Ranking All Of Director Terence Davies’s Movies
“What are Terence Davies’s Best Movies?” We looked at all of Davies’s directed filmography and ranked them against one another to answer that very question!
We took all of the movies directed by Terence Davies and looked at their Rotten Tomato Critic, Rotten Tomato User, Metacritic, Metacritic User, IMDB, and Letterboxd scores, ranking them against one another to see which movies came out on top. The movies are ranked in our list below based on which movies have the highest overall score between all 6 review sites in comparison with all of the other movies by the same director. The process is all very scientific with no flaws at all.
The full ranking chart is also included below the countdown on the bottom of the page.
Happy Viewing!
The Top Film’s Of Terence Davies
10 ) The Neon Bible (1995)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 8
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 9
- Metacritc Critic Score: 8
- Metacritic User Score: 6
- IMDB User Review Score: 10
- Letterboxd User Score: 9
While on a train, a teenage boy thinks about his life and the flamboyant aunt whose friendship acted as an emotional shield from his troubled family. This film evokes the haunting quality of memory while creating a heartfelt portrait of a boy’s life in a rural 1940s Southern town.
9 ) Children (1976)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 9
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 10
- Metacritc Critic Score: 8
- Metacritic User Score: 6
- IMDB User Review Score: 5
- Letterboxd User Score: 6
Robert Tucker, a young gay man who is almost without affect, sits in various waiting rooms. As he sits, he recalls events from the year of his childhood when his father dies. He’s ten or eleven that year, picked on by bullies at the Catholic school he attends. He seems friendless. At home, his mother is quiet, his father is ill and angry. After his father’s death, there’s a wake, the coffin arrives, the body is removed. The lad grieves, alone.
8 ) Sunset Song (2015)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 5
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 7
- Metacritc Critic Score: 7
- Metacritic User Score: 2
- IMDB User Review Score: 8
- Letterboxd User Score: 8
The daughter of a Scottish farmer comes of age in the early 1900s.
7 ) The Deep Blue Sea (2011)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 5
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 6
- Metacritc Critic Score: 3
- Metacritic User Score: 3
- IMDB User Review Score: 9
- Letterboxd User Score: 9
The wife of a British Judge is caught in a self-destructive love affair with a Royal Air Force pilot.
6 ) A Quiet Passion (2016)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 2
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 8
- Metacritc Critic Score: 6
- Metacritic User Score: 4
- IMDB User Review Score: 7
- Letterboxd User Score: 6
The story of American poet Emily Dickinson from her early days as a young schoolgirl to her later years as a reclusive, unrecognized artist.
5 ) The Terence Davies Trilogy (1983)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 9
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 1
- Metacritc Critic Score: 8
- Metacritic User Score: 6
- IMDB User Review Score: 1
- Letterboxd User Score: 3
These three semi-autobiographical short films by Terence Davies follow the journey of Robert Tucker, first seen as a hangdog child in “Children”, then as a hollow-eyed middle-aged man in “Madonna and Child”, and finally as a decrepit old man in “Death and Transfiguration”. Dreamlike and profoundly moving.
3 ) Of Time and the City (2008)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 1
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 5
- Metacritc Critic Score: 4
- Metacritic User Score: 5
- IMDB User Review Score: 4
- Letterboxd User Score: 4
“Of Time and The City” is both a love song and a eulogy to the director’s birthplace of Liverpool, England. It is also a response to memory, reflection and the experience of losing a sense of place as the skyline changes and time takes it toll. The visual content of the film consists largely of archival clips of Liverpool from the 1940s to the 1960s, their nostalgic charm darkened by accompanying music and by the counterpoint of Davies’ dry, at times dyspeptic, voice-over narration. His voice thickens with emotion as he recalls the delights of juvenile movie-going or the ritual of a holiday trip to New Brighton, across the River Mersey, and hardens with contempt when he turns his gaze on the hoopla surrounding Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in 1953.
3 ) The House of Mirth (2000)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 3
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 4
- Metacritc Critic Score: 5
- Metacritic User Score: 1
- IMDB User Review Score: 6
- Letterboxd User Score: 4
A woman risks losing her chance of happiness with the only man she has ever loved.
2 ) The Long Day Closes (1992)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 7
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 3
- Metacritc Critic Score: 1
- Metacritic User Score: 6
- IMDB User Review Score: 2
- Letterboxd User Score: 1
Set in Kensington, a working-class district of Liverpool, England in mid-1950s, this is the story of eleven-year-old Bud, a sad and lonely boy. With cinema as his main source of solace, he haunts the local ‘picture-house’. All the while, his family looms large in our peripheral vision as do the menacing bullies of his school, but Bud is the centre of attention both from the camera’s angle and from his doting family.
1 ) Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 3
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 2
- Metacritc Critic Score: 1
- Metacritic User Score: 6
- IMDB User Review Score: 2
- Letterboxd User Score: 1
The second film in Terence Davies’s autobiographical series (along with “Trilogy” and “The Long Day Closes”) is an impressionistic view of a working-class family in 1940s and 1950s Liverpool, based on Davies’s own family. Through a series of exquisite tableaux Davies creates a deeply affecting photo album of a troubled family wrestling with the complexity of love.
Terence Davies’s Best Movies
Terence Davies Review Website Filmography Rankings
| Film | RT Critic | RT User | MC Critic | MC User | IMDB | Letterboxd | Overal Rank |
| Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) | 3 | 2 | 1 | 6 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| The Long Day Closes (1992) | 7 | 3 | 1 | 6 | 2 | 1 | 2 |
| Of Time and the City (2008) | 1 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 3 |
| The House of Mirth (2000) | 3 | 4 | 5 | 1 | 6 | 4 | 3 |
| The Terence Davies Trilogy (1983) | 9 | 1 | 8 | 6 | 1 | 3 | 5 |
| A Quiet Passion (2016) | 2 | 8 | 6 | 4 | 7 | 6 | 6 |
| The Deep Blue Sea (2011) | 5 | 6 | 3 | 3 | 9 | 9 | 7 |
| Sunset Song (2015) | 5 | 7 | 7 | 2 | 8 | 8 | 8 |
| Children (1976) | 9 | 10 | 8 | 6 | 5 | 6 | 9 |
| The Neon Bible (1995) | 8 | 9 | 8 | 6 | 10 | 9 | 10 |
