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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    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Offence
    There's a powerful confrontation of authority and accused between police sergeant Sean Connery and suspected child molester Ian Bannen in Sidney Lumet's The Offence. A brilliant scene, however, does not in itself make for a brilliant overall feature.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Soylent Green
    The somewhat plausible and proximate horrors in the story of Soylent Green carry the production over its awkward spots to the status of a good futuristic exploitation film.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Paper Moon
    Ryan O'Neal stars as a likeable con artist in the Depression midwest, and his real-life daughter, Tatum O'Neal, is outstanding as his nine-year-old partner in flim-flam.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Coffy
    Jack Hill, who wrote and directs with an action-atuned hand, inserts plenty of realism in footage in which Pam Grier in title role ably acquits herself.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Scorpio
    Despite its anachronistic emulation of mid-1960s cynical spy mellers, Scorpio might have been an acceptable action programmer if its narrative were clearer, its dialog less 'cultured' and its visuals more straightforward.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Scarecrow
    Scarecrow is a periodically interesting but ultimately unsatisfying character study of two modern drifters.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Theater of Blood
    Theatre of Blood is black comedy played for chills and mood and emerges a macabre piece of wild melodramatics.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sisters
    Sisters is a good psychological murder melo- drama, starring Margot Kidder as the schizoid half of Siamese twins, and Jennifer Salt as a news hen driven to terror in her investigation of a bloody murder. Brian De Palma's direction emphasizes exploitation values which do not fully mask script weakness.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Godspell
    Original production’s appealing aspects have remained intact – a strong Stephen Schwartz score and an infectious joie de vivre conveyed by an energetic, no-name cast. So also, unfortunately, have its flaws – a relentlessly simplistic approach to the New Testament interpreted in overbearing children’s theatre-style mugging.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Long Goodbye
    Robert Altman's film version of Raymond Chandler's novel is an uneven mixture of insider satire on the gumshow film genre, gratuitous brutality, and sledgehammer whimsy.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Charlotte's Web
    Heartwarming entertainment.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Train Robbers
    The Train Robbers is an above-average John Wayne actioner, written and directed by Burt Kennedy with suspense, comedy and humanism not usually found in the formula.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Last Tango in Paris
    Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris is an uneven, convoluted, certainly dispute-provoking study of sexual passion in which Marlon Brando gives a truly remarkable performance.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Heartbreak Kid
    Elaine May’s deft direction catches all the possibilities of young romance and its tribulations in light strokes and cleverly accents characterization of the various principals.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean
    The overkill and the underdone do it in.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Getaway
    The Getaway has several things going for it: Sam Peckinpah's hard-action direction, this time largely channeled into material destruction, although fast-cut human bloodlettings occur frequently enough, and Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw as stars.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Poseidon Adventure
    The Poseidon Adventure is a highly imaginative and lustily-produced meller that socks over the dramatic struggle of 10 passengers to save themselves after an ocean liner capsizes when struck by a mammoth tidal wave created by a submarine earthquake.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Asylum
    It's a trim little chiller, with a moderate quota of blood and mayhem, polished performances and smooth direction.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Mechanic
    Michael Winner keeps the tempo at fever-pitch despite deficiencies of feature’s opening sequences.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Lady Sings the Blues
    The film serves as a very good screen debut vehicle for Diana Ross, supported strongly by excellent casting, handsome 1930s physical values, and a script which is far better in dialog than structure.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fist of Fury
    Lee has a good deal of aggressive boyish charm. However, pic is archaically simple-minded in its storyline and marginally professional in its production. Lo Wei’s direction is a juvenile match for his own screenplay.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Way of the Dragon
    Dragon is noteworthy more for the martial arts action than for narrative, which is all its fans probably want anyway.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Snoopy Come Home
    Lee Mendelson and Bill Melendez, who produced A Boy Named Charlie Brown, focus most of their attention on the independent beagle who is the despair of his master, Charlie Brown.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask
    Allen's gift is in the depiction of a contemporary intellectual shlump who cannot seem to make it with the chicks always tantalizingly out of reach. That persona could well have served him once more as the focus for a good bit of caustic comedy on today's sexual mores.
