The New York Times' Scores

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For 20,303 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: 9,393 out of 20303
  2. Mixed: 8,445 out of 20303
  3. Negative: 2,465 out of 20303
20303 movie reviews
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  1. Back to the Future Part III
    Except for Mr. Lloyd, the film is so sweet-natured and bland that it is almost instantly forgettable.
  2. Fire Birds
    Fire Birds has one director (David Green), two writers (Nick Thiel and Paul F. Edwards) and many laughs, all of them unintentional.
  3. Cadillac Man
    Cadillac Man does not stay long in territory pioneered by Arthur Miller, David Mamet and Mr. Levinson. It turns, rather awkwardly, into a hostage-situation comedy featuring a cuckolded young man named Larry (Tim Robbins).
  4. Class of 1999
    Class of 1999 is the paranoid student's dream movie, full of absurd battle scenes and failed attempts at dark humor.
  5. Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!
    Mr. Almodovar's comic invention runs out too soon, leaving the audience to giggle weakly in anticipation of the big laughs and disorienting shocks that never arrive.
  6. Tales from the Darkside: The Movie
    Nothing about Tales From the Darkside is likely to give anyone much of a scare. But thanks to casting that is savvier than the horror norm, and to direction by John Harrison that is workmanlike and sometimes even witty, at least it's fun.
  7. Last Exit to Brooklyn
    Though Last Exit to Brooklyn is bleak, the gloom is never trivial. The effect, instead, is elegiac.
  8. Wild Orchid
    Early in his career, at the time of ''Diner,'' Mr. Rourke managed to do this sort of thing very seductively, with a charming nonchalance. This time he seems puffy, sleazy and sadly ineffectual, well over the edge into self-parody.
  9. The Guardian
    A confused horror film custom-designed for those who prefer their scares set in a clean, comfortable, architecturally correct atmosphere, rather than the usual Gothic settings.
  10. Q & A
    The dialogue is often brutally comic, and individual scenes cut deep. Yet the narrative finally becomes almost impenetrable. The focus that the director would have demanded of another writer is lacking here.
  11. Spaced Invaders
    Spaced Invaders should have been funnier than it is. It rambles and has too many poorly defined characters. Also, because most of it takes place at night, it's not easy to tell what is going on sometimes, which will confuse the audience for which it is intended.
  12. Miami Blues
    Miami Blues is best appreciated for the performances of its stars and for the kinds of funny, scene-stealing peripheral touches that keep it lively even when it's less than fully convincing.
  13. Crazy People
    The movie's attitude toward the mentally and emotionally disturbed is even worse. If Crazy People displayed an ounce of real wit, one wouldn't care, but it's so smug in its ignorance that it begins to look elitist.
  14. I Love You to Death
    More problematical is the tone of the film, which attempts to be both compassionate and goofy, though the events are funny only if they are seen as farcical.
  15. The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover
    Mr. Greenaway turns this tale of a bullying criminal and his unfaithful wife into something profound and extremely rare: a work so intelligent and powerful that it evokes our best emotions and least civil impulses, so esthetically brilliant that it expands the boundaries of film itself.
  16. Ernest Goes to Jail
    Ernest Goes to Jail so resembles a high-spirited cartoon that it is likely to be more amusing to children and less painfully obnoxious for parents than its predecessors.
  17. Cry-Baby
    What it doesn't have, unfortunately, is enough true conviction to rise above novelty status. Nor does it really have a plot.
  18. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
    Teen-Age Mutant Ninja Turtles was directed by Steve Barron, who has a number of music videos to his credit, and shows off the skills of Jim Henson's Creature Shop, without which there would have been no film at all.
  19. Pretty Woman
    Something special.
  20. The Fourth War
    Mr. Frankenheimer relies on standard touches at times, but he also fills The Fourth War with interesting little asides.
  21. A Shock to the System
    Andrew Klavan's screenplay, adapted from a novel by Simon Brett, comes up with funny lines now and then, but it never has any clear idea whether it is a black comedy, a satire or maybe even a psychological study of a serial killer.
  22. Blue Steel
    It isn't necessary to believe Blue Steel fully to find it gripping all the way through, and to be both fascinated and frightened by its icy, gleaming vision of urban life. For the audience, it's both a sobering and invigorating experience. For Ms. Bigelow, it's a breakthrough.
  23. Lord of the Flies
    As directed by Harry Hook, the new Lord of the Flies offers much spectacle for the eye and almost nothing to keep the mind from wandering.
    • The New York Times
  24. House Party
    Unlike most teen-age movies, which attempt to impose some kind of adult order and significance on the events they recall, House Party has the light touch, rude wit and immediacy of rap as improvised by someone in top form.
  25. Joe Versus the Volcano
    Not since "Howard the Duck" has there been a big-budget comedy with feet as flat as those of Joe Versus the Volcano. Many gifted people contributed to it, but there's no disbelieving the grim evidence on the screen.
  26. Bad Influence
    Bad Influence is full of sharply observed subsidiary characters and details of dress and behavior. Among other things, they help ease one past the plot's point of no return.
  27. The Handmaid's Tale
    With its devilish attention to polite little touches, its abundant bitchiness, its decrying of the Handmaids' oppression along with its tacit celebration of their fecundity, The Handmaid's Tale is a shrewd if preposterous cautionary tale that strikes a wide range of resonant chords.
  28. The Hunt for Red October
    The movie finally is never very convincing. Even the special effects aren't great. Mr. Connery, however, wears the movie as if it were a favorite old hat. He makes it look good.
  29. Glory
    Glory is celebratory, but it celebrates in a manner that insists on acknowledging the sorrow. This is a good, moving, complicated film.
  30. Nightbreed
    Surrounded by Mr. Barker's visual clutter and lack of narrative energy, Mr. Cronenberg's presence only highlights the difference between a gruesome but first-rate psychological horror story like Dead Ringers and a mediocrity like Nightbreed.
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