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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    • 90 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Scarface
    It is a stirring picture, efficiently directed and capably acted, but as was once said of The Covered Wagon, that it was all very well if you liked wagons, so this is an excellent diversion for those who like to take an afternoon or an evening off to study the activities of cowardly thugs.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Freaks
    Freaks is not a picture to be easily forgotten.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Shanghai Express
    It is by all odds the best picture Josef von Sternberg has directed.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
    Fredric March is the stellar performer in this blood-curdling shadow venture.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mata Hari
    George Fitzmaurice, the director, has told his story in an intelligent and restrained fashion.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Safe in Hell
    Safe in Hell is a little reminiscent of "The Unholy Garden," with its tropic sanctuary where rogues of various nationalities live out their days in happy oblivion, safe from the long arm of extradition. The theme is a good deal sadder, a sort of meldodramatization of all those sad songs about the women who will die rapturously for their men.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Frankenstein
    It is naturally a morbid, gruesome affair, but it is something to keep the spectator awake, for during its most spine-chilling periods it exacts attention.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Monkey Business
    Whether it is really as funny as Animal Crackers is a matter of opinion. Suffice it to say that few persons will be able to go... and keep a straight face.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Skin Game
    Mr. Galsworthy's narrative is bound to enlist one's attention, but Mr. Hitchcock, who is responsible for the adaptation as well as the direction, cannot be said to have accomplished either task in a fashion the subject deserves, for in undergoing the studio operation the original work has been sapped of its persuasive drama.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Public Enemy
    It is just another gangster film...weaker than most in its story, stronger than most in its acting, and like most maintaining a certain level of interest through the last burst of machine-gun fire.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Front Page
    Front Page displays a giddy bitterness that is rare in any films except those of Mr. Wilder. It is also, much of the time, extremely funny.
    • 99 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    City Lights
    It was a joyous evening. Mr. Chaplin's shadow has grown no less.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Dracula
    With Mr. Browning's imaginative direction and Mr. Lugosi's makeup and weird gestures, this picture succeeds to some extent in its grand guignol intentions.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cimarron
    It gives a wonderfully impressive idea of the early days in the territory, from the time the hordes of persons on horseback, in wagons and on foot make the dash to lay out their claims on the signal of a pistol shot, to the gradual improvements that come to Osage as years go by.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Murder!
    Although the final scenes in Murder...do not live up to many that have gone before and there is a strange absence of true psychology in these closing stretches, there are episodes in this picture that are possessed of considerable merit.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Hell's Angels
    In every instance so soon as the producer forgets Helen, the flaxen-haired creature, and takes to the war, his film is absorbing and exciting. But while she is the centre of attraction the picture is a most mediocre piece of work.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Animal Crackers
    A further example of amusing nonsense.
  18. All Quiet on the Western Front
    Lewis Milestone's unsparing direction of the senseless slaughter more than makes up for the soft spots and does justice to Erich Maria Remarque's novel of a generation destroyed by war.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Big House
    It is a film that sweeps swiftly along, with some conspicuously fine episodes and others where the humor is not a little forced.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Farmer's Wife
    It is a lethargic affair with ingenuous fun. It has been nicely directed with a keen eye for the sunlight and shadows over the winding country roads, and the indoor scenes are always correct as to furnishings.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Manxman
    The British silent pictorial translation of Sir Hall Caine's novel, "The Manxman," is filled with enchanting scenes and the story itself is quite well told.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Blackmail
    It is a murder story based on a play by Charles Bennett and in spite of its many artificial situations and convenient ideas it possesses a dramatic value that holds the attention.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Cocoanuts
    Fun puts melody in the shade in the audible pictorial transcription of the musical comedy The Cocoanuts.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Broadway Melody
    The story was written by Edmund Goulding, and it is one that has not taxed his imagination severely, for it merely concerns the shattered illusions and hopes of two small-time dancing and singing girls who, having been successful in their sphere, decide to give Broadway the benefit of their talents.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Man with a Movie Camera
    It is a disjointed array of scenes in which the producer, Dziga Vertoff, does not take into consideration the fact that the human eye fixes for a certain space of time that which holds the attention.
    • 98 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Passion of Joan of Arc
    FRANCE can well be proud of that great picture, The Passion of Jeanne d'Arc, for while Carl Dreyer, a Dane, is responsible for the conspicuously fine and imaginative use of the camera, it is the gifted performance of Maria Falconetti as the Maid of Orleans that rises above everything in this artistic achievement.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wings
    Amazing air duels and an impressive study of aviators are depicted in Wings, Paramount's epic of the flying fighters of the World War.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Circus
    There are passages in The Circus that are undoubtedly too long and others that are too extravagant for even this blend of humor. But Chaplin's unfailing imagination helps even when the sequence is obviously slipping from grace.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog
    This is an impressive study in anticlimax, more distinguished than the usually quoted classic example of "For God, for country and for Yale." The picture has a very, very excellent begining, a mediocre middle and a most deplorable ending.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sunrise
    Mr. Murnau shows himself to be an artist in camera studies, bringing forth marvelous results from lights, shadows and settings. He also proves himself to be a true story teller, and, incidentally, here is a narrative wherein the happy ending is welcome.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Jazz Singer
    The Vitaphoned songs and some dialogue have been introduced most adroitly. This in itself is an ambitious move, for in the expression of song the Vitaphone vitalizes the production enormously. The dialogue is not so effective, for it does not always catch the nuances of speech or inflections of the voice so that one is not aware of the mechanical features.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Ring
    An old and rather a thin story, but well told and well acted by Carl Brisson, Ian Hunter and Lilian Hall Davis.
    • 97 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Battleship Potemkin
    Whether or not one is disposed to accept all the details as a faithful record, the fact remains that it is a production in which the director displays a vivid imagination and an artistic appreciation of motion picture values.
  34. A Woman of Paris: A Drama of Fate
    The film is not only a treasure in itself—witty, sophisticated an often beautifully funny, though it means to be “serious,” as Chaplin says—it's also a rare opportunity to see what Chaplin is like as a filmmaker when he is not contemplating his own image.
    • 99 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Intolerance
    For in spite of its utter incoherence, the questionable taste of some of its scenes and the cheap banalties into which it sometimes lapses Intolerance is an interesting and unusual picture. The stupendousness of its panoramas, the grouping and handling of its great masses of players, make it an impressive spectacle.
  36. I Love You, Daddy
    When I watched I Love You, Daddy a second time, the jokes no longer landed; its shocks felt uglier, cruder. But for once a filmmaker seemed to be admitting to the misogyny that we know is always there and has often been denied or simply waved off, at times in the name of art.
  37. The Seventh Continent (1989)
    The Seventh Continent is one of the most stylish films in this year's New Directors/New Films series. With its fragmented pattern of beautifully composed and repeated images from middle-class life, it rejuvenates a 1960's style that would seem to be exhausted by now. But the Austrian writer and director Michael Haneke pulls viewers through a good portion of the film on the sheer strength of his visual flair, avoiding the classic trap of how to create a film about boredom that is not boring.
  38. The Life of Jesus
    I wanted to show how the underlying racism of society can transform a banal love story into a tragedy, Mr. Dumont has said. His film, for all its characters' uncommunicativeness, is too flat and unswerving to convey that idea surprisingly. But it does bring haunting power to the bitter, tongue-tied helplessness that sets its tragedy in motion.
  39. George
    At two hours, the documentary is overstuffed, possibly by design. But it matches a kaleidoscopic form to a kaleidoscopic life story, honoring its subject without simplifying him.
  40. The Legend of Swee' Pea
    As absorbing as The Legend of Swee’ Pea is, it might have been even better if May had pulled back the curtain more on his off-camera interactions with his subject
  41. Madame Bovary
    Robert Ardrey has put it together into a literate and playable script and Vincente Minelli has kept it moving with a smooth and refined directoral touch.
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