The New York Times' Scores

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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
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  1. The Lady Eve
    With The Lady Eve, which arrived yesterday at the Paramount, Mr. Sturges is indisputably established as one of the top one or two writers and directors of comedy working in Hollywood today. A more charming or distinguished gem of nonsense has not occurred since It Happened One Night.
  2. The Sea Wolf
    At least a good half of the effect in a sea-picture comes from the sea, and when that element is lacking the whole thing seems flat and synthetic. This, we regret to say, is a major fault in The Sea Wolf.
  3. The Strawberry Blonde
    Its amiable, infectious quality lies in the seriocomic way it re-creates the Eighteen Nineties culture of New York — horse-and-buggy courtships, dancing at beer gardens, Sunday afternoon street music and maybe an occasional brawl.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Mr. & Mrs. Smith
    A chucklesome comedy that fails to mount into a coruscating wave of laughter.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Invisible Woman
    The script is as creaky as a two-wheeled cart and were it not for the fact that John Barrymore is taking a ride in it we hate to think what "The Invisible Woman" might have turned out to be.
  6. Kitty Foyle
    The sharpness and contemporary significance of Mr. Morley's commentary are missing.
  7. The Philadelphia Story
    Provided you have a little patience for the lavishly rich, which these folks are, you should have great fun at The Philadelphia Story. For Metro and Director George Cukor have graciously made it apparent, in the words of a character, that one of the "prettiest sights in this pretty world is the privileged classes enjoying their privileges." And so, in this instance, you will too.
  8. The Letter
    It is an evil tale, plotted with an eye to its torturing effects. And Mr. Wyler has directed the film along those lines. With infinite care, he has created the dark, humid atmosphere of the rubber country. At a slow, inexorable pace, he has accumulated the details.
  9. Fantasia
    Fantasia is simply terrific—as terrific as anything that has ever happened on a screen.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Strike Up the Band
    When they take the rugs off the floor and the youngsters begin moving, Strike Up the Band is spanking good entertainment.
  11. The Westerner
    If some one could just have decided who should carry the ball, instead of letting it pass from one to the other, The Westerner might have been a bang-up, dandy film. And that, we are sorry to say, it isn't. The trouble, as indicated, is that the picture has no core.
  12. Foreign Correspondent
    Director Alfred Hitchcock, whose unmistakable stamp the picture bears, has packed about as much romantic action, melodramatic hullabaloo, comical diversion and illusion of momentous consequence as the liveliest imagination could conceive.
  13. They Drive by Night
    For fanciers of hard-boiled cinema, They Drive By Night still offers an entertaining ride.
  14. Pride and Prejudice
    Hunt Stromberg and his associates have managed to turn out a film which catches the spirit and humor of Miss Austen's novel down to the last impudent flounce of a petticoat, the last contented sigh of a conquering coquette.
  15. Waterloo Bridge
    Miss Leigh shapes the role of the girl with such superb comprehension, progresses from the innocent, fragile dancer to an empty, bedizened street-walker with such surety of characterization and creates a person of such appealing naturalness that the picture gains considerable substance as a result.
  16. Turnabout
    So far as we're concerned, this self-conscious fantasy of a husband and wife who reverse their biological status is a tired and tiresome jape, as subtle as a five-cent stogie and just as aromatic.
  17. My Favorite Wife
    A frankly fanciful farce, a rondo of refined ribaldries and an altogether delightful picture with Cary Grant and Irene Dunne chasing each other around most charmingly in it.
  18. Rebecca
    An altogether brilliant film, haunting, suspenseful, handsome and handsomely played.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The House of the Seven Gables
    Dreary and slightly stale fare.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    It All Came True
    Neither comedy, strictly speaking, nor good red gangsterism, nor an altogether creditable combination of both.
  21. Road to Singapore
    The Road to Singapore is cobbled with good intentions, is blessed intermittently with smooth-running strips of amiable nonsense, but is altogether too uneven for regular use.
  22. The Grapes of Wrath
    In the vast library where the celluloid literature of the screen is stored there is one small, uncrowded shelf devoted to the cinema's masterworks, to those films which by dignity of theme and excellence of treatment seem to be of enduring artistry, seem destined to be recalled not merely at the end of their particular year but whenever great motion pictures are mentioned. To that shelf of screen classics Twentieth Century-Fox yesterday added its version of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.
  23. Pinocchio
    It still is the best thing Mr. Disney has done and therefore the best cartoon ever made.
  24. Swiss Family Robinson
    The uniformly competent performance of the cast make it a moderately entertaining, if rather somnolently paced, story-book film.
  25. His Girl Friday
    His Girl Friday is a bold-faced reprint of what was once—and still remains—the maddest newspaper comedy of our times.
  26. Gone with the Wind
    Is it the greatest motion picture ever made? Probably not, although it is the greatest motion mural we have seen and the most ambitious film-making venture in Hollywood's spectacular history.
  27. The Shop Around the Corner
    A pretty kettle of bubbling brew it makes under Mr. Lubitsch's deft and tender management and with a genial company to play it gently, well this side of farce and well that side of utter seriousness.
  28. Of Mice and Men
    Lewis Milestone, who directed it; Eugene Solow, who adapted it, and Burgess Meredith, Lon Chaney Jr., Betty Field and the others who have performed it, have done more than well in simply realizing the drama's established values.
  29. The Invisible Man Returns
    The Invisible Man Returns is a mite on the ghostly side, too, although neither so horrendous nor so humorous as the first one was.
  30. Destry Rides Again
    A bit of the old West with a good bit of the old Dietrich in it; a tightly written, capitally directed show, with perfectly grand supporting performances.
  31. Another Thin Man
    This third of the trademarked Thin Men takes its murders as jauntily as ever, confirms our impression that matrimony need not be too serious a business and provides as light an entertainment as any holiday-amusement seeker is likely to find.
  32. The Roaring Twenties
    With a commentator's voice interpolating ultra-dramatic commonplaces as the film unreels, their melodrama has taken on an annoying pretentiousness which neither the theme nor its treatment can justify.
  33. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
    [Capra] has paced it beautifully and held it in perfect balance, weaving his romance lightly through the political phases of his comedy, flicking a sardonic eye over the Washington scene, racing out to the hinterland to watch public opinion being made and returning miraculously in time to tie all the story threads together into a serious and meaningful dramatic pattern.
  34. Jamaica Inn
    Jamaica Inn will not be remembered as a Hitchcock picture, but as a Charles Laughton picture.
  35. The Wizard of Oz
    A delightful piece of wonder-working which had the youngsters' eyes shining and brought a quietly amused gleam to the wiser ones of the oldsters.
  36. Beau Geste
    Mr. Wellman's film seems dominated by the tremendous shadow of its predecessor.
  37. Young Mr. Lincoln
    Not merely a natural and straightforward biography, but a film which indisputably has the right to be called Americana. Henry Fonda's characterization is one of those once-in-a-blue-moon things: a crossroads meeting of nature, art, and a smart casting director.
  38. Only Angels Have Wings
    When you add it all up, Only Angels Have Wings comes to an overly familiar total. It's a fairly good melodrama, nothing more.
  39. Love Affair
    Mr. McCarey has balanced his ingredients skillfully and has merged them, as is clear in retrospect, into a glowing and memorable picture.
  40. Wuthering Heights
    It is Goldwyn at his best, and better still, Emily Brontë at hers. Out of her strange tale of a tortured romance Mr. Goldwyn and his troupe have fashioned a strong and somber film, poetically written as the novel not always was, sinister and wild as it was meant to be, far more compact dramatically than Miss Brontë had made it.
  41. The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle
    A beautifully told story, with sincere and vigorous performances, and with a solid and richly atmospheric production to lend its interest and fascination.
  42. Midnight
    One of the liveliest, gayest, wittiest and naughtiest comedies of a long hard season.
  43. Stagecoach
    Here, in a sentence, is a movie of the grand old school, a genuine rib-thumper and a beautiful sight to see.
  44. Intermezzo: A Love Story
    Intermezzo is not exactly a dramatic thunderbolt, nothing the glamour-conscious will be inflamed about. But we found it a mature, an eloquent and sensitive film and we recommend it to you.
  45. The Lady Vanishes
    If it were not so brilliant a melodrama, we should class it as a brilliant comedy.
  46. Jezebel
    It is still an interesting film, though, in spite of our sniffs at its climax; colorful, generally well-performed and admirably directed by William Wyler.
  47. Bringing Up Baby
    After the first five minutes of the Music Hall's new show - we needed those five to orient ourselves - we were content to play the game called "the cliche expert goes to the movies" and we are not at all proud to report that we scored 100 per cent against Dudley Nichols, Hagar Wilde and Howard Hawks, who wrote and produced the quiz. Of course, if you've never been to the movies, Bringing Up Baby will be all new to you - a zany-idden product of the goofy farce school. But who hasn't been to the movies?
