Variety's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
    • 35 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Once Upon a Crime...
    SCTV alum Eugene Levy makes his feature-film directing debut with a film that, ironically, would have provided ample fodder for a Second City spoof as a group of US stars chews its way through Italy and France in search of a movie.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Gladiator
    Marshall, cast as the new kid in school, is sullen and far too low key through much of the picture. Director Rowdy He§rrington, who poured on the trash in Road House, aims for a grittier feel this time, with dull results.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Memoirs of an Invisible Man
    Main problem with this mildly entertaining special effects showcase proves as transparent as its title character -- namely that Chevy Chase, who can only play Chevy Chase, lacks leading-man qualities necessary to make this sort of Hitchcockian man-in-peril scenario work.
    • Variety
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Wayne's World
    Director Penelope Spheeris, with her first major studio assignment (and eight-figure budget), delivers a colorful but uneventful picture.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Medicine Man
    An indelicate attempt to create some African Queen-style magic while curing cancer and saving the rainforests in the bargain, this jumbo-budget two-character piece suffers from a very weak script and a lethal job of miscasting.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Final Analysis
    Final Analysis is a crackling good psychological melodrama [from a screen story by Robert Berger and Wesley Strick] in which star power and slick surfaces are used to potent advantage. Tantalizing double-crosses mount right up to the eerie final scene.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mississippi Masala
    Washington is savvy and attractive as the enterprising carpet cleaner destined for a brighter future. Choudhury is a discovery as the Americanized Mina, who calls herself a kind of masala (mixed spices). Together, they carry the film smoothly and agreeably.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fried Green Tomatoes
    Celebrating the crucial, sustaining friendships between two sets of modern-day and 1930s Southern femmes, pic [based on Fanny Flagg’s novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe] emerges as absorbing and life-affirming quality fare, but for a story celebrating fearlessness, it’s remarkably cautious.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Juice
    Dickerson and co-writer Gerard Brown exhibit a sharp ear for dialog and have some real finds in their largely unknown cast.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Rush
    Head-swiveling directorial debut of Lili Fini Zanuck lays out a tough masculine scenario [based on Kim Wozencraft's book] in a way that is always emotionally riveting.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Hand That Rocks the Cradle
    Helmer has obtained taut, impressive performances, notably from cast women.
  12. Guncrazy
    A shoot-'em-up exploitationer with a few interesting ideas floating around in it, Guncrazy lacks the exhilaration of a first-class lovers-on-the-run crime drama. After a promising beginning, competently made indie effort settles into a surprisingly somber mood that suppresses the possibilities latent in the story and actors.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Light Sleeper
    Paul Schrader has created a pointed companion piece to his earlier portraits of lonely outcasts (Taxi Driver, American Gigolo). Contemplative and violent by turns, this quasi-thriller about a long-time drug dealer leaving the business has a great deal to recommend it but could have been significantly better had Schrader done some fresh plotting and not relied on his standby gunplay to resolve issues.
  14. Porco Rosso
    Not only does this rank among Miyazaki’s finest achievements, it reflects his personal love of aviation, his political concerns and his fullest expression to date of a non-fantasy world resembling our own.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Naked Lunch
    Stretching himself with each new work, David Cronenberg has come up with a fascinating, demanding, mordantly funny picture.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Grand Canyon
    [An] earnest, often moving but not totally successful film.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Prince of Tides
    Bringing her usual strengths of character to her role as Nolte’s psychiatrist/lover, Barbra Streisand marks every frame with the intensity and care of a filmmaker committed to heartfelt, unashamed emotional involvement with her characters.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Until the End of the World
    In the logistically taxing effort to get all this on screen, Wenders has sacrificed some of his customary poetry. And the grand emotion and obsession needed to carry the two lovers around the world isn’t apparent in Hurt and Dommartin.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    JFK
    Oliver Stone's JFK is electric muckraking filmmaking.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bugsy
    A melancholy and intimate gangster saga about a romantic dreamer with fatal flaws, Bugsy emerges as a smooth, safe portrait of a volatile, dangerous character. An absorbing narrative flow and a parade of colorful underworld characters vie for screen time with an unsatisfactory central romance.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Last Boy Scout
    There’s really nothing special about this entertaining if mindless shoot-’em-up other than an ample supply of amusing juvenile put-downs and elaborate action sequences.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Night on Earth
    An easy to take followup to his previous pic Mystery Train. Beginning with an outer-space shot gradually zeroing in on planet Earth, the director covers in five separate segments his favorite theme of lonely people interacting but ultimately facing the great void alone.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Hook
    Hook feels as much like a massive amusement park ride as it does a film. Spirited, rambunctious, often messy and undisciplined.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
    Weighed down by a midsection even flabbier than the long-in-the-tooth cast, director Nicholas Meyer still delivers enough of what Trek auds hunger for to justify the trek to the local multiplex.
