The New York Times' Scores

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For 20,271 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: 9,377 out of 20271
  2. Mixed: 8,430 out of 20271
  3. Negative: 2,464 out of 20271
20271 movie reviews
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  1. The Mountain Men
    The frontiersmen are wild and woolly, and most of the Indians remain scalp-collecting savages. [13 Sep 1980, p.C14]
    • The New York Times
  2. The Shining
    Meticulously detailed and never less than fascinating, The Shining may be the first movie that ever made its audience jump with a title that simply says "Tuesday."
  3. Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back
    The Empire Strikes Back is not a truly terrible movie. It's a nice movie. It's not, by any means, as nice as "Star Wars." It's not as fresh and funny and surprising and witty, but it is nice and inoffensive and, in a way that no one associated with it need be ashamed of, it's also silly.
  4. The Long Riders
    Mr. Hill weaves their gestures together with a portentous elegance that promises a great deal that it never delivers.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fame
    Apart from its virtues or defects as a general feature film, Fame - in its attitude toward the performing arts - strikes a new note. It is a streetwise film with streetwise characters. In its deflating moral for every protagonist, it sees these arts as meshed into a smog of urban existence. Its novelty is its anti-Romantic, ironic view toward these callings. [27 July 1980, p.8]
    • The New York Times
  6. The Nude Bomb
    It's not a question of too little, too late, but of too much, too long.
  7. The Tin Drum
    The story it tells is so outsized, bizarre, funny, and eccentric, the movie compels attention. [11 Apr 1980, p.6]
    • The New York Times
    • 69 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Inferno
    The movie's distinguishing feature is not the number or variety of horrible murders, but the length of time it takes for the victims to die. This is a technique that may have been borrowed from Italian opera, but without the music, it loses some of its panache.
  9. Gilda Live
    Nothing in Gilda Live is funnier than, or a substantial departure from, the material Gilda Radner does on "Saturday Night Live." But the film ought to satisfy her fans.
  10. When Time Ran Out...
    The latest Irwin Allen disaster movie is When Time Ran Out, which is waxen even by Mr. Allen's standards.
  11. Coal Miner's Daughter
    Like "Agatha" and the rock drama "Stardust," other movies of Mr. Apted's, Coal Miner's Daughter does a better job of setting its scenes than of telling a story. Its characterizations and its atmosphere work better than the action, which becomes shapeless and, in the manner of biographies of living subjects, slightly cramped by its good intentions.
  12. The Ninth Configuration
    It takes on the overtones not of an awful movie, but of an awful play.
  13. Wise Blood
    One of John Huston's most original, most stunning movies. It is so eccentric, so funny, so surprising and so haunting that it is difficult to believe it is not the first film of some enfant terrible instead of the 33d feature by a man who is now in his 70's and whose career has had more highs and lows than a decade of weather maps.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Mad Max
    Mad Max is ugly and incoherent, and aimed, probably accurately, at the most uncritical of moviegoers. [14 June 1980, p.13]
    • The New York Times
  15. The Fog
    The Fog is constructed of random diversions. There are too many story lines, which necessitate so much cross-cutting that no one sequence can ever build to a decent climax. The movie looks quite pretty but prettiness of this sort is beside the point in such a film.
  16. Going in Style
    Going in Style, a first commercial feature written and directed by Martin Brest, means to be both moving and comic, but though the cast is headed by three fine actors, two of whom, Mr. Burns and Mr. Carney, are also extremely funny men, it never elicits any emotional response more profound than curiosity.
  17. The Electric Horseman
    Invigorating.
  18. The Black Hole
    The Black Hole is attractively unpretentious and at times quite snappy.
  19. Scavenger Hunt
    A broad, low comedy full of speech defects and pratfalls.
  20. Cuba
    Though a lot of the dialogue would seem absurd even on daytime soap opera, the movie keeps coming up with scenes so arresting or eccentric you are aware of the wicked intelligence behind them.
  21. Roller Boogie
    103 minutes is an awfully long time to watch people whiz along the boardwalk. The novelty wears off in a hurry.
  22. All That Jazz
    An uproarious display of brilliance, nerve, dance, maudlin confessions, inside jokes and, especially, ego.
  23. Kramer vs. Kramer
    Kramer vs. Kramer is densely packed with such beautifully observed detail. It is also superbly acted by its supporting cast, including Jane Alexander, Howard Duff and George Coe.
  24. Being There
    Hal Ashby directs Being There at an unruffled, elegant pace, the better to let Mr. Sellers's double-edged mannerisms make their full impression upon the audience.
  25. The Human Factor
    A fascinating, slightly chilly picture — as well as one of the best Preminger films in years.
  26. 1941
    1941 is less comic than cumbersome, as much fun as a 40-pound wrist-watch.
  27. The Jerk
    By turns funny, vulgar and backhandedly clever, never more so than when it aspires to absolute stupidity. And Mr. Martin, who began his career with an arrow stuck through his head, has since developed a real genius for playing dumb.
  28. Star Trek: The Motion Picture
    Watching Star Trek — the Motion Picture...is like attending your high-school class's 10th reunion at Caesar's Palace. Most of the faces are familiar, but the décor has little relationship to anything you've ever seen before.
  29. The Rose
    BY the time you realize what's wrong with "The Rose," it will have you hooked anyhow...The Rose has an earnest, affecting character at its core. Even at its most preposterous, it never feels like a fraud.
  30. The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh
    It's cheerfully inoffensive entertainment designed for the crowd that liked "Car Wash," with which one of the present film's producers was also involved, and it offers a similarly shapeless brand of merriment.
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