Variety's Scores

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For 17,771 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 52% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 44% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.5 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 63
Highest review score: 100 IMAX: Hubble 3D
Lowest review score: 0 Divorce: The Musical
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9,130 out of 17771
  2. Mixed: 7,005 out of 17771
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17771
17771 movie reviews
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    • 99 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Touch of Evil
    Touch of Evil smacks of brilliance but ultimately flounders in it.
    • 99 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Rules of the Game
    As an experiment it’s interesting, but Jean Renoir, who directs, wrote the scenario and dialog, and takes a leading role, has made a common error: he attempts to crowd too many ideas into 80 minutes of film fare, resulting in confusion.
    • 98 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Wild Bunch
    Film at 145 minutes is far over-length, and should be tightened extensively, particularly in first half. After a bang-up and exciting opening, it appears that scripters lost sight of their narrative to drag in Mexican songs, dancing and way of life, plus an overage of dialog, to the detriment of action.
    • 97 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Night of the Hunter
    This start for Gregory as producer and Laughton as director is rich in promise but the completed product, bewitching at times, loses sustained drive via too many offbeat touches that have a misty effect.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Children of Paradise (1945)
    This ambitious French film turns out to be a strange mixture of the beautiful, the esoteric and the downright dull. Some startling flashes of inspired mimicry and fresh Gallic humor are wedded to the not un-Hollywoodian concept of the femme fatale who, willy-nilly in this instance, leads men to their ruin in an uneven performance of writing and direction.
  6. The Hurt Locker
    Boal's script stirs a little of everything into the pot, which boils down into seven setpieces divided by brief intervals of camaraderie/conflict among the three protags.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Magnificent Ambersons
    This film hasn't a single moment of contrast; it piles on and on a tale of woe, but without once striking at least a true chord of sentimentality.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    McCabe & Mrs. Miller
    Robert Altman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller is a disappointing mixture. A period story about a small northwest mountain village where stars Warren Beatty and Julie Christie run the bordello, the production suffers from overlength; also a serious effort at moody photography which backfires into pretentiousness; plus a diffused comedy-drama plot line which is repeatedly shoved aside in favor of bawdiness.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Secrets & Lies
    Unquestionably a finely observed, deeply felt work, though with some nagging problems in pacing and structure.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Man Who Would Be King
    Whether it was the intention of John Huston or not, the tale of action and adventure is a too-broad comedy, mostly due to the poor performance of Michael Caine.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Young Mr. Lincoln
    With judicious eye to authenticity and dignity the major shortcoming of this Lincoln film is at the altar of faithfulness, hampered by the rather lethargic production and direction.
  12. Nickel Boys
    For the first hour or so, Nickel Boys feels like the most exciting narrative debut since “Beasts of the Southern Wild.” Then Ross tries something bold that doesn’t quite work, and the experiment collapses upon itself.
  13. Ida
    It’s one thing to set up a striking black-and-white composition and quite another to draw people into it, and dialing things back as much as this film does risks losing the vast majority of viewers along the way, offering an intellectual exercise in lieu of an emotional experience to all but the most rarefied cineastes.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    An Autumn Afternoon
    This view of contemporary middle class life in Japan is too leisurely paced, too sentimental in design and its humorous social comments too infrequent.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Halloween
    After a promising opening, Halloween becomes just another maniac-on-the-loose suspenser. However, despite the prosaic plot, director John Carpenter has timed the film's gore so that the 93-minute item is packed with enough thrills.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Le Samouraï
    It is intermittently successful.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Hustler
    Unfoldment of the screenplay, based on novel by Walter S. Tevis, is far overlength, and despite the excellence of Newman’s portrayal of the boozing pool hustler the sordid aspects of overall picture are strictly downbeat.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
    A curious amalgam of the visually striking, the dramatically feeble and the offensively sadistic.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Birds
    The premise is fascinating. The idea of billions of bird-brains refusing to eat crow any longer and adopting the hunt-and-peck system, with homo sapiens as their ornithological target, is fraught with potential. Cinematically, Hitchcock & Co have done a masterful job of meeting this formidable challenge. But dramatically, The Birds is little more than a shocker-for shock’s-sake.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    To Have and Have Not
    Warners give the pic its usually nifty productional accoutrements, and that includes casting, musical scoring and Howard Hawks’ direction but the basic story is too unsteady.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Paths of Glory
    While the subject is well handled and enacted in a series of outstanding characterizations, it seems dated and makes for grim screen fare.
  22. Paterson
    Paterson, Jarmusch’s wee dramatic curio starring Adam Driver as a New Jersey bus driver – his name is Paterson, and he lives in Paterson — is a movie that’s all too aware of how much it diverges from contemporary tempo. That’s because the entire film is a self-conscious anachronism.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Eyes Without a Face [re-release]
    Director Georges Franju has given this some suspense and not spared any shock details. But the stilted acting, asides to explain characters and motivations, and a repetition of effects lose the initial impact.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Searching for Bobby Fischer
    Unfortunately, as scripter, debuting director Steven Zaillian (who wrote Awakenings) also feels compelled to throw in Karate Kid-type flourishes, a rather stale genre that doesn’t lend itself all that well to chess. The narrative is ruthlessly edited, jumping around in a manner that skips needed exposition and abandons characters.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Y Tu Mamá También
    The film's biggest limitation is its oversexed, underdeveloped male duo. Playing like a south-of-the-border version of Beavis and Butt-head, the teenagers have but one thought in their heads.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Force of Evil
    Force of Evil fails to develop the excitement hinted at in the title. Makers apparently couldn't decide on the best way to present an expose of the numbers racket, winding up with neither fish nor fowl as far as hard-hitting racketeer meller is concerned. A poetic, almost allegorical, interpretation keeps intruding on the tougher elements of the plot. This factor adds no distinction and only makes the going tougher.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
    The picture is infinitely better art – indeed, in many passages it is an astonishing fine bit of interpreting a classic, but as popular fare it loses in vital reaction.
  28. Long Day's Journey Into Night
    Plunging viewers into an extended dream sequence in the name of abstract motifs such as memory, time, and space, the film is a lush plotless mood-piece swimming in artsy references and ostentatious technical exercises, with a star (Tang Wei, “Lust, Caution”) as decoration.
  29. Hamilton
    The film aims to be more intimate, but it frequently deprives audiences of the show’s ingenious spatial design. Still, this original cast is so charismatic — and Miranda’s ultra-dense, dizzyingly clever book and lyrics are so effective — that they maintain our attention even when the edit feels like one of those live sporting events, as a producer sits in the control booth choosing between cameras in the moment, rather than planning out the shoot in advance.
  30. Leave No Trace
    There’s a listless, almost meandering nature to the story. The film’s conflict is clear — this is no way to raise a child, and allowed to continue in this fashion, Will risks both his life and Tom’s — and yet there’s no sense of where the script it headed, and no urgency to its resolution.
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