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. The Black Scorpion
    The back-lot boys working for producers Frank Melford and Jack Dietz have, for the most part, performed an adequate job. As for the human side of the plot, written by David Duncan and Robert Blees, just forget it.
  2. The Three Faces of Eve
    It is written, produced and directed by Mr. Johnson with a clean documentary clarity, and played with superlative flexibility and emotional power by Joanne Woodward in the main role.
  3. Man of a Thousand Faces
    Thanks to a dandy performance by James Cagney in the role of the great silent-film star, Lon Chaney, there is drama and personality in Man of a Thousand Faces.
  4. 3:10 to Yuma
    A good, lively script has been written by Halsted Welles, and sharp, business-like direction has been contributed by Delmer Daves.What's more, the whole thing is neatly acted.
  5. An Affair to Remember
    Mr. McCarey's direction is unpropitiously and unaccountably slow. Could it be, too, that a brand of make-believe that was tolerable eighteen years ago, before color and CinemaScope and other intrusions, is just a little discomforting now?
  6. Love in the Afternoon
    This grandly sophisticated romance, which Mr. Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond have penned with a courteous nod to a novel by a Frenchman named Claude Anet, is in the great Lubitsch tradition, right down to the froth on the champagne, with a couple of fine additional "touches" that Mr. Wilder may wholly claim.
  7. The Curse of Frankenstein
    This one should be cold-cuts for old-timers who remember Boris Karloff as the get of Frankenstein, but it may tittilate the blissful youngsters.
  8. A Face in the Crowd
    Mr. Schulberg and Mr. Kazan spawn a monster not unlike the one of Dr. Frankenstein. But so hypnotized are they by his presence that he runs away not only with the show but with intellectual reason and with the potentiality of their theme.
  9. Gunfight at the O.K. Corral
    It is firmly directed by John Sturges (of Bad Day at Black Rock fame), and it is ruggedly acted by all and sundry—of which there is quit[e] a heap.
    • 97 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    12 Angry Men
    A penetrating, sensitive, and sometimes shocking dissection of the hearts and minds of men who obviously are something less than gods. It makes for taut, absorbing, and compelling drama that reaches far beyond the close confines of its jury room setting.
  11. The Incredible Shrinking Man
    Unless a viewer is addicted to freakish ironies, the unlikely spectacle of Mr. Williams losing an inch of height each week, while his wife, Randy Stuart, looks on helplessly, will become tiresome before Universal has emptied its lab of science-fiction clichés.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Wrong Man
    Frighteningly authentic, the story generates only a modicum of drama.
  13. Baby Doll
    Mr. Kazan keeps the courtship bouncing between the emotional and the ludicrous. The nonchalance of the pursuer is its most entertaining grace.
  14. Written on the Wind
    The trouble with this romantic picture—among other minor things, including Mr. Stack's absurd performance and another even more so by Miss Malone—is that nothing really happens, the complications within the characters are never clear and the sloppy, self-pitying fellow at the center of the whole thing is a bore.
  15. Bundle of Joy
    A sadly deficient entertainment when looked at objectively. Its book is an obvious and witless rework of a plot that has gray hairs, and its music and so-called dances are depressingly lacking in class.
  16. Giant
    Thanks to Mr. Stevens' brilliant structure and handling of images, every scene and every moment is a pleasure. He makes "picture" the essence of his film.
  17. Seven Samurai
    On that simple framework and familiar story line, director Kurosawa has plastered a wealth of rich detail, which brilliantly illuminates his characters and the kind of action in which they are involved. He has loaded his film with unusual and exciting physical incidents and made the whole thing graphic in a hard, realistic western style.
  18. Around the World in 80 Days
    It makes like a wild adventure picture and, with some forty famous actors in "bit" roles, it also takes on the characteristic of a running recognition game. It is noisy with sound effects and music. It is overwhelmingly large in the process known as Todd-AO. It runs for two hours fifty-five minutes (not counting an intermission). And it is, undeniably, quite a show.
  19. Julie
    There is one mark of distinction: Mr. Stone has shot much of this film along the beautiful California seacoast in the vicinity of Monterey. That makes it easy to look at. Indeed, it makes it thrilling, at times.
  20. Lust for Life
    Both the script and the performance of this picture have a striking integrity in putting forth the salient details and the surface aspects of the life of van Gogh.
  21. The Bad Seed
    Mervyn LeRoy, who produced and directed, has lost a great deal of the bite of the play. He has done it in a style of presentation that is ostentatious and often insincere.
  22. High Society
    As flimsy as a gossip-columnist's word, especially when it is documenting the weird behavior of the socially elite. And with pretty and lady-like Grace Kelly flouncing lightly through its tomboyish Hepburn role, it misses the snap and the crackle that its un-musical predecessor had.
  23. The King and I
    Every bit of the humor and vibrant humanity that flowed through the tender story of the English school-teacher and the quizzical king is richly preserved in the screen play that Ernest Lehman has prepared.
  24. Moby Dick
    This is the third time Melville's story has been put upon the screen. There is no need for another, because it cannot be done better, more beautifully or excitingly again.
  25. Crime in the Streets
    The production, which Donald Siegel has directed from the screen play of the original author, Reginald Rose, is cramped and flimsy. It matches the rest of the show.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Killing
    Though The Killing is composed of familiar ingredients and it calls for fuller explanations, it evolves as a fairly diverting melodrama.
  27. The Man Who Knew Too Much
    Even in mammoth VistaVision, the old Hitchcock thriller-stuff has punch.
  28. The Searchers
    A rip-snorting Western, as brashly entertaining as they come.
  29. Godzilla, King of the Monsters!
    The whole thing is in the category of cheap cinematic horror-stuff.
  30. The Harder They Fall
    It's a brutal and disagreeable story, probably a little far-fetched, and without Mr. Schulberg's warmest character—the wistful widow who bestowed her favors on busted pugs. But with all the arcana of the fight game that Mr. Yordan and Mr. Robson have put into it—along with their bruising, brutish fight scenes—it makes for a lively, stinging film.
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