The New York Times' Scores

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:
20280 movie reviews
  1. Directed by Dwight Little of "Free Willy 2," and written by onetime high school classmates, Wayne Beach and David Hodgin (Mr. Hodgin died in 1995), Murder at 1600 eagerly invokes other films and stock images without showing much style of its own.
  2. Traveller is just a hot little sleeper with strong characters and a story to tell.
  3. Leaky PT boat of a comedy, descended from the television series.
  4. Enough wild-card energy to keep it bright and surprising.
  5. A trashily entertaining reptilian version of ''Jaws'' set in the steaming heart of the Amazon rain forest.
  6. And the dancing, as in ''Strictly Ballroom,'' is filmed with a wishful Fred-and-Ginger sweetness that gives the film a studiously effervescent mood.
  7. In trying to keep track of everybody while providing enough melodrama to sustain an atmosphere of controlled terror, Paradise Road stumbles all over itself and never really finds its center.
  8. It winds up illustrating the very emptiness it mocks.
  9. Best watched as a showcase for radiant young talent.
  10. Smith's knowing humor and unruffled style make a good antidote to gender chaos. Music by David Pirner contributes to the film's loose, inviting mood.
  11. Loud, frantic, ridiculously overproduced and featuring a preening performance by Val Kilmer as a supposedly brilliant master of disguise, The Saint is sheer overkill.
  12. Rodman, awkward but definitely lively, is the occasion for har-har hair jokes ("Who does your hair, Siegfried or Roy?") and gives the film some much-needed comic relief. Rourke, as a villain named Stavros, is scary. And for once, he's supposed to be.
  13. Five-year-olds who have read their Shakespeare will recognize that Turbo is a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing.
  14. Mr. Pitt moves through this unexpectedly solid thriller with dazzling confidence, showing off all the star power that he usually works overtime to hide.
  15. While the animated characters, bright colors and an appealing Randy Newman score may keep the children content, Cats Don't Dance is no saccharine fantasy. Its Hollywood references and dark satire constitute its real strengths.
  16. On its own good-natured terms, Selena' is both pleasant to watch and instructive in familiarizing a movie audience with the Texan-Mexican borderland music known as Tejano.
  17. Two little words: Jim Carrey. That's all it takes to transform Liar Liar from a formulaic Hollywood comedy into an uproarious one-man free-for-all.
  18. The Crash characters sleepwalk through this story in a state of futuristic numbness, seeking extreme forms of sensation because familiar feelings have long since failed them. It's a chilling, ghastly possibility that manages to exert a grim fascination.
  19. A pictorial tone poem of astonishing visual intensity and emotional depth.
  20. This direction is more ambitious than apt, since it calls attention to the artifice that Mr. Gray otherwise conceals so well. Cuts and scene changes become distractingly blunt, as do the star's efforts to suggest spontaneous enthusiasm.
  21. The film, to its credit, never tries to pluck your heartstrings. As it follows the Geldharts around New York, they are figures in a meditative dialogue on human values that reaches no easy conclusions.
  22. Slinky, sexy Love Jones brings new life to an old story: a courtship and all its predictable detours on the road to romance, with a boy-meets-girl inexorability along the way to love.
  23. Thanks to sharp editing and surprisingly strong comic timing, the film puts less emphasis on the Stern raunchiness than on how his wilder routines make listeners drive off the road.
  24. Jungle 2 Jungle' still finds time to appreciate Mr. Allen's easy way with a child actor, an audience or a heavily tranquilized pet cat.
  25. That it succeeds in being both stimulating and funny is a testament to the talent and open-heartedness of Ms. Dunye, who wrote and directed the movie and is its star.
  26. The main action of The Daytrippers is bright, real and even poignant enough to make this journey worth the ride.
  27. Crackling good... the best crime movie in a long while.
  28. The role of Jimmy is one of Mr. Jackson's scarier characters, and this brilliant actor inhabits all four corners of his jittery, avaricious personality. When he and Sydney finally clash, the movie makes its darkest, cleverest turn into film-noir nightmare.
  29. This story has now been gracefully adapted by Bille August into a sleek, good-looking film that captures the book's peculiar fascination.
  30. This contemporary sex farce, directed by Jeff Pollack, has the attention span of a hyperactive child, but its bawdy sexual humor rarely flags.

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