    • Variety
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Super Fly
    Best that can be said for this quickie is its unpretentiousness in not seeking any pseudo-sociological meaning or theme, or assuming any airs that one is supposed to be enriched or provoked by it all. It's strictly action-adventure, alternating, like clockwork, drugs-sex-violence for its duration with hardly a plot line to hold it together.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fat City
    Huston catches the feel of the community with a lean, no-nonsense economy, a hard-boiled but humanly alert feeling which raises the tale from a purely naturalistic lowlife depiction of the characters to make a statement on the life style of the drifters and those who accept a moderate place in the smalltown hierarchy.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Deliverance
    In the depiction of sudden, violent death, there is the rhapsodic wallowing in the deadly beauty of it all: protruding arrows, agonizing expiration, etc. It’s the stuff of which slapdash oaters and crime programmers are made but the obvious ambitions of Deliverance are supposed to be on a higher plane.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Joe Kidd
    Not enough identity is given Clint Eastwood in a New Mexico land struggle in which no reason is apparent for his involvement, but John Sturges' direction is sufficiently compelling to keep guns popping and bodies falling.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Le Samouraï
    It is intermittently successful.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Hannie Caulder
    Welch, with genteel modesty, makes the character for many rather ingratiating though others undoubtedly will find her plain ludicrous.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Conquest of the Planet of the Apes
    The Planet of the Apes series takes an angry turn in the fourth entry, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Candidate
    The Candidate is an excellent drama starring Robert Redford as a naive liberal political novice who wises up fast...Redford’s superior acting talents, which not-often-enough are tapped by the scripts he decides to do, are nearly all on display herein in a virtuoso peformance.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Frenzy
    Armed with a superior script by Anthony Shaffer, an excellent cast, and a top technical crew, Alfred Hitchcock fashions a firstrate melodrama about an innocent man hunted by Scotland Yard for a series of sex-strangulation murders.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Boxcar Bertha
    Performances are dull. Whatever sociological, political or dramatic motivations may once have existed in the story have been ruthlessly stripped from the plot, leaving all characters bereft of empathy or sympathy. There’s hardly a pretense toward justifying the carnage
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Twins of Evil
    John Hough has given Tudor Gates’ script [based on a characters created by J. Sheridan Le Fanu] a good pace and directed so that audiences can take it as straight horror or as a slight send-up.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Other
    An outstanding example of topflight writing structure and dialog, enhanced to full fruition by a knowing director.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Jeremiah Johnson
    The film has its own force and beauty and the only carp might lie in its not always clear exegesis of the humanistic spirit and freedom most of its characters are striving for.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Play It Again, Sam
    The placid direction of Herbert Ross keeps Allen in the spotlight for some good laughs, several chuckles and many smiles.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fritz the Cat
    Excellent animation and montage shore up a plot which has a few howls, several chuckles and many smiles.
    • 100 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Godfather
    Overlong at about 175 minutes (played without intermission), and occasionally confusing. While never so placid as to be boring, it is never so gripping as be superior screen drama.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    Pink Flamingos
    Around the above premise spins the nitwit plot of the poorly lensed 16mm picture Pink Flamingos – one of the most vile, stupid and repulsive films ever made.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Slaughterhouse-Five
    Slaughterhouse-Five is a mechanically slick, dramatically sterile commentary about World War II and afterward, as seen through the eyes of a boob Everyman. Director George Roy Hill's arch achievement emphasizes the diffused cant to the detriment of characterizations, which are stiff, unsympathetic and skin-deep.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Frogs
    Cast is generally firstclass and Milland’s presence, though comparatively brief, is always commanding.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Silent Running
    Silent Running depends on the excellent special effects of debuting director Douglas Trumbull and his team and on the appreciation of a literate but broadly entertaining script. Those being the highlights, they are virtually wiped out by the crucial miscasting of Bruce Dern. Production lacks dramatic credibility and teeters on the edge of the ludicrous.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    What's Up, Doc?
    The script and cast are excellent; the direction and comedy staging are outstanding; and there are literally reels of pure, unadulterated and sustained laughs.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Cabaret
    It is literate, bawdy, sophisticated, sensual, cynical, heart-warming, and disturbingly thought-provoking.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Hot Rock
    Peter Yates’ direction and uniformly good cast partly overcome a William Goldman script [from Donald E. Westlake’s novel] that has many exciting and funny bits, but lacks a clear, unifying thrust.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Cowboys
    The story [from a novel by William Dale Jennings] is long and episodic, and its gentle treatment makes the length something of a hindrance to maximum enjoyment.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Dirty Harry
    Strip away the philosophical garbage and all that's left is a well-made but shallow running-and-jumping meller. Don Siegel produces handsomely and directs routinely.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Straw Dogs
    Director Sam Peckinpah indulges himself in an orgy of unparalleled violence and nastiness with undertones of sexual repression in this production.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mary, Queen of Scots
    A large cast of excellent players appears to good advantage under the direction of Charles Jarrott. Superior production details and the cast help overcome an episodic, rambling story.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Kidnapped
    An intriguing adventure piece set against that period in Scottish history when the English were trying to take over that country's rule.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Minnie and Moskowitz
    Gena Rowlands and Seymour Cassel play the title roles in Minnie And Moskowitz, an oppressive and irritating film in which a shrill and numbing hysteria of acting and direction soon kills any empathy for the loneliness of the main characters. John Cassavetes wrote and directed in his now-familiar home-movie improvisational and indulgent style.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Clockwork Orange
    A brilliant nightmare... The film employs outrageous vulgarity, stark brutality and some sophisticated comedy to make an opaque argument for the preservation of respect for man's free will - even to do wrong.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Harold and Maude
    Director Hal Ashby’s second feature is marked by a few good gags, but marred by a greater preponderance of sophomoric, overdone and mocking humor.
  56. Diamonds Are Forever
    Whatever connection Bond had to the real world has now been severed in favor of delivering the most satisfying possible experience for audiences, such as a throwaway scene of Q using an electromagnetic device to beat the slot machines or allowing homosexual henchmen Wint and Kidd to devise elaborate (and yet easily escapable) traps.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Hospital
    The heavily sprayed-on sociological angle is that hospitals today treat patients like baggage.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Bedknobs and Broomsticks
    The magic of Walt Disney lingers magnificently on in Bed knobs and Broomsticks.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Nicholas and Alexandra
    Sam Spiegel comes up with a rarity: the intimate epic, in telling the fascinating story of the downfall of the Romanovs.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Play Misty for Me
    When it’s not serving as an overdone travelog for the Monterey Peninsula-Carmel home environment of star, producer and debuting director Clint Eastwood, Play Misty for Me is an often fascinating suspenser about psychotic Jessica Walter, whose deranged infatuation for Eastwood leads her to commit murder. For that 80% of the film which constitutes the story, the structure and dialog create a mood of nervous terror which the other 20% nearly blows away.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    200 Motels
    The film is a series of surrealistic sequences allegedly inspired by the experiences of a rock group on the road. The incidents are often outrageously irreverent. The comedy is fast and furious, both sophisticated and sophomoric.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fiddler on the Roof
    Sentimental in a theatrical way, romantic in the old fashioned way, nostalgic of immigration days, affirmative of human decency, loyalty, bravery and folk humor.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Last Picture Show
    Notre Dame professor Edward Fischer has said that the best films, like the best books, tell how it is to be human under certain circumstances. Larry McMurtry did a beautiful job of this in his small novel (which he transferred to the screen), The Last Picture Show.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Daughters of Darkness
    Daughters of Darkness is so intentionally perverse that it often slips into impure camp, but Kumel and Seyrig hold interest by piling twists on every convention of the vampire genre.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The French Connection
    Producer and screenwriter have added enough fictional flesh to provide director William Friedkin and his overall topnotch cast with plenty of material, and they make the most of it.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Lawman
    Lancaster, as usual, is a highly convincing marshal, tough and taciturn. Ryan is also excellent as the faded, weak marshal with only memories. But it’s Cobb who quietly steals the film as the local boss who, however, unlike in many such films, is no ruthless villain.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Omega Man
    The Omega Man is an extremely literate science-fiction drama starring Charlton Heston as the only survivor of a worldwide bacteriological war, circa 1975. Thrust of the well-written story [adapted from Richard Matheson's novel] is Heston's running battle with deranged survivors headed by Anthony Zerbe.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Willard
    Some good jump moments and at least two stomach-churning murders committed by the rats with tight direction of Daniel Mann develop pic into sound nail-chewer.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Red Tent
    Some spectacularly beautiful Arctic footage, plus an exciting personal story of survival, make the production compelling and suspenseful.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Devils
    As if the story alone weren’t bizarre enough, Russell has spared nothing in hyping the historic events by stressing the grisly at the expense of dramatic unity.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Panic in Needle Park
    The Panic in Needle Park is a total triumph. Gritty, gutsy, compelling, and vivid to the point of revulsion, it is an overpowering tragedy about urban drug addiction.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Two-Lane Blacktop
    An excellent combination of in-depth contemporary story-telling and personality casting.
  73. Shaft
    Directed by Gordon Parks with a subtle feel for both the grit and the humanity of the script. Excellent cast, headed by newcomer Richard Roundtree, may shock some audiences with heavy dose of candid dialog and situation.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Walkabout
    Roeg's bag is photography, but pretty pictures alone cannot sustain - and, in fact, inhibit - this fragile and forced screen adaptation of a James Vance Marshall novel.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
    An okay family musical fantasy featuring Gene Wilder as an eccentric candymaker who makes a boy's dreams come true.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Carnal Knowledge
    Mike Nichols' Carnal Knowlede is a rather superficial and limited probe of American male sexual hypocrisies.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Klute
    Produced handsomely in New York, but directed tediously by Alan J. Pakula, the film is a suspenser without much suspense. Donald Sutherland shares above-title billing in a line-throwing, third-banana trifle of a part.
    • 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.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Le Mans
    Marked by some spectacular car-racing footage, Le Mans is a successful attempt to escape the pot-boiler of prior films on same subject. The solution was to establish a documentary mood.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Anderson Tapes
    Scripter Frank Pierson with director Sidney Lumet has injected broadly comic aspects and the laughs work without reducing suspense.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Mephisto Waltz
    Main fault is a tired script with more than a full quota of arch, laughable dialog, spouted with relish by performers struggling to keep their heads above water.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    They Might Be Giants
    It’s not only unfunny, but increasingly preachy and sentimental – hammering at the cliched tale of the good-hearted nut who’s basically saner, and certainly nicer, than the pack of meanies who attempt to defeat him.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Big Jake
    Big Jake is an extremely slick and commercial John Wayne starrer, this time as a long-gone husband out to rescue a grandson from kidnapper Richard Boone.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Escape from the Planet of the Apes
    Escape from the Planet of the Apes is an excellent film, almost as good as the original Planet of the Apes. Arthur Jacobs’ production is marked by an outstanding script, using some of the original Pierre Boulle novel characters; excellent direction by Don Taylor; and superior performances from a cast headed by encoring Roddy McDowall and Kim Hunter.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Plaza Suite
    Each of the femme stars is given much screen time and the result not only is excellent spotlighting of their own talents, but also an adroit restraint on Matthau’s presence.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Billy Jack
    Screenplay attempts to encompass too many story facets. Result is that the action frequently drags.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bananas
    Allen and Mickey Rose have written some funny stuff, and Allen, both as director and actor, knows what to do with it.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song
    Melvin Van Peebles produced this film, edited it, wrote the screenplay, composed the music and played the leading role. He comes out ahead in all but one category: there are some serious problems with his screenplay.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Summer of '42
    Robert Mulligan's Summer of '42 has a large amount of charm and tenderness; it also has little dramatic economy and much eye-exhausting photography which translates to forced and artificial emphasis on a strungout story.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Beguiled
    Marking a distinct change of pace for both director Don Siegel and star Clint Eastwood, The Beguiled doesn’t come off, and cues laughter in all the wrong places.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Get Carter
    Mike Hodges' top-notch adaptation of a Ted Lewis novel not only maintains interest but conveys with rare artistry, restraint and clarity the many brutal, sordid and gamy plot turns.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Vanishing Point
    The action is almost entirely made up of one man driving a car at maximum speed from Denver to, hopefully, San Francisco, against various odds, from the police who try to intercept him, to the oddball individuals he meets along the way.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Andromeda Strain
    The Andromeda Strain is a high-budget science-fact melodrama, marked by superb production, an excellent score, and intriguing story premise and an exciting conclusion. But Nelson Gidding's adaptation of the Michael Crichton novel is too literal and talky.
    • Variety
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Bleak Moments
    A film with downbeat themes of solitude, difficulties of communication, coping with a retarded 29-year-old sister, it has enough human insight sans mawkishness or undue sentimentality to make it wryly funny, with its recognition of human foibles that gives it an edge, charm and warmth, tempered with compassion.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    There Was a Crooked Man...
    It is the type of action drama in which neither the actors nor director appear to believe the script or characters.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Aristocats
    Helped immeasurably by the voices of Phil Harris, Eva Gabor, Sterling Holloway, Scatman Crothers and others, plus some outstanding animation, songs, sentiment, some excellent dialog and even a touch of psychedelia.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Little Big Man
    Little Big Man is a sort of vaudeville show, framed in fictional biography, loaded with sketches of varying degrees of serious and burlesque humor, and climaxed by the Indian victory over Gen George A. Custer at Little Big Horn in 1876.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Brewster McCloud
    Brewster McCloud spares practically nothing in contemporary society. Literate original screenplay is a sardonic fairy tale for the times, extremely well cast and directed.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Wuthering Heights
    Wuthering Heights is a competent, tasteful, frequently even lovely re-adaption of Emily Bronte's Gothic, mystical love story. But the brooding tension, the electric passion of two lovers compelled to an inevitable tragedy is not generated.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Rio Lobo
    Rio Lobo is the sort of western that John Wayne and producer-director Howard Hawks do in their sleep. But by no stretch of nostalgia does it match such previous Wayne-Hawks epics as Red River or Rio Bravo.
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