  48. Young and Innocent
    Alfred Hitchcock, England's jovial and rotund master of melodrama, has turned out another crisply paced, excellently performed film in "The Girl Was Young."
  49. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
    It is a classic, as important cinematicaly as "The Birth of a Nation" or the birth of Mickey Mouse. Nothing quite like it has been done before; and already we have grown impolite enough to clamor for an encore. Another helping, please!
  50. True Confession
    A valiant comedy, it stands on a level with such blissfully remembered items as I Met Him in Paris and Nothing Sacred... for they are all of a piece -- witty, clever and hugely amazing shows.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Nothing Sacred
    Briskly paced under the direction of William Wellman, the caustic comedy by Ben Hecht treads harshly on many a taboo. [16 May 1999, p.5]
    • The New York Times
  52. The Awful Truth
    Awfully unimportant, but it is also one of the more laughable screen comedies of 1937.
  53. Captains Courageous
    With its rich production, magnificent marine photography, admirable direction and performances, the film brings vividly to life every page of Kipling's novel and even adds an exciting chapter or two of its own.
  54. A Star Is Born
    The original beauty. Not as glittery as Garland-Mason but in some ways even more golden.
  55. Marked Woman
    Marked Woman could easily have become a maudlin piece. It totters every now and then on the brink of bathos and of melodramatic hokum. But invariably it is snatched back by Lloyd Bacon's direction or by the honesty of its players.
  56. Sabotage
    A masterly exercise in suspense. His new film is imperfect narrative, but perfect dramaturgy.
  57. After the Thin Man
    In a changing age it is completely heartening to discover that the Charles family-Nick, the amateur sleuth, Nora, his understanding but frequently underfoot wife, and Asta, the hydrant fancier—has weathered successfully the well-known vicissitudes of time.
  58. My Man Godfrey
    An exuberantly funny picture.
  59. Swing Time
    The plot is never permitted to weigh upon the shoulders of the cast; of comedy there is a generous portion; of romance the lightest sprinkling; of dancing, in solo, duet and ensemble, a brisk and debonair allotment.
  60. The Green Pastures
    Naïve, ludicrous, sublime and heartbreaking masterpiece of American folk drama.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Secret Agent
    It is a defect of the screen narrative that all the spies seem to be continually engaged in melodramatic shadow boxing and that the authors, who couldn't have been Mr. Maugham, never really make out a case for the necessity of spying and never convince you that there is anything in Geneva worth spying on. But there are scattered high-lights.
  62. Show Boat
    Universal's excellent screen transcription, preserving the Jerome Kern score and accepting Oscar Hammerstein's book and lyrics, is the pleasantest kind of proof that it was not merely one of the best musical shows of the century but that it contained the gossamer stuff for one of the finest musical films we have seen.
  63. The Great Ziegfeld
    The picture has the opulence, the lavishness, the expansiveness and the color of the old Follies; it has the general indifference to humor which was one of Ziegfeld's characteristics; and it has the reverential approach with which, we suspect, Mr. Ziegfeld might have handled his own life story.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Three Godfathers
    The Three Godfathers succeeds in catching the spirit of the Westerns of two decades back, when bad men could be heroes too.
  65. Desire
    You will not, in Desire, find a great story, but you will discover one that has been splendidly told. If it is a Lubitsch production, constantly highlighted by those indefinable touches of his, still one should not overlook the skill of its director, Frank Borzage; its excellent camera work, or the performances.
  66. The Story of Louis Pasteur
    Pasteur's life is warm and vital, of itself. It has lost none of that warmth through Mr. Muni's sensitive characterization, through the gifted direction of William Dieterle and the talents of a perfect cast.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Captain Blood
    With a spirited and criminally good-looking Australian named Errol Flynn playing the genteel buccaneer to the hilt, the photoplay recaptures the air of high romantic adventure which is so essential to the tale.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Tale of Two Cities
    Directed by Jack Conway, the picture is a compelling expansion of Dickens's story of the French Revolution, with the central role of Sidney Carton, a disreputable lawyer, memorably projected by Ronald Colman. [14 Feb 1999, p.6]
    • The New York Times
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Mutiny on the Bounty
    The weird and wonderful history of H. M. S. Bounty is magnificently transferred to the screen in Mutiny on the Bounty, which opened at the Capitol Theatre yesterday. Grim, brutal, sturdily romantic, made out of horror and desperate courage, it is as savagely exciting and rousingly dramatic a photoplay as has come out of Hollywood in recent years.