    • Variety
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Double Life of Veronique
    Despite pic’s many-splendored outbursts of filmic creativity and intense emotion, final result, about the opposite destinies of a Polish girl and a French girl who look alike and have the same name and tics, remains a head-scratching cipher with blurred edges.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Beauty and the Beast
    A lovely film that ranks with the best of Disney’s animated classics, Beauty and the Beast is a tale freshly retold.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Addams Family
    Despite inspired casting and nifty visual trappings, the eagerly awaited Addams Family figures as a major disappointment. First-time director Barry Sonnenfeld never really gets past the skeletal plot, which plays like a collection of sitcom one-liners augmented by feature-film special effects.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Kafka
    The story ultimately feels too conventional, and the portrait of the artist is too shallow to stand as a compelling or convincing evocation of a complex mind.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cape Fear
    A smart and stylish remake of the 1962 suspenser.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Little Man Tate
    Filled with small, telling moments rather than big events, film never really gets inside Fred’s head, but it neatly sketches the external aspects of his predicament.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Highlander II: The Quickening
    Audiences unfamiliar with the first film will be hard put to follow the action as it incoherently hops about in time and space.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The People Under the Stairs
    A pretense of social responsibility and most of the necessary tension get lost in a combination of excessive gore and over-the-top perfs in The People Under the Stairs.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Life Is Sweet
    As a precise observation of British types and a virtuoso piece of carefully observed ensemble playing, the film would be hard to beat.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    My Own Private Idaho
    The Shakespearean side of the story falls short due to Reeves' very narrow range as an actor.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Frankie and Johnny
    Frankie and Johnny is an all-star, high-gloss, feel-good romantic feature sitcom. Amiably written and performed but fearsomely predictable, this middle-of-the-road adaptation of Terrence McNally’s off-Broadway hit [the 1987Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune] invites audiences to indulge in watching beautiful movie stars play lonely little people struggling to find love.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Homicide
    Mamet’s direction gives much of the film a bracing, refreshing tone as he works to express the shattering tensions of Gold’s work.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Ricochet
    Screenplay [from a story by Fred Dekker and Menno Meyjes] offers unusually good dialog for the smooth-talking Washington and a number of scenes to savor. Pic threatens to become truly absorbing as Lithgow’s brilliant revenge scheme unfolds, but Ricochet soon abandons cleverness in favor of spectacle.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Dogfight
    The bringing together of a soldier headed for Vietnam and a future hippie on the night before President Kennedy’s assassination represents a frightfully schematic screenwriting device. But Savoca underplays the character development to such an extent that the film has a muted, very modest impact.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Man in the Moon
    The performances are all on the money, but two are outstanding. Newcomer Witherspoon manages to strike exactly the right note as the tomboy on the verge of womanhood while Waterston works on several levels at once.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Necessary Roughness
    Essentially, this is a football version of the equally contrived and only slightly less hokey baseball comedy Major League.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Fisher King
    The Fisher King has two actors at the top of their form, and a compelling, well-directed and well-produced story.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Indian Runner
    A tortured examination of the disintegration of a Mid-western family, The Indian Runner is very much actors' cinema. Rambling, indulgent and joltingly raw at times, Sean Penn's first outing as a director takes a fair amount of patience to get through but has an integrity that intermittently serves it well.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare
    Delivers enough violence, black humor and even a final reel in 3-D to hit paydirt with horror-starved audiences.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Commitments
    Director Alan Parker's story of a band of young Dubliners playing American '60s soul is fresh, well-executed and original.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Child's Play 3
    Noisy, mindless sequel.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dead Again
    Engaging film style is buoyed by an infectious sense of fun and punctuated by wild and woolly character turns.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man
    A dopey, almost poignantly bad actioner about two legends-in-their-own-minds, who bungle their way through a bank robbery on behalf of a friend, stands out only for big stars Mickey Rourke and Don Johnson.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Barton Fink
    Scene after scene is filled with a ferocious strength and humor. Michael Lerner's performance as a Mayer-like studio overlord is sensational.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Doc Hollywood
    Has no real taste of its own, but, in its mildness and predictability, offers the reassurance of a fast-food or motel chain.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Return to the Blue Lagoon
    Return to the Blue Lagoon is a pointless spinoff of the 1980 hit, which was itself a remake of a 1949 British pic.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Trust
    Long Island filmaker Hal Hartley progresses from his debut feature, The Unbelievable Truth to this bleak, off-center comedy about dysfunctional families in working class suburbia.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Life Stinks
    Mel Brooks' Life Stinks is a fitfully funny vaudeville caricature about life on Skid Row. Premise of a rich man who chooses to live among the poor for a spell feels sorely undeveloped, and suffers from the usual gross effects and exaggerations.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey
    These guileless airheads with the outrageous vocabulary are obviously a beloved creation, and filmmakers might have gotten more mileage if they'd rooted their adventure a bit more in reality.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Boyz n the Hood
    Ultra socially responsible, sometimes to the point of playing like a laundry list of difficulties faced specifically by the urban black community.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Point Break
    A hare-brained wild ride through big surf and bad vibes, Point Break acts like a huge, nasty wave, picking up viewers for a few major thrills but ultimately grinding them into the sand via overkill and absurdity.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Regarding Henry
    A subtle emotional journey impeccably orchestrated by director Mike Nichols and acutely well acted, Regarding Henry has a back-to-basics message that’s bound to strike a responsive chord in the troubled aftermath of the 1980s.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Slacker
    Linklater springs these seemingly random encounters together with a fluid, on-the-move style. Basic problem, given the absence of storyline, is that interest quickly rises and falls by virtue of who happens to be on screen.
