Variety's Scores

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For 17,760 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 2.3 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: 9,121 out of 17760
  2. Mixed: 7,003 out of 17760
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17760
17760 movie reviews
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  1. Career Girls
    Mike Leigh has made one of his most modest pictures, although one that offers quite a few laughs and other quirky pleasures.
  2. In the Company of Men
    Pics greatest achievement is its sharply poignant dialogue which, despite the horrible consequences of the contest it describes, is also darkly amusing.
  3. Picture Perfect
    A well-upholstered but hopelessly contrived romantic comedy, Picture Perfect is too ineffectual to tickle either the funnybone or the heartstrings.
  4. Spawn
    Spawn is a moodily malevolent, anything-goes revenge fantasy that relies more upon special visual and digitally animated effects for its intended appeal than any comics-derived sci-fier to date.
  5. One Eight Seven
    Artistically pretentious, thematically fuzzy and almost sinister in its deterministic view of the human condition, this unusually ambitious and serious-minded major studio release is simply too negative in every possible way to find a receptive audience.
  6. Air Force One
    Viewers looking for old-fashioned movie thrills as a change of pace from the glut of alien and digital-oriented features might paradoxically enjoy the feeling of being back on terra firma with this airborne adventure.
  7. Good Burger
    A ruthlessly clever yarn about small fries vs. big biz, this winning comedy serves up a hearty helping of fun and wholesome values that will ring up appetizing sales at the box office.
  8. Star Maps
    Stays consistently interesting through some risky tonal shifts.
  9. Her Majesty, Mrs. Brown
    Though there are a number of outdoor scenes and production values are handsome, ultimately it's the narrow focus and chamber nature of the material that lends the movie its resonance and emotional power.
  10. Kiss Me, Guido
    A bright, snappy culture-clash farce in the mode of "Desperately Seeking Susan" and its ilk, Kiss Me, Guido plays gay and Italian-American stereotypes against one another to good-natured, crowd-pleasing results.
  11. George of the Jungle
    Not quite inspired lunacy, the film has a game, likable quality.
  12. Contact
    Beautifully crafted and legitimately involving once it locks onto a dramatic track, film benefits from remaining mysterious about how far it intends to go in pursuing its themes, but also suffers from long-windedness and preachy final-reel explicitness as to its message.
  13. 4 Little Girls
    Lee takes a conventional, talking-heads-and-archival-clips approach to the material, but rewardingly establishes an intimate connection with his subjects by devoting considerable time to the personalities and families of the four victims.
  14. Men in Black
    A witty and sometimes surreal sci-fi comedy, Men in Black is a wild knuckleball of a movie that keeps dancing in and out of the strike zone.
  15. Out to Sea
    For the most part, Lemmon, like Matthau, recycles shtick from earlier, better pictures. But then again, their roles call for little else, and Out to Sea actually benefits from their stock turns. [30 June 1997, p.65]
    • Variety
  16. Face/Off
    A provocative premise, virtuoso direction and two dazzling lead performances go a long way toward offsetting a lack of dramatic structure and a sense of when to quit in Face/Off.
  17. Hercules
    Directors John Musker and Ron Clements, who’ve collaborated on Mermaid and Aladdin, here combine smooth, state-of-the-art animation with a funky razzledazzle. They bring Hercules the vitality and insouciance that make Disney an undisputed champ in the arena.
  18. My Best Friend's Wedding
    Ultimately, My Best Friend's Wedding works for some very old-fashioned reasons: It skillfully engages us in the story and its characters. And, for no additional cost, it has something to say about how we live, act, commit and relate.
    • Variety
  19. Batman & Robin
    Unfortunately, the operative word is bland, as the newcomers don't add much to the formula, leaving it to their nemeses to enliven the proceedings. Narrative drive and humor are also in short supply, which creates a serious sagsag in the middle when the novelty of the fresh components has mostly worn off.
  20. Underground
    Emir Kusturica's epic black comedy about Yugoslavia from 1941 to 1992 is a three-hour steamroller circus that leaves the viewer dazed and exhausted, but mightily impressed.
  21. Speed 2: Cruise Control
    Lacking the manipulative structure of "Speed," which shrewdly interspersed rousing set pieces throughout the story, Speed 2 is vastly uneven, trying in its second hour to recoup energy and compensate the audience for all the exposition of the initial reels.
  22. Ulee's Gold
    Nunez achieves a rare, and rarely earned, emotional depth that rewards the moderate demands he makes on contemporary viewers' short attention spans.
  23. Con Air
    Apart from not knowing to quit while it's ahead, Con Air provides quite an exciting flight prior to its crash and burn.
  24. The Pillow Book
    It is at first daunting but ultimately awesomely impressive and beautiful.
  25. Addicted to Love
    Warm performances that result in hilarity without guilt.
  26. The Lost World: Jurassic Park
    David Koepp's script, from the Michael Crichton novel, is schematic and largely predictable. There's an obvious threat and not too many ways to quell it. Underneath the technical virtuosity is a standard chase film, and director Steven Spielberg does little to elevate it dramatically.
  27. Brassed Off
    This well-played, often very sparky dramedy about the shenanigans in a northern brass band composed of miners threatened with pit closure gets a bad attack of social realism in the latter stages that rocks the crowded craft.
  28. Love! Valour! Compassion!
    It is so sharply written and entertaining that in its stage-to-screen transfer the material easily overcomes its theatrical sensibility and the static direction of Joe Mantello, who also staged the Broadway production.
  29. Night Falls on Manhattan
    Lumet never tires of exploring moral quandaries. But what separates his films from the pack is his appreciation for all perspectives.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Brave
    The main fault lies with the writing. Lacking both a realistic grounding and compelling internal momentum, pic wastes its handsome mounting and capable cast on a plodding tale that eludes either psychological or allegorical sense.
  31. The Fifth Element
    Ultimately a mess of diverse ingredients that sorely could have used a rigorous screening process to eliminate all the chaff.
  32. Fathers' Day
    Robin Williams and Billy Crystal can each provoke a lot more laughs in a minute of standup than they jointly manage during the entire running time of Fathers' Day.
  33. Nowhere
    A vibrantly colorful, wildly nihilistic and lovingly perverse poem to America's beautiful, libidinous and doomed youth. Though not his best, Araki's sixth feature is without a doubt his most accessible, sensual and superficially entertaining movie to date.
  34. Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery
    Definitely lives up to its promise of being smashing, groovy, baby.
  35. Breakdown
    In his bigscreen feature debut, director and co-writer Jonathan Mostow displays real flair for visceral cinema while adroitly sidestepping many of the usual tripwires of this sort of film, particularly silly coincidences, stupid decisions on the part of characters with whom you're supposed to identify, and superheroics performed by ordinary people.
  36. Children of the Revolution
    Brimming with almost too many ideas for its 99-minute running time, Duncan's film boasts a strong cast of top actors who flesh out a group of bizarre yet recognizable characters involved in the political scene from the '50s to the present day.
  37. Irma Vep
    A slender but appealing divertissement about a has-been auteur attempting to remake the French silent classic "Les Vampires," the film's wry digs at the institution of Gallic art movies and at the anarchic confusion of the filmmaking process should amuse hip fest audiences.
  38. Romy and Michele's High School Reunion
    Desperately uncertain in tone and able to generate only sporadic laughs, pic decks out its meager story of revenge and comeuppance with a vulgar, flashy shimmer that will no doubt attract teenage girls, or the core "Clueless" audience.
  39. Volcano
    A furiously paced popcorn picture whose outrageous implausibility is somewhat amusing, Volcano delivers enough spectacular action to get it off to a hot B.O. start, although like the lava in the picture, it may not flow quite as far as anticipated.
  40. 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag
    Spade is tiresome in yet another smart-ass part.
  41. Murder at 1600
    What makes the film involving and enjoyable in its first hour is a thick, multilayered plot, a rare sight in mainstream movies nowadays.
  42. Traveller
    The film shrewdly humanizes its protagonists to the point where the audience forgets their identity and roots for them to succeed - and survive.
  43. McHale's Navy
    Time and adapters have not been kind to the fun-loving series.
  44. Grosse Pointe Blank
    The zeal and good nature of the cast overcome the artificial quality of the situations.
  45. Anaconda
    A silly and plodding "Jaws" rip-off about a 40-foot man-eating snake on the prowl in the Brazilian rain forest.
  46. Paradise Road
    Though carefully rendered from a historical perspective, this powerful account of female friendship and bonding under the most cruel conditions lacks the narrative focus and dramatic shapeliness to generate emotional excitement.
  47. Schizopolis
    Some of the filmmaker's keen intelligence remains on display, but only in fractured and often obscure form, and pic overall gives the impression of a giant expurgation of negative feelings about things in general rather than a carefully articulated brief on recognizable subjects.
  48. Inventing the Abbotts
    An emotionally powerful but extremely old-fashioned coming-of-age saga.
  49. Chasing Amy
    Much of the dialogue is good, and Smith does a decent job of presenting the emotional fallout from every major participant's p.o.v.
  50. The Saint
    A generic suspenser that doesn't taste bad at first bite but becomes increasingly hard to swallow, The Saint comes off more as a pallid imitation of Paramount's Eurothriller "Mission: Impossible" than as anything resembling the further adventures of Leslie Charteris' charming rogue.
  51. Double Team
    Shrewdly made with an eye for the global market, where the Belgian star is more of a draw than he is Stateside, pic features visually exciting set pieces in alluring tourist sites, putting the audience in a pleasantly mindless state of disbelief.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Love and Other Catastrophes
    Boosted by a terrific ensemble of five engaging young thesps, pic is forthright, frank and freewheeling in its approach to sex, love and cinema.
  53. Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie
    Even under the best of circumstances, it would be late in the day for another bigscreen adventure from the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. But coming so soon after the well-received reissue of George Lucas' Star Wars trilogy, the high-camp cheesiness ofTurbo: A Power Rangers Movie is especially unimpressive.
  54. The Devil's Own
    The Devil's Own is neither the best nor the worst $90 million-$100 million-area budgeted picture ever made, but it must be the one in which the cost is least evident on the screen.
  55. Cats Don't Dance
    Decked out with sharp and colorful design work, some well-drawn characters and six snappy Randy Newman tunes, this first entry from Turner Feature Animation goes down very easily but lacks a hook to make it anything other than a minor kidpic entry commercially.
  56. Selena
    Although Nava's screenplay hits the subject of every scene right on the head and doesn't ask for much subtlety or subtext, Lopez is wonderful to watch in the dramatic sequences as well as in the numerous musical interludes.
  57. Liar Liar
    Awfully funny at times.
  58. Crash
    Cronenberg is a master of creating and sustaining a mood of insinuating cool and dark allure, but while the director remains firmly behind the wheel for the first hour or so, he cracks up toward the end with sequences that send the film and the audience into a ditch.
  59. Maborosi
    This visually lush but sometimes ponderously slowfilm is a poetic saga of love and loss.
  60. Gray's Anatomy
    Removing a live audience from the equation, Soderbergh becomes a bold participant in the storytelling. The backdrop keeps changing, from a brick wall to drapes, windows and assorted landscapes. The lighting is in constant flux, often punctuating the text on cue.
  61. The Substance of Fire
    But what presumably was powerful in Jon Robin Baitz's play has been diluted in opening it up for the screen.
  62. Love Jones
    Although it becomes a bit contrived and conventional toward the end, writer-director Theodore Witcher's debut feature shows quite a few good moves, and Larenz Tate and Nia Long make an attractively hot couple at its center.
  63. Private Parts
    A funny and unexpectedly beguiling account of the outrageous humorist's unlikely rise to the pinnacle of radio celebrity.
  64. Jungle 2 Jungle
    An extremely handsome physical production, with breathtaking Venezuelan vistas by Tony Pierce-Roberts, Jungle 2 Jungle is an otherwise modest effort. Simple truths are often the most effective, but in this instance they are only banal and mildly amusing.
  65. The Daytrippers
    Greg Mottola's feature directorial debut, is an amusing farce about the delicate intricacies and imbalances of a modern marriage. A spirited cast, including old pros such as Anne Meara and younger talent such as Parker Posey, elevates the basically sitcom material into something fluffier and funnier than its nature suggests.
  66. Donnie Brasco
    The psychological dimensions of the story remain underrealized, but the loaded central premise and intimate focus the film sustains combine for a very involving and dramatic piece of crime lore.
  67. Hard Eight
    Four excellent lead performances, vividly evoked ambience and a masterfully sustained mood of quiet desperation mark Sydney as an impressive piece of work.
  68. Smilla's Sense of Snow
    An exceedingly sleek and handsome thriller, this ambitious European co-production, like the novel on which it's quite faithfully based, starts intriguingly but fails to stay the distance.
  69. Booty Call
    Though straining at the bounds of good taste (and occasionally spilling over), the story remains vigilant in its primary focus.
  70. Lost Highway
    Although uneven and too deliberately obscure in meaning to be entirely satisfying, result remains sufficiently intriguing and startling to bring many of Lynch's old fans back on board for this careening ride.
  71. Rosewood
    Ultimately, however, the film's ambition, urgency and acute observations prevail over the many stock elements to forge an estimable work that is notably serious and analytical for a Hollywood-produced film in this day and age.
  72. Fools Rush In
    In a role that Tom Hanks might have played a decade or so ago, Perry is pretty bland and doesn't provide any hints as to why Alex is so emotionally stymied.
  73. Vegas Vacation
    Series regulars Chevy Chase, Beverly D'Angelo and Randy Quaid (who joined for "Christmas Vacation") are all back for more, and thank God for Quaid, who injects a few bracing shots of mangy humor into what is otherwise a lukewarm brew.
