
    Loose, rambling and sometimes rudderless as it is, The Indian Runner has a fundamental honesty that gives it real substance.
  2. Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare
    Mr. Englund, playing the Halloween favorite whom audiences love to hate, now delivers lines like this with the broadness of a latter-day Jimmy Durante. But he sustains Freddy's peculiar charm even when appearing without ghastly makeup in scenes of Freddy's early years.
  3. The Commitments
    Mr. Parker immerses his audience in a world in which popular art amounts to a communal high, a means of achieving identity and a great escape from the abundant problems of everyday life. As in Fame, he does this with a mixture of annoying glibness and undeniable high-voltage style. [14 Aug 1991, p.C11]
    • The New York Times
  4. Child's Play 3
    Child's Play 3, directed by Jack Bender, misses the sharpness and dark humor that the director and co-writer Tom Holland brought to the original.
  5. Dead Again
    A big, convoluted, entertainingly dizzy romantic mystery melodrama.
  6. Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man
    Mr. Rourke and Mr. Johnson handle their roles with more ease and humor than can be accommodated by a movie so stuffed with mindless fistfights, gunfights, helicopter chases, explosions and leaps from tall buildings.
  7. Barton Fink
    An unqualified winner. Here is a fine dark comedy of flamboyant style and immense though seemingly effortless techniqe...It's an exhilarating original. [21 Aug 1991]
    • The New York Times
  8. Pure Luck
    Martin Short can do anything, it seems, except find the right movies to star in.
  9. Double Impact
    As it turns out, two Jean-Claude Van Dammes are pretty much the same as one. Fans who like their action unadulterated by story, character or acting know where to find it.
  10. Doc Hollywood
    The screenplay, by Jeffrey Price, Peter S. Seaman and Daniel Pyne, is occasionally sharp-tongued but more often pleasantly knee-deep in rustic corn. Mr. Fox also seems a shade more substantial this time, possibly because he is seen making life-or-death decisions when not fielding comic lines.
  11. Paris Is Burning
    Miss Livingston's interviews reveal a way of living that is both highly structured and self-protective.
  12. Trust
    Though Mr. Hartley's films are richly detailed, there are no frills or grace notes. Such work risks being too blunt, but Trust comes through.
  13. Life Stinks
    Even more dispiriting than the film's silly moments are its pious ones. Only at rare moments does Life Stinks offer much in the way of surprise or grace.
  14. Archangel
    From its flickering, inky cinematography to its wavering late 1920's-style sound track, to Veronkha's kohl-eyed vampish look, the movie is an expert parody of a period movie style.
  15. Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey
    Amusing but sloppy and overcomplicated.
  16. Boyz n the Hood
    The film's strength is that it sustains an intimate and realistic tone. Mr. Fishburne, who is called upon to deliver several lectures, manages to do so with enormous dignity and grace, and makes Furious a compelling role model, someone on whom the whole film easily pivots.
  17. Point Break
    Point Break, though it's anything but watertight where plotting is concerned, again reveals Ms. Bigelow's real talents as a director of fast-paced, high-adrenaline action. Whenever the flakiness of Point Break threatens to become lulling, Ms. Bigelow wakes up her audience with a formidable jolt.
  18. Regarding Henry
    A good deal more tolerable than any such gimmick movie has a right to be.
  19. Slacker
    The members of Mr. Linklater's cast, most of whom are non-professionals, are so amazingly effective that it's hard to believe they didn't make up their own lunacies.
  20. Terminator 2: Judgment Day
    Mr. Cameron has made a swift, exciting special-effects epic that thoroughly justifies its vast expense and greatly improves upon the first film's potent but rudimentary visual style. He has also broadened his initial idea to encompass better developed characters (after all, the first Terminator was barely verbal), a livelier wit and a more ambitious, if nuttier, message.
  21. The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear
    The enthusiastic Zucker, Zucker & Abrahams style of movie parody is too rarely seen to prompt much head-shaking about gags that don't work. The entire film is justified by those gags that do succeed, beginning with a pre-credit sequence that is possibly one of the most blithely hilarious six or seven minutes of film stock ever exposed to light.
  22. The Rocketeer
    A benign adventure saga that has attractive stars, elaborate gimmicks and nice production values -- everything it needs except a personality of its own.
  23. 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.
  24. City Slickers
    A comedy that's cheery, earnest, harmless and almost totally lacking in bite. City Slickers ambles along lackadaisically, incorporating birth, death, casual wisecracks and a running gag about two ice-cream moguls who pride themselves on knowing the right flavor for any occasion. Each of these things seems to be given equal weight.
  25. Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead
    Miss Applegate is charming when the screenplay allows her to slow down. Working against her is the director, Stephen Herek, who pushes every gag so hard and fast that he seems to be keeping up with a laugh track only he can hear.
  26. Soapdish
    Soapdish, directed with good-natured zest by Michael Hoffman, has as serious a split-personality problem as any of its characters, perhaps because its screenplay is the work of Robert Harling (who wrote the story) and Andrew Bergman, two screenwriters with decidedly different comic sensibilities.
  27. Backdraft
    While Mr. Howard ably maintains a strong forward momentum, Backdraft often feels directionless beneath its overlay of frantic activity. One clear story line would have been worth more than a series of subplots and tangents.
  28. Thelma & Louise
    It reimagines the buddy film with such freshness and vigor that the genre seems positively new.
  29. Hudson Hawk
    A colossally sour and ill-conceived misfire.
  30. Truly Madly Deeply
    Truly, Madly, Deeply should be enchanting, but it isn't. Everyone pushes too hard, especially Mr. Minghella, the writer and director. There are a few amusing lines and a lot of terrible ones, including Nina's overwrought response, early in the film, when her sister wants to borrow Jamie's cello: "It's like asking me to give you his body!"
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »