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. Lost Highway
    Lost Highway, an elaborate hallucination that could never be mistaken for the work of anyone else, finds Mr. Lynch echoing the perversity of "Blue Velvet," the earlier film of his that this most closely resembles.
  2. Rosewood
    The film transcends racial divisions by bestowing equally hopeless dialogue on both sides.
  3. Fools Rush In
    The film never gets past the unlikelihood that its characters have much chance of living happily ever after. Or of finding real heat or humor along the way.
  4. Vegas Vacation
    Throughout this lame film, directed by Stephen Kessler and written by Elisa Bell, situations are developed -- complicated directions to a hotel room, Clark clinging to the face of Hoover Dam, Ellen the object of Mr. Newton's seductive charm -- and left to wither without a payoff.
  5. Absolute Power
    Eastwood directs a sensible-looking genre film with smooth expertise, but its plot is quietly berserk.
  6. Touch
    Mr. Schrader doesn't match the Leonard habit of ending each scene with a lively little jolt. But he succeeds admirably in extracting the novel's best lines and in casting his film with mischievous verve.
  7. That Darn Cat
    While Mr. Doug brings plenty of enthusiasm to the task, he doesn't have the moves, and the scene, which ends with his following a mouse into a Dumpster, is one dull thud. The movie also crams far too many subsidiary characters into its 89 bumpy minutes.
  8. Dante's Peak
    The special effects are suitably catastrophic, though they aren't much more clever than the computer tricks that turn up in beer commercials these days.
  9. SubUrbia
    Mr. Bogosian's venomously funny play, which he adapted himself for the screen, is given warmth and generosity by Mr. Linklater, whose elegantly fluid direction and great skill with actors are accentuated by the play's spareness.
  10. Hotel de Love
    Hotel de Love, the directing and screenwriting debut of Craig Rosenberg, is like a Valentine's Day box of heart-shaped chocolates that all have the same too-sweet cherry fillings.
  11. Waiting for Guffman
    The don't quite do for "Oklahoma!" what they did for heavy metal, but they come close. [31 Jan 1997, p.C6]
  12. Fierce Creatures
    The real fun here comes from watching Mr. Kline bounding through two archly good performances, Mr. Cleese coming hilariously unstrung in the presence of Ms. Curtis and all those adorable animals.
  13. Prefontaine
    But even after the documentary affectation gives way to a more conventional narrative, the film has trouble ringing true.
  14. Mother
    Brooks brings vast reserves of quarrelsome, hairsplitting hilarity to the story of a man going mano a mano with his sweet little mom.
  15. Albino Alligator
    Events are minor and they unfold slowly. The audience has plenty of time to get ahead of the game.
  16. Beverly Hills Ninja
    If you're nostalgic for the third grade and all those little wads of wet paper bouncing off the back of your neck, Beverly Hills Ninja is the movie for you. It is one extended fat joke, tricked out in ceremonial robes.
  17. Metro
    But long before the last car has been flipped, this flurry of flying metal has lost its edge. The vehicular pirouettes and ski jumps are so exaggerated that they correspond neither to the urban geography nor to the laws of physics. And the jiggling camera can't blur the careless mechanical stitching in a sequence that tries to make up for in length what it lacks in inventiveness.
  18. The Relic
    Yes, we've seen it all before. But The Relic proves that the hoariest cliches, when stirred together with enough money, shaken vigorously and artfully lighted, can still make the adrenaline surge.
  19. Ghosts of Mississippi
    True as it is, Reiner's film feels like the Hollywood version.
  20. The People vs. Larry Flynt
    A blazing, unlikely triumph about a man who is nobody's idea of a movie hero. Smart, funny, shamelessly entertaining and perfectly serious too.
  21. Evita
    But the film is still breathless and shrill, since Alan Parker's direction shows no signs of a moral or political compass and remains in exhausting overdrive all the time.
  22. Michael
    The movie is so busy applying cute touches to everything and everybody that it forgets to devote enough attention to the souls Michael has come down to save.
  23. The Portrait of a Lady
    Brilliantly eccentric even when it yields mixed results.
  24. Scream
    Wes Craven (of the 'Nightmare on Elm Street' films) is in the mood for parody.
  25. Beavis and Butt-Head Do America
    Nastily amusing
  26. My Fellow Americans
    My Fellow Americans, doesn't get to the heart of any issue, constitutional, legislative or otherwise. But it has a fine time imagining our leaders as bumbling, thin-skinned, ultimately likable misfits who are as lost on the American highway as everybody else.
  27. One Fine Day
    One Fine Day makes for sunny, pleasant fluff. Both stars are enjoyably breezy, and there's enough chemistry to deflect attention from the story's endless contrivances. The screenplay by Terrel Seltzer and Ellen Simon is full of energetic wisecracks. But it's jokey rather than actually funny most of the time.
  28. Marvin's Room
    This film often fumbles, but it finally tugs at the heartstrings all the same.
  29. Jerry Maguire
    Jerry Maguire is loaded with them: bright, funny, tender encounters between characters who seem so winningly warm and real.
  30. Mars Attacks!
    Just a parade of scattershot gags, more often weird than funny an dmost often just flat.
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