The New York Times' Scores

Select another publication »
For 20,278 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: 9,380 out of 20278
  2. Mixed: 8,434 out of 20278
  3. Negative: 2,464 out of 20278
20278 movie reviews
view
per page
  1. Sophie's Choice
    Thanks in large part to Miss Streep's bravura performance, it's a film that casts a powerful, uninterrupted spell.
  2. Smithereens
    Eventually, it becomes clear that neither Wren nor the movie is going anywhere, since the character never becomes any more thoughtful or less selfish than she was to begin with, and since her bouncing between Paul and Eric has become both predictable and strained. But before it runs out of steam, Smithereens is ragged, funny and eccentric. It has as much life as the indefatigable Wren, and that's plenty.
  3. The Last Unicorn
    Features a cast that would do any live-action film proud, a visual style noticeably different from that of other children's fare, and a story filled with genuine sweetness and mystery.
  4. Still of the Night
    A velvety-smooth looking romantic mystery melodrama that has far less to do with life than with other movies. It's clever but chilly in the way of something with a mechanical heart.
  5. Ashes and Embers
    The film's concerns emerge as heartfelt even when they aren't clearly expressed. On those occasions when clarity prevails the style becomes emphatic and tough, but at other times it tends to preach and to wander.
  6. The Slumber Party Massacre
    The fact that Miss Brown and Miss Jones have obviously tried to inject a little satire and innovation into the genre just makes the ultimate vulgarity of their film all the more disappointing.
  7. Creepshow
    The best things about Creepshow are its carefully simulated comic-book tackiness and the gusto with which some good actors assume silly positions. Horror film purists may object to the levity even though failed, as a lot of it is.
  8. Alone in the Dark
    Unobjectionable even when it doesn't work, and certainly amusing when it does.
  9. Five Days One Summer
    Most of the movie is simply about mountain climbing, something that is undoubtedly more thrilling to attempt than it is to watch.
  10. The Man from Snowy River
    To appreciate it fully, however, one must have a completely uncritical fondness for Kirk Douglas as he acts his heart out in two roles; for picturesque landscapes; for silly plots, and for dialogue that leans heavily on aphorisms too homespun to be repeated in a big-city newspaper.
  11. First Blood
    It's a film with a number of strengths, not the least of them its fierce, agile, hollow-eyed hero.
  12. Halloween III: Season of the Witch
    Mr. Wallace clearly has a fondness for the cliches he is parodying and he does it with style.
  13. Stalker
    Stalker offers the eye so little that it might well have made a better novel, or short story, than a nearly three-hour-long film.
  14. Lookin' to Get Out
    Lookin' to Get Out is not as bad as Mr. Ashby's Second Hand Hearts though, like that film, it is a showcase in which excellent actors are allowed to make fools of themselves.
  15. Let's Spend the Night Together
    The classiest of concert movies, even if that sounds as if it ought to be a contradiction in terms. As photographed by Gerald Feil and Caleb Deschanel (of ''The Black Stallion''), it looks glorious, particularly in the opening sequences at an outdoor arena.
  16. My Favorite Year
    A funny and good-natured comedy that marks the directing debut of Richard Benjamin. Mr. Benjamin works in a steady, affable style that is occasionally inspired, always snappy and never less than amusing.
  17. Split Image
    The shrill, melodramatic quality of the film's final sections, so unlike its calmly controlled beginning, suggests that no one connected with Split Image really knew which way this story was heading.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Amityville II: The Possession
    The new movie starts out eerily enough but soon manages even to make sensation, blood, sex and suspense become a monotonous way of life. After a while, one doesn't really care what happens to this family of five who had problems when they moved in and whom we never do get to know very well.
  19. Hammett
    Hammett, the first major American movie by Wim Wenders, isn't quite the mess one might expect, considering the length of time it's been in production and the number of people who seem to have contributed to it. It's not ever boring, but heaven only knows what it's supposed to be about or why it was made. One answer would serve both questions.
  20. Zapped!
    ZAPPED! is a half-baked, rather retarded parody of Carrie and a number of other films that, using the awesome power of their ignorance, drove telekinesis into the ground.
  21. Human Highway
    Mr. Young’s slapdash style, which suggests a Roger Corman movie crossed with dinner theater, extends to the clanking sound effects and flagrantly fake backdrops.
  22. The Beastmaster
    It's meant as a tiny bit of praise to say that the movie, which was made in southern California, looks as if it had been shot in Spain or Yugoslavia. It looks both big and cheap.
  23. Class of 1984
    Class of 1984 is sort of crudely funny. The movie's idea of punk culture is also picturesque. But it quickly gets worse and worse until it achieves a degree of awfulness that, though rare, isn't much fun.
  24. Fast Times at Ridgemont High
    There's a lot to make [Heckerling's] film likeable, but not much to hold it together.
  25. Friday the 13th Part III
    As in each of the other recent 3-D movies, of which this is easily the most professional, there is a lot of time devoted to trying out the gimmick. Titles loom toward you. Yo-yos spin. Popcorn bounces. Snakes dart toward the camera and strike. Eventually, the novelty wears off, and what remains is the now-familiar spectacle of nice, dumb kids being lopped, chopped and perforated.
  26. Tempest
    Experiencing it is like watching a 10-ton canary as it attempts to become airborne. It lumbers up and down the runway tirelessly, but never once succeeds in getting both feet off the ground at the same time. The spectacle is amusing in isolated moments but, finally, exhausting.
  27. Pink Floyd: The Wall
    His The Wall is a good-looking film, and it has no shortage of nerve. When he puts an entire schoolchildren's choir on a conveyor belt leading into a meat grinder as they sing, ''We don't need no education,'' he is being nothing if not bold. These effects, while some are individually powerful, are dwarfed by the towering selfimportance of The Wall and by its lack of focus.
  28. The Pirate Movie
    The Pirate Movie stars Kristy McNichol and Christopher Atkins in a cut-rate kiddie version of Gilbert and Sullivan, laced with synthetic pop ballads and leavened with infantile dirty jokes.
  29. Things Are Tough All Over
    Cheech and Chong have a good time with Things Are Tough All Over, and you will, too.
  30. Tex
    An unexpected but certainly major force in movies at the moment, S.E. Hinton (with four of her novels being adapted for the screen), created in Tex an utterly disarming, believable portrait of a small-town adolescent. Tim Hunter's film version captures Miss Hinton's novel perfectly.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »