The New York Times' Scores

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For 20,278 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: 9,380 out of 20278
  2. Mixed: 8,434 out of 20278
  3. Negative: 2,464 out of 20278
20278 movie reviews
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  1. The Mouse on the Moon
    Sensitive music by Mr. Pintoff and some wonderfully wry dialogue, subtly laced with motivations, top off this animated jewel.
  2. Cleopatra
    Forget the length of time it took to make it and all the tattle of troubles they had, including the behavior of two of its spotlighted stars. The memorable thing about this picture is that it is a surpassing entertainment, one of the great epic films of our day. By virtue of brilliant staging, Mr. Mankiewicz keeps this well-known tale moving with visual excitements that increase the dramatic flow and give extraordinary insights into the characters.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Donovan's Reef
    This running account of Pier 6 brawls, miscegenation, romance and religion that disrupt the idyllic life on a post-World War II South Sea island paradise is sheer contrivance effected in hearty, fun-loving, truly infectious style.
  4. Irma la Douce
    Mr. Lemmon is little short of brilliant — vigorous, incisive and deft.
  5. Hud
    Ugly, powerful drama. [28 May 1963]
    • The New York Times
  6. Dr. No
    This lively, amusing picture is not to be taken seriously as realistic fiction or even art, any more than the works of Mr. Fleming are to be taken as long-hair literature. It is strictly a tinseled action-thriller, spiked with a mystery of a sort. And, if you are clever, you will see it as a spoof of science-fiction and sex.
  7. Sanjuro
    This is a mischievous, sly, good-humored presentation of a crusty old samurai caught between two groups of plain incompetents, with a playful satiric point.
  8. The Birds
    Making a terrifying menace out of what is assumed to be one of nature's most innocent creatures and one of man's most melodious friends, Mr. Hitchcock and his associates have constructed a horror film that should raise the hackles on the most courageous and put goose-pimples on the toughest hide.
  9. How the West Was Won
    With little or no imagination and, indeed, with no pictorial style, despite the fact that the three directors were Henry Hathaway, George Marshall and John Ford, they have fashioned a lot of random episodes, horribly written by James Webb, into a mat of outdoor adventure vignettes that tell you nothing of how the West was really won.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Young Racers
    Somehow, as the film progresses, its superficial protagonists grow more complex and assume added dimensions, until they unexpectedly emerge as interesting people.The result, though not a picture that many filmgoers would take special pains to see, still provides an agreeable hour for those who do. It is enough to make a viewer wonder what Mr. Corman might be able to accomplish with a better project and adequate means.
  11. Days of Wine and Roses
    It is a commanding picture, and it is extremely well played by Mr. Lemmon and Miss Remick, who spare themselves none of the shameful, painful scenes. But for all their brilliant performing and the taut direction of Blake Edwards, they do not bring two pitiful characters to complete and overpowering life. [18 Jan 1963, p.7]
    • The New York Times
  12. To Kill a Mockingbird
    Their charming enactments of a father and his children in that close relationship that can occur at only one brief period are worth all the footage of the film.
  13. Mutiny on the Bounty
    Has its ups and downs. Bronislau Kaper has provided a highly chromatic musical score that is consistent with the size, the sweeping romance and the eventual lumpishness of this film.
  14. What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
    The feeble attempts that Mr. Aldrich has made to suggest the irony of two once idolized and wealthy females living in such depravity and the pathos of their deep-seated envy having brought them to this, wash out very quickly under the flood of sheer grotesquerie. There is nothing particularly moving or significant about these two.
  15. Period of Adjustment
    Isobel Lennart's screenplay adds a few mild embellishments and George Roy Hill has directed in a nice, clear, uncomplicated way.
  16. The Manchurian Candidate
    The film is so artfully contrived, the plot so interestingly started, the dialogue so racy and sharp, and John Frankenheimer's direction so exciting in the style of Orson Welles when he was making Citizen Kane and other pictures that the fascination of it is strong. So many fine cinematic touches and action details pop up that one keeps wishing the subject would develop into something more than it does.
  17. The Longest Day
    It is hard to think of a picture, aimed and constructed as this one was, doing any more or any better or leaving one feeling any more exposed to the horror of war than this one does.
  18. Cléo from 5 to 7
    Another French film that fairly glitters with photographic and cinematic "style," yet fails to do more than skim the surface of a cryptic dramatic theme.
  19. The Miracle Worker
    The absolutely tremendous and unforgettable display of physically powerful acting that Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke put on in William Gibson's stage play The Miracle Worker is repeated by them in the film made from it by the same producer, Fred Coe, and the same director, Arthur Penn.
  20. Tales of Terror
    Tales of Terror is still lots of fun; Price is paired with Peter Lorre for an adaptation of The Black Cat that veers almost immediately into The Cask of Amontillado.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Birdman of Alcatraz
    A thoughtful yet powerful portrait that cleaves to the heart and mind despite its omissions.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hell Is for Heroes
    An unusually well-made film.
  23. Boys' Night Out
    Michael Gordon's direction is not as nimble as it was on "Pillow Talk."
  24. The Music Man
    It's here, and the rich, ripe roundness of it, the lush amalgam of the many elements of successful American show business that Mr. Willson brought together on the stage, has been preserved and appropriately made rounder and richer through the magnitude of film.
  25. Lolita
    This is not the novel Lolita, but it is a provocative sort of film.
  26. The Road to Hong Kong
    Practically every moment spent with Bing and Bob is good for consecutive chuckles and frequent belly-deep guffaws.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ride the High Country
    Take two cornbelt veterans like Mr. McCrea and Mr. Scott, give them a taut, tangy script (by N. B. Stone Jr.) a trim supporting cast and a good director (Sam Peckinpah), and you have the most disarming little horse opera in months.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Burn, Witch, Burn
    This low-budget, British import, with Janet Blair and a small cast, is quite the most effective "supernatural" thriller since Village of the Damned.
  29. Jules and Jim
    To put it quickly and crisply, it is charming, exciting and sad.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
    Mr. Ford, who has struck more gold in the West than any other film-maker, also has mined a rich vein here. He is again exposing the explosive forces involving the advent of law, in the shape of Mr. Stewart, on the raw denizens of a lawless frontier town. When legend becomes fact, a newspaper editor tells Mr. Stewart, print the legend. In Liberty Valance, there is too much of a good legend.
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