The Hollywood Reporter's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
For 12,887 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 51% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 45% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.8 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 62
Highest review score: 100 The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Lowest review score: 0 Dirty Love
Score distribution:
12887 movie reviews
    • 98 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    This film is pure entertainment.
  1. Directed by Howard Hawks with his sly sidearm grace, this is top-of-the-genre stuff.
    • 98 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Some Like It Hot is another supersonic, breakneck, belly-laugh comedy that should be a block-busting bonanza at the box office. It should be a proof that when the making of pictures is taken out of the bands of men-of-measured-merriment and handed over to men whose only purpose is to create amusement, they are still the world's best means of entertainment. Billy Wilder, who produced, directed and wrote the screenplay, with I.A.L. Diamond, was on the front burner all the way.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Giant stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the great ones.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It's a tumultuous and lavish windup with a dramatic wallop.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    This C.V. Whitney production is undoubtedly one of the greatest Westerns ever made. For sheer scope, guts and beauty I can think of no picture of the Indian Wars of the Southwest to compare with it.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It contains some extraordinarily good acting by the late James Dean, Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo (who is coming up fast and reveals himself to be a real trouper in this one). The direction by Nicholas Ray is outstanding...This is a superficial treatment of a vital problem that has been staged brilliantly.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    George Cukor's direction, briskly paced, combines heartbreaking tragedy, out-of-this-world musical entertainment and rib-splitting comedy into a coordinated whole that can only be compared for sheer cinematic know-how with Gone With the Wind. This is a picture that's worth seeing over and over again.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    This brutal, violently realistic drama, set against the sordid background of the New York waterfront, packs a terrific wallop that results in topflight entertainment.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A good piece of science-fiction of the beauty and the beast school, the beast in this case being a monstrous combination of man and fish. It makes for solid horror-thrill entertainment.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Laslo Benedek’s expert megging keeps the action taut and suspenseful, drawing top performances from a capable cast.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    With Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn turning in superb performances, Roman Holiday is 118 minutes of sheer entertainment.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    House of Wax is great entertainment, an exciting, diverting thriller.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hathaway draws splendid performances from his cast and maintains a taut, spicy tempo that grips the attention consistently. Miss Monroe turns in her finest acting performance yet, adding to her acting laurels by playing a sexy tart with a provocative abandon that has a powerful impact.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    With the aplomb of a modern Mesmer, DeMille forges The Greatest Show on Earth into a fabulous entertainment experience — a big, seething SHOW, spectacular, exciting, colorful.
    • 99 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    With the names and versatile talents of Gene Kelly, Donald O'Connor and Debbie Reynolds, supported by lilting melodies, wonderful dancing and some very funny comedy, the show just can't miss being another MGM top-grosser.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    As charming as the C.S. Forester novel on which it is based, The African Queen is top flight entertainment, delightful, different, always interesting. It is filled with excitement and adventure and sparked by superlative performances from Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Curiously contrasted characters and locales play their parts in the Hitchcock strategy, making for an enormously entertaining show.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Certainly The Snake Pit will go down in Hollywood annals as one of the must unusual subjects ever attempted, and what is more to the point, successfully accomplished. It is bold and original — a defiant answer to those who say that our American motion picture creators cannot evolve a mature dramatic subject.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    This couldn't be other than a Capra picture, the humanness of its story the dominant factor at every turn of situation. His direction of the individual characterizations delivered is also distinctively his, and the performances, from the starring roles of James Stewart and Donna Reed down to the smallest bit, are magnificent. When Capra is at his best, no one can top him.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Peter Godfrey paces the picture at a fast clip and the writing is laden with fun stuff.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    It is in the clandestine scheming of the sex-hungry man and the cunning woman, in the methodical method of their plotting the husband's murder that Wilder builds the suspense that pounds and drives to a staggering climax. There are at least three instances of suspense so great that the heart almost stops beating. The highest praise one can give the Sistrom production is to say that it is like a masterpiece of mystery fiction coming vividly to life on the screen. As you cannot lay down such a book until it has been read through, neither then can you shake off the witchery exerted over you by this film from its very opening scene.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Direction by George Cukor is ever a display of fine craftsmanship. He utilizes small mosaics of sharp characterization in building to his climax and works in each facet faultlessly. This is the job for which Cukor admirers have been waiting.
    • 100 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Here is a drama that lifts you right out of your seat.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Wolf Man serves its horror straight. A very substantial cast undertakes to sell believably a tale of superstitious folklore.
    • 97 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    On a number of accounts it is distinguished celluloid entertainment, but it is of great interest to the trade because it reveals, in startling terms, the unheralded talent of topflight scenarist, John Huston, who, in the dual capacity of writer and director of this picture, is now entitled to take his place among the most important creative artists in the industry.
    • 100 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Citizen Kane is a great motion picture. Great in that it was produced by a man who had never had any motion picture experience; great because he cast it with people who had never faced a camera in a motion picture production before; great in the manner of its story-telling, in both the writing of that story and its unfolding before a camera; great in that its photographic accomplishments are the highlights of motion picture photography to date, and finally great, because technically, it is a few steps ahead of anything that has been made in pictures before.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Mr. and Mrs. Smith is not the most brilliant comedy to hit the screen, nor is it the best directed, acted or produced. It may be disappointing to many of the followers of Norman Krasna, Alfred Hitchcock and Carole Lombard who expected extreme brilliance from that trio, but there’s enough fun in it to send you home happy with your entertainment.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    In its essence, Rebecca is another entry in the Wuthering Heights school of dour, somber, psychological drama, steeped in ultra-British atmosphere. Though overlong, it is beautifully done.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The writers have, wisely perhaps, toned down the language of the original version, although it is still lusty entertainment.

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