New York Times Launches Movies Section

The New York Times announced last week the launch of http://movies.nytimes.com. This site contains 20 years' worth of reviews in addition to a variety of other movie- related content.

Wow, there's a lot of stuff on this front page.. where to begin, where to begin... recent stories are over on the left side of the page. In the top middle there's a place to enter a movie name and/or zip code. This'll find theaters playing the movie in which you're interested. (You'll be pleased to know that there are six theatres playing "Bruce Almighty" in Beverly Hills, 90210.)

A little further down there's a "reviews" box. This box has several different sets of information. There's a "Current Releases" list, which gives a list of movies now playing or opening this week, from 2 Fast 2 Furious to X2: X-Men United. Red checkmark icons denote movies which are NY Times critic picks. Click on a movie title and you'll get more details on the releases, including a more extensive summary, the MPAA rating and why it got that rating, average reader rating, number of votes, cast listing, and similar movies. Reader ratings? Yup, readers are invited to rate the movies on a five star system and contribute written reviews as well. "The Matrix Reloaded," at this writing, has 95 written reviews and over 1600 star ratings.

But hey, maybe you want material from the New York Times reviewers. That's fine. You'll also see that the reviews box has free reviews from New York Times critics back to 1983. There are actually reviewers from here back to 1929, but only the years 1983 on have a full list of reviews. You can browse the reviews by year or browse by movie title, critic, or genre.

If you think that the NYT restricts itself to highbrow movies, think again. I was delighted to see Janet Maslin's restrained but still overtly annoyed review of ''Rainbow Brite and the Star Stealer''. Elvis Mitchell has much more fun beating up the 2002 release of "Pinocchio." But of course you'll find plenty of lesser-known movies here as well; Laurie Anderson's "Home of the Brave" and ''The Emperor and the Assassin'' are included. Readers are encouraged to leave reviews of past as well as current movies.

If you like movies, or like movie nostalgia, or like seeing reviewers having fun, you'll like this section. Put aside a lot of time, though -- I spent over an hour with this site just writing up this review.

Posted in the following categories: Entertainment-Movies
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