  70. Special Agent
    Crisp, fast moving and thoroughly entertaining melodrama.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Top Hat
    When Top Hat is letting Mr. Astaire perform his incomparable magic or teaming him with the increasingly dexterous Miss Rogers it is providing the most urbane fun that you will find anywhere on the screen.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The 39 Steps
    By comparison with the sinister delicacy and urbane understatement of The Thirty-nine Steps, the best of our melodramas seem crude and brawling.
  73. The Raven
    If The Raven is the best that Universal can do with one of the greatest horror story writers of all time, then it had better toss away the other two books in its library and stick to the pulpies for plot material.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Informer
    Ford has made an astonishing screen drama out of Liam O'Flaherty's novel The Informer.
  75. The Bride of Frankenstein
    Another astonishing chapter in the career of the Monster.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Man Who Knew Too Much
    Although the photography and lighting are inferior according to Hollywood standards, the film is an interesting example of technical ingenuity as well as an absorbing melodrama.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Roberta
    The work is a model for urbanity in the musical films and Mr. Astaire, the debonair master of light comedy and the dance, is its chief ornament.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    David Copperfield
    The most profoundly satisfying screen manipulation of a great novel that the camera has ever given us.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Imitation of Life
    A gripping and powerful if slightly diffuse drama which discussed the mother love question, the race question, the business woman question, the mother and daughter question and the love renunciation question.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Gay Divorcee
    Like the carefree team of Rogers and Astaire, The Gay Divorcee is gay in its mood and smart in its approach.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Little Miss Marker
    Tiny Shirley Temple is a joy to behold and her spontaneity and cheer in speaking her lines are nothing short of amazing.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Thin Man
    An excellent combination of comedy and excitement.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It Happened One Night
    It Happened One Night is a good piece of fiction, which, with all its feverish stunts, is blessed with bright dialogue and a good quota of relatively restrained scenes.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Flying Down to Rio
    It is a hearty and lively show, the story of which is just about equal to that of other musical offerings.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Son of Kong
    The film does offer some witty opening scenes depicting Carl Denham hounded by creditors following Kong's Gotham rampage. But the remainder of the film is sometimes laughably bad, and much of the dialogue is dated in a way that is not charming at all. [20 Sept 1987, p.36]
    • The New York Times
    • 92 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Little Women
    The film begins in a gentle fashion and slips away smoothly without any forced attempt to help the finish to linger in the minds of the audience. Little Women is just as honest in its story as Jo's nature.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Duck Soup
    A production in which the bludgeon is employed more often than the gimlet. The result is that this production is, for the most part, extremely noisy without being nearly as mirthful as their other films.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Invisible Man
    The story makes such superb cinematic material that one wonders that Hollywood did not film it sooner. Now that it has been done, it is a remarkable achievement.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Blood of a Poet
    While the various imaginery episodes shown on the screen, to the accompaniment of microphone comment by M. Cocteau himself, reinforced by English titles for those unfamiliar with French, have a certain fascination, especially for persons interested in film technique, they are hardly calculated to set the Hudson River on fire.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Footlight Parade
    It is not until Footlight Parade has been struggling through its plot for more than an hour that the fragments of song, costumed nymphs and technical virtuosity are finally integrated in a complete performance.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bombshell
    Although there are moments when the comedy is too rambunctious and scenes which are not precisely convincing, it is for the most part a merry, fast-paced diversion.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Cavalcade
    It is unfurled with such marked good taste and restraint that many an eye will be misty after witnessing this production.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    King Kong
    A fantastic film.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    42nd Street
    The liveliest and one of the most tuneful screen musical comedies that has come out of Hollywood.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    No Man of Her Own
    Well acted and clearly photographed little drama of musical hall life in Paris.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Three on a Match
    Three on a Match...is both tedious and distasteful.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Red Dust
    The atmosphere of this tale is more interesting than its story, especially the glimpses of the men at work.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    One Way Passage
    In its uncouth, brusque and implausible fashion "One Way Passage," a pictorial comedy drama which arrived at the Warners' Strand last night, offers quite a satisfactory entertainment.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Grand Hotel
    In all, the picture adheres faithfully to the original and while it undoubtedly lacks the life and depth and color of the play, by means of excellent characterizations it keeps the audience on the qui vive.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Horse Feathers
    Some of the fun is even more reprehensible than the doings of these clowns in previous films, but there is no denying that their antics and their patter are helped along by originality and ready wit.
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