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 Sundowners
    A sense of outdoor living and a tingle of open-air adventure are the breath of life in this film.
  2. Butterfield 8
    The dialogue is rough. Let's say O'Harrowing. And the ending is absurd. But so is most of it for that matter. It's the living it up that gets you in this film.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Magnificent Seven
    A gifted director like Mr. Sturges (who also produced) can't be held entirely responsible for this endless dawdling prologue, since William Roberts' scenario increasingly flattens the action with philosophical talk on all sides and some easy clichés.
  4. Spartacus
    It is a spotty, uneven drama in which the entire opening phase representing the basic-training program in a gladiatorial school is lively, exciting and expressive, no matter how true to history it is, and the middle phase is pretentious and tedious, because it is concerned with the dull strife of politics.
  5. Midnight Lace
    It's always nice to have a mystery melodrama, no matter how implausible it may be, that takes place amid elegant surroundings and involves people who are beautiful and rich. It makes one feel so luxurious to be there with the diamonds and champagne, enjoying the heat on the rich folks and knowing that you are not going to be burned.
  6. The Hidden Fortress
    This is not to say that the action is not vivid, exciting and tense, or that Kurosawa's camera is any less graphic than it usually is. This is simply to say that The Hidden Fortress is essentially a superficial film and that Kurosawa, for all his talent, is as prone to pot-boiling as anyone else.
  7. The Entertainer
    It works out to a fascinating picture, for one reason because of its superior illustrative performance and, for another, because of its striking mise en scène.
  8. Sunrise at Campobello
    A well-done, moving biographical film.
  9. Psycho
    The consequence in his denouement falls quite flat for us. But the acting is fair. Mr. Perkins and Miss Leigh perform with verve, and Vera Miles, John Gavin, and Martin Balsam do well enough in other roles.
  10. The Brides of Dracula
    Here is but another repetition of the standard tale of the vampire bugaboo who likes to sink his oversized dentures into the necks of pretty girls.There is nothing new or imaginative about it.
  11. Ocean's 11
    Lewis Milestone's direction suits the movement of Harry Brown's and Charles Lederer's script, which is entirely centripetal, focusing exclusively on Mr. Sinatra and his gang. Young people are likely to find this more appropriate and bewitching than do their elders. The latter are likely to feel less gleeful in the presence of heroes who rob and steal.
  12. The Time Machine
    The drama, for all its invention, is creaky and a bit passé. (Apparently there has still been no contact with other planets in 800,000 A. D.) And the mood, while delicately wistful, is not so flippant or droll as it might be in a fiction as fanciful and flighty as this one naturally is.
  13. Inherit the Wind
    One of the most intelligent, respectable and entertaining motion pictures of this year.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Bellboy
    A generous—some might even say gratuitous—proportion of the anecdotes are devoted to mild shaggy dog jokes, with a subdued audience chuckle as the kindest response. Mr. Lewis' devotees may find the comedian disappointingly restrained.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    13 Ghosts
    It's too bad Mr. Castle, in serving up his ghosts, didn't simply have some cartoonists draw, 'em on in full view.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Darby O'Gill and the Little People
    Overpoweringly charming concoction of standard Gaelic tall stories, fantasy and romance.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    House of Usher
    Under the low-budget circumstances, Vincent Price and Myrna Fahey should not be blamed for portraying the decadent Ushers with arch affectation, nor Mark Damon held to account for the traces of Brooklynese that creep into his stiffly costumed impersonation of the mystified interloper.
  18. The Apartment
    Mr. Wilder has done more than write the film. His direction is ingenious and sure, sparkled by brilliant little touches and kept to a tight, sardonic line.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Pollyanna
    Like its sub-teen, "Glad Girl" heroine, this visit with Pollyanna is pleasant and unlikely to hurt or excite even the small fry.
  20. Private Property
    This tense and upsetting film has more psychological depth and empathy than the comparable sensationalist fare of its time, and shudder-inducing cinematic style to spare. Private Property qualifies as a genuine rediscovery.
  21. The Cranes Are Flying
    Thanks to Mr. Kalatozov's direction and the excellent performance Tatyana Samoilova gives as the girl, one absorbs a tremendous feeling of sympathy from this film—a feeling that has no awareness of geographical or political bounds.
  22. Suddenly, Last Summer
    Joseph L. Mankiewicz' direction is strained and sluggish, as is, indeed, the whole conceit of the drama. It should have been left to the off-Broadway stage.
  23. On the Beach
    Mr. Kramer has brilliantly directed a strong and responsive cast, headed by Gregory Peck as the submarine commander and Ava Gardner as the worldly woman who craves his love. Miss Gardner is remarkably revealing of the pathos of a wasted life. Fred Astaire is also amazing as the cynical scientist, conveying in his self-effacing manner a piercing sense of the irony of his trade.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Mummy
    For a superior version of a nearly identical horror yarn, with a little style and imagination, catch the 1932 Boris Karloff version of The Mummy now floating around on television. The new one just lumbers.
  25. Ben-Hur
    The artistic quality and taste of Mr. Wyler have prevailed to make this a rich and glowing drama that far transcends the bounds of spectacle. His big scenes are brilliant and dramatic—that is unquestionable. There has seldom been anything in movies to compare with this picture's chariot race.
  26. Shadows
    Shadows is an unfinished picture in every sense of the word. Yet it is fitfully dynamic, endowed with a raw but vibrant strength, conveying an illusion of being a record of real people, and it is incontestably sincere.
  27. Pillow Talk
    One of the most lively and up-to-date comedy-romances of the year.
  28. Look Back in Anger
    The fury and hate that John Osborne was able to pack into a flow of violent words in his stage play, Look Back in Anger, are not only matched but also documented in the film that the original stage director, Tony Richardson, has made from that vicious play.
  29. The Magician
    This picture is full of extraordinary thrills that flow and collide on several levels of emotion and intellect. And it swarms with sufficient melodrama of the blood-chilling, flesh-creeping sort to tingle the hide of the least brainy addict of out-right monster films.
    • 98 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    North by Northwest
    The lines and the expert manipulation of the principals are tributes to the outstanding talents of Messrs. Lehman and Hitchcock.
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