  74. Absolute Power
    Eastwood is in good, sly form, once again delighting in a character's splendid solitude and singular skill at what he does.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Touch
    Paul Schrader's first feature since Light Sleeper five years ago boasts a colorful cast and some vivid individual scenes, but unsuccessfully mixes tones while strenuously reaching for offbeat humor.
  76. That Darn Cat
    It's not quite a catastrophe, but the updated remake of That Darn cat is a loud and largely charmless trifle. Very small children may be attracted in sufficient numbers for fair-to-middling opening weekend B.O., but this overbearing comedy isn't likely to pussyfoot very long in theaters before it high-tails to homevideo.
  77. Dante's Peak
    Physicality of the second half, then, will keep the audience going, but it is not quite sufficient to camouflage the elemental silliness of storyline.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    SubUrbia
    Writer-director teamings seldom mesh as smoothly or suggest so many creative affinities as does the one at the heart of subUrbia, a brooding, incisive comedy that blends the talents of helmer Richard Linklater and playwright Eric Bogosian.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Waiting for Guffman
    The enterprise comes across like a bunch of talented friends making an elaborate home movie for their own amusement.
  80. Fierce Creatures
    A hilarious farce.
  81. Prefontaine
    This first dramatic feature by "Hoop Dreams" director Steve James has one foot still squarely planted in the docu aesthetic and notably lacks any psychological interest or emotional depth.
  82. Albino Alligator
    Spacey makes an honorable and intelligent helming debut with less-than-dazzling material.
  83. Beverly Hills Ninja
    This sweet saga of an underachiever who makes good is surprisingly appealing and sure to broaden the portly comic's fan base.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Metro
    Murphy and the filmmakers clearly want to establish Murphy as an action hero in the mold of Stallone and Van Damme (Carter wrote the Stallone starrer “Tango & Cash” and co-scripted the Van Damme feature “Nowhere to Run”), but they lack the courage of their convictions. Pic is bracketed by scenes of Eddie the funny man, just in case anybody forgets the performer’s roots.
  85. The Relic
    Still, this strikingly proficient production boasts genuinely scary thrills and first-rate visual and creature effects.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Ghosts of Mississippi
    Tepid and two-dimensional in the manner of many telepics, this “Ghost” bodes to haunt the vid shelves after a short theatrical life.
  87. The People vs. Larry Flynt
    Vastly entertaining.
  88. Evita
    Director Alan Parker has done a dazzling job creating screen images to accompany the wall-to-wall music, resulting in a musical fresco that is much closer to a sophisticated filmed opera than to any conventional tuner.
  89. Michael
    John Travolta's charismatic screen presence is the only element that propels Michael over its rough narrative spots and scattered direction.
  90. Thieves
    An abrupt change of pace from Wild Reeds, director Andre Techine's Cannes-competing Thieves (Les Voleurs) elevates a seemingly routine police drama into a Rashomon-style exploration of family and amorous ties. Handsomely and meticulously made, the film nonetheless appeals mostly to a rarefied audience.
  91. The Portrait of a Lady
    A literary adaptation of exceeding intelligence, beauty and concentrated artistry, but one that remains emotionally remote and perhaps unavoidably problematic dramatically.
  92. Scream
    Though the material is more intelligent than the norm and has an unusual third-act twist, it also employs some very clunky stereotypes.
  93. Beavis and Butt-Head Do America
    Has some genuinely amusing moments of dumb and dumber silliness.
  94. Marvin's Room
    The whole film is laced with shards of humor and irony, which proves helpful, considering the basically downbeat nature of the material.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Bastard Out of Carolina
    The pic is a quality item earmarked for serious auds by its nonexploitative handling of potent material, the strong work of debuting helmer Anjelica Huston and striking perfs from young newcomer Jena Malone, Jennifer Jason Leigh and others.
  96. Jerry Maguire
    An exceptionally tasty contempo comedic romance.
  97. Mars Attacks!
    The picture is lacking in the uproarious humor that might well have ensued from the material, which instead inspires occasional laughs but, much more often, bemused fascination and wonderment at the bizarre imaginations and impressive skill of the filmmakers.
  98. Daylight
    Daylight is a lower-echelon disaster thriller, in which the best character is knocked off early on and the leading man runs out of ideas with a third of the picture still to go. Noisy, technically proficient actioner about a group of people trapped in the Holland Tunnel after an explosion gets off a few decent blasts, but is just too limited in scope, imagination and excitement to burst out as a major B.O. winner domestically.
  99. Sling Blade
    Marked by some powerful scenes, fine performances and colorful dialogue, this talented directorial debut by actor-writer Billy Bob Thornton has its effectiveness diluted by serious overlength and a rather monotonous, unmodulated tone.
  100. 101 Dalmatians
    Where the film misses its biggest bet, however, is in depriving the animals of the voices they had in the animated version.
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