The New York Times' Scores

Select another publication »
For 20,269 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 20269
  2. Mixed: 8,428 out of 20269
  3. Negative: 2,464 out of 20269
20269 movie reviews
view
per page
  1. Carnal Knowledge
    More than any other film Nichols has made, Carnal Knowledge reminds me of his stage work at its best, particularly of the highly stylized Luv in which low comedy techniques were employed to illuminate material that might otherwise seem too cruel, or too anti‐heroic for a dramatic medium.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Klute
    Pakula, when he is not in dulging in subjective camera, strives to give his film the look of structural geometry, but despite the sharp edges and dramatic spaces and cinema presence out of Citizen Kane, it all suggests a tepid, rather tasteless mush.
  3. McCabe & Mrs. Miller
    I don't automatically object to contemporary allusions, but I prefer to find them myself, and McCabe and Mrs. Miller is so busy pointing them out to us that the effect is to undercut its narrative drive and the dignity of its fiction.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Le Mans
    Dramatically, the picture is a bore. And neither the oblique approach to these time-out sequences nor a ripe score by Michel Legrand manages to juice things up.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Anderson Tapes
    In Sidney Lumet's The Anderson Tapes the quality of professionalism appears in rather lovely manifestations to raise a by no means perfect film to a level of intelligent efficiency that is not so very far beneath the reach of art.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Horror of Frankenstein
    It's not only painless but also fun.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Mephisto Waltz
    This shrill, heavy-handed exercise only makes us appreciate "Rosemary's Baby" all over again.
  8. They Might Be Giants
    A mushy movie with occasional, isolated moments of legitimate comedy, all provided by Mr. Scott with an assist by Mr. Goldman, whose sense of humor seems to surface in peripheral incidents only.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Big Jake
    Jogs along fairly tediously on the rescue trail, with the star being his laconic self, plus conventional spurts of violence, likewise the saddle humor.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Escape from the Planet of the Apes
    Nobody is going to believe it, but I must say anyway that Don Taylor's Escape From the Planet of the Apes is one of the better new movies in town, and better in a genre—science-fiction—that at the crucial middle level where the history of movies is made, if not written, has recently been not so much bad as invisible.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Cat o' Nine Tails
    Only blindly abject devotees of the whodunit should discover catnip in The Cat O'Nine Tails. Any simple souls who expect large dollops of probability and authentic excitement are cautioned that they're in short supply in the concoction of slayings and sleuthing that is dished up here.
  12. Plaza Suite
    In the case of Plaza Suite, I don't have the feeling that anything much has been lost, but rather that nothing much was ever there.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Billy Jack
    The whole picture nicely conveys a Southwestern atmosphere. But much too often, at the cost of plain credibility, it stacks its cards, characters and even credo like any rootin', tootin' Western.
  14. Bananas
    Any movie that attempts to mix together love, Cuban revolution, the C.I.A., Jewish mothers, J. Edgar Hoover and a few other odds and ends (including a sequence in which someone orders 1,000 grilled cheese sandwiches) is bound to be a little weird—and most welcome.
  15. Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song
    If Sweet Sweetback is unforgettable, it is also deeply flawed. The acting is mediocre at best. And in depicting women as grotesque, flailing sex machines serviced by the indifferent stud hero, it matches today's gangsta rap in arrogant misogyny.
  16. Summer of '42
    Robert Mulligan's Summer of '42 is a memory movie, written, directed and acted with such uncommon good humor that I don't think you'll be put off by its sweet soft-focus, at least until you start analyzing it afterwards.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The House That Dripped Blood
    Moves in many directions, but never too far from the mechanics of the high school play.
  18. The Beguiled
    I must say that I found it interesting (even when it approached the ludicrous) because of its place in relation to other Siegel films and because I have nothing but appreciation for the performers.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Get Carter
    Its violence is so ghastly and unremitting and its view of the human condition is so perfectly vile that one would almost rather wash one's mouth out with soap than recommend it. Yet it is so finely acted and crafted—and is so spectacularly better than the run of its genre—that as a lover of movies one feels practically diity‐bound to sing its praises.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Barefoot Executive
    In this genial but strained and arch frolic, the one real joke is not only "in" but it wears thin and even frantic.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Vanishing Point
    A movie about which I can think of almost nothing good to say.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Andromeda Strain
    Despite all the drama of the situation (United States threatened with biological destruction from outer space, etc.) nothing very exciting goes on in The Andromeda Strain. Since nobody greatly feels or acts, we are left with the drama of people tensely sitting around in chairs, twisting dials and watching TV monitors. From time to time, somebody gets up and paces the room.
  23. Bleak Moments
    The best that can be said for Bleak Moments is that it earns its name. The film, while it has been handsomely photographed, seems entirely given over to pained, wordless interludes. [23 Sep 1980, p.C6]
    • The New York Times
  24. There Was a Crooked Man...
    There Was A Crooked Man . . . is really a duel between two men, one good, one bad, and it's these smaller, more civilized confrontations, done with irony and wit, that make the film one of the more pleasant things you're likely to see this season.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Aristocats
    As funny, warm and sweet an animated, cartoon, package as ever gave a movie marquee a Christmas glow.
  26. Little Big Man
    The film tries to cover too much ground, even though Calder Willingham's script eliminates or telescopes events and characters from the Berger novel.
  27. Brewster McCloud
    Attempts to be a kind of all American, slapstick Orpheus Ascending, a timeless myth about innocence and corruption told in the sort of outrageous and vulgar terms that Brian De Palma and Robert Downey do much better.
  28. Wuthering Heights
    The screenwriter, who often uses bits of dialogue from the novel, doesn't hesitate to add new material that is completely inappropriate.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    El Topo
    El Topo is a good deal more interesting and a good deal less hung up on its own pretensions than all my most intelligent friends had led me to believe.
  30. Love Story
    It looks to be clean and pure and without artifice, even though it is possibly as sophisticated as any commercial American movie ever made.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »