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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    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Green Card
    Although a thin premise endangers its credibility at times, Green Card is a genial, nicely played romance.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Not Without My Daughter
    Sally Field has the stage to herself to engage the audience’s sympathy, and this she does with an earnest, suitably emotional performance as a rather typically sincere, middle-class American.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Warlock
    Warlock is an attempt to concoct a pic from a pinch of occult chiller, a dash of fantasy thriller and a splash of 'stalk 'n' slash'. But what could have been a heady brew falls short, despite some gusto thesping from Richard E. Grant and Lori Singer.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Godfather: Part III
    Part III matches its predecessors in narrative intensity, epic scope, socio-political analysis, physical beauty and deep feeling for its characters and milieu.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Alice
    Performances are strong all around, with a succession of top actors making the most of their brief turns. But the center of the pic is Farrow, who’s funny and touching.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Kindergarten Cop
    The polished comic vision that gave Twins, Arnold Schwarzenegger's comedy breakthrough, a storybook shine completely eludes director Ivan Reitman here. Result is a mish-mash of violence, psycho-drama and lukewarm kiddie comedy.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Long Walk Home
    An effectively mounted drama about the human impact of changing times on two families, with sturdy performances by Sissy Spacek as an uppercrust white housewife and Whoopi Goldberg as her maid.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    The Bonfire of the Vanities
    Unfortunately, the caricatures are so crude and the ‘revelations’ so unenlightening of the human condition, that the satire is about as socially incisive as a Police Academy entry.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Russia House
    John le Carre's glasnost-era espionage novel has been turned into intelligent adult entertainment, but somber tone, utter lack of action and sex, and complexity of plot tilts this mainly to upscale audience.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Mermaids
    As eccentric mother-daughter films go, this one [from the novel by Patty Dann] falls into the same category as Terms of Endearment, with many of the same comedic pleasures and dramatic pitfalls. The delightful Ryder, billing notwithstanding, is really the star. Cher is also fine as the cavalier, self-centered mom, an equally amusing if less sympathetic character.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Edward Scissorhands
    A delightful and delicate comic fable.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Rookie
    Overlong, sadistic and stale even by the conventions of the buddy pic genre.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Grifters
    A curiously uneven movie.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Cyrano de Bergerac
    A winner by more than a nose, Cyrano de Bergerac attains a near-perfect balance of verbal and visual flamboyance. Gerard Depardieu's grand performance as the facially disgraced swordsman-poet sets a new standard with which all future Cyranos will have to reckon.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Misery
    Casting of Caan is effective, as his snide remarks and grumpy attittude are backed up by a physical dimension that makes believable his inevitable fighting back. Bates had a field day with her role, creating a quirky, memorable object of hate.
    • Variety
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Eating
    The ladies who lunch - and munch, breakfast, binge, dine, diet, starve and sample - are delicious in Eating, but writer-director Henry Jaglom labors over the stove too long, harming a tasty souffle.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mr. & Mrs. Bridge
    Mr. & Mrs. Bridge is an affecting study of an uppercrust Midwestern family in the late 1930s.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Predator 2
    While the film doesn’t achieve the same thrills of the final 45 minutes of Predator in terms of overall excitement, it outdoes its first safari in start-to-finish hysteria. The real star is the pic’s design. Writers don’t waste much time on character development.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Rocky V
    When the underdog always wins he's not much of an underdog anymore, and the narrative cartwheels Sylvester Stallone has turned over the years to put Rocky in that position have peeled away the novelty.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Rescuers Down Under
    This sort-of sequel to the 1977 hit The Rescuers boasts reasonably solid production values and fine character voices. Too bad they're set against such a mediocre story that adults may duck.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Dances with Wolves
    Costner's directing style is fresh and assured. A sense of surprise and humor accompany Dunbar's adventures at every turn, twisting the narrative gently this way and that and making the journey a real pleasure.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Child's Play 2
    Child’s Play 2 is another case of rehashing the few novel elements of an original to the point of utter numbness.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Jacob's Ladder
    Jacob's Ladder means to be a harrowing thriller about a Vietnam vet (Tim Robbins) bedeviled by strange visions, but the $40 million production is dull, unimaginative and pretentious.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Vincent & Theo
    One of Robert Altman’s most cinematically conventional films as well as one of his most deeply personal.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Graffiti Bridge
    A half-baked retread of tired MTV imagery and childish themes.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Night of the Living Dead
    The story faithfully follows the original except for the bonehead decision to replace the ending with a ‘meaningful’ twist that reeks of pretentiousness.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    White Palace
    Outstanding performances by Susan Sarandon and James Spader, working from a relentlessly witty script, make White Palace one of the best films of its kind since The Graduate (1967).
    • 51 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Quigley Down Under
    Quigley Down Under is an exquisitely crafted, rousing western made in Oz.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Hot Spot
    Seeps with atmosphere, unfolds at a deceptively relaxed pace, steadily accumulates noirish grit, then dizzily plunges into a Lynch-like plumbing of the dark passions and nasty secrets at the heart of Main Street, USA.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael
    Fans of Winona Ryder will definitely want to catch her in an offbeat role as the town rebel in this teen-oriented smalltown saga; unfortunately, the rest of the production doesn't quite match up.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Memphis Belle
    Offering a romanticized view of heroism drawn from the Hollywood war epic, Memphis Belle is unashamedly commercial. Its moral fabric is thinner than that of other David Puttnam productions.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Mr. Destiny
    A heavy-handed, by-the-numbers fantasy about an ordinary Joe who thinks his life would have been different if he'd connected with that all-important pitch in a high school baseball game.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Miller's Crossing
    Substance is here in spades, along with the twisted, brilliantly controlled style on which filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen made a name.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Marked for Death
    This dim-witted revenge yarn is the simplest of showcases for Steven Seagal - an extremely compelling action presence with his brutal martial arts fighting style, imposing size and nasty demeanor.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Henry & June
    In its depiction of Depression Paris and sexual candor, Henry & June succeeds. The central performances of Fred Ward, as the cynical, life-loving Miller, and Maria de Medeiros, as the beautiful, insatiable Anais, splendidly fulfill the director’s vision. Pic is less successful in gaining audience sympathy for these hedonists. Also, the character of June (Uma Thurman) is ill-defined.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Desperate Hours
    Desperate Hours is a coldly mechanical and uninvolving remake of the 1955 Bogart pic The Desperate Hours, with Mickey Rourke as the hood terrorizing a suburban family.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    An Angel at My Table
    A potentially painful and harrowing film is imbued with gentle humor and great compassion, which makes every character come vividly alive. Campion constructs the film in a series of short, sometimes elliptical scenes.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    King of New York
    Complementing Walken’s bravura turn are equally flamboyant performances by David Caruso as the young Irish cop out to destroy Walken, and Larry Fishburne as Walken’s slightly crazy aide-de-camp.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Pacific Heights
    The specter of a menace who invades one's home turf and can't be ousted is universally disturbing, and director John Schlesinger goes all out to make this creepy thriller-chiller as unsettling as it needs to be.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Texasville
    Peter Bogdanovich's sequel to The Last Picture Show is long on folksy humor and short on plot. In adapting Larry McMurtry's 1987 follow-up novel (predecessor was penned in 1965, filmed in 1971), Bogdanovich uses an impending county centennial celebration as the weak spine for this slice of small-town Texas life.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Narrow Margin
    Spectacular stunt work and Canadian locations punch up the train thriller Narrow Margin, but feature remake is too cool and remote to grab the viewer.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    State of Grace
    State of Grace is a handsomely produced, mostly riveting, but ultimately overlong and overindulgent gangster picture.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    White Hunter Black Heart
    Clint Eastwood's film isn't an African adventure epic, as those unaware of Peter Viertel's 1953 book may surmise from the title. It's an intelligent, affectionate study of an obsessive American film director who, while working on a film in colonial Africa, becomes sidetracked by his compulsion to hunt elephants.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Repossessed
    Nonstop silliness keeps this frightless spoof of The Exorcist entertaining enough to keep an undemanding audience happy.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Hardware
    Hardware veers loonily out of control and becomes a black comic exercise in F/X tour-deforce that’s ceaselessly pushing itself over the top.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Postcards from the Edge
    Mike Nichols' film of Carrie Fisher's novel Postcards from the edge packs a fair amount of emotional wallop in its dark-hued comic take on a chemically dependent Hollywood mother and daughter (Shirley MacLaine and Meryl Streep).