    • Variety
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Terminator 2: Judgment Day
    As with "Aliens," director James Cameron has again taken a first rate science fiction film and crafted a sequel that's in some ways more impressive - expanding on the original rather than merely remaking it.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear
    The Naked Gun 2 1/2 is at least two-and-a-half times less funny than its hilarious 1988 progenitor. But even if the laugh machine isn't operating at top efficiency, it still cranks out a few choice bits of irreverent lunacy.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Rocketeer
    Newcomer Campbell exhibits the requisite grit and all-American know-how, but the lead role is written with virtually no humor or subtext. Those around him come off to better advantage, notably Dalton as the deliciously smooth, insidious Sinclair; Sorvino and Alan Arkin, with the latter as the Rocketeer’s mentor; Terry O’Quinn as Hughes; and the lovely, voluptuous Connelly.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
    Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood is a Robin of wood. Murky and uninspired, this $50 million rendition bears evidence of the rushed and unpleasant production circumstances that were much reported upon.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead
    Starts with an enjoyable, if crude, black comedy situation promised by the title, but then it turns into an incredibly dumb teenage girl's fantasy of making it in the business world.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Jungle Fever
    Performances are all pointed and emotionally edgy. Film feels too long, but it ends powerfully, as the audience exits with the view that both the white and black communities are deeply troubled and have a very long way to go to resolve their differences.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Soapdish
    Soapdish aims at a satiric target as big as a Macy’s float and intermittently hits it. Sally Field and Kevin Kline play a feuding pair of romantically involved soap opera stars in this broad but amiable sendup of daytime TV.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Backdraft
    Visually, [the film] often is exhilarating, but it's shapeless and dragged down by corny, melodramatic characters and situations.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Thelma & Louise
    Even those who don't rally to pic's fed-up feminist outcry will take to its comedy, momentum and dazzling visuals.
    • 17 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Hudson Hawk
    A relentlessly annoying clay duck that crash-lands in a sea of wretched excess and silliness.
  68. Truly Madly Deeply
    This sharply scripted study of a bereaved woman who literally wishes her partner back from the grave is an impressive directorial bow by British playwright Anthony Minghella. Despite surface similarities with Ghost pic has a different feel and theme.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Drop Dead Fred
    Oscillating between long arid stretches, inspired explosions of slapstick and disarming warmth, Drop Dead Fred [suggested by a story by Elizabeth Livingston] has an almost irresistible premise - kid's imaginary friend comes back to help the grown woman work out her problems - but it's probably too slow and mushy for kids and too sporadic in its rewards for adults.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    What About Bob?
    Bill Murray finds a real showcase for his oft-shackled talent in this manic comedy.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Mannequin: On the Move
    The only real movement is offered by Meshach Taylor, a prancing decorator who returns from the original Mannequin for more stereotyped fun.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    F/X2
    With all the ingenuity that went into toys and gadgetry in this five-years-removed sequel, it’s a shame no one bothered to hook a brain up to the plot.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Switch
    Switch is a faint-hearted sex comedy that doesn't have the courage of its initially provocative convictions. Undemanding audiences will get a few laughs from the notion of a man parading around in Ellen Barkin's body.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Toy Soldiers
    Toy Soldiers is a very entertaining action film that updates 1981's sleeper hit Taps. Seeing Sean Astin (son of John Astin and Patty Duke) and his pranksters turn into commandos who wipe out the nasty invaders makes for purely escapist, crowd-pleasing pleasure.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    A Kiss Before Dying
    Played with a satirical edge, this update on the pulpy 1956 thriller about a murderous social climber might have been good for a chill and a hoot, but played straight it's a real clunker.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Oscar
    Oscar is an intermittently amusing throwback to gangster comedies of the 1930s. While dominated by star Sylvester Stallone and heavy doses of production and costume design, pic is most distinguished by sterling turns by superb character actors.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Mortal Thoughts
    Played straight and for sympathy, tale of dark retaliation goes astray early on, despite the promise created at the outset by imaginative, energetic production and appealing performances.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Object of Beauty
    The Object of Beauty is a throwback to the romantic comedies of Swinging London cinema, but lacks the punch of the best of that late 1960s genre. Mildly diverting but empty picture.
