The New York Times' Scores

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For 20,312 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: 9,400 out of 20312
  2. Mixed: 8,446 out of 20312
  3. Negative: 2,466 out of 20312
20312 movie reviews
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  1. Meet Joe Black
    With a too-many-cooks screenplay credited to Ron Osborn, Jeff Reno, Kevin Wade and Bo Goldman, it's so long that every character regrettably wears out his or her welcome.
  2. I Still Know What You Did Last Summer
    An empty, farcical blood bath that's virtually shock-free except for one preposterous plot twist.
  3. Velvet Goldmine
    Brilliantly reimagines the glam-rock 70's as a brave new world of electrifying theatricality and sexual possibility, to the point where identifying precise figures in this neo-psychedelic landscape is almost beside the point.
  4. The Siege
    Edward Zwick's ultimately sedate thriller starts out with crisply efficient style and the potential for a much more involving story.
  5. The Waterboy
    This escapist comedy is so cheerfully outlandish that it's hard to resist, and so good-hearted that it's genuinely endearing.
  6. Elizabeth
    This Elizabeth is presented as a glamorously stressed-out modern woman who must cope with a super-intense case of having it all.
  7. Gods and Monsters
    What especially elevates it is the razor-sharp cleverness of McKellen's performance, which brings unusual fullness and feeling to a most unusual man.
  8. Belly
    Belly is a film that begs for a pat on the head for its virtue while catering to cinematic tastes more interested in crotch shots, topless dancers, wall-sized television screens, ganja galore and, wherever possible, crime without punishment, all to the accompaniment of a high-octane soundtrack.
  9. Living Out Loud
    The filmmaker has borrowed from Chekhov the soul-baring introspection that can be so ineffable on the page or stage yet becomes so damply sensitive and dramatically vague on screen.
  10. Vampires
    Ridiculous without being awful enough to be hilarious.
  11. American History X
    An inflated yet gut-slugging film.
  12. Life Is Beautiful
    Benigni effectively creates a situation in which comedy is courage. And he draws from this an unpretentious, enormously likable film that plays with history both seriously and mischievously. Piety has no place here, nor do tears until the final reel. Life is Beautiful plays by its own rules
  13. Pleasantville
    Ingenious fantasy.
  14. Apt Pupil
    Both actors play their roles so trickily that tensions escalate until the horror grows unimaginatively gothic.
  15. Orgazmo
    Faced an insoluble problem: how do you make a boundary-shattering gross-out farce about the porn business that isn't itself pornographic? Having the actors wear silly costumes embellished with sex toys just won't do the trick.
  16. The Cruise
    As much as Mr. Levitch's voice grates, you can't help but admire the zest for life of this heroically independent but impossibly self-centered crank.
  17. The Last Days
    Each person's story is so compelling it is worthy of a feature-length documentary itself. If The Last Days has a flaw, it is that the stories have been so abbreviated to keep the film moving quickly that they feel incomplete.
  18. Happiness
    It has taken only two films, "Welcome to the Dollhouse" and now Happiness, for Todd Solondz to establish his as one of the most lacerating, funny and distinctive voices in American film.
  19. Beloved
    Beloved works on its own but is much enhanced by familiarity with the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. In so ambitiously bringing this story to the screen, Ms. Winfrey underscores a favorite, invaluable credo: read the book.
  20. Practical Magic
    Based on Alice Hoffman's fanciful novel and directed with go-for-broke prettiness by Griffin Dunne, Practical Magic is nothing but a guilty pleasure.
  21. Bride of Chucky
    The novelty of a bloody horror film built around a malevolent doll carrying the soul of a serial killer has worn thin.
  22. The Sentinel
    Although the thriller aspect of "La Sentinelle" doesn't quite add up, the film is still an absorbing, psychologically resonant portrait of French student life. As directed by Desplechin, the attractive young cast hardly seems to be acting.
  23. Holy Man
    For all the funny possibilities of Mr. Murphy's neat transformation here, the latest comedy from Stephen Herek ("Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure," "The Mighty Ducks") doesn't know what to do with him.
  24. The Celebration
    Though it dedicates itself to avoiding directorial egotism, in accordance with strict rules of the Danish filmmakers' collective known as Dogma 95, Thomas Vinterberg's Celebration is still a virtuoso feat.
  25. Slam
    What Slam possesses is real passion, and that is in short supply in movies these days.
  26. Flowers of Shanghai
    Lavish in its depiction of surfaces -- clothing, furniture, lighting fixtures -- Flowers of Shanghai proves deficient in its revelation of inner lives.
  27. What Dreams May Come
    What Dreams May Come, based on a novel by Richard Matheson and directed by Vincent Ward, the New Zealand filmmaker noted for his skill at creating lavish cinematic dreamscapes, represents the uncomfortable collision of two ideas about filmmaking, one commercial, the other eccentrically, ambitiously dreamy.
  28. A Night at the Roxbury
    A lot like the brothers themselves: undeniably pathetic but strangely lovable. Still, do you really want to spend an hour and a half with them in a dark room?
  29. Antz
    Antz works best just showing off its prodigious voice talent.
  30. I Stand Alone
    The movie's triumph -- if that's what it is -- is in the force of its assault. It takes one man's unbearable truth and bashes us in the skull with it.
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