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. The Land Before Time
    The Land Before Time isn't heavily plotted; it doesn't do much more than concentrate on the amusingly lifelike dynamics among the dinosaur children as they make their journey. Luckily, it isn't very long either. At a just-right length of 73 minutes, it ought to win audiences' hearts without wearing out their patience.
  2. Oliver & Company
    It's not that Oliver and Company is not up to par. It actively denies its own unique heritage. [18 Nov 1988, p.C8]
    • The New York Times
  3. High Spirits
    Luckily, High Spirits has a good cast and enough joie de vivre to rise above some of its underlying clumsiness.
  4. Ernest Saves Christmas
    The best that can be said for the film is that it leaves Ernest behind now and then to focus on Santa, who is played by Douglas Seale with sweetness, sincerity and an amazing amount of dignity, considering his surroundings.
  5. A Cry in the Dark
    The screenplay for A Cry in the Dark, adapted by Robert Caswell and Mr. Schepisi from a book by John Bryson, isn't perfect, but it provides Miss Streep with the kind of raw material that allows her to create a character who, while being perfectly ordinary, is always unexpectedly special.
  6. Child's Play
    Child's Play has some limp dialogue among the clever touches. Its appeal is clearly for upscale horror fans rather than a general movie audience. Yet it is a fitting successor to the classic television horror stories it takes off from.
  7. They Live
    Mr. Carpenter has directed the film with B-movie bluntness, but with none of the requisite snap. And his screenplay (written under the pseudonym Frank Armitage) makes the principals sound even more tongue-tied than they have to. [4 Nov 1988, p.C8]
    • The New York Times
  8. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers
    In this film, suspense and psychological horror have given way to superhuman strength and resilience...The one effectively handled scene is the last, which promises a sequel with a feminist twist.
  9. Things Change
    An enchanted lark about wiseguys and those hustlers who think they are wiseguys, but aren't.
  10. Bat*21
    It's hard to imagine what the film might have been with anyone other than Mr. Hackman in this role, for this actor's quintessential decency and ordinariness have never seemed more affecting. It's precisely the lack of bravado in Hambleton that makes him an interesting character, and a poignant anti-Rambo.
  11. The Lair of the White Worm
    Not a worm is left unturned in Ken Russell's buoyant, mischievous and predictably overwrought new film.
  12. Mystic Pizza
    Though in essence this is little more than a girls' romance novel brought to life, it has been filled with heart and humor. The place, the people and even the largely predictable situations in which they find themselves are presented in an entirely winning way.
  13. The Accused
    A consistently engrossing melodrama, modest in its aims and as effective for the cliches it avoids as for the clear eye through which it sees its working-class American lives.
  14. Salaam Bombay!
    Bombay is a place of noise, restless movement and no privacy whatsover. It is squalor accepted as the natural order of things, and thus accommodated. Miss Nair does not share this fatalism, but in ''Salaam Bombay!'' she allows us to examine it without panic, and without patronizing it. She is a new film maker to watch.
  15. Alien Nation
    Eventually, though it happens later rather than sooner, the conventional aspects of Alien Nation overwhelm the novelty.
  16. Punchline
    Tepid...A big Punchline problem is that it's impossible to tell the difference between Miss Field's routines that are supposed to be awful, and the awful ones that are supposed to be funny.
  17. Clara's Heart
    Directed by Robert Mulligan in an unapologetically sentimental style, Clara's Heart succeeds in tugging the heartstrings only when Clara herself is on screen.
  18. Memories of Me
    A film that assumes it's up to the job of dealing with life and death and love, but is not even up to dealing with lobsters.
  19. Bird
    Bird is less moving as a character study than it is as a tribute and as a labor of love. The portrait it offers, though hazy at times, is one Charlie Parker's admirers will recognize.
  20. Elvira: Mistress of the Dark
    Elvira, Mistress of the Dark is a lame attempt to cash in on her character's success.
  21. Dead Ringers
    What makes the performance(s) even better is that Mr. Irons invests these bizarre, potentially freakish characters with so much intelligence and so much real feeling.
  22. Patty Hearst
    Patty Hearst is a model of swift, spare, unsentimental film making about a character who can never be known, as most fictional characters are, and about a specific time and circumstances that, with hindsight, seem incredible.
  23. Kansas
    For a film so exhaustively loaded with silliness, Kansas is remarkably dull. [23 Sep 1988, p.C17]
    • The New York Times
  24. Crossing Delancey
    What makes Crossing Delancey so appealing is the warm and leisurely way it arrives at its inevitable conclusion. All the different aspects of Izzy's busy, contradiction-filled life are carefully drawn, giving the film a realistic, well-populated feeling and a nicely wry view of the modern world.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Distant Voices, Still Lives
    One of those dimly realized personal statements that ultimately says a lot less than the written program notes that accompany it.
  26. Running on Empty
    Running on Empty works best when it plays upon emotions generated by the Popes' unique predicament, something that it often does rather shamelessly. It helps that Sidney Lumet has directed the film in a crisp, handsome style that diminishes the maudlin or unlikely aspects of its story, even when they threaten to intrude.
  27. Eight Men Out
    For Mr. Sayles, whose idealism has never been more affecting or apparent than it is in this story of boyish enthusiasm gone bad in an all too grown-up world, Eight Men Out represents a home run.
  28. The Thin Blue Line
    Morris has fashioned a brilliant work of pulp fiction around this crime. [26 Aug 1988, p.C6]
  29. Hot to Trot
    Although Michael Dinner's direction is noticeably better than the material, the film aims consistently for the lowest common denominator.
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