The New York Times' Scores

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For 20,268 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 4.3 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 20268
  2. Mixed: 8,427 out of 20268
  3. Negative: 2,464 out of 20268
20268 movie reviews
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  1. West Side Story
    What they have done with West Side Story in knocking it down and moving it from stage to screen is to reconstruct its fine material into nothing short of a cinema masterpiece...In every respect, the recreation of the Arthur Laurents-Leonard Bernstein musical in the dynamic forms of motion pictures is superbly and appropriately achieved.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Blue Hawaii
    Mild, nonsensical and harmless.
  3. The Comancheros
    So studiously wild and woolly it turns out to be good fun.
  4. Splendor in the Grass
    Miss Wood has a beauty and radiance that carry her through a role of violent passions and depressions with unsullied purity and strength. There is poetry in her performance, and her eyes in the final scene bespeak the moral significance and emotional fulfillment of this film.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Breakfast at Tiffany's
    Like that storied novella by Truman Capote from which it stems, it is a completely unbelievable but wholly captivating flight into fancy composed of unequal dollops of comedy, romance, poignancy, funny colloquialisms and Manhattan's swankiest East Side areas captured in the loveliest of colors.
  6. Paris Blues
    Paris Blues is a small movie with large ambitions.
  7. The Hustler
    Under Robert Rossen's strong direction, its ruthless and odorous account of one young hustler's eventual emancipation is positive and alive. It crackles with credible passions. It comes briskly and brusquely to sharp points.
  8. Yojimbo
    As in most Westerns, the dramatic penetration is not deep, and the plot complications are many and hard to follow in Japanese. Kurosawa is here showing more virtuosity than strength. Yojimbo is a long way (in the wrong direction) from his brilliant Rashomon.
  9. Scream of Fear
    Though clearly influenced by Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 Psycho, Scream of Fear is closer to Orson Welles in its baroque visual design and delight in style for style's sake. [21 Oct 2008, p.C4]
    • The New York Times
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
    Good color, handsome photographic effects and a submarine to end them all make Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea a mildly diverting but far from memorable screen plunge.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Guns of Navarone
    Even though the picture runs more than two hours and a half, it moves swiftly and gets where it is going. J. Lee Thompson has directed it with pace and has seen to it that the actors give the impression of being stout and bold.
  12. La Dolce Vita
    A brilliantly graphic estimation of a whole swath of society in sad decay and, eventually, a withering commentary upon the tragedy of the overcivilized. (Review of Original Release)
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Blast of Silence
    Molly McCarthy, however, is deceptively unaffected as the heroine, and her spirited attack on her two big scenes has the quality of the film as a whole—over-eager, unsuccessful, but worth watching.
  14. Breathless
    Say this, in sum, for "Breathless": it is certainly no cliché, in any area or sense of the word. It is more a chunk of raw drama, graphically and artfully torn with appropriately ragged edges out of the tough underbelly of modern metropolitan life.
  15. The Misfits
    Mr. Huston's direction is dynamic, inventive and colorful. Mr. Gable is ironically vital. Miss Ritter, James Barton and Estelle Winwood are amusing in very minor roles, and Alex North has provided some good theme music. But the picture just doesn't come off.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Great Impostor
    An amusing, and occasionally fascinating, comedy-drama about the career of one of the most amazing—and likable—contemporary charlatans, Ferdinand W. Demara Jr.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    101 Dalmatians
    A generally cozy and sentimental little yarn about a nice young English couple, their brood of dogs and a lady dognapper who collects Dalmatians to make coats. It's a rather clever idea, if a bit unsettling.
  18. Where the Boys Are
    Inspired by the novel of Glendon Swarthout, which one reviewer described as "a highly carbonated elixir of sex, sun-shine and beer," it has been patterned into a movie by the glib script writer, George Wells, so that it looks and sounds like a chummy dramatization of the Kinsey reports.
  19. The Grass Is Greener
    Miss Kerr and Miss Simmons look attractive and Mr. Grant and Mr. Mitchum try hard to create the illusion of being moved by love and passion. But they both appear mechanical and bored. [24 Dec 1960, p.8]
    • The New York Times
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Swiss Family Robinson
    The Robinsons, their island and Mr. Disney have made a real Christmas contribution for any family.
  21. Exodus
    A dazzling, eye-filling, nerve-tingling display of a wide variety of individual and mass reactions to awesome challenges and, in some of its sharpest personal details, a fine reflection of experience that rips the heart.
  22. The Sundowners
    A sense of outdoor living and a tingle of open-air adventure are the breath of life in this film.
  23. 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.
  25. 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.
  26. 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.
  27. 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.
  28. 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.
  29. Sunrise at Campobello
    A well-done, moving biographical film.
  30. 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.
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