The New York Times' Scores

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For 20,278 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: 9,380 out of 20278
  2. Mixed: 8,434 out of 20278
  3. Negative: 2,464 out of 20278
20278 movie reviews
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  1. Heart Like a Wheel
    Its story is unusual, but it's told in a style that is immediate and understandable, and that never opts for heroism at the expense of authenticity.
  2. The Meaning of Life
    Monty Python's the Meaning of Life is funny but, being unreasonable, I wish it were funny from start to finish.
  3. The Outsiders
    It is spectacularly out of touch, a laughably earnest attempt to impose heroic attitudes on some nice, small characters purloined from a ''young-adult'' novel by S.E. Hinton, the woman who wrote the novel on which ''Tex'' was based.
  4. The Black Stallion Returns
    It is funny, unpretentious and fast-paced. It has a kind of comicbook appreciation for direct action and no time whatsoever for mysticism or for scenery for its own sake, though most of it was shot in Morocco and is fun to look at.
  5. Bad Boys
    Bad Boys is a suspenseful movie, but it's also an extremely brutal one. It begins with someone's brains spattered on a wall, and ends with a particularly bloody battle. In between, there's a lot more of the same.
  6. Spring Break
    Each beer-guzzling marathon inevitably leads to one of those bathroom scenes that provide the film with just about its only jokes.
  7. High Road to China
    Miss Armstrong, who was seen as the second, prettier wife in Alan Alda's ''The Four Seasons,'' is the best thing in the film, though even she seems to be a cross between Julie Andrews and Carol Burnett. Mr. Selleck is, indeed, a handsome actor, but his good looks here have no individual personality, which may be the script's fault.
  8. Wild Style
    Wild Style lacks a lot of the style of the people in it, but it never neutralizes their vitality.
    • 12 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    10 to Midnight
    The suspense generated in this most cheaply sensational recounting set in Los Angeles is episodic, rising at the time of the kill and receding into boredom at other times. The actors, directed by J. Lee Thompson, seem a reasonably competent crew, although in this raunchy, bloodstained, moralizing account there is not much opportunity to demonstrate. [13 Mar 1983, p.62]
    • The New York Times
  10. Say Amen, Somebody
    The music alone would be enough to make Say Amen, Somebody worth seeing. But it has warmth and friendliness, too, and some of its family scenes are as memorable as its songs.
  11. Tender Mercies
    Tender Mercies has a bleak handsomeness bordering on the arty, but it also has real delicacy and emotional power, both largely attributable to a fine performance by Robert Duvall.
  12. Gandhi
    Neither Mr. Attenborough nor John Briley, who wrote the screenplay, are particularly adventurous filmmakers. Yet in some ways their almost obsessively middle-brow approach—their fondness for the gestures of conventional biographical cinema—seems self-effacing in a fashion suitable to the subject. Since Roberto Rossellini is not around to examine Gandhi in a film that would itself reflect the rigorous self-denial of the man, this very ordinary style is probably best.
  13. The King of Comedy
    Though The King of Comedy seems less substantial than past De Niro-Scorsese collaborations, it's a funny, stinging film in which there's much to enjoy. Miss Abbott, Mr. De Niro, Mr. Lewis and the unforgettably alarming Sandra Bernhard (as a fan even crazier than Rupert, and one who looks like an enraged ostrich) deliver fine performances, and the film's satirical edge can indeed be cutting.
  14. The Pirates of Penzance
    The Pirates of Penzance has been made into a cheerful movie, but it isn't nearly as deft or distinctive here as it was on stage.
  15. Local Hero
    Local Hero is a funny movie, but it's more apt to induce chuckles than knee-slapping. Like Gregory's Girl, it demonstrates Mr. Forsyth's uncanny ability for making an audience sense that something magical is going on, even if that something isn't easily explained.
  16. Videodrome
    Though Videodrome finally grows grotesque and a little confused, it begins very well and sustains its cleverness for a long while.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Entity
    The Entity offers thrills in short staccato bursts and dull science in long bursts. If your thirst is for horror, it will not be slaked. If your taste runs to psychiatry, it will not be satisfied. If your fancy is for films that keep you riveted to your seat, you may find that you need a restraining belt by third-quarter time.
  18. Without a Trace
    Taken on its own terms, Without a Trace is a reasonably well made film, and it's certainly slick enough to hold an audience's attention. But its own terms are very, very limited.
  19. The Year of Living Dangerously
    Peter Weir’s The Year of Living Dangerously is a good, romantic melodrama that suffers more than most good, romantic melodramas in not being much better than it is.
  20. Coup de Torchon
    Coup de Torchon, which opens today at the Paris, has Mr. Tavernier's typical polish, which means it has much to recommend it. But however impressive the meticulousness and conviction on display here, or the performances Mr. Tavernier has elicited, Coup de Torchon seems strangely lacking in overall momentum and direction.
  21. Tootsie
    Tootsie is the best thing that's yet happened at this year end. It's a toot, a lark, a month in the country.
  22. Frances
    It contains too many show-down scenes, too much raw material that hasn't been refined, and more brutality than either the movie or the audience can make dramatic sense of. Yet it also contains a magnificent performance by Jessica Lange in the title role. Here is a performance so unfaltering, so tough, so intelligent and so humane that it seems as if Miss Lange is just now, at long last, making her motion picture debut.
  23. Trail of the Pink Panther
    The Trail of the Pink Panther is less a conventional comedy than an uproarious retrospective devoted to the particular achievements of the Edwards-Sellers collaboration. Some of the routines seem totally new to me, and others are familiar, but either way, most of them are huge fun, and a couple approach greatness.
  24. The Dark Crystal
    The Dark Crystal aims, I think, to be a sort of Muppet Paradise Lost but winds up as watered down J.R.R. Tolkien.
  25. The Verdict
    A solidly old-fashioned courtroom drama such as The Verdict could have gotten by with a serious, measured performance from its leading man, or it could have worked well with a dazzling movie-star turn. The fact that Paul Newman delivers both makes a clever, suspenseful, entertaining movie even better.
  26. Best Friends
    Even when Best Friends isn't working uproariously as a comedy, there's an element of original, offbeat humor that keeps it promising.
  27. Honkytonk Man
    Only charm and sentimentality could have brought the requisite magic to Clint Eastwood's Honkytonk Man; unfortunately, this well-intentioned but weak film hasn't nearly enough of either.
  28. Airplane II: The Sequel
    Even though most of the gags are too familiar or too dumb to be hilarious, Airplane II is too good-natured to be a serious irritant.
  29. The Toy
    My mind wasn't simply wandering during the film - it was ricocheting between the screen and the exit sign.
  30. 48 Hrs.
    Walter Hill, the director of such beautiful but stilted tough guy movies as ''The Warriors'' and ''The Long Riders,'' has attempted something very different in 48 Hours a male-buddy action film that's positively witty and warm-hearted compared with his other work.
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