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. Volunteers
    Take a healthy helping of Raiders of the Lost Ark, a dollop of The Bridge on the River Kwai, a dash of any Tarzan movie, a soupcon of Casablanca, a whiff of The Wizard of Oz and a stunt or two from a favorite Saturday serial, stir frenetically, and if you're lucky enough to have snappy dialogue by Ken Levine and David Isaacs, you may end up with as funny a movie as Volunteers.
  2. The Return of the Living Dead
    Though certainly not for the squeamish, the film is by no means the ultimate horror movie it aspires to be. The volume of stagy gore quickly reaches a point of diminishing returns. And rather than trying to sustain a mood of grim suspense, the writer-director Dan O'Bannon has conceived this cinematic cousin of Night of the Living Dead as a mordant punk comedy.
  3. The Bride
    Miss Beals's performance sinks this already muddled mess of a movie like a stone.
  4. American Flyers
    Even though American Flyers is a fatal disease movie involving a couple of bike-racing brothers, it's the film - and not any character - that dies as you watch it.
  5. Year of the Dragon
    In Year of the Dragon, a busy and elaborate film that manages to be inordinately messy, his tactics are a constant distraction, dissipating the viewer's interest at every turn.
  6. Pee-wee's Big Adventure
    Pee-Wee's Big Adventure is the most barren comedy I've seen in years, maybe ever.
  7. Summer Rental
    Summer Rental is a wan but good-natured hot-weather comedy, with a big debt to National Lampoon's Vacation plus a few nice touches of its own.
  8. My Science Project
    A cheerful teen-age adventure film that in its snappier moments resembles a far less clever and less expensive Back to the Future. Despite a plot that has few interesting twists and a shoestring budget, the film glimmers with moments of drollery.
  9. Real Genius
    What the film needs, instead of these familiar teen-movie trappings, is a cleverness and eccentricity to match that of its characters. For the most part, these are qualities that it lacks.
  10. Weird Science
    Most of Weird Science, for all its repetitive vulgarity and its wide array of gimmicks, is essentially much too calculating and cautious. Even 14-year-old boys may find it heavy sledding.
  11. Phenomena
    The gore starts spattering in earnest too late to save Creepers, a dim-witted horror movie.
  12. Fright Night
    Though Mr. Holland's handling of his stars is successful enough to establish him as a newcomer with promise, his material here is uneven and often flat.
  13. Follow That Bird
    The teaching of letters and numbers, for which Sesame Street is famous, is played down here in favor of messages about getting along.
  14. National Lampoon's European Vacation
    While it's very much a retread, it succeeds in following up the first film's humor with more in a similar vein.
  15. The Heavenly Kid
    Guardian angel movies almost always have a little charm, but The Heavenly Kid has none.
  16. The Black Cauldron
    This is the 25th full-length animated feature from Walt Disney studios, and professionally put together as it is, many of the ingredients may seem programmed to those who have seen some of the others.
  17. Day of the Dead
    Day of the Dead has a less startling setting, since most of it takes place underground. But it still affords Mr. Romero the opportunity for intermittent philosophy and satire, without compromising his reputation as the grisliest guy around.
  18. The Legend of Billie Jean
    The Legend of Billie Jean' is competently made, sometimes attractively acted, and bankrupt beyond belief. It's hard to imagine that even the film makers, let alone audiences, can believe in a sweet, selfless heroine who just can't help becoming a superstar.
  19. The Man with One Red Shoe
    It's mostly just slight, and none of it elicits more than the mildest of chuckles.
  20. The Coca-Cola Kid
    The Coca-Cola Kid is of more interest for these oddball peripheral touches than for its awkward attempts at satire.
  21. Explorers
    OF all the Spielberg-inspired fantasy films afoot at the moment, Joe Dante's Explorers is by far the most eccentric. It's charmingly odd at some moments, just plain goofy at others.
  22. Silverado
    Silverado is sufficiently modern to make its landscapes bigger, its people smaller and its moral polarities less powerfully distinct than those of simpler, more starkly beautiful westerns gone by.
  23. Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
    This film has showier stunts than its predecessors, and a better sense of humor. It also has Tina Turner, in chain-mail stockings.
  24. Back to the Future
    Mr. Zemeckis is able both to keep the story moving and to keep it from going too far. He handles Back to the Future with the kind of inventiveness that indicates he will be spinning funny, whimsical tall tales for a long time to come.
  25. Red Sonja
    Mr. Fleischer brings absolutely no playfulness to what might, at least, have been enjoyably light. And he brings out the worst in a cast that was ill-chosen to begin with. The most memorable thing about the film is the costume/production design by Danilo Donati, which is genuinely demented. Even the horses wear too much junk jewelry.
  26. Pale Rider
    This veteran movie icon handles both jobs with such intelligence and facility I'm just now beginning to realize that, though Mr. Eastwood may have been improving over the years, it's also taken all these years for most of us to recognize his very consistent grace and wit as a film maker.
  27. St. Elmo's Fire
    St. Elmo's Fire is most appealing when it simply gives the actors a chance to flirt with the camera, and with one another. When it attempts to take seriously the problems of characters who are spoiled, affluent and unbearably smug, it becomes considerably less attractive.
  28. Return to Oz
    The inventiveness that has gone into this, and into turning Oz into a land of lavish special effects, will be lost on anyone with a fondness for the 1939 musical classic. That film will always enchant adults and children alike. This joyless new Return to Oz isn't likely to appeal to the former, and may give many of the latter a good scare. Children are sure to be startled by the new film's bleakness.
  29. Cocoon
    Mr. Howard brings a real sweetness to his subject, as does the film's fine cast of veteran stars; he has also given Cocoon the bright, expansive look of a hot-weather hit. And even when the film begins to falter, as it does in its latter sections, Mr. Howard's touch remains reasonably steady.
  30. Lifeforce
    Lifeforce shows off Mr. Hooper's way with a whirling mass of protoplasm, just as Poltergeist did. But its style is shrill and fragmented enough to turn Lifeforce into hysterical vampire porn.
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