    • 92 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Goodfellas
    Simultaneously fascinating and repellent, Goodfellas is Martin Scorsese's colorful but dramatically unsatisfying inside look at Mafia life in 1955-1980 New York City.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Killer
    This extremely violent and superbly made actioner demonstrates the tight grasp that director John Woo has on the crime meller genre, and his ability to twist the form into surprisingly satisfying shapes. The picture creeps up on an audience. Melodramatic from the start, it finally goes over the top to deliver a solid emotional punch.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    After Dark, My Sweet
    Director-cowriter James Foley has given this near-perfect adaptation of a Jim Thompson novel a contempo setting and emotional realism that make it as potent as a snakebite.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Witches
    The wizardry of Jim Henson's Creature Shop and a superbly over-the-top performance by Angelica Huston gives The Witches a good deal of charm and enjoyment.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Pump Up the Volume
    Writer-director Allan Moyle's story about a shy high school student who galvanizes an Arizona suburb with a rebellious pirate radio show has rambunctious energy and defiant attitude.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Exorcist III
    Since The Exorcist was one of the most frightening films ever and Exorcist II one of the goofiest, chances favored The Exorcist III to fall somewhere in between, though not nearly far enough up the scale to rival the original.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Wild at Heart
    Joltingly violent, wickedly funny and rivetingly erotic, David Lynch's Wild at Heart [based on the novel by Barry Gifford] is a rollercoaster ride to redemption through an American gothic heart of darkness.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Air America
    Spectacular action sequences and engaging performances by Mel Gibson and Robert Downey Jr make this big-budgeter entertaining and provocative.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Two Jakes
    This oft-delayed sequel proves a jumbled, obtuse yet not entirely unsatisfying follow-up to Chinatown, rightly considered one of the best films of the 1970s.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Flatliners
    Flatliners is a strikingly original, often brilliantly visualized film from director Joel Schumacher and writer Peter Filardi.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Metropolitan
    Metropolitan succeeds on several levels, offering rich, sparkling dialog, distinct characters and an intriguing peek into a seldom seen milieu.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Mo' Better Blues
    Personal rather than social issues come to the fore in Mo' Better Blues, a Spike Lee personality piece dressed in jazz trappings that puffs itself up like Bird but doesn't really fly. More focused on the sexual dilemmas of its main character than on musical themes, pic might well be subtitled He's Gotta Have It.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Young Guns II
    Although it's more ambitious than most sequels, Young Guns II exhausts its most inspired moment during the opening credits and fades into a copy of its 1988 predecessor - a slick, glossy MTV-style western.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    Problem Child
    The film marks an atrocious bigscreen debut for actor and episodic TV director Dennis Dugan.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Presumed Innocent
    Honed to a riveting intensity by director Alan Pakula and featuring the tightest script imaginable, Presumed Innocent is a demanding, disturbing javelin of a courtroom murder mystery.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Unbelievable Truth
    The Unbelievable Truth is a promising, reasonably engaging first feature of the art school film variety. Very consciously designed and stylized in all departments, pic has a minor-key feel to it.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Freshman
    Pic’s weakest element is the recurring satire of film studies. Although Benedict is droll as an academic poseur, the mocking of film analysis is puerile and obvious.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Navy Seals
    Nifty performances make this routine action flick better than it probably has a right to be.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Arachnophobia
    Arachnophobia expertly blends horror and tongue-in cheek comedy in the tale of a small California coastal town overrun by Venezuelan killer spiders. Frank Marshall’s sophisticated feature directing debut never indulges in ultimate gross-out effects and carefully chooses both its victims and its means of depicting their dispatch.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Ghost
    An odd creation - at times nearly smothering in arty somberness, at others veering into good, wacky fun.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Quick Change
    Bill Murray delivers a smart, sardonic and very funny valentine to the rotten Apple in Quick Change. Pic became Murray's directing debut after he and Franklin became too attached to the project to bring anyone else in. Material, based on Jay Cronley's book, is neither ambitious nor particularly memorable, but it's brought off with a sly flair that makes it most enjoyable.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Adventures of Ford Fairlane
    Surprisingly funny and expectedly rude, this first starring vehicle by vilified standup comic Andrew Dice Clay has a decidedly lowbrow humor that is a sort of modern equivalent of that of the Three Stooges.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Die Hard 2
    Die Hard 2 lacks the inventivenes of the original but compensates with relentless action.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Days of Thunder
    This expensive genre film about stock car racing has many of the elements that made the same team's Top Gun a blockbuster, but the producers recruited scripter Robert Towne to make more out of the story than junk food.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    RoboCop 2
    This ultraviolent, nihilistic sequel has enough technical dazzle to impress hardware fans, but obviously no one in the Orion front office told filmmakers that less is more.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Betsy's Wedding
    Setting a buoyant, anything-could-happen tone from the outset, Alda as director creates what he’s striving for: a feeling of being caught up in the warm craziness of this family, as all its vivid characters push and tug to impose their will on the proceedings. His punchy, inpertinent script is equally good.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Dick Tracy
    Though it looks ravishing, Warren Beatty's longtime pet project is a curiously remote, uninvolving film.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Gremlins 2: The New Batch
    An hilarious sequel featuring equal parts creature slapstick for the small fry and satirical barbs for adults. Addition of Christopher Lee to the cast as a mad genetics engineering scientist is a perfect touch.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Total Recall
    The fierce and unrelenting pace, accompanied by a tongue-in-cheek strain of humor in the roughhouse screenplay, keeps the film moving like a juggernaut.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Back to the Future Part III
    Recovers the style, wit and grandiose fantasy elements of the original. The simplicity of plot, and the wide expansiveness of its use of space, are a refreshing change from the convoluted, visually cramped and cluttered second part.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Fire Birds
    Originally titled Wings of the Apache for the Apache assault helicopters prominently featured, Fire Birds resembles a morale booster project leftover from The Reagan era.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!
    Almodovar's inventive direction, superb lensing by Jose Luis Alcaine, a fine score by Ennio Morricone and top technical credits make pic a pleasure to watch.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Tales from the Darkside: The Movie
    Tales from the Darkside is significantly gorier than its namesake TV series, and has better production values.
    • Variety
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Last Exit to Brooklyn
    Last Exit to Brooklyn is a bleak tour of urban hell, a $16 million Stateside-lensed production of Hubert Selby Jr's controversial 1964 novel. But it doesn't hold a scalpel to the lacerating torrential prose that made the book so cringingly urgent.
    • 19 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Wild Orchid
    What doesn’t work is the hold Rourke is supposed to have over Otis. Looking pudgy and puffy-faced, with a little gold earring, he is anything but an appetizing sex object...As Emily, Otis really is hypnotically attractive, but she plays the still-waters-run-deep country beauty with expressionless immobility. Bisset, always a class act, here bubbles over with caricatured joie de vivre.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Guardian
    Who knows what possessed director William Friedkin to straight-facedly tell this absurd 'tree bites man' tale, but it's an impulse he should have exorcised.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Q & A
    Key to film’s success is how the case gradually uncovers new layers of corruption and insidious racism, with escalating awareness (and danger) for Hutton. Nolte is outstanding, bringing utter conviction to the stream of racist and sexist epithets that pour from his good ole boy lips.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Miami Blues
    This quirky and sometimes brutally funny film strings together terrific moments but never takes a point of view.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Crazy People
    Crazy People combines a hilarious dissection of advertising with a warm view of so-called insanity... Finished film is a credit to all hands.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Gods Must Be Crazy II
    Jamie Uys has concocted a genial sequel to his 1981 international sleeper hit The Gods must Be Crazy that is better than its progenitor in most respects.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    I Love You to Death
    I Love You to Death is a stillborn attempt at black comedy.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover
    Albert is one of the ugliest characters ever brought to the screen. Ignorant, over-bearing and violent, it’s a gloriously rich performance by Gambon.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Cry-Baby
    John Waters' mischievous satire of the teen exploitation genre is entertaining as a rude joyride through another era, full of great clothes and hairdos.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Pretty Woman
    Roberts handles the transition from coarse and gawky to glamorous with aplomb.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Fourth War
    Tightly directed by Frankenheimer with an eye for comic relief as well as tension maintenance, The Fourth War holds the fascination of eyeball-to-eyeball conflict.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Blue Steel
    A taut, relentless thriller that hums with an electric current of outrage. Director and cowriter Kathryn Bigelow makes the most of her hook - the use of a female star (Jamie Lee Curtis) in a tough action pic - by stressing the character's vulnerability in remarkable early scenes.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Lord of the Flies
    Director Harry Hook’s literal, unimaginative visual approach makes the tale seem mundane and tedious.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Blind Fury
    Blind Fury is an action film with an amusing gimmick, toplining Rutger Hauer, as an apparently invincible blind Vietnam vet who wields a samurai sword with consummate skill.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    House Party
    House Party captures contemporary black teen culture in a way that’s fresh, commercial and very catchy.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Joe Versus the Volcano
    An overproduced, disappointing shaggy dog comedy.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Bad Influence
    Bad Influence proves a reasonably taut, suspenseful thriller that provides its share of twists before straying into silliness. Rob Lowe doesn’t really project enough menace or charisma to pull off his role as Alex, a babyfaced psycho who slowly leads Michael (James Spader) through a liberating fantasy that ultimately turns into a yuppie nightmare.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Handmaid's Tale
    Though helmer Volker Schlondorff succeeds in painting the bleakness of this extrapolated future, he fails to create a strong and persistent connection with the heroine’s plight.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Hunt for Red October
    The Industrial Light & Magic special visual effects unit does yeoman work in staging the action with cliffhanger intensity.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Cinema Paradiso
    Tornatore is an able storyteller who knows the value of cute kids and easy emotion.
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