The New York Times' Scores

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For 20,271 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 20271
  2. Mixed: 8,430 out of 20271
  3. Negative: 2,464 out of 20271
20271 movie reviews
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  1. The Awful Truth
    Awfully unimportant, but it is also one of the more laughable screen comedies of 1937.
  2. 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.
  3. A Star Is Born
    The original beauty. Not as glittery as Garland-Mason but in some ways even more golden.
  4. 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.
  5. Sabotage
    A masterly exercise in suspense. His new film is imperfect narrative, but perfect dramaturgy.
  6. 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.
  7. My Man Godfrey
    An exuberantly funny picture.
  8. 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.
  9. 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.
  11. 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.
  12. 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.
  14. 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.
  15. 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.
  19. 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.
  22. 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.
  24. 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.
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