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. Hiding Out
    Mr. Giraldi, who also directs commercials, takes a fairly ordinary approach to this easygoing teen-age comedy about a stockbroker in his mid-20's who must pretend to be a high-school student. The material is pleasant enough, and Mr. Cryer is a good deal less strained here than he has been in other roles, affecting a natural manner and a good way with wisecracks.
  2. Less Than Zero
    At heart, the film version of Less Than Zero is deeply conventional, with its underlying notion that these young people's lives are ruined because their rich parents neglect them. However, Mr. Kanievska gives it a superficial stylishness that is quite spectacular; every scene revolves around one ingeniously bizarre touch or another (the lighting effects are especially dazzling), and the cumulative effect is as striking as it means to be.
  3. Steel Dawn
    Steel Dawn has been directed by Lance Hool to emphasize Mr. Swayze's biceps. The movie starts with the mysterious fighter standing on his head. Maybe it looks better that way.
  4. Russkies
    A comic-book movie whose heart is in the right place.
  5. Sammy and Rosie Get Laid
    Mr. Frears and Mr. Kureishi have composed Sammy and Rosie as if they were building a giant bonfire in a mock celebration of the achievements of contemporary British society and, by extension, of the civilized world. They throw everything on -love, death, sex, politics, violence. A lot of stuff doesn't easily burn, but there's also plenty that does.
  6. The Hidden
    The movie is mostly a series of automobile chases through Los Angeles, but there is also some humor.
  7. Prince of Darkness
    A surprisingly cheesy horror film to come from Mr. Carpenter (''Halloween,'' ''Escape From New York,'' among others), a director whose work is usually far more efficient and inventive.
  8. No Man's Land
    Peter Werner, who has directed some stylish television shows (''Moonlighting'' episodes and the mini-series ''L.B.J.: The Early Years'') is competent but dull here. The endless car chases through parking garages and close-ups of the two friends talking seem conceived for a television-size scale and budget, then blown up to fill a larger screen.
  9. Suspect
    If Suspect amounts to less than the sum of its parts, those parts are often valuable on their own.
  10. Barfly
    Though it's set within the world of the seriously down-and-out in Los Angeles and is about people who are at the end of their ropes, Barfly somehow manages to be gallant and even cheerful. It has an admirably lean, unsentimental screenplay by Charles Bukowski, the poet laureate of America's misbegotten.
  11. Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II
    Hello Mary Lou has nothing much to do with the original "Prom Night" (1980), except that it's somewhat more entertaining if female nudity, bizarre violence and comically deadpan special effects amuse you...Bruce Pittman, the director, and Ron Oliver, who wrote the screenplay, have constructed the movie as if it were a gourmet banquet for toddlers. From the first course to the last, it's all ice cream.
  12. House of Games
    Though House of Games is not of the dramatic heft of the playwright's ''American Buffalo'' and ''Glengarry Glen Ross,'' the screenplay is the first true Mamet work to reach the screen, and the direction illuminates it at every turn. Both Miss Crouse and Mr. Mantegna and the supporting actors, including Mike Nussbaum, J. T. Walsh and Steve Goldstein, are splendidly in touch, not only with character but also with the sense of the film.
  13. Three O'Clock High
    The film jabs so relentlessly at the viscera that the audience is never allowed to notice anything independently; if Mr. Joanou wants you to spot a license plate, for instance, he drives the car right into a floor-level camera.
  14. Someone to Watch Over Me
    Howard Franklin's screenplay plays less like a feature film than like the pilot for a failed television series about New York policemen.
  15. Baby Boom
    Baby Boom isn't much more than a glorified sitcom, but it's funny, and it's liable to hit home. The reason: a devilishly good performance by Diane Keaton.
  16. Near Dark
    You might call this the scattershot school of film making... The result of being pushed and pulled through the confusing styles of Near Dark is simple exhaustion.
  17. Slam Dance
    Put them all together and you have complete confusion, a movie without any identity whatsoever.
  18. Like Father Like Son
    This slick movie proves how much fun it can be to watch first-rate actors challenge our credulity and rise above a second-rate script.
  19. The Belly of an Architect
    The Belly of an Architect does have a humanizing element in the form of Mr. Dennehy, who brings a robust physicality to Kracklite without missing the essentially cerebral nature of the role; this is one of the best things he has done.
  20. The Princess Bride
    Mr. Reiner seems to understand exactly what Mr. Goldman loves about stories of this kind, and he conveys it with clarity and affection.
  21. The Big Town
    This huge cliche of a movie isn't even a distant relation of films like The Color of Money, which can actually make you root for hustlers. The Big Town only proves we've gone back to the 1950's one time too many.
  22. Maurice
    Mr. Ivory and Ismail Merchant have long since learned to breathe life into their material without excessive reverence, in a manner that is as decorous as it is dramatic. As might be expected, the costumes, settings and cinematography are once again ravishing.
  23. Fatal Attraction
    Mr. Lyne takes a brilliantly manipulative approach to what might have been a humdrum subject and shapes a soap opera of exceptional power.
    • 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.
  25. The Pick-up Artist
    The film roams from the Upper West Side to Coney Island to Atlantic City, maintaining a lighthearted style that doesn't quite match the hints of obsessiveness in Mr. Toback's screenplay.
  26. Amazon Women on the Moon
    An anarchic, often hilarious adventure in dial-spinning, a collection of brief skits and wacko parodies that are sometimes quite clever, though they're just as often happily sophomoric, too.
  27. The Principal
    Frank Deese's script is as rudimentary as the lyrics that pound through the hallways, and Christopher Cain's direction provides no surprises.
  28. The Fourth Protocol
    A coolly efficient thriller with an octopus of a plot.
  29. Hamburger Hill
    Two actors who do have good material, and make the most of it, are Courtney Vance, as the platoon's snappish, highly articulate medic, and Dylan McDermott, as the platoon's exhausted sergeant. Mr. Vance is particularly fine. The narrative picks up weight and momentum every time he comes on the screen. Also good is Tegan West, who plays yet another young, raw lieutenant who must depend on the patience of his men.
  30. Matewan
    There's not a weak performance in the film, but I especially admired the work of Mr. Cooper, Mr. Tighe, Miss McDonnell, Miss Mette, Mr. Gunton, Mr. Strathairn and Mr. Mostel. They may be playing Social-Realist icons, but each manages to make something personal and idiosyncratic out of the material, without destroying the ballad-like style.
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