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. Prizzi's Honor
    From start to finish, this exhilarating adaptation of Richard Condon's phantasmagorical and witty novel -set inside the world of the Mafia - ascends, plunges and races around hairpin curves, only to shoot up again and dive over another precipice. [14 June 1985, p.C8]
    • The New York Times
  2. Secret Admirer
    The film's sole ray of sunshine is Fred Ward, who reveals an unexpected flair for comedy in the role of Deborah Ann's father, a police detective with a very hot temper and a vein in his forehead that visibly throbs.
  3. The Goonies
    It has crooks, bats, cobwebs, skeletons, a lovable monster, an underground grotto and a treasure hidden by some of the most considerate, clue-loving pirates who ever lived. Their ghostly ship is the movie's piece de resistance.
  4. Perfect
    Too superficially knowing to be a camp classic, but it's an unintentionally hilarious mixture of muddled moralizing and all-too-contemporary self-promotion.
  5. Fletch
    An enjoyable paperback of a film, a lightweight, breezy experience that, by never pretending to be anything more than what it is, disarms criticism.
  6. A View to a Kill
    As lavishly escapist as they are, the latest James Bond films have become strenuous to watch, now that the business of maintaining Bond's casual savoir-faire looks like such a monumental chore.
  7. Rambo: First Blood Part II
    To anyone who doesn't share the camera's adoration, this sort of behavior becomes so comic that Rambo turns into something of a camp classic.
  8. Brewster's Millions
    The film does nothing to accommodate Mr. Pryor's singular comic talents...It keeps the crazy premise but does away with such essential ingredients as funny material and antic timing.
  9. Gotcha!
    Gotcha is about as devoid of personality as it's possible for a narrative movie to be.
  10. Code of Silence
    Code of Silence, as directed by Andy Davis, has a slick look and adequate pacing, though its action sequences tend to fizzle as they end.
  11. The Purple Rose of Cairo
    I'll go out on a limb: I can't believe the year will bring forth anything to equal The Purple Rose of Cairo. At 84 minutes, it's short but nearly every one of those minutes is blissful.
  12. Just One of the Guys
    Familiar but likable, thanks largely to Mr. Jacoby's irrepressible clowning and Miss Hyser's good-sport manner.
  13. Stick
    Through all this, Mr. Reynolds displays little understanding of the very good reasons why audiences usually like him. He is at his most ponderous here, with none of his trademark resiliency or sardonic humor.
  14. Moving Violations
    An especially weak teen- age comedy even by today's none-too- high standards. Everything about it is either second best or second hand.
  15. The Company of Wolves
    It's also absolutely jam- packed with the kind of symbols that delight Freudian analysts of culture, particularly of folk tales.
  16. Cat's Eye
    Cat's Eye is pop movie making of an extremely clever, stylish and satisfying order.
  17. Desperately Seeking Susan
    Desperately Seeking Susan, based on a good screenplay by a new writer named Leora Barish, is a terrifically genial New York City farce in which the lives of two very different young women become tangled in an Orlon web of lies, half-truths and cross purposes. Full of funny, sharply observed details, reflected in Santo Loquasto's witty production design as well as in all of the dozens of individual performances. The cast is virtually a Players Guide to the variety of performing talent available in New York.
  18. Girls Just Want to Have Fun
    Helen Hunt is a real scene-stealer as a girl who wears things like toy dinosaurs in her hair, in keeping with the film's relentlessly silly mood. The audience at the National Theater seemed giddy enough in its own right.
  19. Ladyhawke
    Mr. Donner has obvious difficulty coordinating the various elements of the overall vision.
  20. Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment
    Police Academy 2 isn't as funny as its predecessor, but as sequels go it's certainly amusing. [31 Mar 1985, p.55]
    • The New York Times
  21. The Slugger's Wife
    It's a shock to find Neil Simon's name attached to something as resoundingly unfunny as The Slugger's Wife.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Care Bears Movie
    This endearing movie's mottoes are: never stop caring. And: the best way to make friends is to be a friend yourself.
  23. 1984
    This 1984 is not an easy film to watch, but it exerts a fascination that demands attention even as you want to turn away from it. That the Orwell tale still works so well - and this version works far better than the 1956 film adaptation - also makes it apparent that the novel was always more cautionary in its intentions than prophetic.
  24. Mask
    All of the performances are limited by the material and, in the case of Mr. Stoltz, by Michael Westmore's quite spectacular makeup. The exception - and the film's best sequence - occurs when Rusty's very middle-class, well-meaning parents, played by Estelle Getty and Richard Dysart, come to visit. In these few, brief minutes, Mask becomes specific and interesting. Otherwise it's the kind of story that would work better as a television feature.
  25. Friday the 13th: A New Beginning
    This one, set in a bucolic halfway house for disturbed children, is not entirely without Grand Guignol humor, but almost. It appears to have been paced by a metronome - a joke followed by a murder followed by a joke followed by a murder, until all but one of the featured played have been exterminated...It's worth recognizing only as an artifact of our culture.
  26. Porky's Revenge
    Porky's Revenge proceeds with the kind of comic pacing that has the audience laughing way ahead of each joke. Some of it is funny, but it's also entirely predictable.
  27. The Last Dragon
    Berry Gordy's The Last Dragon is a multimedia movie of sorts, designed for those who can't bear the monotony of only one thought or sound or activity at a time.
  28. He-Man and She-Ra: The Secret of the Sword
    The Secret of the Sword is a Saturday morning kiddie cartoon stretched out to feature length, which by some lights is an awfully long time.
  29. The Hit
    The Hit' is a disappointing English underworld movie directed by Stephen Frears. Less a film noir than a film gris, partly because almost all of it takes place in sun- drenched Spain and because the characters talk too much. These guys don't have to use guns. All they have to do is open their mouths and bore each other to death.
  30. The Sure Thing
    The Sure Thing is glowing proof of two things: Traditional romantic comedy can be adapted to suit the teen-age trade, and Mr. Reiner's contribution to ''This Is Spinal Tap'' was more than a matter of humor.
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