    • Variety
    • 38 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Out for Justice
    Director John Flynn does a fair job of keeping the minimal storyline crawling along well enough to justify all the mayhem. Too bad the climactic confrontation doesn’t justify the build-up. Stuntwork, however, is first rate, and Seagal remains a convincing action figure.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Poison
    Haynes has composed three distinctive stories that constitute case studies of antisocial aberrations, shot them in three strikingly different styles and intercut them in surprisingly successful ways.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Defending Your Life
    Defending Your Life is an inventive and mild bit of whimsy from Albert Brooks.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Comfort of Strangers
    Neither the beguiling romance of Venice nor the undraped bodies of Natasha Richardson and Rupert Everett can disguise the hollowness of The Comfort of Strangers.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ju Dou
    The plot [from the novella Fuxi fuxi by Liu Heng] has all the elements of a Hollywood melodrama of the ’40s (both The Postman Always Rings Twice and Leave Her to Heaven come to mind), and the picture is, indeed, as deliriously enjoyable as it sounds, but with the added dimension of age-old tradition forcing the characters into roles they don’t want to play.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Career Opportunities
    Writer-producer John Hughes' followup to Home Alone lacks the spit-polish and magic of the blockbuster but still has plenty of absorbing characters, smart, snappy dialog and delightful stretches of comic foolery.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze
    Though Turtles II suffers from a lack of novelty and an aimless screenplay, the bottom line is that the pic won't disappoint its core subteen audience.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Class Action
    Winning performances by Gene Hackman and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and potent direction by Michael Apted pump life into the sturdy courtroom drama formula once again.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Guilty by Suspicion
    First writing-directing effort by vet producer Irwin Winkler squarely lays out the professional, ethical and moral dilemmas engendered by the insidious political pressures brought to bear on filmmakers in the early 1950s. Robert De Niro is excellent as a top director brought down by reactionary paranoia. But the drama comes to life only fitfully.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    True Colors
    True Colors represents a cloyingly schematic attempt to portray the political and moral bankruptcy of the 1980s in a neat little package. Pic condemns but doesn't begin to analyze the corrupted values of the Reagan years, leaving one feeling soiled but unenlightened.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    La Femme Nikita
    [Parillaud] remains a totally uninteresting figment of Besson's blinkered movieland imagination, especially when she's in the company of Karyo and Anglade, who provide balance to her overacting.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    New Jack City
    Filmmakers pull off a provocative, pulsating update on gangster pics with this action-laden epic about the rise and fall of an inner city crack dealer. Strongest element is the anger and disgust directed squarely at drug dealers.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Doors
    This $40 million look at Jim Morrison's short, wild ride through a rock idol life is everything one expects from the filmmaker - intense, overblown, riveting, humorless, evocative, self-important and impossible to ignore.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bride of Re-Animator
    Fans of Stuart Gordon's 1985 Re-Animator will probably dig this campy gorefest sequel directed by the original's producer, Brian Yuzna.
    • 13 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Nothing But Trouble
    It’s a good bet a film is in trouble when the highlight comes from seeing John Candy in drag.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Silence of the Lambs
    A mesmerizing thriller that will grip audiences from first scene to last.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    L.A. Story
    Goofy and sweet, L.A. Story constitutes Steve Martin's satiric valentine to his hometown and a pretty funny comedy in the bargain.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sleeping with the Enemy
    In Sleeping with the Enemy, a chilling look at marital abuse gives way to a streamlined thriller [from the novel by Nancy Price] delivering mucho sympathy for imperiled heroine Julia Roberts and screams aplenty as she's stalked by her maniacal husband.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter
    Film is effective in its own right, but as with most sequels, it lacks freshness. American actress Burt is any adolescent boy’s fantasy seductress. Rest of the cast is adequate, but a letdown compared with the original’s.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Hamlet
    Franco Zeffirelli's Hamlet is bland.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    White Fang
    Disney’s workmanlike remake of Jack London’s adventure White Fang boasts enough nature footage and a strong central performance by Ethan Hawke to win over small fry.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »